Well I already have jellyfin running in a container, just have to figure out how to get mum’s TV to work with it I guess
<edit> log in on a local IP and not the network name and it’s working again. but I’ll be moving to jellyfin from now
Dude(ette), I have nothing to do with this self hosting thing and even I knew years ago plex was shit. It’s been extremely obvious just from browsing reddit (before leaving) and lemmy. I don’t know anything about any of this other than plex having an extremely bad reputation. How did you manage to become part of this and still chose to use it?
I used Plex about 12 years ago. The first time my internet went down, and I couldn’t use it, I stopped using it. Garbage. Not what I wanted.
I used Windows Media Center as long as I could, I loved it. But, eventually, I had to leave Windows 8 behind. Now I use Jellyfin and SABnzbd, it works okay most of the time, but I don’t serve media to the outside, so I don’t know if it works for that.
Jellyfin or Emby.
What’s plex better at?
I think the GUI is more refined and the initial setup a bit easier for casual users. I’m a Jellyfin user, because my online entertainment budget is exactly $0.
Yeah it took me a few hours of research and plugin setup to get feature parity with Plex, and then even so I don’t have anything to replace plexamp yet
Not sure how features compare, but finamp exists for jellyfin if you’re looking for a jellyfin-music-player-thingy
Getting people to pay to watch their locally stored media?
It literally says ‘remote access’
Just as an FYI, Jellyfin doesn’t charge money for… well, anything.
Fellow jellyfin user 😍
For a perfect pairing, Jellyfin + Tailscale.
Oh, this is so true. I set it up and now can watch things anywhere. Even my kids who live 6 hours away can just jump on and watch that stuff. Jellyfin is what plex wanted to be, like 10+ years ago. I remember how stupid it was when they first started charging people to watch their own local media, it was funny at first because it was only on iphones that you had to pay. Then it was everywhere. They will continue to take features away until you pay.
Can you do it from someone’s roku TV easily? Im worried about having too much networking trouble getting my mom’s TV hooked up to my jellyfin but don’t really want to open a port to the raw internet.
Longtime lifetime Plex Pass holder here.
FOSS is important. Having control over how you use your own hardware and files is important.
But even if none of that mattered, once I actually used Jellyfin for a few days the snappy bloat-free feel of it won me over. Switching between Plex and Jellyfin felt like switching between windows and linux.
what is FOSS
I’ve also got lifetime plex pass. I might take more of an interest in Jellyfin if there was an easy way to transfer all of my server settings, playlists, metadata, etc. over. But it just seems like such a hastle to make the switch and I really don’t have any big issues with plex aside from needing to change the settings so they don’t sell my data.
FOSS is free and open source software. And the word “free” does a lot of heavy lifting there because it refers to much more than it typically not costing anything. It means that you have the freedom to do what you want with your stuff, basically. You (or others on your behalf) can see the source code for what the software is doing, and you can even change and improve it.
You’ll see the word “libre” thrown around in this context too, for that reason. For many people the liberty side of free matters a lot more than the no-cost side. But they do go hand in hand, because not needing to protect a revenue stream makes it a lot easier to not enshittify software. You’ll see names like LibreOffice and FLOSS instead of FOSS.
So it’s basically the whole Linux world that is very well represented on Lemmy and the fediverse. :)
Sent using FOSS Voyager web client …in FOSS browser LibreWolf (a fork of FireFox) …on FOSS operating system Linux.
I use Mint btw.
(This is an inside joke for the other Linux people – a play off of “I use Arch btw” where Arch Linux is a hardcore distro where you kind of build your operating system piece by piece, but with excellent documentation. Valve switched SteamOS to be based on Arch a while back)
I have a lot of custom artwork, covers, playlists, etc. How easy did that data migrate? I’ve got 6,500 movies
I can’t imagine moving over would be difficult. Just point Jellyfin to the same folder containing your content. When I first setup my home lab, I was going to use Plex, but I could not get it to recognize media. The naming format wasn’t right or something. Jellyfin just worked immediately
man, I’ve manually setup tons of huge playlists, and entered in a hell of a lot of TV show information by hand so episodes play in an order I like. Getting that working in plex probably constitutes days of work. I don’t want to even think about re-doing that in jelly fin. If there were a way to automate the process though, I’d probably be more interested.
Very new to using Jellyfin but I also feel the difference in loading and such. Feels so much cleaner! Already uninstalled Plex :)
Imagine wanting to charge to stream your own media with your own hardware and resources… Hey wait, we don’t have to imagine it anymore, Plex already did it.
I forgot as I am a Plex Pass Lifetime user, and oh boy I’ll be sure to milk that out (actually after all these years I think I have already done that) just to keep being an annoying stat for Plex and nothing else 🤣
Aren’t they charging because it passes through their servers so you don’t have to expose your server directly to the public Internet?
Like, I pay $5 a month to access my Home Assistant setup remotely, although I could do it cheaper with my own AWS setup. But the money goes to development, so I’m happy to contribute.
Yeah… That only applies for non CGNATED networks, and as we are in 2025 I’d say most users worldwide are CGNATED or don’t have an IPv6 address… Or worse, both.
If you are CGNATED Plex approach is useless, as their relay sucks as it only lets you play up to 2 (or 4 can’t remember) mbps 720p files lol (server will transcode to meet those requirements), if they wanted to charge for remote streaming they should at least increase the minimum Mbps allowed in their relay, that way I understand they fall into server costs by proxying our media… But until that happens, charging for remote streaming is a completely joke (much more if we have free alternatives to keep doing so in a plethora of devices thanks to Tailscale and Zerotier, the true GOATS with a CGNAT environment).
Or you could properly configure your server to recognise local ips
well everythig has been working fine for years as is, and still works fine on firefox (I wanted to cast to chromecast tonight, it worked fine 2 days ago)
I’m not gonna waste my time explaining how software might change over time, if you think you’ll never have to touch your Jellyfin server moving forward you’re sure to be disappointed
Never. Break. Userspace.
when you cant read and dont know what youre talking about but you want to say something anyway:
log in on a local IP and not the network name and it’s working again. but I’ll be moving to jellyfin from now
after seeing this edit on the top post I felt like OP was not not really looking for input and instead jumped ship when he had to change a single setting after an update in a software he had been using for years
Genuinely Plex has become so obtrusive about NEW FEATURES, NOW WE HAVE THIS, USE THIS THUS WAY!!! and then also my libraries have somehow become even slower to load. I’ve been using jellyfin way more often
I tried hitting the X thinking it was an ad XD
For my media consumption, I use jellyfin for streaming thing. Like music and movies to mobile or laptop.
I use OSMC on a pi4 for TV viewing, it’s a kodo remix but I like it. Have the media from jellyfin mounted over NFS and in kodo directly.
I did run tvheadend for live TV, but we don’t watch any live TV now as the kids get TV priority. I also had tvheadend setup in jellyfin so I could watch TV out and about
Plex recently switched the remote watch thing to be behind a paywall. If your PC/App was also on the same local network it would probably work.
Leaving Plex and switching to Jellyfin would work even better.
Jellyfin.
That is all.
Stockholm syndrome is a mental illness, we are glad to help you out of your hostage situation with Plex.
Asking for help is the first step. This second step is to install Jellyfin.
I know Plex is a business that has to make money, but if I hadn’t bought a lifetime pass for $50 a decade ago, I’d have dropped them at this point.
I paid too, but consider that you basically paid $5 per year for 10 years and I’d say that good. You don’t need to feel guilty if you decide to leave, you got your money’s worth.
(And I mean, I have a sneaky suspicion they’re coming for the lifetime users sooner or later)
Yeah, for sure. They can’t survive if people just paid 50 $ ten years ago. They’re going to restrict the service for lifetime users sooner or later.
Same here. I have no complaints about the service and it’s easy for my tech illiterate family and friends, but I’ll switch as soon as they try to charge pass owners for new features.
“Try our new Plex Pass Lifetime* Plus!”
*Valid for the lifetime of the product†.
†2 yearsSame. Lifetime pass. That money is gone, and I use jellyfin nowadays. My photo collection will be stored on ente soon. Still no idea where to host my music library.
I setup music with Clementine, and output analog via the jack. Surely there must be better way… But it was easy & I can choose songs to play from cellphone.
For your photo collection I’d also suggest Immich.
