this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 month ago (2 children)

all my homies use jellyfin...

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

Was going to say the same. Why use plex, when jellyfin exists.

Edit: spelling

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Because jellyfin has less device compatibility, worse transcoding performance, and still struggles with media matching. Oh and still had memory leak issues.

I have it installed, regularly update and test it, i want to ditch plex. But it's just got to many basic issues. Anime matching in particular is rough and yes even after adjusting match sources some anime just outright fails till i manually match, matches incorrectly, won't work either way.

No it's not the filenames. I use Sonarr, they are all very clean.

Series name(year) | Season folder (001) | SxxExx episode title

Edit: i give up figuring out how to make this stay treed, fucking hate reddit/lemmy formatting

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

worse transcoding performance

You have to pay on Plex to use hardware acceleration for transcoding. Lmao

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It doesn't make the point any less valid. I would pay for better transcoding performance in jf if it were an option.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have hard time believing Plex's software transcoding is more performant than Jellyfin's hardware accelerated trandcoding

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My problems are less about speed and more about compatibility. I have Plex and jelly thing set up next to each other as containers on the same media database. There's quite a number of videos that play on Plex that will not play on jellyfin. It could be problems between the two clients.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I've understood that "performance" in this sort of context mean how quickly a given task is done

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They're mostly just using FFmpeg behind the scenes, which is exactly how Plex did it to start with. Plex spent a long time working on hardware acceleration, it's hard to tell exactly what they're doing at this point but it's safe to say they spend a hell of a lot of time on it so I doubt they're just using FFmpeg for hardware acceleration anymore.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hilarious if they are, they'd just be getting people to pay to use their own hardware

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I mean it's not entirely impossible, FFmpeg has also pushed to improve themselves over the years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I paid for lifetime in 2012. Worth it.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

I'm not using HA so that's irrelevant to me. It's just cpu encoding on my threadripper server.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

i use Jellyfin but a big thing that Plex has is the ability to easily stream remotely. Its doable with Jellyfin but requires a lot of manual configuration that a non technical user just can't/won't do.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Jellyfin has automatic port mapping, but it's been hit or miss in my experience. I use Zerotier for remote access, but I forget that not everyone wants to take the time to play around with stuff.

Relevant XKCD

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

For the sake of not being trapped by Plex I could deal with all the other problems everyone's listed here.

But asking my friends and family to either use tailscale or for me to leave that open highly complicated open source project dangling out there on an open port...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I find the Jellyfin UX to be unbearable. It frequently shows the metadata for completely different movies, despite perfect file naming. Nearly every time I use it I have to restart it due to some weird UI bug or another.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The only reason that Plex has survived every service purge on my system is because Jellyfin doesn't have a PS4 app. Every other device that accesses my media is going through Jellyfin. I have my PS4 connected to Jellyfin via DLNA, but asking my wife to give up the polished (turd) Plex app for the file-picker front end in the media player app isn't a viable option for me.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Dude…what’s your CashApp? A Firestick costs like $20.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Does a Firestick require WAN access? I know my PS4 calls out of the network pretty regularly, but I'm a little hesitant to add more data harvesting into my network. I haven't ruled it out, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I can’t recall offhand. What I will say, though, is that your PS4 is not designed to be a streaming device. It can utilize streaming apps, but that is not its purpose or focus. The apps available on its platform will always be a step behind those for dedicated streaming devices such as Firestick, Roku, Chromecast, AppleTV, or specific streaming apps on a smart TV.

If you are concerned about data harvesting, you should migrate away from Plex and onto something open source like Jellyfin overall. Once Plex closed their code and pushed towards monetization, they began harvesting data just like any other streaming service. That said, there is no Jellyfin app on PS4, but it is fully accessible through the PS4. Again, however, your PS4 is not really meant to be your all-encompassing streaming platform. A Roku or Firestick is very cheap, it is designed to only stream apps, both of Jellyfin, and Plex if you need to continue on that path, and will provide a far better viewing experience than a PS4.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I appreciate the response, and as i said, I understand that jellyfin is completely accessible from PS4 even though there is no dedicated app. Unfortunately, that's not an option for all the users in my household, which is why I'm running both a JF and Plex server.

As far as PS4 not being designed as a streaming device, the fact remains that it does stream media, and since I have it in my house, it does serve that purpose when it is not being used for gaming. I'm not ruling out the option of adding a dedicated streaming device, but I am loath to the idea of trading in one data harvesting service (plex) for another.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because people already have the hardware... Why buy something else when what you got works?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Apparently its not working how they want to use it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

it should* have the performance to do anything a smort TV can

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Right now for me its smart collections and playlists and the fact that you can pin them to the home screen. My family lives off the home screen and smart collections.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Is there a good walkthrough of how to set up Jellyfin on Linux? If I'm breaking away from a shit OS, I may as well try breaking away from an increasingly crummy Plex

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

depends on your distro.
an internet search like "debian jellyfin install" should point you into the right direction.

if in doubt or having trouble: there's a friendly linux community around the corner.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

The official documentation has some guides on setting it up in a few different ways, although they assume the user is decently familiar with Linux/terminal commands and such. There might be some more beginner-friendly guides out there, though.

https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/container/

I switched from Plex to Jellyfin a while back and I've been very happy with it.