[NichoPaolucci]

I’m surprised people reach for plex, not sure what I’m missing - but a Jellyfin container set up has been fantastic for strictly at home usage (running on an old gaming PC).

It’s fantastic software - the cross platform applications are pretty useable. Don’t think we’ve even had any major issues over the last 4 years using it.

Many thanks to the builders and maintainers, hopefully Andrew can take some rest and know they help a lot of people!

[NamTaf]

I run JF not plex, but the #1 missing feature I'd like is per-user granular sharing of content within specific libraries.

So far as I can tell, the only way around this is to symlink the subset of media into separate folders, make each of them libraries, then present those libraries to each user.

[amlib]

I'm not sure if this is what you want but you can set two lists of tags for each user that works as items blacklists and whitelists. Then you tag whatever media you want with those and they will appear or disappear for that user.

You can find this feature in the admin control panel -> Users -> select an user -> Parental control (tab)

There is also an Access tab, together both can be used to lock things down fairly well.

[c0eos]

I didn't know about tags nor their uses in Parental Control, thanks!

And after checking it out, if you use Sonarr/Radarr for managing your media, the tags you put there are synced to Jellyfin, so that's even better.

[onel]

That's exactly the problem that I tried to solve with the OS I'm working on. You can have a shared jellyfin instance if you want everyone to access the same library. But you can also create OS users, with their own jellyfin instance, and within that you can set access or only to certain folders. That only have the contents that you want them to access.

It's not as efficient as granting access within jellyfin, but it's pretty close to what you're trying to do.

[sgc]

I have a problem that it constantly tries to re-encode video that could be played perfectly fine in their player or the mpv shim. I wound up just mounting my remote drives and playing in my local mpv. I don't really use it because of that. Unfortunate because otherwise I love a lot of things about it.

[andwur]

I too have run into this problem on a number of devices. The client's supported codec/media format detection logic appears to be extremely pessimistic. To the point that the mere existence of certain audio track formats and subtitles can trigger transcoding, even when said tracks/subtitles aren't actively used. The same files played via MPV on a file share, i.e. no transcoding possible, play without issue.

I've tried tweaking both the clients and server to be less pessimistic, i.e. see if the active media elements are supported, but even then it really fights it. I think the best approach would be rewrite the clients to adopt a (try || transcode) strategy rather than (guess || transcode), but that looked to be a major piece of work.

[port11]

You can check why it’s re-encoding, there’s some guides out there. In my case it was the subtitles! Turns out Safari can’t handle all types of subtitles. Might be worth looking into it.

[sgc]

Of course I have been down the rabbit hole. The software is wrong. Give me an option to bypass re-encoding, and instead of failing based on diagnostics like it does, just play the darn file the best you can. I only have so much patience and I prefer living with a samba share to play it in the exact same mpv player without problems rather than fighting software over something that is so simple and fundamental to a video player.

[port11]

Yeah, I can 100% understand your frustration. It’s also a bit opaque as to why it’s re-encoding.

That said, we are a family so I can’t get everyone else to stream to mpv, so Jellyfin works better for everyone. mpv is also a great piece of software, plays everything!

[internet101010]

The Apple TV solutions for Jellyfin are inadequate last I checked. Basically you are stuck with Plex and Infuse. I already have lifetime Plex Pass so no reason to care... for now.

[tkcranny]

Infuse is terrific software, and supports jellyfin and smb. I use it for jellyfin and absolutely love my setup.

I ditched plex because of missing Dolby audio support and all the use hostile channels and “features” years ago, and will never look back.

[oarsinsync]

Infuse is another $100 license to sync watch history, when I already paid $100 for Plex a while ago (with the primary driver being 'sync watch history', which is the basic feature Plex provides).

Paying more money to use a different product, and then expecting all of my users to do the same, is a big hill to climb.

So the Plex inertia remains.

[dewey]

For how much Infuse gets praised I was disappointed in the UI/UX. Playback is great, but the browsing UI is terrible and offline downloads are really buggy (Just like with Plex for a very long time)

[JamesSwift]

Yep, total agreement here. But they really nail the "it just works" of playback, so all things considered I stick with it.

[maggit]

It's worth noting that Swiftfin finally had a new release for tvOS this summer which is worth checking out if you're interested in Jellyfin on Apple TV

[exogenousdata]

Not sure of your issues or when you last tried. I recently installed Plex on my TruNAS. I use the AppleTV app and it works well.

One caveat is that older AppleTVs can’t do native decoding of some mkvs. But that’s largely an AppleTV limitation. Though I could imagine the client being smart enough to list its abilities and the server only serving content supported by the client.

[Hikikomori]

What about moonfin? I use it on shield and it works great.

[watermelon0]

Plex app is better, but still inadequate compared to Infuse.

[muppetman]

Because Plex worked amazingly ~5-6 years ago, while Jellyfin was still very early stage. It'd sort of work. So there's a lot of "Well I'm already using Plex" inertia. Plus Plex has very lovely, polished clients, you can easily invite people, share your library with others etc etc. Once they got all that of course, then the changes/fees/ads/bloat started.

Jellyfin is great, it's all I've ever used. But it's still very rough - AppleTV support is limited+buggy (ask my wife...), you can't cast to a Chromecast from iOS etc. Plugins are required for some things to work. Transcoding is harder to get working. Good luck downloading stuff for offline use on the mobile client apps, all you get is the raw movie/tv show file - you have to use VLC to play it.

Again, I love Jellyfin and I use it daily. But we're both kidding ourselves if we think the polished experience you get with Plex is the same as it is with Jellyfin.

[schainks]

I bought a cheapo lifetime pass in the early days of plex. Their business leadership decided to make Plex more like a TV than a personal media server, and the UI / UX changes reflected this.

I got a great deal as an early user, but new users have Good Reasons not to use plex anymore.

[thiht]

I use Plex because the whole experience looks and feels more polished than Jellyfin (that’s personal but even the name Jellyfin irks me, I hate jellyfish), which is something I value more than openness. Also I bought the Plex lifetime a few years ago during Covid and at that time Jellyfin was nowhere near Plex in terms of user friendliness, Plex already had a TV app, a mobile app with ability to download locally, a feature to share access to anyone with a Plex account, automatic metadata update, etc. I don’t know if Jellyfin has all that even today.

If I were to make a choice today I think my first choice would still be Plex.

[Hikikomori]

Would you pay the $700 today as well?

Jellyfin has all those features now. Sharing servers is harder as you don't have centralized account mgmt, but you can use wizarr to make it simpler.

[mvanbaak]

I probably would. Or just go for the cheaper route of paying them monthly/yearly

[thiht]

I would not pay $700 indeed.

[zeratax]

every jellyfin app nowadays not only has downloads, but unlike plex it even works relialby

[thiht]

It works reliably with Plex too, I use it every time I travel or take the train, not sure useless taunts are necessary here.

[zeratax]

it's just one of the most common complaints i see all the time from plex users and was a big reason i switched too

[TiredOfLife]

5 years ago when i bought an LG OLED tv and finally decided to move from SAMBA/Apache/plain files I tried first Jellyfin, but

1. Jellyfin up to to a year or two ago didn't have WebOS client.

2. Jellyfin android client is (was?) just the webclient - so no video or audio codec support.

3. Server ran very poorly on my raspberry pi

so I went with Plex and am still using Plex

[noisy_boy]

I run Jellyfin on Raspberry pi and access it with Android app. The main issues I have with the app are:

1. Subtitle management is a total pain. Sometimes it doesn't show any subtitle toggle, sometimes it does. There isn't an option to switch between different subtitles. Adding an external subtitle file on the fly via the app never works for me. One approach that almost always works is to download the subtitle file, rename it to match movie filename, trigger a metadata refresh for the file/library (this requires switching from library view to dashboard view and back so certainly has friction). Also, if you start a movie directly on Chromecast, subtitles don't show even if they have been chosen. However, if you start the movie with subtitles "ON" on the app and THEN stream it via Chromecast, subtitles show up on the TV.

2. Sometimes it has issues with Google Chromecast (puck connecting to my LG OLED TV via HDMI port). I have had better luck with the in-built Chromecast feature of the TV.

The Pi isn't mega snappy when it comes to the lag between button press to actual playback start/end of seeking but it generally works fine once the stream starts playing.

I didn't pay a dime for it so this is not throwing any shade on the Jellyfin team - I am grateful for their work.

[TiredOfLife]

I also didn't pay a dime for Plex

[dabbz]

I have been using Plex since 2014, paid for the lifetime pass back then. It is by-far the most used piece of software I've ever relied on (excluding any general purpose software like OS/Browser).

I have my family setup on Plex, my automations, my apps, my preferences, etc. I'm so comfortable in Plex that until they do something catastrophic to my experience, I can't find the motivation to train my mother to use another app.

[k3liutZu]

I never heard of Jellyfin until now (I might have been living under a rock). Plex has been... fine, though this looks really interesting so I might switch over.

[jerf]

One thing that may help your transition is that you can point both systems at the same media files so it's not an immediate commitment. I did that, then one day Plex borked itself as it periodically did for me and I just didn't bother fixing it.

[jkman]

Plexamp is still head and shoulders above anything comparable on the jellyfin side.

[jagermo]

plex runs on most of the commercial NAS you can buy as a simple click-install-works packet, even on the cheap CPUs. It is a very slick tool, but I am happy I moved everything over to jellyfin.

[baxuz]

The media player app for android set top boxes like nvidia shield handles different subtitle formats and advanced settings much better than the jellyfin one, especially for anime subs.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

How much music do you have in Jellyfin? I tried it a few weeks ago and it was extremely slow and terrible with my music library. It would take 30+ seconds to load artist pages.

[jasonlotito]

> I'm surprised people reach for plex

I have a lifetime subscription from 2016. All my friends have Plex, too. It works. We share. Ezpz.

[simonklitj]

Biggest reason for me - for a long time - was no Apple TV app. Using Infuse has fixed that for me, however.

[mmcnl]

Plex has a great Tizen app. It just works on my TV same as Netflix.