After 14 years with Plex, I finally moved my video library to Jellyfin. Why rising costs, feature restrictions and digital ownership pushed me towards FOSS.
I am hoping that jellyfin gets better over the next few years. I keep trying it and it keeps feeling broken to me. Lots of people have the same experience it seems but then there’s also always a few people that act like I’m crazy. Nah, it’s still not there, unless things have changed a lot in the past year.
I use a 3rd party client called Wholphin and it works great.
Also it helps to set up profiles in sonarr/radarr to make sure you’re getting media thats compatible with the devices that will interact with Jellyfin, and filter out formats that cause problems. I use Profilarr to load in community made quality profiles to sonarr/radarr and then i copy them and tweak them for myself.
Before i started doing this i had loads of problems with Jellyfin not being able to play stuff, and now everything runs perfectly.
The biggest discovery I made that was causing a lot of my problems was HDR formats. HDR10+ only really works on Samsung TVs for example. I dont have a Samsung TV, so anything I had that would try to play that content would come out a weird green/purple colour. Content with Dolby Vision Profile 5 would flat out not play on devices that don’t support Dolby Vision. Dolby Vision Profile 7 falls back to regular HDR10 when the device doesnt accept DV, so that works, but DV Profile 5 doesnt do that.
I was able to filter out HDR10+ and DV Profile 5 using quality profiles and all my playback issues disappeared immediately.
What about it feels broken? I’ve been running Plex and Jellyfin together for a long time and always find myself using Jellyfin. I’m curious what problems people run into to see if I have the same problem or maybe I’m just overlooking something.
I had Kodi installed for a few weeks as my television media front-end, but it has:
the worst UX that you could possibly imagine, with menu after menu arranged seemingly at random, and buttons doing different things at every level
functionality delivered via plugins, at least half of which do not work
directory scans failing seemingly at random, with the errors hidden away in log files that you have to shell in to retrieve
terrible documentation, inevitably consisting of forum pages about how it used to work a decade ago
It may well have a huge amount of functionality, but configuring and using it is the exact opposite of slick. Have uninstalled in favour of KDE with VLC installed, and manipulated via the KDE Connect mobile app, which is somehow a much better big-screen experience.
I felt crazy when I tried to use Kodi. Everything was so convoluted to setup.
I was thinking of installing Linux on a mini-pc I have here and just buying a bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo to watch medias. I can run Firefox with ad blocking and easily access my server like that.
Not OP, but I have similar feelings and they have nothing to do with the client or plugins. If I can’t easily and securely share my Jellyfin with the Internet beyond my LAN without resorting to a VPN, then Jellyfish is not going to come close to replacing Plex. Sharing my library securely with tech illiterate family and any browser I have access to, without modification, was the one and only reason I moved away from XBMC/Kodi and installed Plex in the first place. Jellyfin is fine inside my LAN and for my personal use, totally fails at hosting.
As long as you don’t mind sharing your library with Plex and relying on them to authenticate everyone and get accounts.
I get why you are saying this, but to me that is a big negative. As long as I am going to self host, I might as well do it right and not need a paid third party I have no control over on my server.
On the other hand, I only have about 4 households I am interested in sharing with, so it was easy to configure that and be done with it. I have no desire to share to my family and they really have no desire to use it, my friends just don’t care. So I can understand it was easier for me to fill my use case.
I wonder if we are at a tipping point, where someone would be willing to pay just for the Jellyfin to Internet connection (basically a plex like plugin or additional container).
I am hoping that jellyfin gets better over the next few years. I keep trying it and it keeps feeling broken to me. Lots of people have the same experience it seems but then there’s also always a few people that act like I’m crazy. Nah, it’s still not there, unless things have changed a lot in the past year.
I use a 3rd party client called Wholphin and it works great.
Also it helps to set up profiles in sonarr/radarr to make sure you’re getting media thats compatible with the devices that will interact with Jellyfin, and filter out formats that cause problems. I use Profilarr to load in community made quality profiles to sonarr/radarr and then i copy them and tweak them for myself.
Before i started doing this i had loads of problems with Jellyfin not being able to play stuff, and now everything runs perfectly.
The biggest discovery I made that was causing a lot of my problems was HDR formats. HDR10+ only really works on Samsung TVs for example. I dont have a Samsung TV, so anything I had that would try to play that content would come out a weird green/purple colour. Content with Dolby Vision Profile 5 would flat out not play on devices that don’t support Dolby Vision. Dolby Vision Profile 7 falls back to regular HDR10 when the device doesnt accept DV, so that works, but DV Profile 5 doesnt do that.
I was able to filter out HDR10+ and DV Profile 5 using quality profiles and all my playback issues disappeared immediately.
What about it feels broken? I’ve been running Plex and Jellyfin together for a long time and always find myself using Jellyfin. I’m curious what problems people run into to see if I have the same problem or maybe I’m just overlooking something.
Same. Have run both for a while. Find the jellyfin customisation preferable to plex.
If you mean limitations in the client, I discovered that there’s a Jellyfin for Kodi plugin.
Kodi has had decades of development. It’s super customizable, has every feature you can think of, direct plays every video format, and is fast.
Having it act as a Jellyfin client has been amazing and given me the best of both worlds.
I had Kodi installed for a few weeks as my television media front-end, but it has:
It may well have a huge amount of functionality, but configuring and using it is the exact opposite of slick. Have uninstalled in favour of KDE with VLC installed, and manipulated via the KDE Connect mobile app, which is somehow a much better big-screen experience.
I felt crazy when I tried to use Kodi. Everything was so convoluted to setup.
I was thinking of installing Linux on a mini-pc I have here and just buying a bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo to watch medias. I can run Firefox with ad blocking and easily access my server like that.
‘Decades of development’ is stretching it a bit 😅
Not OP, but I have similar feelings and they have nothing to do with the client or plugins. If I can’t easily and securely share my Jellyfin with the Internet beyond my LAN without resorting to a VPN, then Jellyfish is not going to come close to replacing Plex. Sharing my library securely with tech illiterate family and any browser I have access to, without modification, was the one and only reason I moved away from XBMC/Kodi and installed Plex in the first place. Jellyfin is fine inside my LAN and for my personal use, totally fails at hosting.
As long as you don’t mind sharing your library with Plex and relying on them to authenticate everyone and get accounts.
I get why you are saying this, but to me that is a big negative. As long as I am going to self host, I might as well do it right and not need a paid third party I have no control over on my server.
On the other hand, I only have about 4 households I am interested in sharing with, so it was easy to configure that and be done with it. I have no desire to share to my family and they really have no desire to use it, my friends just don’t care. So I can understand it was easier for me to fill my use case.
I wonder if we are at a tipping point, where someone would be willing to pay just for the Jellyfin to Internet connection (basically a plex like plugin or additional container).
Where does this myth come from that Plex is secure to share over the open internet?
The misunderstanding that funneling your data through plex servers is functionally equivalent to exposing it to the internet.
Nice. I’ll try that