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Noticed that Jellyfin had inched out Plex when sorting by popularity on the TrueNAS app catalogue the other day (45,178 installs vs Plex's 42,225). The existan

Noticed that Jellyfin had inched out Plex when sorting by popularity on the TrueNAS app catalogue the other day (45,178 installs vs Plex's 42,225). The existance of this project seems to confirm that the dev ecosystem around it is getting stronger!

monocasa 5mo ago
And that plex really pissed off the community by changing its pricing model.
altmanaltman 5mo ago
I started out my home server journey with Plex but it just kept getting worse, forcing me to switch to Jellyfin, which imo works just as well and seems to not fall into the whole pay us to stream your media business practice yet. Paywalling such a core feature was pretty harsh
- shiroiuma 5mo ago
  It may seem "harsh", but this is simply the reality of using proprietary software. You don't have any control over it, and unless you stick with a particular version, it can change at any time (sometimes called a "rugpull"). And with anything internet-connected, it's not usually a good idea to stick with an old version because of security issues. With open-source software, this just isn't a problem. Even if the company behind it decides to turn evil, the community can fork it and continue on. Just look at Emby for example: it did a rugpull and changed to a proprietary license, so the community forked it and made Jellyfin.
tech234a 5mo ago
Can anyone comment on the security of Jellyfin? When I had last looked into it, it seemed like Jellyfin had a somewhat weak security model that made me question switching family members to it from Plex.
- heavyset_go 5mo ago
  Don't expose it to the internet unless you know what you're doing, or put it on a VPS you don't care about. Ideally keep it behind a VPN and give your family members access to it that way, and let local devices on your LAN connect to it without a VPN.
  - ssl-3 5mo ago
    Those are fine ideas. But I'm not all about getting something like Tailscale to work with my elderly mother's Roku device, nor teaching her how to use it.
    - ray_v 5mo ago
      I set my dad up with a Linux box as a daily driver for him - he keeps the desktop on , and the roku jellyfin now has a clean proxy into jellyfin over the tailscale network. Giving him a desktop I can remote into was a great decision that paid dividends for him :)
    - lamasery 5mo ago
      Get your elderly mother an Apple TV and infuse, then connect with Tailscale. It’s pretty friggin’ smooth in daily operation. Apple TV’s UI is no easier to get lost in than Roku, and actually has fewer pitfalls if you toggle one setting (the one that makes one home tap open the Apple TV app, and a second press while in that app actually go home, by default; switch that to always go home on any press of that button no matter what) I dunno if Tailscale works on Roku but otherwise that would indeed be entirely viable too, last I saw Jellyfin’s app on there is really good. Likely need a server powerful enough to transcode, though, lots of (all?) Roku devices don’t have hardware decoding for newer codecs like h.265. That’s one big benefit of an Apple TV, it can hardware decode damn near everything.
      - ssl-3 5mo ago
        Perhaps. Y'all (collectively) have some good ideas. But she likes the Roku. She's even got silicone skins for the remotes (plural; spares!), and two of them are tethered near the chairs that her and dad tend to sit in. Also: The Roku stuff already exists, and is paid for, and it works with Plex (without a VPN, because my local Plex container didn't come with the caveat to avoid exposing it to the world). Buying them one or more Apple TV devices to use instead seems expensive and likely to fail somehow. Switching them to (cheap? linux?) PCs also sounds expensive and bad, particularly with my dad. He's certainly had more years to learn how to use a computer than I have, but he's spent most of the recent decades deliberately avoiding them. He hates them, and he doesn't want to learn them. He'd fall apart and give up on television entirely if I gave him a PC with a slick Logitech K400 to run it with. (He can drive a Roku with Youtube TV and Plex like a pro, but that's mostly only a D-pad and a back button.) --- But since you and others have mentioned it: Transcoding. That's really not a big problem for many vaguely-recent PCs. With Plex, at least: The quite old i7-6700k desktop box I use for this transcodes to h.264 like a beast using its paltry iGPU, and does h.265 just fine with an old nVidia RTX 2080 if I elect to use that instead. Either way works well and never breaks a sweat. It may have been a powerful machine a decade ago, but a used computer with a 6700k (or so) to serve media with is cheap these days. (And a brand-new power-sipping N150 box does transcoding waaaay better, even in credit-card form factor.)
tengbretson 5mo ago
Plex could reverse this trend in a week if they decided to prioritize work on any feature that their core market actually wanted.
- zythyx 5mo ago
  What more does Plex need? I would consider myself a power user of Plex and it does everything I need it to do. I would think the only thing I can think of is fully self-hosted login instead of their cloud option, but I'm glad we have that option because I don't want to handle the authentication of my friends and family
  - chneu 5mo ago
    They removed plugins which severely hamstrung their ecosystem. They quickly lost a ton of useful features and started to lock everything into their preferences.
  - VonGuard 5mo ago
    The poster you're asking this to is probably talking about plug-ins. Plex, very long ago, supported plug-ins, but it no longer does. Plug-ins were usually for adding in support for other media scrapers (porn and anime), or even other media types, like audiobooks. Additionally, Plex tends to revise their UI and inner workings in a way that favors everything but the core media sharing platform. They add TV stations, they mix in their streaming ad-supported channels with your search results, and push them before the friends and family stuff, making it tough to help other navigate to shared libraries. I think, overall, Plex is a good shepherd for their product, but everyone knows the enshitificaiton process is inevitable. It's just a question of how long the timeline between "Plex is usable" and "Plex is sold to private equity and is now utter shit." I've been pleasantly surprised with the length, so far. But having an escape hatch is always a good idea, and Jellyfin seems to be nearing a parity.
  - ssl-3 5mo ago
    It needs more of the feature that makes it a networked player for the media I already have (which works great -- once a person gets to it), and less of the misfeature that is the sideshow also-ran ad-supported and rental live streaming and on-demand offerings (which I will never, ever use -- and that Jellyfin lacks altogether). Plex been swinging in the wrong direction for a number of years now.
outime 5mo ago
When I had to decide between Plex and Jellyfin, I noticed that with Plex it was mandatory to have an account even when self-hosting (!) so I'm not sure whether it's better or worse than Jellyfin, I just didn't bother trying it out because of that.
- chneu 5mo ago
  I was camping without service last year. I wanted to watch some House MD I had downloaded in the plex app before I left. I fire up plex ...it can't connect. Why does it need to connect? Bye Plex. Hello Jellyfin.
- majora2007 5mo ago
  Plex is aimed for a simple ease-of-use experience, so if you aren't technical enough to setup a reverse proxy, Plex offers all the authentication and proxying for you. It's not a true self-hosted software. It just depends on what matters most to you.

monocasa 5mo ago

And that plex really pissed off the community by changing its pricing model.

altmanaltman 5mo ago

I started out my home server journey with Plex but it just kept getting worse, forcing me to switch to Jellyfin, which imo works just as well and seems to not fall into the whole pay us to stream your media business practice yet. Paywalling such a core feature was pretty harsh

shiroiuma 5mo ago
It may seem "harsh", but this is simply the reality of using proprietary software. You don't have any control over it, and unless you stick with a particular version, it can change at any time (sometimes called a "rugpull"). And with anything internet-connected, it's not usually a good idea to stick with an old version because of security issues. With open-source software, this just isn't a problem. Even if the company behind it decides to turn evil, the community can fork it and continue on. Just look at Emby for example: it did a rugpull and changed to a proprietary license, so the community forked it and made Jellyfin.

tech234a 5mo ago

Can anyone comment on the security of Jellyfin? When I had last looked into it, it seemed like Jellyfin had a somewhat weak security model that made me question switching family members to it from Plex.

heavyset_go 5mo ago
Don't expose it to the internet unless you know what you're doing, or put it on a VPS you don't care about. Ideally keep it behind a VPN and give your family members access to it that way, and let local devices on your LAN connect to it without a VPN.
- ssl-3 5mo ago
  Those are fine ideas. But I'm not all about getting something like Tailscale to work with my elderly mother's Roku device, nor teaching her how to use it.
  - ray_v 5mo ago
    I set my dad up with a Linux box as a daily driver for him - he keeps the desktop on , and the roku jellyfin now has a clean proxy into jellyfin over the tailscale network. Giving him a desktop I can remote into was a great decision that paid dividends for him :)
  - lamasery 5mo ago
    Get your elderly mother an Apple TV and infuse, then connect with Tailscale. It’s pretty friggin’ smooth in daily operation. Apple TV’s UI is no easier to get lost in than Roku, and actually has fewer pitfalls if you toggle one setting (the one that makes one home tap open the Apple TV app, and a second press while in that app actually go home, by default; switch that to always go home on any press of that button no matter what) I dunno if Tailscale works on Roku but otherwise that would indeed be entirely viable too, last I saw Jellyfin’s app on there is really good. Likely need a server powerful enough to transcode, though, lots of (all?) Roku devices don’t have hardware decoding for newer codecs like h.265. That’s one big benefit of an Apple TV, it can hardware decode damn near everything.
    - ssl-3 5mo ago
      Perhaps. Y'all (collectively) have some good ideas. But she likes the Roku. She's even got silicone skins for the remotes (plural; spares!), and two of them are tethered near the chairs that her and dad tend to sit in. Also: The Roku stuff already exists, and is paid for, and it works with Plex (without a VPN, because my local Plex container didn't come with the caveat to avoid exposing it to the world). Buying them one or more Apple TV devices to use instead seems expensive and likely to fail somehow. Switching them to (cheap? linux?) PCs also sounds expensive and bad, particularly with my dad. He's certainly had more years to learn how to use a computer than I have, but he's spent most of the recent decades deliberately avoiding them. He hates them, and he doesn't want to learn them. He'd fall apart and give up on television entirely if I gave him a PC with a slick Logitech K400 to run it with. (He can drive a Roku with Youtube TV and Plex like a pro, but that's mostly only a D-pad and a back button.) --- But since you and others have mentioned it: Transcoding. That's really not a big problem for many vaguely-recent PCs. With Plex, at least: The quite old i7-6700k desktop box I use for this transcodes to h.264 like a beast using its paltry iGPU, and does h.265 just fine with an old nVidia RTX 2080 if I elect to use that instead. Either way works well and never breaks a sweat. It may have been a powerful machine a decade ago, but a used computer with a 6700k (or so) to serve media with is cheap these days. (And a brand-new power-sipping N150 box does transcoding waaaay better, even in credit-card form factor.)

tengbretson 5mo ago

Plex could reverse this trend in a week if they decided to prioritize work on any feature that their core market actually wanted.

zythyx 5mo ago
What more does Plex need? I would consider myself a power user of Plex and it does everything I need it to do. I would think the only thing I can think of is fully self-hosted login instead of their cloud option, but I'm glad we have that option because I don't want to handle the authentication of my friends and family
- chneu 5mo ago
  They removed plugins which severely hamstrung their ecosystem. They quickly lost a ton of useful features and started to lock everything into their preferences.
- VonGuard 5mo ago
  The poster you're asking this to is probably talking about plug-ins. Plex, very long ago, supported plug-ins, but it no longer does. Plug-ins were usually for adding in support for other media scrapers (porn and anime), or even other media types, like audiobooks. Additionally, Plex tends to revise their UI and inner workings in a way that favors everything but the core media sharing platform. They add TV stations, they mix in their streaming ad-supported channels with your search results, and push them before the friends and family stuff, making it tough to help other navigate to shared libraries. I think, overall, Plex is a good shepherd for their product, but everyone knows the enshitificaiton process is inevitable. It's just a question of how long the timeline between "Plex is usable" and "Plex is sold to private equity and is now utter shit." I've been pleasantly surprised with the length, so far. But having an escape hatch is always a good idea, and Jellyfin seems to be nearing a parity.
- ssl-3 5mo ago
  It needs more of the feature that makes it a networked player for the media I already have (which works great -- once a person gets to it), and less of the misfeature that is the sideshow also-ran ad-supported and rental live streaming and on-demand offerings (which I will never, ever use -- and that Jellyfin lacks altogether). Plex been swinging in the wrong direction for a number of years now.

outime 5mo ago

When I had to decide between Plex and Jellyfin, I noticed that with Plex it was mandatory to have an account even when self-hosting (!) so I'm not sure whether it's better or worse than Jellyfin, I just didn't bother trying it out because of that.

chneu 5mo ago
I was camping without service last year. I wanted to watch some House MD I had downloaded in the plex app before I left. I fire up plex ...it can't connect. Why does it need to connect? Bye Plex. Hello Jellyfin.
majora2007 5mo ago
Plex is aimed for a simple ease-of-use experience, so if you aren't technical enough to setup a reverse proxy, Plex offers all the authentication and proxying for you. It's not a true self-hosted software. It just depends on what matters most to you.