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As a long time plex user with a lifetime pass, I always enjoy seeing the good progress with Jellyfin as it will increasingly give me a soft landing for when Ple

As a long time plex user with a lifetime pass, I always enjoy seeing the good progress with Jellyfin as it will increasingly give me a soft landing for when Plex finally does something to make me move. At the very least it will hopefully keep some of plex’s most user hostile behavior in check. As an aside, I recently started having Claude help me with configuring my *arr stack and it has helped tremendously. I used to have to babysit and manually intervene on maybe 10% of requests, now it’s near zero, plus I got audiobook requests and subtitles working great. Granted a big part of the increased success was signing up for a Usenet service but of course Claude was able to configure it all and make it work. I was a little worried Claude would demur in the face of the task, but it was more than happy to help me acquire media in this way

firecall 9d ago
Feels like only a matter of time with Plex doesn't it! I've got the lifetime pass, but it really does feel like a Sword of Damocles situation...
- senectus1 9d ago
  really is just the normies access to it via samsung and LG TV's that hold me back.
  - ThomasBb 9d ago
    There is a nice Jellyfin app for LG now
  - notrealyme123 9d ago
    I am currently on vacation and used jellyfin via the browser on all the smart TV. And it just works great. I didn't expect it to work this good. Sign in via key is easy, not stuttering. I can recommend it.
  - mrmlz 9d ago
    Newer TiZEN models has a jellyfin app now in the appstore!
- doctoboggan 9d ago
  Yes it really does, and I intend to switch eventually but from what I heard the last time I looked into it, the end user clients are a big area where plex still beats Jellyfin. Since that’s where my non technical friends and family mostly interact with the system, it’s the area I need to be the most polished and hands off.
  - al_borland 9d ago
    Performance was also a big issue for me the last time I tried running Jellyfin on the same hardware as my Plex server. I’m happy to see that has been their focus.
  - BLKNSLVR 9d ago
    Jellyfin's Android clients seem to be fine. Android TV and smartphone at least. Have been fine for at least five years. Can't speak to other platforms though.
  - c0nsumer 9d ago
    Yes, this is the big one for me. Seemingly unlike a lot of folks, Plex is my main music server. Years ago I ripped all my CDs (1800+, IIRC) and Plex + Plexamp is really, really, really good for listening. I haven't yet found anything else that works as well. I use Plexamp on desktop/laptop computers and then the Android and iOS apps for on-the-go music. I tried Symfonium [1] because it seemed promising and would give me a Jellyfin path, but it was weird and kinda buggy and ate my phone's battery. I'm hopeful there'll be a good replacement available eventually, but for now, I just have to stick with Plex. [1] https://www.symfonium.app/ https://www.symfonium.app/
    - devindotcom 9d ago
      yeah I'm in a boat of similar shape. plex and plexamp is very simple and plug and play - it handles the IP stuff for remote play, which is the tough part for me. I don't mind lacking features in the server or the client honestly, if I can find and play an album or playlist I'm good. But the connectivity piece can be hard if you're not familiar with self host stuff. I tried to do Jellyfin and Tailscale and some client and it... kind of worked? But it was definitely not as seamless. I do hope every year that it's my last year paying for Plex. Maybe this year!
- mzi 9d ago
  I have a lifetime pass as well, but switched to Jellyfin years ago.
- madeofpalk 9d ago
  Maybe I'm naive, but I feel like if Plex was going to do anything to existing lifetime subscriptions, they would have done it by now. I think we're fine for now.
- heed 9d ago
  they'll eventually come out with a completely new overhauled version of plex that's sub only but your lifetime pass will still be good for "plex classic" which they'll stop supporting
  - schrectacular 9d ago
    Or just end the lifetime tier and make people pay like fastmail did. If even the HN beloved fastmail would do it I pretty much expect it from everyone.
    - awakeasleep 8d ago
      I think this already happened. They increased Plex lifetime to 750 bucks. That’s effectively an end.
    - zchrykng 8d ago
      I mean, I have a lifetime license for Plex, but even I would happily pay some nominal amount every year if Plex stopped making their software worse intentionally.
      - schrectacular 6d ago
        Fair, I mean, I still use fastmail :)
  - therealpygon 8d ago
    Or if like PlayOn, they’ll simply replace your legacy lifetime license software with their new version that no longer does the core functionality that has to be kept up to date — recording different providers — without upgrading to their new extra-special monthly cloud licensing that replaces your “lifetime” license you bought to support their fledgling business. One thing is almost certain, any software claimed to be “Lifetime” will become a lie if given time and one should assume “lifetime” in software almost never means more than 5-10 years before a new executive has a bright idea to generate more revenue.
  - buran77 8d ago
- jmuguy 8d ago
  Its hard to tell if the folks at Plex understand the position they're in. They definitely are dancing right up to the line of pushing people too far. I could see them trying to boil the frog with stuff like putting their garbage free streaming stuff front and center more. Like so there won't be one specific thing they do that makes everyone realize its time to leave. I think one silver lining is that whenever it does reach a tipping point there's going to be a ton of support for projects like Jellyfin, so hopefully we see more feature parity - in particular for shared access for friends and family.
  - arwineap 8d ago
    I left this year when they told me I'd have to re-buy my lifetime pass. I suspect they rolled it back, but as you said that was the last straw. All of these streaming nonsense that keeps getting re-enabled, totally troublesome to help friends with the same settings I couldn't help but think with all the ads they were serving me directly, that they must be selling my data as well. That's not the point of self-host. No thank you. Jellyfin still missing download w/ transcode, but with space getting so cheap I don't miss it. I do need to improve the music side though
    - jmuguy 8d ago
      The "vendor" page for their data collection is... impressive. https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us/ https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us/
    - deleted 8d ago
      [deleted]
bigstrat2003 9d ago
I (also a lifetime Plex Pass user) decided to try it out ~6 months ago, and I've switched over. I haven't had any gaps in functionality yet, though YMMV of course. While it isn't better than Plex (which is still fine for now), it isn't worse either, and I trust the Jellyfin devs a lot more than the Plex devs at this point.
- RajT88 9d ago
  I must be old school. I never got on board with Plex, because my "lifetime" licenses for PlayOn, TVersity and Twonky all ended up completely useless. Yes, those licenses still work, but you can't get the latest versions which provide support for the latest codecs, features, etc. There's a cutoff on the versions that "lifetime" license allows you to upgrade to, and some of those licenses were not that cheap at the time. So of course, Plex is going to engage in the fuckery that they are. JellyFin on the other hand, for the amount it costs is surprisingly low on janky behavior.
  - BeetleB 9d ago
    Yes, eventually, all of them will end up this way. But the attitude lacks nuance. I paid $120 for Plex 8 years ago, and if it becomes utter crap tomorrow, it's been totally worth it. Don't think of any such thing as "lifetime". Just ask: "For the amount they are charging me, how long does it need to last for it to have been worth my money?" With the price I paid, one year would have been enough.
- VladVladikoff 9d ago
  I switched to jellyfin about 6 months ago and I can say it is definitely worse. I’m constantly fighting to fix thumbnails, fix episodes to be in the same show, force rescans to get it to even recognize a show that already exists. I never had any of these problems with plex. Plex also defaults to transcoding which fixes a lot of gaps with clients that don’t support certain codecs. I’m often running into issues where infuse can’t play DTS so I need to reencode before I can play the movies. Also in the process of ditching plex I switched to audiobookshelf for my audiobooks and I have to say it’s also crap. It’s constantly refusing to start playing, or pausing for a really long time before playing. All that being said I’m not switching back. It’s been a pain but it was worth it.
darknavi 9d ago
> As an aside, I recently started having Claude help me with configuring my *arr stack and it has helped tremendously. I used to have to babysit and manually intervene on maybe 10% of requests, now it’s near zero Any more details here? I hit this a lot and it's not too much work, but still pretty annoying.
- doctoboggan 9d ago
  Step one is to just let Claude have ssh access to the machine you run plex from and let him do a full sweep. I had some conflicting profile rules and was not properly blocking malware and not properly marking failures so they were never retried. This fixed a big portion of the manual work needed, but the usenet account is really what got me to nearly 100% hands off. I think I am paying $3/month for the next fifteen months, and apparently if I pay attention during Black Friday there will be some pretty cheap deals. For more months of access at even less EDIT: Claude was also able to look at my logs and noticed that nearly all of the exe or other malware was coming from 2 trackers so we just eliminated those.
  - Gareth321 9d ago
    I second your Usenet recommendation. I also have the $3 deal which just rolls over each year.
  - tired_star_nrg 9d ago
    Where could someone learn more about the usenet account method?
    - doctoboggan 9d ago
      Claude will be able to help you with everything you need. If you don't have Claude code then the various self hosted subreddits are a good starting point. I had Claude do a sweep of the recent reddit posts to capture the current most recommended usenet accounts, he gave me two links, told me to sign up and paste in the API keys and he took it from there.
BLKNSLVR 9d ago
I just like the confirmation that AI is happy to be a Boatswain.
- post-it 9d ago
  Claude is perfectly happy to do it and gives great suggestions. I can't imagine it will last, I did run into one situation where I wanted to archive all the media on a subscription site before my subscription expired, and it refused. But splitting it into one session to collect all URLs and a second session to plug them into yt-dlp with the right arguments worked just fine.
dgrin91 9d ago
What are you using for audiobook requests? I also recently setup arr stack, but I saw readarr is depreciated and there doesn't seem to be a clear successor.
- Xerox9213 9d ago
  It’s been a while since I used it but lazylibrarian has worked for me in the past. I tried shelfarr as well with some success a while back, but haven’t needed any new books lately since I’m busy catching up on the books I’ve downloaded (the Bible is long lol).
- doctoboggan 9d ago
  After reading a lot of reddit threads I settled on ReadMeABook[0] and it has been working great so far. One pretty cool feature is that it lets you connect an LLM API key and then you can have it make requests based on your library. I now have Fable 5.1 suggesting my next book. [0]: https://github.com/kikootwo/readmeabook https://github.com/kikootwo/readmeabook
  - y-curious 9d ago
    Hello Mantis. Question: what do you do with the books? Is there kindle integration somehow?
    - tstrimple 8d ago
      I think most folks lean on Calibre for that. I've setup KOReader on my wife's Kobo and it looks at our local Calibre server for books.
    - doctoboggan 8d ago
      I use it for audiobooks. They are served up by Plex and I use the Prologue iOS app which is a great audiobook listening experience.
- davkan 9d ago
  If you don’t want to commit to one of the vibecoded no community arr clones for books then i recommend shelfmark. Lightweight grabber, easy to start with, easy to rip out later.
villish 9d ago
I like them both, but I can never give up plexamp. I’ve tried navidrome and various jellyfin clients but I keep going back.
- bigstrat2003 9d ago
  For music, I use Navidrome + Symfonium. Not quite as smooth as Plexamp was (and there's nothing on par with Symfonium on desktop), but I disliked having my music and video commingled so it's been worthwhile for me.
bombcar 9d ago
Claude and jellyfin and HASS is great. Now my phone has a “door lock” which turns off the kids user’s access, but lets the current playing finish. And another “door lock” unlocks playing for ten minutes.
- y-curious 9d ago
  What do you mean by door lock, where does the code show up?
  - bombcar 8d ago
    Hass can make things appear like light switches, etc, but if you did that (they can run arbitrary code) then the kids will learn that "Hey Siri, turn on Kids Play" will work. But door locks refuse to unlock from Hey Siri, so you have to unlock and use your phone. So I made them appear as door locks (my idea, heh, AI didn't come up with that).
    - y-curious 8d ago
      Understood, so you have a virtual “home lock” on your phone that is actually a media unlock or whatever. Clever :) I also didn’t know HASS = home assistant
      - bombcar 7d ago
        Yeah, home assistant is super powerful once you break out of the mold of "a light is a light, right" and realize that ANYTHING can be represented as state changes, and you can run arbitrary code based on it. And with lights, locks, and brightness/color being able to be modeled in Hass's interface to HomeKit and Siri, you can basically do ANYTHING that can be turned into on/off, lock/unlock, or a slider. You could probably build a remote paintball turret with it, camera for viewfinder, sliders for elevation, rotation, and azimuth, lock for arming, switch for fire.
devindotcom 9d ago
unrelated to your otherwise helpful comment, I just wanted to note that it is "demur" (i.e. hesitate or object) you want in this case; "demure" is an adjective meaning shy or modest.
- doctoboggan 9d ago
  Thanks, fixed
bitexploder 9d ago
For what it’s worth, I am very happy with Jellyfin and the *arr suite. It took a bit of agent prodding to get them all playing nicely together and bypassing Cloudflare CAPTCHAs. However, it's pretty sweet when you get it all working.
- scubbo 9d ago
  > bypassing Cloudflare CAPTCHAs Can you say more about this? I've never encountered this problem in nearly a decade of running the same stack.
  - alacritas0 9d ago
    With the *arr stack, some of the trackers it uses to search for a torrent will present a captcha when Prowlerr queries it for a search. If you integrate FlareSolverr and set up Prowlerr to submit queries through it for the trackers that have CAPTCHAs, it won't get blocked by them.
    - bitexploder 9d ago
      Yep. It really isn’t nefarious or abusive. I keep mine slowed down to not scan often to be considerate. Even private trackers can require it now.
    - scubbo 8d ago
      Ah - I use Usenet, not Torrents, that'd explain it. Thanks!
jshier 9d ago
Also a lifetime pass Plex user, I'll leave as soon as someone has a good solution for identifying raw Bluray rips automatically. Why do I have to manually name the episodes? We had CDDB last century, why isn't there an equivalent for raw video rips? The ripped data should be identical, a simple hash should uniquely identify it.
- 0points 9d ago
  Are you describing a plex feature? I was under the impression they required the media to follow certain naming conventions. [1] Maybe mkv-renamer is of use to you? [2] 1: https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-... 2: https://github.com/ssanj/mkv-renamer https://github.com/ssanj/mkv-renamer
  - jshier 9d ago
    I'm describing a hypothetical feature that I want. Essentially an automatic version of mkv-renamer that can identify series, episodes, and special content based on the signature of the ripped files. For whatever reason, such a service doesn't even exist.
    - IAmBroom 8d ago
      Does Filebot not do this for you? A quick glance suggests it does, but I'm not overly concerned with its decision-making; name matches are close enough.
      - jshier 8d ago
        That may actually be what I need, I'll give it try.
ggm 9d ago
Thank you for starting this thread. Another lifetime plex pass user, interested in my choices. For now, I am happy on plex/plexamp. Good to know what jellyfin is at.
internet101010 9d ago
If there is one thing that needs to be re-written and consolidated it is the arrs ecosystem. Replacing/consolidating the arrs themselves is pretty straightforward. The trap that quickly becomes a token incinerator is incorporating the downloader into the library manager itself. A lot of learned lessons in that sabnzbd codebase.
- davidwritesbugs 9d ago
  As someone with coding projects in the is area would you care to elaborate on "a lot of learned lessons"?
  - SSLy 9d ago
    sabnzbd is basically packaged decades of domain specific knowledge about deobfuscating media files
  - internet101010 8d ago
    Things like when to cancel early, how to handle par2, obfuscation, rars within rars, decoding articles. Just a mountain of "huh, didn't think of that being a complex problem" that was resolved over time. I was able to replace the arr suite + sabnzbd with my own rust+ts frankenstein but had I known how complex the usenet piece was going to be I would have separated it into two phases.
- drdexebtjl 8d ago
  I agree. In particular, I think it needs declarative configuration, and it needs to stop storing configuration in a database. It's insane that the current setup options are: - Click through dozens of pages importing JSONs from TRaSH Guides, then do it all over again on the other app. - Run an app that basically does the same thing but over the REST API.
prophesi 9d ago
Lifetime pass user long before the ridiculous price hikes for it and the direction for the service going down a path I didn't want to support. You can run Plex and Jellyfin on the same server concurrently pointing to the same media files. My Plex server was still running until I was able to transfer everything over and their mobile app ecosystem got up to parity.
leokennis 9d ago
Both for simplicity and portability, I am a very happy user of https://firecore.com/infuse https://firecore.com/infuse. I guess it's less full featured as Plex or Jellyfin (it still more than covers the bases for video: format support, different video/audio/subtitle tracks, tv series recognition, skip intros, Trakt.tv etc.); but then again all it requires is any online storage, and the Infuse app (either on iDevice or AppleTV).
- vulkoingim 9d ago
  Yeaah, second that! I use it on the AppleTV and across the rest of my devices! Works like a charm, and coupled with Tailscale I can access everything on my Nas everywhere :) I have it configured to use Jellyfin as the source, runing on said nas
  - s_dev 9d ago
    You should try this: https://neptuneplayer.com/ https://neptuneplayer.com/
    - zeagle 8d ago
      Does it do bitstream DTS and DV on Apple TV? If so maybe I’ll have to try. Also am I going old or is the whole join our discord to see what it’s about/download is the new norm on the web? My click through rate on that is about 0.
    - ulimn 8d ago
      Oh my, this immediately looks so much better UX-wise than Swiftfin!
    - vulkoingim 8d ago
      Looks good...but having to join Discord to try it is one step too many, if I have to be honest.
      - s_dev 8d ago
colechristensen 9d ago
huh, yeah I should start an xbmc fork/reimagining. the limitations with the tools of the day are imagination. a LOT of the software I use these days are things I facilitated the creation of and a media player is definitely supposed to be on that list
atombender 9d ago
I left Plex for Jellyfin + Infuse a couple of years ago, and I'm not looking back. But the sore point right now is outside access, which Jellyfin really isn't made for. I set up Tailscale so I can connect Infuse to Jellyfin remotely. But that's not exactly as smooth as Plex. I can't give friends and family access, either, which was dead easy with Plex. In terms of the UX, Infuse isn't very good, but it does the job okay. The built-in subtitle fetcher is amazing; that stuff never worked for me with Plex.
- BrendanThompson 6d ago
  I have the exact same setup. I found Infuse a PITA to begin with. Now it works pretty dang well, even remotely. One big irritation though is the subtitles are always on by default, on Apple TV it's an issue as I can't find a way to disable the default haha! Sometimes there is also a delay between when Jellyfin can play a new video in the browser and when Infuse can play it even though it can see the file. I do find Infuse significantly better than the Jellyfin apps though.
- y-curious 9d ago
  For people that don’t know, Infuse lets you use Jellyfin on Apple TV and it’s very helpful for day purpose
  - Gareth321 9d ago
    Crazy expensive though. It's basically a Plex subscription, just for the player.
    - skydhash 9d ago
      Isn’t it something like $10/yr or something?
      - illegalbyte2 9d ago
        Yep. Worth every cent. The Apple TV experience of Infuse is night and day with Plex. I used to constantly struggle with Plex buffering and crashing on my local network with the Apple TV app. Infuse just points to a file share on my NAS and streams beautifully, even at larger 4K files. I used Plex for years. I’d never go back from Infuse now, and I’m happy to pay that subscription to support its excellent development.
jwr 9d ago
I also have a lifetime pass, but I'm becoming increasingly annoyed with Plex. Why do I have to regularly turn off their "recommended" stuff that is just ads for movies I can buy online? Why does it appear and re-appear? Also, the Plex app for LG TV has been buggy and broken for years: some content will not play at all, some will not play if you ff/rewind, and some will not play until you physically turn your TV off and then on. Very annoying. I'm glad to see competition.
Gareth321 9d ago
> As an aside, I recently started having Claude help me with configuring my arr stack and it has helped tremendously. LLMs have been AMAZING for home server maintenance and improvements. I have completed SO many of my "some day" tasks. I never have to read another fucking log file ever again. It has taken all of the friction out of the hobby. It's all* fun now.
- joshstrange 9d ago
  I’ve set up literally hundreds of different self-hosted applications over the years on my homelab. I’ve configured the reverse proxy by hand, setup the docker containers, etc. Now I can just tell Claude “Setup XYZ app on my server” and it does it all and leaves a note in my Obsidian vault documenting the service (setup instructions, backups, hostname, etc). Trying out new things has never been easier now that the effort is near-0 to kick the tires.
  - drnick1 8d ago
    I would caution against this approach. It's fine to have Claude write a setup script, or whatever you need, but don't run coding agents as your main user on your production machine with full access to your files or whatever your "homelab" consists of.
    - bigstrat2003 8d ago
      Yep. You should never let an LLM have access to the system. It's irresponsible as all get out.
      - threecheese 8d ago
        Your personal computer? Eh. This afternoon Claude code diagnosed an issue I’ve had with my 4K displays since Tahoe, it would have taken me a week just to learn enough to try to figure it out. Now I have a cli tool which fixes it. I get a weekly report of Chezmoi drift across all my machines, including what I changed. This took me 30 minutes to set up. There are so many things it can simplify. A production server with user data on it? I wouldn’t dare. My backed up MacBook? Truly valuable.
mistyvales 8d ago
I still use the free version of Plex and got it set up in a jail on my FreeBSD server. Serves my needs for now, and also use Infuse like a lot of people here on my Apple TV 4K. I have no need to transcoding or anything because all my media consumption is at home these days. If Plex does shit the bed, I will have to rethink my setup for Jellyfin..
deleted 8d ago
[deleted]
tstrimple 8d ago
I've also got a lifetime Plex pass, but have moved on. I was tired of fighting Plex for what the home screen looked like. It seemed like every update there was more Plex bullshit and less of my actual media without digging through menus. I'd configure it to be just my media, and the next update ads and content from other streaming services kept showing up.

firecall 9d ago

Feels like only a matter of time with Plex doesn't it! I've got the lifetime pass, but it really does feel like a Sword of Damocles situation...

senectus1 9d ago
really is just the normies access to it via samsung and LG TV's that hold me back.
- ThomasBb 9d ago
  There is a nice Jellyfin app for LG now
- notrealyme123 9d ago
  I am currently on vacation and used jellyfin via the browser on all the smart TV. And it just works great. I didn't expect it to work this good. Sign in via key is easy, not stuttering. I can recommend it.
- mrmlz 9d ago
  Newer TiZEN models has a jellyfin app now in the appstore!
doctoboggan 9d ago
Yes it really does, and I intend to switch eventually but from what I heard the last time I looked into it, the end user clients are a big area where plex still beats Jellyfin. Since that’s where my non technical friends and family mostly interact with the system, it’s the area I need to be the most polished and hands off.
- al_borland 9d ago
  Performance was also a big issue for me the last time I tried running Jellyfin on the same hardware as my Plex server. I’m happy to see that has been their focus.
- BLKNSLVR 9d ago
  Jellyfin's Android clients seem to be fine. Android TV and smartphone at least. Have been fine for at least five years. Can't speak to other platforms though.
- c0nsumer 9d ago
  Yes, this is the big one for me. Seemingly unlike a lot of folks, Plex is my main music server. Years ago I ripped all my CDs (1800+, IIRC) and Plex + Plexamp is really, really, really good for listening. I haven't yet found anything else that works as well. I use Plexamp on desktop/laptop computers and then the Android and iOS apps for on-the-go music. I tried Symfonium [1] because it seemed promising and would give me a Jellyfin path, but it was weird and kinda buggy and ate my phone's battery. I'm hopeful there'll be a good replacement available eventually, but for now, I just have to stick with Plex. [1] https://www.symfonium.app/ https://www.symfonium.app/
  - devindotcom 9d ago
    yeah I'm in a boat of similar shape. plex and plexamp is very simple and plug and play - it handles the IP stuff for remote play, which is the tough part for me. I don't mind lacking features in the server or the client honestly, if I can find and play an album or playlist I'm good. But the connectivity piece can be hard if you're not familiar with self host stuff. I tried to do Jellyfin and Tailscale and some client and it... kind of worked? But it was definitely not as seamless. I do hope every year that it's my last year paying for Plex. Maybe this year!
mzi 9d ago
I have a lifetime pass as well, but switched to Jellyfin years ago.
madeofpalk 9d ago
Maybe I'm naive, but I feel like if Plex was going to do anything to existing lifetime subscriptions, they would have done it by now. I think we're fine for now.
heed 9d ago
they'll eventually come out with a completely new overhauled version of plex that's sub only but your lifetime pass will still be good for "plex classic" which they'll stop supporting
- schrectacular 9d ago
  Or just end the lifetime tier and make people pay like fastmail did. If even the HN beloved fastmail would do it I pretty much expect it from everyone.
  - awakeasleep 8d ago
    I think this already happened. They increased Plex lifetime to 750 bucks. That’s effectively an end.
  - zchrykng 8d ago
    I mean, I have a lifetime license for Plex, but even I would happily pay some nominal amount every year if Plex stopped making their software worse intentionally.
    - schrectacular 6d ago
      Fair, I mean, I still use fastmail :)
- therealpygon 8d ago
  Or if like PlayOn, they’ll simply replace your legacy lifetime license software with their new version that no longer does the core functionality that has to be kept up to date — recording different providers — without upgrading to their new extra-special monthly cloud licensing that replaces your “lifetime” license you bought to support their fledgling business. One thing is almost certain, any software claimed to be “Lifetime” will become a lie if given time and one should assume “lifetime” in software almost never means more than 5-10 years before a new executive has a bright idea to generate more revenue.
- buran77 8d ago
jmuguy 8d ago
Its hard to tell if the folks at Plex understand the position they're in. They definitely are dancing right up to the line of pushing people too far. I could see them trying to boil the frog with stuff like putting their garbage free streaming stuff front and center more. Like so there won't be one specific thing they do that makes everyone realize its time to leave. I think one silver lining is that whenever it does reach a tipping point there's going to be a ton of support for projects like Jellyfin, so hopefully we see more feature parity - in particular for shared access for friends and family.
- arwineap 8d ago
  I left this year when they told me I'd have to re-buy my lifetime pass. I suspect they rolled it back, but as you said that was the last straw. All of these streaming nonsense that keeps getting re-enabled, totally troublesome to help friends with the same settings I couldn't help but think with all the ads they were serving me directly, that they must be selling my data as well. That's not the point of self-host. No thank you. Jellyfin still missing download w/ transcode, but with space getting so cheap I don't miss it. I do need to improve the music side though
  - jmuguy 8d ago
    The "vendor" page for their data collection is... impressive. https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us/ https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us/
  - deleted 8d ago
    [deleted]

bigstrat2003 9d ago

I (also a lifetime Plex Pass user) decided to try it out ~6 months ago, and I've switched over. I haven't had any gaps in functionality yet, though YMMV of course. While it isn't better than Plex (which is still fine for now), it isn't worse either, and I trust the Jellyfin devs a lot more than the Plex devs at this point.

RajT88 9d ago
I must be old school. I never got on board with Plex, because my "lifetime" licenses for PlayOn, TVersity and Twonky all ended up completely useless. Yes, those licenses still work, but you can't get the latest versions which provide support for the latest codecs, features, etc. There's a cutoff on the versions that "lifetime" license allows you to upgrade to, and some of those licenses were not that cheap at the time. So of course, Plex is going to engage in the fuckery that they are. JellyFin on the other hand, for the amount it costs is surprisingly low on janky behavior.
- BeetleB 9d ago
  Yes, eventually, all of them will end up this way. But the attitude lacks nuance. I paid $120 for Plex 8 years ago, and if it becomes utter crap tomorrow, it's been totally worth it. Don't think of any such thing as "lifetime". Just ask: "For the amount they are charging me, how long does it need to last for it to have been worth my money?" With the price I paid, one year would have been enough.
VladVladikoff 9d ago
I switched to jellyfin about 6 months ago and I can say it is definitely worse. I’m constantly fighting to fix thumbnails, fix episodes to be in the same show, force rescans to get it to even recognize a show that already exists. I never had any of these problems with plex. Plex also defaults to transcoding which fixes a lot of gaps with clients that don’t support certain codecs. I’m often running into issues where infuse can’t play DTS so I need to reencode before I can play the movies. Also in the process of ditching plex I switched to audiobookshelf for my audiobooks and I have to say it’s also crap. It’s constantly refusing to start playing, or pausing for a really long time before playing. All that being said I’m not switching back. It’s been a pain but it was worth it.

darknavi 9d ago

> As an aside, I recently started having Claude help me with configuring my *arr stack and it has helped tremendously. I used to have to babysit and manually intervene on maybe 10% of requests, now it’s near zero Any more details here? I hit this a lot and it's not too much work, but still pretty annoying.

doctoboggan 9d ago
Step one is to just let Claude have ssh access to the machine you run plex from and let him do a full sweep. I had some conflicting profile rules and was not properly blocking malware and not properly marking failures so they were never retried. This fixed a big portion of the manual work needed, but the usenet account is really what got me to nearly 100% hands off. I think I am paying $3/month for the next fifteen months, and apparently if I pay attention during Black Friday there will be some pretty cheap deals. For more months of access at even less EDIT: Claude was also able to look at my logs and noticed that nearly all of the exe or other malware was coming from 2 trackers so we just eliminated those.
- Gareth321 9d ago
  I second your Usenet recommendation. I also have the $3 deal which just rolls over each year.
- tired_star_nrg 9d ago
  Where could someone learn more about the usenet account method?
  - doctoboggan 9d ago
    Claude will be able to help you with everything you need. If you don't have Claude code then the various self hosted subreddits are a good starting point. I had Claude do a sweep of the recent reddit posts to capture the current most recommended usenet accounts, he gave me two links, told me to sign up and paste in the API keys and he took it from there.

BLKNSLVR 9d ago

I just like the confirmation that AI is happy to be a Boatswain.

post-it 9d ago
Claude is perfectly happy to do it and gives great suggestions. I can't imagine it will last, I did run into one situation where I wanted to archive all the media on a subscription site before my subscription expired, and it refused. But splitting it into one session to collect all URLs and a second session to plug them into yt-dlp with the right arguments worked just fine.

dgrin91 9d ago

What are you using for audiobook requests? I also recently setup arr stack, but I saw readarr is depreciated and there doesn't seem to be a clear successor.

Xerox9213 9d ago
It’s been a while since I used it but lazylibrarian has worked for me in the past. I tried shelfarr as well with some success a while back, but haven’t needed any new books lately since I’m busy catching up on the books I’ve downloaded (the Bible is long lol).
doctoboggan 9d ago
After reading a lot of reddit threads I settled on ReadMeABook[0] and it has been working great so far. One pretty cool feature is that it lets you connect an LLM API key and then you can have it make requests based on your library. I now have Fable 5.1 suggesting my next book. [0]: https://github.com/kikootwo/readmeabook https://github.com/kikootwo/readmeabook
- y-curious 9d ago
  Hello Mantis. Question: what do you do with the books? Is there kindle integration somehow?
  - tstrimple 8d ago
    I think most folks lean on Calibre for that. I've setup KOReader on my wife's Kobo and it looks at our local Calibre server for books.
  - doctoboggan 8d ago
    I use it for audiobooks. They are served up by Plex and I use the Prologue iOS app which is a great audiobook listening experience.
davkan 9d ago
If you don’t want to commit to one of the vibecoded no community arr clones for books then i recommend shelfmark. Lightweight grabber, easy to start with, easy to rip out later.

villish 9d ago

I like them both, but I can never give up plexamp. I’ve tried navidrome and various jellyfin clients but I keep going back.

bigstrat2003 9d ago
For music, I use Navidrome + Symfonium. Not quite as smooth as Plexamp was (and there's nothing on par with Symfonium on desktop), but I disliked having my music and video commingled so it's been worthwhile for me.

bombcar 9d ago

Claude and jellyfin and HASS is great. Now my phone has a “door lock” which turns off the kids user’s access, but lets the current playing finish. And another “door lock” unlocks playing for ten minutes.

y-curious 9d ago
What do you mean by door lock, where does the code show up?
- bombcar 8d ago
  Hass can make things appear like light switches, etc, but if you did that (they can run arbitrary code) then the kids will learn that "Hey Siri, turn on Kids Play" will work. But door locks refuse to unlock from Hey Siri, so you have to unlock and use your phone. So I made them appear as door locks (my idea, heh, AI didn't come up with that).
  - y-curious 8d ago
    Understood, so you have a virtual “home lock” on your phone that is actually a media unlock or whatever. Clever :) I also didn’t know HASS = home assistant
    - bombcar 7d ago
      Yeah, home assistant is super powerful once you break out of the mold of "a light is a light, right" and realize that ANYTHING can be represented as state changes, and you can run arbitrary code based on it. And with lights, locks, and brightness/color being able to be modeled in Hass's interface to HomeKit and Siri, you can basically do ANYTHING that can be turned into on/off, lock/unlock, or a slider. You could probably build a remote paintball turret with it, camera for viewfinder, sliders for elevation, rotation, and azimuth, lock for arming, switch for fire.

devindotcom 9d ago

unrelated to your otherwise helpful comment, I just wanted to note that it is "demur" (i.e. hesitate or object) you want in this case; "demure" is an adjective meaning shy or modest.

doctoboggan 9d ago
Thanks, fixed

bitexploder 9d ago

For what it’s worth, I am very happy with Jellyfin and the *arr suite. It took a bit of agent prodding to get them all playing nicely together and bypassing Cloudflare CAPTCHAs. However, it's pretty sweet when you get it all working.

scubbo 9d ago
> bypassing Cloudflare CAPTCHAs Can you say more about this? I've never encountered this problem in nearly a decade of running the same stack.
- alacritas0 9d ago
  With the *arr stack, some of the trackers it uses to search for a torrent will present a captcha when Prowlerr queries it for a search. If you integrate FlareSolverr and set up Prowlerr to submit queries through it for the trackers that have CAPTCHAs, it won't get blocked by them.
  - bitexploder 9d ago
    Yep. It really isn’t nefarious or abusive. I keep mine slowed down to not scan often to be considerate. Even private trackers can require it now.
  - scubbo 8d ago
    Ah - I use Usenet, not Torrents, that'd explain it. Thanks!

jshier 9d ago

Also a lifetime pass Plex user, I'll leave as soon as someone has a good solution for identifying raw Bluray rips automatically. Why do I have to manually name the episodes? We had CDDB last century, why isn't there an equivalent for raw video rips? The ripped data should be identical, a simple hash should uniquely identify it.

0points 9d ago
Are you describing a plex feature? I was under the impression they required the media to follow certain naming conventions. [1] Maybe mkv-renamer is of use to you? [2] 1: https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-... 2: https://github.com/ssanj/mkv-renamer https://github.com/ssanj/mkv-renamer
- jshier 9d ago
  I'm describing a hypothetical feature that I want. Essentially an automatic version of mkv-renamer that can identify series, episodes, and special content based on the signature of the ripped files. For whatever reason, such a service doesn't even exist.
  - IAmBroom 8d ago
    Does Filebot not do this for you? A quick glance suggests it does, but I'm not overly concerned with its decision-making; name matches are close enough.
    - jshier 8d ago
      That may actually be what I need, I'll give it try.

ggm 9d ago

Thank you for starting this thread. Another lifetime plex pass user, interested in my choices. For now, I am happy on plex/plexamp. Good to know what jellyfin is at.

internet101010 9d ago

If there is one thing that needs to be re-written and consolidated it is the arrs ecosystem. Replacing/consolidating the arrs themselves is pretty straightforward. The trap that quickly becomes a token incinerator is incorporating the downloader into the library manager itself. A lot of learned lessons in that sabnzbd codebase.

davidwritesbugs 9d ago
As someone with coding projects in the is area would you care to elaborate on "a lot of learned lessons"?
- SSLy 9d ago
  sabnzbd is basically packaged decades of domain specific knowledge about deobfuscating media files
- internet101010 8d ago
  Things like when to cancel early, how to handle par2, obfuscation, rars within rars, decoding articles. Just a mountain of "huh, didn't think of that being a complex problem" that was resolved over time. I was able to replace the arr suite + sabnzbd with my own rust+ts frankenstein but had I known how complex the usenet piece was going to be I would have separated it into two phases.
drdexebtjl 8d ago
I agree. In particular, I think it needs declarative configuration, and it needs to stop storing configuration in a database. It's insane that the current setup options are: - Click through dozens of pages importing JSONs from TRaSH Guides, then do it all over again on the other app. - Run an app that basically does the same thing but over the REST API.

prophesi 9d ago

Lifetime pass user long before the ridiculous price hikes for it and the direction for the service going down a path I didn't want to support. You can run Plex and Jellyfin on the same server concurrently pointing to the same media files. My Plex server was still running until I was able to transfer everything over and their mobile app ecosystem got up to parity.

leokennis 9d ago

Both for simplicity and portability, I am a very happy user of https://firecore.com/infuse https://firecore.com/infuse. I guess it's less full featured as Plex or Jellyfin (it still more than covers the bases for video: format support, different video/audio/subtitle tracks, tv series recognition, skip intros, Trakt.tv etc.); but then again all it requires is any online storage, and the Infuse app (either on iDevice or AppleTV).

vulkoingim 9d ago
Yeaah, second that! I use it on the AppleTV and across the rest of my devices! Works like a charm, and coupled with Tailscale I can access everything on my Nas everywhere :) I have it configured to use Jellyfin as the source, runing on said nas
- s_dev 9d ago
  You should try this: https://neptuneplayer.com/ https://neptuneplayer.com/
  - zeagle 8d ago
    Does it do bitstream DTS and DV on Apple TV? If so maybe I’ll have to try. Also am I going old or is the whole join our discord to see what it’s about/download is the new norm on the web? My click through rate on that is about 0.
  - ulimn 8d ago
    Oh my, this immediately looks so much better UX-wise than Swiftfin!
  - vulkoingim 8d ago
    Looks good...but having to join Discord to try it is one step too many, if I have to be honest.
    - s_dev 8d ago

colechristensen 9d ago

huh, yeah I should start an xbmc fork/reimagining. the limitations with the tools of the day are imagination. a LOT of the software I use these days are things I facilitated the creation of and a media player is definitely supposed to be on that list

atombender 9d ago

I left Plex for Jellyfin + Infuse a couple of years ago, and I'm not looking back. But the sore point right now is outside access, which Jellyfin really isn't made for. I set up Tailscale so I can connect Infuse to Jellyfin remotely. But that's not exactly as smooth as Plex. I can't give friends and family access, either, which was dead easy with Plex. In terms of the UX, Infuse isn't very good, but it does the job okay. The built-in subtitle fetcher is amazing; that stuff never worked for me with Plex.

BrendanThompson 6d ago
I have the exact same setup. I found Infuse a PITA to begin with. Now it works pretty dang well, even remotely. One big irritation though is the subtitles are always on by default, on Apple TV it's an issue as I can't find a way to disable the default haha! Sometimes there is also a delay between when Jellyfin can play a new video in the browser and when Infuse can play it even though it can see the file. I do find Infuse significantly better than the Jellyfin apps though.
y-curious 9d ago
For people that don’t know, Infuse lets you use Jellyfin on Apple TV and it’s very helpful for day purpose
- Gareth321 9d ago
  Crazy expensive though. It's basically a Plex subscription, just for the player.
  - skydhash 9d ago
    Isn’t it something like $10/yr or something?
    - illegalbyte2 9d ago
      Yep. Worth every cent. The Apple TV experience of Infuse is night and day with Plex. I used to constantly struggle with Plex buffering and crashing on my local network with the Apple TV app. Infuse just points to a file share on my NAS and streams beautifully, even at larger 4K files. I used Plex for years. I’d never go back from Infuse now, and I’m happy to pay that subscription to support its excellent development.

jwr 9d ago

I also have a lifetime pass, but I'm becoming increasingly annoyed with Plex. Why do I have to regularly turn off their "recommended" stuff that is just ads for movies I can buy online? Why does it appear and re-appear? Also, the Plex app for LG TV has been buggy and broken for years: some content will not play at all, some will not play if you ff/rewind, and some will not play until you physically turn your TV off and then on. Very annoying. I'm glad to see competition.

Gareth321 9d ago

> As an aside, I recently started having Claude help me with configuring my arr stack and it has helped tremendously. LLMs have been AMAZING for home server maintenance and improvements. I have completed SO many of my "some day" tasks. I never have to read another fucking log file ever again. It has taken all of the friction out of the hobby. It's all* fun now.

joshstrange 9d ago
I’ve set up literally hundreds of different self-hosted applications over the years on my homelab. I’ve configured the reverse proxy by hand, setup the docker containers, etc. Now I can just tell Claude “Setup XYZ app on my server” and it does it all and leaves a note in my Obsidian vault documenting the service (setup instructions, backups, hostname, etc). Trying out new things has never been easier now that the effort is near-0 to kick the tires.
- drnick1 8d ago
  I would caution against this approach. It's fine to have Claude write a setup script, or whatever you need, but don't run coding agents as your main user on your production machine with full access to your files or whatever your "homelab" consists of.
  - bigstrat2003 8d ago
    Yep. You should never let an LLM have access to the system. It's irresponsible as all get out.
    - threecheese 8d ago
      Your personal computer? Eh. This afternoon Claude code diagnosed an issue I’ve had with my 4K displays since Tahoe, it would have taken me a week just to learn enough to try to figure it out. Now I have a cli tool which fixes it. I get a weekly report of Chezmoi drift across all my machines, including what I changed. This took me 30 minutes to set up. There are so many things it can simplify. A production server with user data on it? I wouldn’t dare. My backed up MacBook? Truly valuable.

mistyvales 8d ago

I still use the free version of Plex and got it set up in a jail on my FreeBSD server. Serves my needs for now, and also use Infuse like a lot of people here on my Apple TV 4K. I have no need to transcoding or anything because all my media consumption is at home these days. If Plex does shit the bed, I will have to rethink my setup for Jellyfin..

deleted 8d ago

[deleted]

tstrimple 8d ago

I've also got a lifetime Plex pass, but have moved on. I was tired of fighting Plex for what the home screen looked like. It seemed like every update there was more Plex bullshit and less of my actual media without digging through menus. I'd configure it to be just my media, and the next update ads and content from other streaming services kept showing up.