I'm sad this isn't just a link to Jellyfin
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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That was my thought.
A privacy conscious selfhoster wouldn't be using Plex.
Can't figure out why you would use Plex over jellyfin, I have a life time pass to Plex, I haven't used it in years, this isn't about money, it's about not having garbage running on your machine.
Can’t figure out why you would use Plex over jellyfin
Probably the biggest reason is that it makes it so easy to securely share across the internet. With JF you're on your own and you can really fuck things up. If you're just running it on your LAN the JF is the obvious choice.
There are plenty of VPN solutions.
Get something like Netbird and share the port.
That's what you have to do for sharing!?
Someone definitely told me that there was library sharing for jellyfin... Is this the only option?
agree in principal, but in practice:
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parents who live across the state
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plexamp for music
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You absolutely need to be careful sharing your own media with people outside your household as that's probably illegal. If you still need to you can setup a VPN.
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The Jellyfin music player has recently seen a lot of love
- This hasn’t been a notable issue in a while. That’s why Plex’s https-by-default was such a big deal. With https, even your ISP can’t see what you’re streaming. They can see that something is being streamed, but not what specifically.
Also, you totally glossed over the fact that Plex is simply easier for non-savvy people to set up. Plex provides a unified login experience similar to major streaming services, which Jellyfin simply can’t provide; If your mother-in-law can figure out how to log into Netflix on her TV, she can figure out how to log into Plex too.
And the unfortunate truth is that Plex’s remote access is much easier for 90% of users to figure out. It doesn’t require VPNs or reverse proxies at all. You just forward a port and anyone with access can easily see your server. But my MIL’s TV doesn’t even have access to a Jellyfin app without sideloading. Not to mention the fact that I’d need to walk her through actually setting the app up once it is installed, because there is no unified system for logging in. And if I’m not using a reverse proxy for my Jellyfin server, then I also need to walk her through setting up Tailscale, assuming her TV is even capable of using it at all.
Any single one of those hurdles would make Jellyfin a non-starter if I want to walk my MIL through the setup over the phone, and they’re all currently present. And some of them will never be fixed, by design. For instance, the lack of a unified login page is by design, because a unified login would require a centralized server for the app to phone home too. That centralization is exactly what Jellyfin was made to rebel against, so it’s a problem that will never be “solved”; It is seen by the devs and FOSS enthusiasts as a feature, not an issue.
From a FOSS perspective, Jellyfin is a modern marvel. But it’s definitely not at the same level as Plex when you compare ease of setup or remote access. Jellyfin is fine if you’re just using it locally, or are willing to run Tailscale to connect back to your home network. But if you’re looking for true seamless remote access and need to consider the mother-in-law factor, then Plex is hard to beat.
You definitely do not want to expose Plex or Jellyfin to the internet.
That's a great way to get PWD as Plex has had its fair share of vulnerabilities
Port forwarding is almost is to easy to do as people do it without understanding the risk. That's one of the ways you end up with massive botnets.
- So it has sonic analysis and sonic adventures? It has “stations”?
I would be genuinely surprised if fair use draws the line on format-shifted, legally purchased media, at "remote watch-together", leaving format-shifting and local watch-together in-tact.
If it were up to the studio's interpretation of the law, you'd need to purchase a license for each person during local watch-together.
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Here's some thoughts I posted on a different post https://lemmy.world/comment/15822959 I was running jellyfin off the same server and hardware as Plex, yet it's less efficient and performant.
Agreed it all really just depends on what functionality is important to you. If it was just me and my wife using it I'd absolutely be using Jellyfin. But between grandparents and small children using mine, I got so many complaints I had to turn Plex back on after a week.
Jellyfin for me sucks. Not the server, the client. It works great on my wife's machine but whenever I wanna watch something I get constant issues with crashing and seeking not working.
Sounds like a transcoding issue which AFAIK can depend on the machine you try to play this with. Doesn't really solve your problem other than next time get something that's better at playing more video formats, which is a hilarious and silly problem to have these days.
Its a windows desktop lmao.
Lmao indeed.
This is why I’ve stuck with Emby.
I get why people switched, and I’m open to it eventually, but Emby is much more polished. That’s not to say the Emby clients don’t also crash from time to time.
If you're trying to watch 4k content in a browser, AFAIK, Edge is the only one capable.
Nah, the dedicated client.
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Jellyfin always irrecoverably crashes for me over time. It also suffers from permissions issues where videos won't play sometimes due to a a transcode folder being full or something like that.
I want to use it but it always breaks.
The sqlite database that Jellyfin uses tends to get corrupted easily, especially if the disk gets full.
The main big feature that Jellyfin devs are working right now is a complete overhaul of the internal database system:
I've used it for about 2 years and it has been mostly stable. The only major issue I had was about a year and a half ago where it got stuck in a infinite crash due to a corrupt database. It was a known bug that was fixed.
What's your setup and hardware look like? I'm just curious.
My jellyfin service has been up for about six months, and has played probably 100+ shows and movies, for myself internally and a few external clients over that time. My hardware is a HP elite desk mini and a 10TB USB HDD
I have some ancient desktop that accesses media on my NAS. I run Plex on the same PC no problem. Stopped running Jellyfin because of the above-mentioned issues.
I’m running Plex with the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner for live TV channels. Would that work with Jellyfin now? When I set this system up, Plex was the only thing that I got to work.
I use the HDhomerun
I have no experience of actual HdHomerun devices, but I tried emulating HDHomerun with tvheadend and antennas when I was setting up. I didn’t get that to work with Plex, so I’m not sure that would work with jellyfin either. It wouldn’t make sense to buy new equipment since Plex works fine with what I already own (and I generally avoid buying USA products)
That's fair
However I have to say the HDhomerun has been fantastic. It is a simple device that provides a local web API that allows devices on the network to request a channel stream. My device died after a few years and they replaced it for free.
If Plex works for you that's great. However if your current setup breaks I would look into the HDhomerun
I will keep that in mind!
I have been trying to use jellyfin locally but subtitles have issues some times depending on the show or format. Also recently my wife watched 2 episodes more than me so we needed to go back 2 episodes and only way to do that from the Up Next or Resume screens was to start a new search of the show and click into the season and then find the episode. In Plex that takes 2extra clicks to get to the season and find the episode. I get supporting open source but for my jellyfin only has 70% of the features I use weekly on Plex. Definitely supporting it and trying to use it but it's not feature parity for me
There's a simple answer to that. When many people first got started with Plex, it was awesome! Way better than xbmc! Also, jellyfin didn't exist.
Once you've had things up and running smoothly for years, changing everything is a hard sell. You could spend hours setting it up, fixing little inconsistencies, manually matching titles that had weird names, etc. or you could just... not.
I hope I've cleared things up for you! The answer is laziness!
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This.
Jellyfin is ugly, buggy, and the options to secure it aren’t really up to snuff.
If Jellyfin implemented proper SSO support (without needing the plugin) and the clients worked with it as well, I’d be much more willing to use Jellyfin.
All the people yes jellyfin is great but plex is easiest to share to non tech people to just download an app and they are instantly connected to my server. It’s just works and it’s a lot easier to explain to my family then jellyfin is.
It’s not just that. I’m a techie. I’ve been in the industry for decades. I know my way around computer very well.
I want to like Jellyfin and I want to ditch Plex (even though I have a lifetime license) because of what it has become and where it’s headed.
That said, the other day my Plex server had some issues that took me a while to figure out. Since when it failed I just wanted to watch an episode of a series and relax, I once again fired up the JF client. I couldn’t get seek to work, I had to manually find and download subtitles (that’s not always the case but when it is, it’s pretty annoying), and ultimately I couldn’t watch my series at all as playback would randomly stop, the player would close and I’d be back at the menu, without the position having been recorded and with no way to fast-forward as seek didn’t work at all.
I ended up spending 15min figuring out what was wrong and fixing Plex, then watched my series undisturbed.
Like I said, I want to drop Plex for JF, but in the 3 years or so that I’ve been running both, every time I fire up JF I end up running back to Plex as I just want to sit back and watch a bloody series or movie.
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Jellyfin was more work on my end so that family could connect with https, but for me to set them up it’s literally just “here is the URL, login, and password.”
It's not that hard. Everyone knows how to put in a URL.
Have fun doing that with a TV remote though, I guess you could buy a very short domain name.
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Why would you waste your energy and manage something yourself when they collect your data anyway?
For me, who has several streaming subscriptions (Netflix,...), this allows me to have a unified library and to be able to launch Netflix from Plex. Is it possible to do the same thing with jellyfin?
No, I don't think so
The privacy conscious choice is to not use Plex at this point. It is only a matter of time before they start directly screwing with private library's.
Wow, I haven't used Plex in years but this reads like some Windows 11 installation guide with all those checkmarks and hidden options.
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