Someone please educate me, in case I’m missing something. Is there an excuse left why people use plex, not jellyfin? It’s now basically on every platform and even supports music and audiobooks.
it becomes easier to understand when you look outside of your bubble for, like, a second.
if you want to try explaining to my eldery mother that lives 3000 miles away how to setup wireguard so she can access my jellyfin server on her smart tv, be my guest. oh you’ll just do it remotely? ok, explain to her how to install and setup vnc and forward the right ports so you can remote in, oh but she doesn’t want to watch on her laptop, she wants it on her tv. can’t vnc into that.
or you can say “install the plex app and i emailed you your login details.”
i’m a jellyfin user, but that’s why people continue to use plex.
I’m having a hard time understanding why you need all of that to just log into your jellyfin when you’re not home! You don’t need wireguard, or VNC or any of that jargon. That is something you chose to do for some reason. I can do it with literally the same way you said it
“install the plex app and i emailed you your login details.”
Replace plex with jellyfin. Your mother won’t need to do anything but downloading the app and put in the credentials and the server address which is in your face once you launched the app. Get a domain from cloudflare for $10 a year and set it up on the server. That’s it. No need for wireguard. I did the same thing for my friend who uses my jellyfin. I only sent him username and password and server address. That’s it.
Understandable, but like I told the other person in another comment. Setting jellyfin on a friend’s device is as easy as setting up plex if you get a domain name. I have one from cloudflare that I pay $10 a month for. I create the user account on my end and only give my friend the server address and login
Sure, but I’ll use myself as an example: I don’t want any of my services exposed to the internet, so Tailscale/Netbird/other Wireguard solution is the best choice.
Some family members have their TV’s online with no Tailscale or media box, so that solution is out.
Sure I could route all their Jellyfin traffic to my me via an exit node or VPN, but then we’re way deeper into this than my 60-something mother would ever want to. And I am on the hook for both her and my uptime. So phone/tablet/PC only if they don’t want a streaming device with native support.
The built in functionality on Plex is really practical, and practical is good for us creatures of comfort.
So I’m not disagreeing with you, just explaining what edge Plex still has over JF.
(And yes, I could do what you do and run with Cloudflare, but I don’t want to pay for it and I don’t want any traffic via third party I don’t trust)
The lack of AirPlay 2, and the indignant dismissal by the lead developer when challenged on its omission, calls into question their technical comprehension and competency. That was around 5 years ago, and it’s still not been implemented.
That’s fair. I don’t use it, so I don’t know what I’m missing. Navidrome has been fantastic. And it has great frontends on both IOS and Android. I’ve personally built my own frontend that I’ve been using for the better part of a year.
Because Jellyfin is an ugly, duct-taped-together mess. It’s very utilitarian at best, when everything is working. Ease of use is just not there for your non-technical friends and family.
Invariably whenever you bring any of these issues up, people will come out of the woodwork and tell you “Oh you just have to bolt this thing on or use it in this one specific unintended way in order to get it working halfway towards what you want”.
Not that I want to disagree with you, and I have never used Plex. But I was shocked how polished and easy Jellyfin is for an open source project when I used it the first time. It feels like a very mature piece of software to me. My gf really loves it, too.
I agree setting up tailscale for remote access was a bit of a learning curve though.
If you think there’s anything polished about Jellyfin there’s a whole world of open source projects out there for you to discover. The world is your oyster.
It definitely isn’t mature by any measure. It’s been stuck in the process of fixing technical debt and poor design decisions from the project it was forked from for years now and still isn’t finished, though they’ve made some progress in the last couple years. But I’m not sure if they are going to keep the momentum up since several lead maintainers have left the project recently. Jellyfin still hasn’t figured out table stakes features like native intro and credit skipping, OIDC support, etc. There are some devastating bugs that having been around more most of its lifetime too. One they fixed like a month ago was if Jellyfin couldn’t access your media files for even a short period of time, it would delete all media from your playlists and you’d have to recreate them one one.
I don’t think that is how it works. I don’t necessarily need a reference to tell something is a good or a bad product. I have never said that Jellyfin is more polished than Plex is, just that my impreession is contadictionary to yours of Jellyfin being a duct-taped mess. No idea why you would argue against another persons obviously subjective opinion?
I’m not saying you don’t think it’s polished, I’m saying that if Jellyfin is where you set the bar for what “polished” means to you, then the rest of the open source world is going to blow your mind. Like you have nowhere to go but up from here.
Jellyfin being a duct taped mess on the other hand isn’t part of any subjective opinion, that’s just the state the software is in. Like it’s just missing basic features of its competitors, and has been stuck in relative development hell trying to rework the internals it inherited from Emby.
I wouldn’t call it subjective. The issues that it has are all objectively there, whether or not you’re bothered by them is what’s subjective. If you’re personally ok with all the quirks, bugs, missing features and general lack of polish that plague Jellyfin but not Plex more power to you. But those problems exist regardless, and they are the answer to the question you asked.
Of course it’s subjective, but it was you who asked why people continue to use Plex. This is a reason, and the reason is valid whether you share the same experience or not.
Someone please educate me, in case I’m missing something. Is there an excuse left why people use plex, not jellyfin? It’s now basically on every platform and even supports music and audiobooks.
it becomes easier to understand when you look outside of your bubble for, like, a second.
if you want to try explaining to my eldery mother that lives 3000 miles away how to setup wireguard so she can access my jellyfin server on her smart tv, be my guest. oh you’ll just do it remotely? ok, explain to her how to install and setup vnc and forward the right ports so you can remote in, oh but she doesn’t want to watch on her laptop, she wants it on her tv. can’t vnc into that.
or you can say “install the plex app and i emailed you your login details.”
i’m a jellyfin user, but that’s why people continue to use plex.
I’m having a hard time understanding why you need all of that to just log into your jellyfin when you’re not home! You don’t need wireguard, or VNC or any of that jargon. That is something you chose to do for some reason. I can do it with literally the same way you said it
Replace plex with jellyfin. Your mother won’t need to do anything but downloading the app and put in the credentials and the server address which is in your face once you launched the app. Get a domain from cloudflare for $10 a year and set it up on the server. That’s it. No need for wireguard. I did the same thing for my friend who uses my jellyfin. I only sent him username and password and server address. That’s it.
I have Plex and Jellyfin but if I want to watch on my PS5, Plex has an official media app on there that’s really convenient to use.
It just werks.
Some paid for lifetime and enjoy it. Or prefer the layout. Or prefer the easier sharing if data with family and friends.
There are still reasons to run Plex over Jellyfin for some, but not many of they keep going the way they are.
Understandable, but like I told the other person in another comment. Setting jellyfin on a friend’s device is as easy as setting up plex if you get a domain name. I have one from cloudflare that I pay $10 a month for. I create the user account on my end and only give my friend the server address and login
Sure, but I’ll use myself as an example: I don’t want any of my services exposed to the internet, so Tailscale/Netbird/other Wireguard solution is the best choice.
Some family members have their TV’s online with no Tailscale or media box, so that solution is out.
Sure I could route all their Jellyfin traffic to my me via an exit node or VPN, but then we’re way deeper into this than my 60-something mother would ever want to. And I am on the hook for both her and my uptime. So phone/tablet/PC only if they don’t want a streaming device with native support.
The built in functionality on Plex is really practical, and practical is good for us creatures of comfort.
So I’m not disagreeing with you, just explaining what edge Plex still has over JF.
(And yes, I could do what you do and run with Cloudflare, but I don’t want to pay for it and I don’t want any traffic via third party I don’t trust)
Because Plexamp is by far the best music player I’ve ever used.
The lack of AirPlay 2, and the indignant dismissal by the lead developer when challenged on its omission, calls into question their technical comprehension and competency. That was around 5 years ago, and it’s still not been implemented.
That’s fair. I don’t use it, so I don’t know what I’m missing. Navidrome has been fantastic. And it has great frontends on both IOS and Android. I’ve personally built my own frontend that I’ve been using for the better part of a year.
Because Jellyfin is an ugly, duct-taped-together mess. It’s very utilitarian at best, when everything is working. Ease of use is just not there for your non-technical friends and family.
Invariably whenever you bring any of these issues up, people will come out of the woodwork and tell you “Oh you just have to bolt this thing on or use it in this one specific unintended way in order to get it working halfway towards what you want”.
Not that I want to disagree with you, and I have never used Plex. But I was shocked how polished and easy Jellyfin is for an open source project when I used it the first time. It feels like a very mature piece of software to me. My gf really loves it, too.
I agree setting up tailscale for remote access was a bit of a learning curve though.
If you think there’s anything polished about Jellyfin there’s a whole world of open source projects out there for you to discover. The world is your oyster.
It definitely isn’t mature by any measure. It’s been stuck in the process of fixing technical debt and poor design decisions from the project it was forked from for years now and still isn’t finished, though they’ve made some progress in the last couple years. But I’m not sure if they are going to keep the momentum up since several lead maintainers have left the project recently. Jellyfin still hasn’t figured out table stakes features like native intro and credit skipping, OIDC support, etc. There are some devastating bugs that having been around more most of its lifetime too. One they fixed like a month ago was if Jellyfin couldn’t access your media files for even a short period of time, it would delete all media from your playlists and you’d have to recreate them one one.
I don’t think that is how it works. I don’t necessarily need a reference to tell something is a good or a bad product. I have never said that Jellyfin is more polished than Plex is, just that my impreession is contadictionary to yours of Jellyfin being a duct-taped mess. No idea why you would argue against another persons obviously subjective opinion?
I’m not saying you don’t think it’s polished, I’m saying that if Jellyfin is where you set the bar for what “polished” means to you, then the rest of the open source world is going to blow your mind. Like you have nowhere to go but up from here.
Jellyfin being a duct taped mess on the other hand isn’t part of any subjective opinion, that’s just the state the software is in. Like it’s just missing basic features of its competitors, and has been stuck in relative development hell trying to rework the internals it inherited from Emby.
That’s subjective. I’ve never had an issue with it, neither has my wife or son or the couple of friends who use my media.
I wouldn’t call it subjective. The issues that it has are all objectively there, whether or not you’re bothered by them is what’s subjective. If you’re personally ok with all the quirks, bugs, missing features and general lack of polish that plague Jellyfin but not Plex more power to you. But those problems exist regardless, and they are the answer to the question you asked.
Of course it’s subjective, but it was you who asked why people continue to use Plex. This is a reason, and the reason is valid whether you share the same experience or not.