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
I got the Plex lifetime pass over 10 years ago for pretty cheap and Plex has served me well over the years. But it’s just so damn bloated now and the biggest recent change to their android app is atrocious. The app is so laggy and slow now. And downloading movies to watch locally on a tablet is just painful.
So I decided to start experimenting with Jellyfin this month and I am blown away at how fast and snappy everything is. It still isn’t as refined as Plex but there’s something to be said about privacy and using FOSS apps.
I’ll be using Jellyfin going forward now.
I’m glad I really only use it for music, but the fire TV app works decently well. Better than the fucking Netflix app, at least.
Remember when Plex tried to sell you a subscription to use outdated versions of open source game console emulators?
Plex wants to be a profit-driven company, but their business model is piracy. They’ll squeeze you for subscriptions, while making your experience worse to try and broker a peace deal with content owners.
idk I find $2/month to be very reasonable. I don’t feel squeezed.
EDIT: Just to be clear there is no amount of condescending replies form trilby wearing neckbeard keyboard warriors that will change my opinion.
To stream remotely from your own server?
If I chose to use Plex’s
plex.tvservices to expose my server to the internet, that’s one thing. But I have my Plex server exposed through my own infrastructure (NPM + Let’s Encrypt), so fuck that shit.The $2/mo is for the Plex relay service. If you access the server directly it should be free.
It’s not. Now you need to pay any time you want to connect to your server from outside of your LAN.
Would a VPN be a solution to that?
Yes, a VPN can resolve it. Depending on how you do it you may need to add a subnet or list of IPs to the local allow list like so. This also, for me, fixes my wifi subnet being treated as remote.
Yes. You only need to pay if you’re connecting via their relay or trying to use the remote hosting functionality. But since a VPN would land you inside of the network, you’d be fine. You’d probably need to dig into the plex settings to specify that the VPN subnet is LAN traffic. But after that, you should be good.
Sorry to have annoyed you.
Unforgivable, have a wretched hour and a half.
I much prefer jellyfin + tailscale
I’m switching to Jellyfin myself.
Setting up ddns takes 15 minutes for a professional (mostly setting a 1-line script to reload a simple url every ten minutes)
and poking a hole in the firewall takes maybe half an hour (since every router puts the relevant page in a different spot)
And for this you think it’s reasonable to pay ~$25/year for the rest of your life? You’re not wrong in the sense that you’re welcome to choose your own values, but I … disagree with you on the value position.
I’d be fine paying $25 a year to not maintain that shit myself. Plus the money should contribute to development efforts.
It should. I agree, but speaking as someone in the industry - usually it doesn’t. Just lines some rich guy’s pockets.
Fair in the instance of Plex, but I’m happy to pay for the feature with Home Assistant.
Good call! 100% (at least for now 😅)
I mean, you just listed the most insecure way to host Jellyfin. Poking a hole in your firewall will technically work, but that doesn’t mean it’s the correct way to do things. A good setup would use a reverse proxy, and some sort of authentication wall like Authentik or Authelia.
All of that would only take about 15 minutes for someone who knows what they’re doing. But the vast majority of people setting up Jellyfin for the first time won’t know what they’re doing. And seeing the inevitable “lol just open your firewall” comments only serves to scare them away, because even the noobs have heads that’s the wrong way to do things.
I would be ashamed of myself and be tempted to leave the industry in disgrace if setting up DDNS and allowing a single port through a firewall took me 45 minutes.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. I want the newbs to feel accomplished when it only takes them 2 hours to figure it out. 😉
But seriously, you and I have it on reflex, but there’s merit to the notion that we also have our mise en place - we’ve read the manual, we’ve saved or memorized the script, already know our local equipment passwords, etc - all things we took the time to do before and now have at the ready.
ok
👌 ok!
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I did try and preempt that in my comment - but it’s hard to switch from plex when there are 5 other people with everything all configured and history etc
but it’s hard to switch from plex when there are 5 other people with everything all configured and history etc
That’s exactly what Plex wants you to say
No it’s not. Tell them to learn to switch or lose access. It’s your server, do what you want.
How to migrate your watch history, apparently: https://www.florianjensen.com/2024/08/21/how-to-migrate-from-plex-to-jellyfin/
btw i use jellyfin
lol crap, it’s the new arch!
We need a name for lemmy users running arch on their pc that they’re using to watch stuff on their Jellyfin server
I wanted to move to Jellyfin, but there isn’t an app for it on the LG WebOS library like there is for Plex, so I wouldn’t be able to watch stuff on my TV, which sadly makes it useless for me :-(
I don’t have the money to be going out and buying extra add-ons for my TV to watch stuff either, sadly. So, Plex it is for now!
Root your TV and install the homebrew channel on it.
Yes, this is real.
now I need to find a Wiimote, damnit
You can use the Smart remote which is basically the fusion of a wiimote, a tv remote and a computer mouse
I tried googling some of this but I must be misunderstanding the thread, mind ELI5 for the rest of us? ^_^’
15 years ago a pirate decided to name the main channel on the Nintendo Wii for homebrew the “Homebrew Channel”, as it has been for 15 years.
That was my reference. If you found a hacked Wii right now and turned it on, it would be one of the channels available.
OK.
So, you know of android rooting?
(I'm assuming no)
Android rooting is the action of getting superuser prileveges on an android device, which lets you do literally anything. From removing bloat, to overclocking, it gives you full power over the device.
Keep in mind that “with great power comes great responsibility.” -the
sudocommand on first useWell, it’s that, but for TVs.
As for the remote, how you move the cursor is wii-like, and you can click the [OK] button to click stuff. You can also scroll, because the [OK] button is also a scroll wheel.
What I meant is I tried to Google homebrew smart remote and found nothing. I do have understanding of the concepts and was looking for the specifics :)
The Homebrew Channel for LG WebOS is got three pieces of absolutely essential software:
A YouTube app modified with built in ad blocking and sponsor blocking. The Jellyfin app. The Moonlight app.
With these three plus the toggle to block system updates your TV gets 1000% better for free.
Yes there is. I have it on my tv.
Yes there is, I literally have it installed on my two LG WebOS TVs. Plus there’s a web browser app that you can create shortcuts for, which works for Dropout so I would assume it works for Jellyfin as well.
When was the last time you checked? A client was added to the WebOS store maybe 2 or 3 years ago for recent models, and support for older models (like my C9) came months later.
Can you try using DLNA to connect to jellyfin? You need to install the plugin first.
More effort, but there’s also this https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos
I mean, with a post like this, I’d call it baiting
USE JELLYF-
Be prepared for a barrage of “Jellyfin” in your comments.
Oh.
Jel-ly-fin, jel-ly-fin, je-ly-fin!
Is there something better than jellyfin? I’ve been using it for a little over a year, and it works for the most part, but clients are often pretty buggy (especially on apple apple devices)
Have you tried the third party ones? I’ve seen recommendations for Swiftfin
Yeah that’s the one I’m using on our appleTV, it’s buggy as hell. “Continue” show often doesn’t work and picks an episode that I’ve watched long ago and not the next in line, often never updating it despite watching several episode over several weeks. Aftee Pausing a show or movie and closing the app, if you want to continue from where you left off, well that doesn’t work consistently either, usually it will just restart from the beginning. Switching language on shows pretty much doesn’t work at all, it will either never change from default audio language, or use an entirely different language than the one picked from the list.
All these things work perfectly fine from a browser or official app on android.
I mostly use Infuse on the Apple TV and Streamyfin on the iPhone.
I’d be happy to pay for Infuse if the lifetime wasn’t AU$150, and I just outright reject paying a subscription for an app for using something FOSS, even if it’s only AU$20/year. A lifetime license that’s 3-5yrs of a yearly sub is much more reasonable.
I’m no fan of software subscriptions. I have only one and it’s Infuse. Took the plunge mainly for Apple TV playback a few years ago and I’m glad I did.
It’s not just relying on FOSS through JF, but allows connection to Plex and Emby servers. And just as importantly direct NAS playback (side note - I honestly think a lot people go through the hassle of setting up a full JF/Emby/Plex server when this option would work just as well for them for single client playback). They also update regularly, and generally adhere to native OS design standards so it feels at home - https://firecore.com/releases
Back to the point, I pay the cost of a McDonald’s meal a year and I’m happy. IMHO it’s fantastic value. And I’ll continue to wait patiently for the official Jellyfin Apple TV client rework (Swiftfin). If it’s great and ticks the boxes I need I’ll cancel the Infuse subscription, if not we get enough value for £8.99 a year to make it a no brainer decision to continue.
Infuse is so good on Apple TV it’s worth the money
I refuse to support companies with subscription based business models.
I just bought the lifetime since it works out to being cheaper than the subscriptions it saves me from over like a year
I have no trust that lifetime is in fact lifetime, and the price is also too high compared to the product value IMO.
Plex will do the exact same thing if you have an episode earlier in your history that didnt get marked as “watched”. But plex lets you manually tag episodes as watched which usually fixes it. Maybe there’s a similar option in jellyfin?
Jeælyfin also has this, is just doesn’t work on appleTV
Was I supposed to read that with a Scottish accent?
I use Emby and it’s flawless, might be worth swimming upstream?
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Yeah, the way things at going I feel like I should protect myself further with a VPN, but it does break some of my services’ access. Just another hurdle in the track to net independence that will be overcome! Heaven knows we’ve overcome many to get where we each are.
No need to bust your brain trying too hard - you’ll find an answer eventually!
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I’m pretty happy with Emby, but it’s not open source.
infuse is a good jellyfin client. there’s a free tier but im not sure of the limitations.
The free tier limitation is that it doesn’t work with jellyfin
What’s an “apple apple” device? 😁
Yea, Jellyfin on iOS hsed to be buggy. Seems much better these days, and there’s also Finamp for music
The web interface is fantastic. I just use a spare laptop with a wireless keyboard and mouse
I can’t say I’ve given Jellyfin a proper try (as in using it and the clients exclusively for a long period) but we have been using Emby for quite a while before I knew it existed.
If I’m not mistaken Jellyfin is actually a fork of Emby so they’re pretty similar, but one is a bit older.
If I’m not mistaken Jellyfin is actually a fork of Emby so they’re pretty similar, but one is a bit older.
Jellyfin forked from Emby in 2018 when Emby chose to switch to a closed-source model. Because of this, there are many similarities, but the projects continue to become increasingly different from one another as time goes on.
I was probably using Emby already by then, had bought a lifetime license since it didn’t require bouncing things off and outside server like Plex did (or was it that Plex was a renewing subscription, I forget) , so it just stayed out of inertia.
What sort of bugs are you experiencing? I’m using the official Jellyfin app and it’s been extremely stable on all my Apple devices. But I noticed a while ago that videos that were not MPEG were problematic so I converted all the AVI and WMV and WEBM to MP4 and it has been much more reliable. Scrubbing and previews have worked much better also
“Continue show” often doesn’t work and picks an episode that I’ve watched long ago and not the next in line, often never updating it despite watching several episode over several weeks, even if they’re marked as “seen”. After pausing a show or movie and closing the app, if I want to continue from where I left off, well that doesn’t work consistently either, usually it will just restart from the beginning. Switching language pretty much just doesn’t work at all, it will either never change from default audio language, or use an entirely different language than the one picked from the list.
Is there something better than jellyfin?
Plex.
What if you want to own your server?
I do own my server. It’s in my living room.
Then you signed it over to Plex. Smdh
For remote streaming access, sure. But I don’t see a problem otherwise.
You can absolutely run plex in a local only mode. You don’t sign it in to an account and then set your subnets in the local networks section like so. Or leave it blank if you have a standard flat home network.
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 :)
Something that’s getting glossed over in these comments is the ability to easily watch or listen to friends’ media.
I have my own library with about 1k movies, a bunch of anime and TV, and 10k albums. But I have like 6 or 7 friends with libraries even larger. My one friend has 37k albums, they all have thousands of movies I never even heard of, etc. It really makes it like my own mini streaming service, and I love throwing on a huge music library on shuffle via plexamp while driving to/from work.
I paid like $70 for a lifetime pass years ago, so I’m along for the ride I guess. I really rely on the music aspect of it, I haven’t had a spotify subscription in like 7 years.
I know they changed a lot lately, and particularly what pisses me off is how vague and how they intentionally obfuscate how their model works now. I have friends that for years used my library, and recently have been like “I saw Plex started charging now so I stopped using it” and I have to be like “no it’s still free because I have a lifetime pass”. It’s definitely just to trick people into getting monthly subscriptions.
the ability to easily watch or listen to friends’ media
Why do you think this can’t be done with Jellyfin?
My friends don’t have it set up. Some of them are friends of friends, and people I don’t talk to regularly. I’m not going to try and convert them. It’s also a bit more complicated via tailscale or VPN reverse proxies and Plex “just werks”. If there’s anything beyond just installing an app and clicking an invite, a bunch of people who use my library are going to have a hard time. Like my dad, he’s pushing 70. My friends would also have to do the goofy networking setup for it to work for me.
I’m also not even sure if people I share with have means of installing. My one friend who uses my library a lot does it through a Samsung TV. That involves sideloading the app to install jellyfin.
Lastly, like I said, music. Plexamp is one of my #1 used apps. There’s a lot that goes into that beyond just being able to play media. It curates playlists depending on what you just listened to or gives you similar artists, similar to how Spotify makes a “radio” after playing something.
the thing that everyone always glosses over is that jellyfin should not be run on a public network. it has known security vulnerabilities… that includes VPN remote proxy, so now you have to have external users on your actual VPN, and if that’s the case then plex will work fine because it’s “local”, and has a lot more features
(and my main issue: media segments don’t work on swiftfin)
Just use wireguard between the two devices
i’m not likely to wrangle installing and maintaining wireguard on my mums cheap smart tv
and if that’s the solution, as i said you get plex local playback so that’s free still anyway
Yeah, Plex makes it easy…other than dealing with their cloud data breach.
which they handled about as well as you can: prompt and clear notification without trying to pass the buck
the potential of a data breach is just a fact of life with any SAAS product - bugs happen… and it’s exactly the SAAS part of the product that makes the invites/login/aggregation of servers so smooth
You have to port forward a port and setup dynamic dns, for 99% this is a insurmountable difficulty.
You do not have to port forward. In fact, I would suggest against port forwarding. There are other options to access remotely
Are these options going to require installation of specialist software and then entering of special configuration parameters on the client computer as rather than just using any standard browser on any internet connected computer and typing yourjellyfindomainname.com ?
I got fed up one day with Plex because it blocked me from getting to my server from one of my televisions. My LAN’s internet gateway was down and Plex was useless even though all the content was on the local network. I’m sure there’s configuration things or something that I could have changed but in the end I decided I didn’t want to be pressured into buying anything and I didn’t like the constant commercialization of Plex.
So I installed Jellyfin and never looked back. Yes, it’s missing a few features but you can get around that with nginx so totally worth it not to be harassed.
There is a dlna server but it has “totally unintentional” memory leaks that cause it to crash after a few days and they refuse to fix.
Aaaand that’s one of the reasons why I got rid of Plex. “Bought” it, then they found some other feature to paywall. Bought that, then another feature. Then it stopped playing files of certain extensions through chromecast. Fuck that. Put together Jellyfin and moved my collection over. Zero trouble since.
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sigh
This is why I switched to Jellyfin and recommend everyone to switch to Jellyfin
Because OP doesn’t know what he’s doing? Or because you like opening your server to the internet without any authentication?
How about… Neither.
I don’t think OP doesn’t know, but I feel like its been said multiple times here, so maybe op either missed it or has a use case where he still wants to use Plex.
I have a Jellyfin server and I don’t need to expose it to the internet. Look at all the posts and comments here about setting up a reverse proxy and to securely expose your server to the internet. But you can also just keep your server locked behind your firewall and only access your network using a self hosted VPN.
Op doesn’t know what he’s doing, otherwise we wouldn’t have this thread.
JellyFin can’t be securely exposed to the internet.
VPN go burrr
Not sure if you understand what a VPN is?
Ok buddy, go bother other kids now. I obviously know what a VPN is. But you don’t like Jellyfin so keep using whatever you are using and I’ll keep using whatever I’m using.
You obviously don’t though lol. Using a VPN is not exposing it to the internet - it’s a private network. It’s even in the name!
Jellyfin’s local download function suuuuuucks by comparison. Lifetime Plex pass has been worth it.
The most annoying thing about Jellyfin is that there’s no way to consolidate all of your servers under a single interface.
With Plex, I have a huge library made up of all my friends’ libraries.
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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.
Same. 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.
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 years
I don’t have the link(s) on hand but there’s a Tizen build of Jellyfin for Samsung TVs. It runs rather slow on my old tube so I wouldn’t recommend it outside of a last resort. It’s actually smoother for me to just open the app on the TV and then remote control it from a browser/app on another device (my Steam Deck is my homelab universal remote). But you can use the Tizen dev tools or a simpler docker container to push it to the TV.
For my folks I got a cheap Walmart brand Android box (Onn 4k Plus). I installed Jellyfin from the app store then black hole’d the thing because I’m wary of cheap Android apps and their history of supply chain attacks. It’s much more responsive and also leaves me with the option of installing additional stuff like Smart Tubes, Retro Arch and whatnot.
Sorry to hit you with a random question, but since I’m in a similar situation: are you using Tailscale to remote stream to your parents, or how do you get that working seamlessly with Jellyfin?
Unfortunately I can’t help in that regard. I keep everything local/unexposed so my solution for them was just running Jellyfin at their place. I was already
rsyncing some stuff to a NAS I set up for them (and vice versa), as off-site backup. Since the files were already there it made the most sense to just give them their own instance.Not the guy, but I use a domain I bought from cloudflare with a cloudflare tunnel on my network. Not as secure as a VPN like tailscale, but doesn’t require setting up a VPN for my friends and family’s TVs so they can connect to the server while keeping my actual IP hidden and without needing to do any port forwarding.
This is a helpful. This sounds like a way, even if I’m still in the “hmmm, yes, I recognize some of those words” stage. Maybe I’ll look for a detailed guide.
I admit, though, the details of how to do this are pretty hard to imagine for me - networking and tunneling seems very technical. Before I can jump off the Plex enshittification train, I just want a way to share my media with tech-illiterate family without complex setup on their end.
Yes, I’m a technical person, but not a web developer and so this was all new to me until very recently. Good luck!
The way I think of the cloudflare tunnel is very similar to a VPN into your system from outside, but for web application traffic specifically.
That’s why I switched to Emby and only sometimes regret it lol.
People often involved with piracy probably love entering personal information in that context…
So glad I installed jellyfin years ago and never bothered to set up Plex.
