Jellyfin: Free software media system • Hacker News Board

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#171

Post by BeetleB » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:40 PM UTC

Every 6 months or so I give Jellyfin a try, and always come back to Plex.

I heavily use Plex DVR. Jellyfin is not even close in that regard.

Beyond that, I always find annoying bugs with Jellyfin. The last time I tried it, it couldn't handle Photo libraries well.

Also, I need it to work on Roku, and the experience has always been poor.

I understand some people have very limited needs (stream files on their PC onto their phone), but many people pay for Plex to get other features. While Plex is somewhat user hostile, they have delivered, and continue to do so.

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#172

Post by stuckinhell » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

number6 wrote: post #165

n0zmer wrote: post #162

Jellyfin is still so far behind Plex in media organization and just general reliability and polish. Also, Plexamp is by far the best music player to exist right now.

But it doesn't trick you into an account or subscription

This alone, finally got me and my husband to switch. Jellyfin is FANTASTIC, and I wrote a simple script with ChatGPT to help with tagging and metadata for our home collection.

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#173

Post by afavour » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:42 PM UTC

kitsunesoba wrote: post #148

Not too long ago I found myself tired of how Plex on my server would periodically break itself and unhappy with how the company was continuing to pivot away from the core product, so I started looking into alternatives. Jellyfin was the most promising option but unfortunately ended up being unviable for me, because my home server/NAS runs FreeBSD, and by virtue of C#/Mono being a pain to get running on FreeBSD so is…

> As an side it's a bit odd to me how all of the most complete media server packages heavily rely on either Python or C#

Why? Not trying to be an ass but there isn’t much in a media server that would warrant it all being written in a lower level language.

Personally I run Plex in a Docker container and basically don’t worry about it at all.

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#174

Post by skrrtww » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:42 PM UTC

Trying to move away from Plex on my Apple TV, I installed Jellyfin. Server-side, installation was painless. The Swiftfin Apple TV client, however, is basically unusable. It only allows you to connect to a server instance via unencrypted http://, including user and password. Indexing is buggy (it seems to think I don't have any TV shows), metadata lookup seems almost nonexistent, with base filenames everywhere and no organization. Playback, lastly, seems to crash with half my files. Which are nothing special, 1080p h264 encodes with normal settings.

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#175

Post by afavour » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:44 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #171

Every 6 months or so I give Jellyfin a try, and always come back to Plex. I heavily use Plex DVR. Jellyfin is not even close in that regard. Beyond that, I always find annoying bugs with Jellyfin. The last time I tried it, it couldn't handle Photo libraries well. Also, I need it to work on Roku, and the experience has always been poor. I understand some people have very limited needs (stream files on their PC onto th…

Strongly agree with this. Plex’s DVR functionality was very shaky to start with and I switched to using Channels, which to be honest is better than anything else at being a DVR. But it’s $60 a year and Plex costs me nothing (because I bought a lifetime membership years ago) so I switched back.

Every time I tried Jellyfin the DVR stuff had weird problems and the client apps were notably inferior. In fairness I haven’t checked in a while.

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#176

Post by jsf01 » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:46 PM UTC

skrrtww wrote: post #174

Trying to move away from Plex on my Apple TV, I installed Jellyfin. Server-side, installation was painless. The Swiftfin Apple TV client, however, is basically unusable. It only allows you to connect to a server instance via unencrypted http:// , including user and password. Indexing is buggy (it seems to think I don't have any TV shows), metadata lookup seems almost nonexistent, with base filenames everywhere and no…

I’ve personally been using Infuse as my Jellyfin Apple TV client and for the most part it addresses those issues, and more importantly it doesn’t attempt to live transcode video, which may be what’s causing the crashes you’re describing. The main downside is that there’s a monthly fee if you want it to support 4k video.

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#177

Post by Vaslo » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:47 PM UTC

I have Jellyfin on my home server and use it occasionally on my Apple stuff.

It’s good, but Plex is just better. In addition, it just won’t play some media that Kodi will play. I feel like Kodi will play just about anything, Plex frequently gives me issues with certain formats.

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#178

Post by kkarakk » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:48 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #159

rglullis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did you find JellyFin had, that Plex didn't? An Open source License

I mean, while nice, the parent was talking about features , not the license.

that IS a feature esp considering how plex gets more and more arcane about new user onboarding to get you to buy their service

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#179

Post by vezycash » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:50 PM UTC

GranPC wrote: post #118

nyjah wrote: post #99

This github page strikes a pet peeve of mine which is that it has no screenshots of jellyfin running. Why not?

There's a demo on their official website: https://demo.jellyfin.org/stable/web/index.html

The demo is passworded and they didn't provide the login details.

Edit I don't care about cookies extension removed it. So username is demo. There's no password.

Re: Jellyfin: Free software media system

#180

Post by asylteltine » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 3:51 PM UTC

number6 wrote: post #165

n0zmer wrote: post #162

Jellyfin is still so far behind Plex in media organization and just general reliability and polish. Also, Plexamp is by far the best music player to exist right now.

But it doesn't trick you into an account or subscription

Where’s the trick? Pretty much every feature a typical user would use is free. Everything else is clearly outlined on their website. Just because you don’t want to pay for software you use doesn’t mean it’s a trick.