PurpleTentacle

I know, you know, that I’m not telling the truth.

You are aware that this isn't a lifelong commitment, right? A Plex license doesn't make using it mandatory. In fact, had you read a bit further, you'd have seen that it's no commitment at all, and I'm still running and maintaining a Jellyfin server simultaneously, reverse proxy and all. Not just as a fallback, but also for the things it still does better.

I migrated my household use to Plex, though, because this evil "closed source for profit app" offers an on-device user experience that is as good, if not better, than that of a commercial streaming services. This makes the rest of the household use it happily, instead of seeing it as an inferior alternative.

Jellyfin's user experience is simply not there yet, not even close. Its clients, if available at all for the system in question, are (mostly) functional, but certainly not fun.

I had the money to spend on the evil "closed source for profit app" and it made my family's life a little better for it - are you sure that trying to shame me for that was the right reaction?

Plex killed their official plugin repository, but plugins are, technically, still supported. There just isn't much life left in that ecosystem after Plex strangled it.

Ironically, it's probably Jellyfin's thriving plugin-ecosystem that's holding back its clients - since anything with a native UI can't really be used with any plugin that extends the UI feature set and vice versa.

Oh, and all "workarounds" that I know of for "offline" Plex involve essentially disabling user auth for certain IPs - which is insane. Plex simply doesn't support local auth, it's not an offline-capable solution. That (and some other restrictions) is why I'm still running and maintaining Jellyfin as a fallback.

https://youtu.be/_pDTiFkXgEE?si=bTRqLjugncfjeEpW

Jellyfin requires a reverse proxy or similar to be reachable from outside the network, once that's set up, the usability gap between the two becomes a lot smaller. And Jellyfin does, still, have some benefits over Plex - first and foremost: it doesn't require an active Internet connection and an "ok" from a central server to fully function - it also has fewer restrictions when it comes to sharing content and a better plugin ecosystem.

Again, I think both are highly capable servers and I'm running both in parallel, even after migrating most of my personal use to Plex.

It's the clients where it all falls down, sadly. Jellyfin's are, even after all these years, clunky, ugly and unpleasant. The choice of supported devices and systems is also quite limited. This is where Plex shines: they have a, generally excellent, client for pretty much everything you would ever want to play your media on.

Do you mean hardware encoding, because that's what's paywalled in Plex.

I personally migrated from a Jellyfin ecosystem to a Plex with Lifetime Pass one when building my current server - while both are highly capable media servers, Plex has, by far, the better clients.

I'm disabled ...

Geeze, what an obvious sales pitch.

Try The Secret of Money Island instead, it's much better than Loom. 😉

They're pushing their proprietary "Metal" API, which is iOS and MacOS compatible. Just Apple being Apple.

MacOS is a good middle ground but not one I would personally use outside of a work machine.

I fail to see how it's a "middle ground" between the drawbacks you mentioned before.

When it comes to gaming, Mac OS is the absolute bottom of the barrel, compatibility is utterly atrocious. With Apple's insistence not to allow Vulkan drivers, they pulled the rug out of any leaps Mac OS could have made in that regard (like Linux did).

Apple also pulled the plug on any server capabilities Mac OS once had.

So, when it comes to gaming or server use, Mac OS would be my absolute last choice, not a middle ground.

Software choice is limited, but software quality is generally high and for some professions, the choice is flawless: when it comes to content creation, Apple's ecosystem is hard to beat.

The Epson Eco-Tank printers are probably one of the most infuriatingly mislabeled products ever, though. They come with self-destruct timers.

If their software counter device that their excess ink sponge pad is full (which can happen rather quickly depending on printing behavior and the amount of cleaning cycles), they turn themselves into e-waste. Epson considers the sponge non-serviceable and the only official solution is to buy an entirely new printer with a clean sponge. Absolutely nothing Eco about that.

There are (paid!) counter reset hacks available now, though.

So, yeah, fuck Epson, but for very different reasons than op is listing.