Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team • Hacker News Board

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#31

Post by igorstellar » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #26

freetime2 wrote: post #9

Recently Plex increased the cost of a new Lifetime Plex Pass to $750 [1]. It seems like they really want to get most users paying recurring monthly or annual fees. But to me at least that kind of goes against the whole purpose of hosting my own media library. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to Jellyfin for offering an alternative! [1] https://www.plex.tv/blog/new-lifetime-plex-pass-pricing/

I still am not quite sure what value something like Plex offers for my personal HTPC media needs. I have a large collection of disk space that's an SMB file share on my local LAN, on a server in my garage. My home theatre PC mounts it over the LAN. I have an XFCE4 desktop environment on the HTPC with the font size cranked up a bit and can run nautilus, thunar, or any other file explorer metaphor browser to explore th…

You’ve described NAS in general. It’s more than just file system. Plex gives you Media Library indexing, web app, mobile and TV apps to play content from your NAS, from anywhere in the world (it even includes Relay, in case you don’t have public IP or accessing NAT traversal).

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#32

Post by sasaf5 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #26

freetime2 wrote: post #9

Recently Plex increased the cost of a new Lifetime Plex Pass to $750 [1]. It seems like they really want to get most users paying recurring monthly or annual fees. But to me at least that kind of goes against the whole purpose of hosting my own media library. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to Jellyfin for offering an alternative! [1] https://www.plex.tv/blog/new-lifetime-plex-pass-pricing/

I still am not quite sure what value something like Plex offers for my personal HTPC media needs. I have a large collection of disk space that's an SMB file share on my local LAN, on a server in my garage. My home theatre PC mounts it over the LAN. I have an XFCE4 desktop environment on the HTPC with the font size cranked up a bit and can run nautilus, thunar, or any other file explorer metaphor browser to explore th…

I have almost the same setup. Plus a 3rd party app called "Material Files" to access it on my phone.

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#33

Post by RAM-bunctious » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

Great that it's peaceful.

Jellyfin is an amazing project, and works almost exactly how I want it to. By listing and playing my media without autoplaying trailers and other such stuff.

I imagine many here who've never tried it will be of the same mindset

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#34

Post by judge2020 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:37 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #26

freetime2 wrote: post #9

Recently Plex increased the cost of a new Lifetime Plex Pass to $750 [1]. It seems like they really want to get most users paying recurring monthly or annual fees. But to me at least that kind of goes against the whole purpose of hosting my own media library. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to Jellyfin for offering an alternative! [1] https://www.plex.tv/blog/new-lifetime-plex-pass-pricing/

I still am not quite sure what value something like Plex offers for my personal HTPC media needs. I have a large collection of disk space that's an SMB file share on my local LAN, on a server in my garage. My home theatre PC mounts it over the LAN. I have an XFCE4 desktop environment on the HTPC with the font size cranked up a bit and can run nautilus, thunar, or any other file explorer metaphor browser to explore th…

In particular the main value-add is that they have clients across so many different platforms, including most major bespoke smart TV brands[0], and their solution to streaming on WAN (HTTPS brokering) is pretty darn good for most people. Accessing my media from hotel rooms is pretty darn seamless, other than the wifi connection sometimes requiring downscaling to 720p or or so.

0: not really an issue nowadays with everyone moving to Big Tech-provided smart TV OS, but when you use an old TV with like mid-2010s webOS it's nice to see some old Plex app that still works.

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#35

Post by xrox » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:37 AM UTC

The three founders are all great people, but there is a gatekeeping issue within the project (I'm heavily involved, so this is a throwaway account).

The constant mocking accusations and hostility toward third-party clients, plugins, themes, and other tools have made Jellyfin's official spaces unbearable. The atmosphere often revolves around the opinions of a small group of people, and anything that falls outside their preferences will result in a ban.

There are two individuals are the primary drivers of this culture.

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#36

Post by RajT88 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:38 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #26

freetime2 wrote: post #9

Recently Plex increased the cost of a new Lifetime Plex Pass to $750 [1]. It seems like they really want to get most users paying recurring monthly or annual fees. But to me at least that kind of goes against the whole purpose of hosting my own media library. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to Jellyfin for offering an alternative! [1] https://www.plex.tv/blog/new-lifetime-plex-pass-pricing/

I still am not quite sure what value something like Plex offers for my personal HTPC media needs. I have a large collection of disk space that's an SMB file share on my local LAN, on a server in my garage. My home theatre PC mounts it over the LAN. I have an XFCE4 desktop environment on the HTPC with the font size cranked up a bit and can run nautilus, thunar, or any other file explorer metaphor browser to explore th…

I assume Plex "just works". Jellyfin is some assembly required.

You also occasionally run into a "Love Exposure" type bug.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/10494

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#37

Post by addandsubtract » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:38 AM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #14

techaqua wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is your hardware problem?

I’m running Plex via Docker on a Synology NAS. This has been working fine. When I tried to fire up a Jellyfin container, it was painfully slow. Clients barely worked. It wasn’t a good experience. It was several months ago, so I don’t remember all the details.

I run Jellyfin in Docker on an N100 mini PC without problems.

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#38

Post by NichoPaolucci » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:39 AM UTC

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!

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#39

Post by al_borland » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:40 AM UTC

infecto wrote: post #18

kortilla wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plex is a piece of shit that rams dumb streaming stuff down your throat each time you sign in on a TV. This coincidentally happens every other month or so when the app seems to forget the account it’s signed into. It’s becoming hostile for people who want to work from their media alone.

I am not so sure. Have used it for years for free( I have need to stream on the go) and it’s always been no issue. On first setup you are give the option to display streaming options or only your library. I cannot remember the last time I was logged. Super stable and zero time spent setting it up. On the flip side Jellyfin has never worked that well out of the box for me. Always some fiddling around and even when I g…

I was a user back when it was Mac only, before they even broke it out into a client/server architecture. When they added the streaming services, I don’t remember getting a choice. I do remember finally getting annoyed enough some time last year and looking for a way to hide it all.

I also remember opening the app one day, not long ago, and seeing a full screen ad instead of my media. Considering I have PlexPass, I found this extremely off putting. I think that was a one-time thing, but still a bad omen.

Re: Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

#40

Post by judge2020 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:42 AM UTC

igorstellar wrote: post #31

walrus01 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still am not quite sure what value something like Plex offers for my personal HTPC media needs. I have a large collection of disk space that's an SMB file share on my local LAN, on a server in my garage. My home theatre PC mounts it over the LAN. I have an XFCE4 desktop environment on the HTPC with the font size cranked up a bit and can run nautilus, thunar, or any other file explorer metaphor browser to explore th…

You’ve described NAS in general. It’s more than just file system. Plex gives you Media Library indexing, web app, mobile and TV apps to play content from your NAS, from anywhere in the world (it even includes Relay, in case you don’t have public IP or accessing NAT traversal).

Even with public IP, it brokers an HTTPS certificate for you, which many smart TV platforms and OSes require for operation nowadays.