Text:
I consent to Plex to: (i) sell certain personal information (hashed emails, advertising identifiers) to third-parties for advertising and marketing purposes; and (ii) store and/or access certain personal information (advertising identifiers, IP address, content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners. This data is used to deliver personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Your consent applies to all devices on which you have Plex installed. You can withdraw your consent at any time in Account Settings or using this page.
Soure: https://www.plex.tv/vendors/ (Might have to clear cache)
Can also read about the changes here: https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/
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Speedrunning destroying your platform.
"Updated “Who does Plex share or sell Personal Data with?” to include the Plex activity that you share based on your account visibility and activity settings as well as sharing/sale of certain Personal Data to third parties.
Nothing changes for Plex Accounts created before March 20, 2025 unless you change your preferences here. If you are a new user and created an account after March 20, 2025, you can update your preferences here. The types of data that we may share has not changed We do not and will not collect information about content or titles in your personal media library or what you’ve played. Personal media users: we do NOT, and will not, share or sell any information about the content and titles on or your use of a personal media server. Consent is required by all Plex Accounts created before March 20, 2025 for the sale of their data."Seems like it’s just for their other services, which I already assumed they were tracking and selling view counts.
The downfall of Plex needs to be compiled into an 80 minute YouTube video with sponsors spaced in for NordVPN and Viagra
Meanwhile, poor Jellyfin just quietly doing the job.
I’m a big fan of Jellyfin. I would say it is easily family approved. That is for my family in my household who is using it on our home Wi-Fi.
But I am not about to expose it publicly. I have WireGuard set up on my immediate family’s devices and that is mostly ok (until you get on a public Wi-Fi that fails because you haven’t gone through their portal and can’t because the vpn is on, or you are on an airplane’s Wi-Fi with no internet trying to watch their movies and it doesn’t work until you turn off the vpn). Explaining this to my wife has been a nonstop battle.
I’d like it open it up to my siblings families, especially because I have the ersatztv plug-in to create approved child stations, but so many smart tvs and devices don’t support a vpn. How have others handled that situation?
“enshittification wont happen to my software of choice”
hahahaha… those ppl with discord, iphones, windows,plex…they wont learn.
I don’t know why everyone in the selfhosting community still even mentions Plex or uses it.
It’s closed source, not free; Jellyfin is a no brainer yet people still go to Plex??
The sunken cost of buying a plexpass on sale for 39 dollars 15 years ago.
I bought a Plex pass for 90 or something. I officially dropped Plex about 4 months ago now. For 90 bucks I got something like 8 years out of it. I’ll call that a win, I don’t feel like I wasted my money, I don’t feel like I overpayed. Just moving on now.
Yeah great perspective. I think we all need to have this perspective more as many tech companies will randomly change their minds on their products.
Kind of like how I got free photo backup on my first two pixels. It was a nice feature, I’m sad it’s gone, but it’s fine.
Did they really kill off free photo backup? That’s so incredibly shitty, they even compressed them!
Did they really kill off free photo backup? That’s so incredibly shitty, they even compressed them!
Yeah it was over after pixel 3 or a little before iirc! Although to me it was obvious they would eventually kill it off because that’s soooo much storage. It was just a trick to get people bought into Google photos (which is a great service but much too expensive for me and now basically totally replaced by Immich)
damn I’ve been out of the loop on that one for a while! Agreed, I set up Immich and it’s pretty much a drop-in replacement now
How has immich been compared to photoprism? My issue with immich is that new releases kept breaking things. Has it finally stabilized? Lts are super important to me as I don’t want to spend every weekend reconfiguring services for my family.
Forgot to mention- can’t compare to photo prism as I’ve never used it!
I’m new to self hosting and I’ve only used it for about a month. During the last month all updates have been stable for me! But according to their roadmap they plan to do their official “stable” release a little later this year, so you could wait until then?
Also I’m running it in docker so that might help
Same.
Plex is easier to run on older NAS systems, but yeah - that was me :) but i switched to jellyfin, finally
Hence the term “sunk cost fallacy”.
I stuck with Emby for way too long for this reason. I spent $50 in 2017. Gotta get my money’s worth no matter how broken their app was.
Jellyfin is hardly a no-brainer. I set it up out of curiosity a few weeks ago and my first question was how do I give access to my friends and family. So I searched, and all of the results were talking about setting up a VPN or a reverse proxy or whatever. Man, I just want to tell my mom “install this app on your tv and log in”, which is exactly what Plex does.
I get that Plex is enshittifying, but pretending Jellyfin is a drop-in replacement is delusional.
Jellyfin is a no-brainer. Publishing services on the Internet is complex.
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Yeah, but then you’re not self-hosting, you’re paying or using their free services to manage that for you.
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Yup. And letting them collect data on what goes through their service is the cost.
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Happens with most services.
I’m sure that one boutique website you shopped on had buried in the T&C that they can sell your data.
If they adhered to somewhat modern security principles for their Backend I wouldn’t mind hosting it behind a reverse proxy. But since large parts of the API is unauthorized and unprotected, I wont.
And I do not plan on supporting family and friends in setting up vpns on all of their devices
What are the worries behind it? Last time someone was worried about the security it was about knowing filenames of the stuff you host by brute forcing iirc
Last time someone was worried about the security it was about knowing filenames of the stuff you host by brute forcing iirc
Knowing (guessing) the file path allows them to access and stream the content. Meaning worst case scenario… Sony (the people known for putting malicious stuff on CDs) can probe your server, and prove the content is there because your server will return the movie file itself.
The issue is their approach to security. I don’t trust them to properly secure their software, since they have proven to prefer client compatibility over security.
Understandable. I don’t worry that much myself since I haven’t heard anything bad happening yet. And with ro rights to media, potential damage at least should be pretty limited.
You’re in a post about people outraged about an opt-in anonymous data sharing option on Plex, and you’re not worried about known security issues because you haven’t heard of anything bad happening yet?
Make it make sense.
And with ro rights to media, potential damage at least should be pretty limited.
Depends entirely on where you live I would think.
Seconded it’s not a no-brainer. I spent days trying to get it set up with Docker on two different computers and three different distros. It wouldn’t install, if it did install it had errors, if it would even open at all with anything other than a black screen. Hours trying to search how to fix it. I gave up and installed it as a standalone app on a common distro. Not as convenient, but FML it finally worked. Really felt like I wasted my time. Personally, this is the exact bullshit linux fanatics completely ignore when they insist on how great linux is vs whatever. I’ve got a shitload of patience, willpower and modest skill to try to get something like this working, but 99% of the population doesn’t. That’s why linux will stay on the back burner. And if it ever becomes just as easy as Windows…guess what? You’ll have many of the same problem as Windows.
You struggled to set up Jellyfin with docker?
Damn
Don’t be smug.
I’ll take any chance, even one involving docker
I am a devops engineer and application architect who spends their entire day developing automated docker deployments for custom applications from scratch and I manage all our reverse proxies and TLS termination and certificates.
5 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what a docker container really was. Thankfully migrating legacy apps to docker on Linux hosts is my full time job and it has allowed me to become proficient enough in a fairly short amount of time.
We all have to start somewhere and shitting on someone for not knowing something now will dissuade them from ever learning it and potentially remove a future contributor to the open source tech stack before they ever even get started.
If they said they had trouble understanding docker it would’ve been clearer, but they said Jellyfin was the issue.
I’ve definitely pulled my hair out with docker too. Banged my head against the wall for a couple days before finally giving up.
I’m not ridiculously tech savvy, but I’ve tinkered with Linux since I was young, daily drive it on my laptop. I’m not afraid of the command line, and I’m smart enough to search for help and guides when I need it.
But something about docker just breaks my brain. Maybe I’m too old and there’s too much abstract thought required, I don’t know. But I can’t figure it out.
IMO it was my hardware on the first tries. Not sure what your problem was, but after digging around I found something that loosely indicated that my hardware was too old or something - it didn’t play well with the onboard graphics or similar. But the second hardware set I tried it on was far newer, and after all the installation was complete I got a black screen. Every time. No matter which guide I used, no matter what dependencies I thought might be missing or whatever I tried to get it working. A hair pulling experience indeed.
I just want to tell my mom “install this app on your tv and log in”
I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d start to suspect that the large multimedia corporations building walled gardens of apps in closed Smart TV ecosystems don’t really want you to be able to easily tell your mom how to watch shit for free. I mean they’ll let you, if you really insist on having that app available, but someone will have to pay THEM money instead first (and probably let them spy on you). That’s their racket.
The reason Plex can do it is because they do make money, doing shitty stuff like this to their users, so they can use that money to open these doors into SmartTV-land. The root of the problem is that your SmartTV itself (and your mom’s) is a locked down proprietary piece of shit, designed exclusively for shoving all proprietary content these media companies develop down your throat, and there are few convenient workarounds that are available to us, because of course they make workarounds as inconvenient as possible.
Unless you’re willing to ditch everything proprietary and insist on open technology for everything, which is hard on its own, you’re going to end up with a janky mix of proprietary and open systems that always require some compromises, because the proprietary stuff forces us to compromise. It’s literally a “this is why we can’t have nice things” situation.
Or… You know… Jellyfin could make it so I don’t have to setup elaborate VPN schemes and have every user install that on every one of their devices. For example they could fix their security issues to make it safer to expose JF through a reverse proxy, bug they refuse to not break client compatibility
Since you need to self-host Jellyfin, then you are responsible for making the service public.
I’m not a hardcore tech person and this is exactly the issue for me as well.
I want to be able to stream my music collection when I’m away from home without having to get an associate’s degree in networking.
Tailscale makes this easy if you are the only user.
Easy if the device you’re trying to listen on has a tailscale app and a JellyFin app, which is unlikely unless you’re using your phone or a tablet/pc.
You saying you wouldn’t have those things away from home? Or a firestick.
No, I don’t generally carry Firesticks around with me.
So assuming you are traveling, what do you bring with you if it isn’t a mobile streaming device, a laptop, or a mobile device that you are going to stream to?
I’ll look into Tailscale then. I’m guessing there’s something funky about adding additional users. I would eventually like to add one or two other people.
I think the free tier lets you have three users. I ended up going with headscale so that could be wrong.
It’s not that hard but they will have to make accounts and set the correct exit node or use the weird magic dns. Takes some hand-holding and depends on how you set things up.
Jellyfin is a fully self hosted drop in. That means it’s up to the server operator to handle everything. You would still tell your mom to just install the Jellyfin app on her TV with the one additional step in your server address which you would tell her.
But yes, you as the operator have to do some extra things like implementating a reverse proxy and if hosting out of your home make necessary network configuration changes to accommodate this access.
You as server operator also have to check what device your mom has and point her to what app download, because Jellyfin doesn’t have an app for everything
True though that’s less server operator and more “just being helpful to your mom”. That said it seems nowadays that a Jellyfin app is available on most devices/ecosystems (or maybe I just don’t have experience with enough devices to have an accurate idea).
“install this app on your tv and log in”, which is exactly what Plex does
Yes, but that person has to create an account. Everyone has to create an account. With Plex. Some people I know immediately say no, others are annoyed that plex would try and shake them down for money.
If you configure Jellyfin, all that goes away. THEN they can simply download the app and login.
I make the account for them. Then I log in as them and set it up so they only see my server. Then I send them the credentials and have them login
There is one thing I want from jellyfin. It is to be able to login from their Android app to watch or set something to record without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
So I searched, and all of the results were talking about setting up a VPN or a reverse proxy or whatever.
The best thing is, you can’t use a reverse proxy with it, it doesn’t even support it.
Odd, since my Jellyfin sits behind a reverse proxy.
Oh, right, it was basic auth (behind a reverse proxy, or even in general) that Jellyfin doesn’t support and isn’t planned to support IIRC.
Here is a GitHub issue where they said they don’t plan on supporting it: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-android/issues/123
I don’t even know what a reverse proxy is
So I told people download app enter this url and login. I even send out an email inviting them so they can click the link and create their own username and password. Then if they forget their password they can ask for a reset link.
and all of the results were talking about setting up a VPN or a reverse proxy or whatever. Man, I just want to tell my mom “install this app on your tv and log in”,
This is why I use Yunohost. It makes all of that just a “click buttons” affair. Then you can tell your Mom the same thing. Only the domain is yours so Jellyfin can’t hold it over your head.
Does it work on a smart tv or roku or whatever?
Yeah they have apps on all the platforms.
All of these, plus more unofficial ones: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/
Until jellyfin adds better user log in plex will still thrive. I do the self hosting I don’t want a call every few days about they can’t log in. The one click Gmail login with plex is amazing.
I don’t share videos with people using google to log into any site.
The whole anti Google holier than thou is annoying at these levels.
Ok fine, don’t use Google. But telling your friends and loved ones to switch email providers over your crusade is worse than vegans telling you about their diet.
I’m all for kicking Google to the curb. I’m not for shoving my beliefs down other people’s throats.
It’s not “shoving my beliefs down other people’s throats” telling them that these are the options for signing in the service I’m hosting
Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?
No ma’am, this is a Wendys drive thru.
But really, I think you misunderstood the intended inference from OP, it has nothing to do with email and everything to do with data collection, algorithms, and not quite fair use media access that get’s logged to Google (a third party) ad infinitum.
:)
Agreed. I have a dozen or so people using my Plex. There is no conceivable way I’m going to get my less tech literate friends and family to use jellyfin, much less am I going to find a way to set it up for remote access with my limited knowledge. Plex is just too convenient right now.
Damn, I was with you until the unnecessary vegan bashing.
I’m vegan and it’s my diet!
Hello vegan, I’m vegan as well
Hello vegan, I’m vegan as well as well
Hello vegan, I’m dad.
ITT: bunch of nerds with literally no friends or family to share media with lol
Ok but there are a million SSO options out there - just because someone doesn’t want to allow google as a SSO provider doesn’t mean they’re telling anyone they have to switch fucking email services.
If you want a remote service to handle your authentication you don’t have to use google. I feel like that’s something I shouldn’t have to point out in a self-hosting community on an open-source and federated social media platform.
telling your friends and loved ones to switch email providers over your crusade
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It has nothing to do with email
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It’s not a personal crusade. Everyone should be trying to get people away from Google. They are an absolutely fucked corporation who makes a fortune spying on you and everyone you know.
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Sounds more of an user problem than a jellyfin problem? If they can’t remember their login I’ll just not add them to jellyfin.
The overall vast majority of everyone is completely tech illiterate. We can blame them for their lack of tech skills all we want but that won’t change anything. Jellyfin needs a better UX before it’s feasible to use over Plex when sharing libraries with other users.
Let’s not act like a user and password is some revolutionary new technical concept. They can remember it for their email provider if they can access the plex link. So why not jellyfin? I think the UX of Jellyfin is more than acceptable in this regard. Sure I wouldn’t mind they added this feature but i don’t see it as a must have.
I can tell you right now that something like a username and password is exceptionally difficult for most users. Many just have one password for every single application and if they need to use a different email or password, they will be stuck.
The vast overwhelming majority of users do not have password managers, do not know they exist, and will give up at the first sign of complexity. You’re too far into the weeds if you don’t conceptualize this.
Username, password, and URL* Also the majority of users will be on a tv, where typing that in is a huge pain. Plex’s centralized auth makes it trivial to link with a browser or app on their phone so they can login.
Jellyfin has a sign in through the app for tv. Which I tell them to use first. And URL is also nothing new. All this stuff are 30+ year old concepts by now. But to each his own!
I’m starting to think it acts as a nice filter. If they can’t grasp an URL + login, it would save me from tech support down the line.
I have atleast a dozen family members on mine that are more than double the age that 30+ year concept that don’t and never will manage to understand it. You can keep complaining about your own marginal effort, and I will keep preventing hundreds of dollars a month of wasted money by the people I love :)
URL into bookmark, username and password onto paper. Dont tell me they can’t do handwriting anymore.
TV? how did they log into their google account to begin with?
but also: they can log in first on the phone or anywhere else, then use quick connect for the TV… added bonus: phone is now a remote.
Yeah, but since you basically need a VPN to share Jellyfin safely, you now also need to install and maintain that on their end
Conversely, the average FOSS programmer has no idea how to either design for simplicity or document for the novice.
Yeah, being a novice in the FOSS scene can be extremely frustrating sometimes. It can very easily start feeling like you’re reading documentation for a plumbus, where every single sentence seems to introduce a new term you’re unfamiliar with. And it often assumes you’re already intimately familiar with how these new terms work. So even just reading the documentation for one specific thing often means having fifty different tabs open, as you also have to read documentation about a ton of dependencies or terms.
I actually think most of them do, it’s just that the simple designs aren’t universal enough to gain much traction in a FOSS community.
@Decq @Jimmycakes ehh helping people every 6 months of so since they forgot their password. Isn’t that bad. I have 10 users and have had to tell people their password maybe four times over four years. Not that bad.
Well yes I know, but that kind of proofs a sign in link is not that important right? :) surely not a deal breaker as they postulated above.
Exactly, we dont add them to jellyfin, we add them to plex because its easier for them lol.
Fair enough, i just have very limited patience for incompetence. if they cant figure out how to remember their user and password. I don’t want to have to deal with them at all.
Cool story bro you’re such a big man telling grandma she’s cut off. Tough guy over here. Absolute unit of a guy.
i dont get this… im technically still usin emby, but user management is beyond simple and requirs no upkeep. no one has asked me to reset their passwords and ive got a few dozen people usin my instance.
Not forgetting Emby allows either a local or a federated account!
You can install a plugin to add SSO.
Did you notice that they’re using a local connection? Still requires VPN/reverse proxy to get it outside the home.
They didn’t mention it in the post I reacted to.
But both of your suggestions are excellent solutions to the problem.
@Jimmycakes @Selfhoster1728 they learn pretty fast and the calls stop. Everyone says it’s hard I have very tech illerate people using it and yes I get some calls but not alot. And they managed to login way easier then I thought. I think everyone is overblowing how hard Jellyfin is. I mean most people know how to login to a website.
I think most of the people complaining about jellyfin being difficult either haven’t tried it for at least a year or are trying to use it alongside their plex service without knowing how to configure them properly.
Which is fair, I just didn’t realize how many people were using plex that didn’t have an interest in learning remote service deployment.
My family/friends uses it on TV all they do is scan the qr code on plex and it logs them in and basically keeps them logged in forever. On jellyfin it logs out randomly. I run a dedicated Nas with 40tb half filled with media. I started on jellyfin and switched over to plex and never looked back. Just the fact that half the people in my replies think the main use case is on a Pc tells you everything you need to know. It’s perfectly fine for tech literate people for everyone else plex is superior.
I would not let anyone access my self hosted stuff who is not using a password manager and secure passwords.
I’m actually fascinated/frightened by the number of people here who are apparently comfortable running an exposed remote service on their personal network without enough tech knowledge to manage user auth themselves or maintain a stack with shared volumes…
Also the people that know how to set that all up and still expose a Jellyfin server to the public internet
I think most of the reason people are using Plex is that they don’t have to expose services. Plex handles all the nat traversal and whatnot for them.
Tailscale
I will not make myself the tech guy for half my friends and family, just because I can’t share Jellyfin safely without a vpn
That’s fair but tailscale isn’t a traditional vpn, it makes direct connections between two devices. it was also designed to be extremely easy to setup and it’s free for up to 100 devices.
Again it’s fair if you don’t want to mess with it
“still even mentions plex”
I’ve been using plex for a LONG time, and bought a lifetime plexpass 12 years ago. I’m pretty sure I haven’t started a thread on Lemmy regarding Plex, but I’m sure I’m not alone as a LONG TIME user. Plex just works for me and cost me $75 in 2013. Right now I’ve got no pressing reason to switch.
If they remove my plexpass features, or start showing me ads / making my user experience worse, then I’ll probably look to change, and won’t participate in these awful ‘plex’ posts.
P.S. we should encourage as much new content on Lemmy as possible if you ask me.
Same with me, 12 years, about $70, and it still works just as well as ever. I turn off any new features I don’t want, my friends and family can still stream from me for free since I have plex pass already, and it’s easy to share without having to pass around my IP address.
Same. I bought the lifetime pass on sale many years ago, my setup is still working fine without me having to have touched it for at least the past 3 years outside of applying an update from time to time. I don’t stream their free shows or movies and have those setup so that they don’t even show up as an option on my tv.
Do I wish it was still the same company it was a decade ago? Of course… but so far they haven’t impacted my experience to the point that I feel the need to replace it with something else. The second that happens I will be spinning up Jellyfin.
Plex was the reason why I learned Docker + watchtower, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about updates (work smarter not harder). Now I have like 35 containers and am comfortable with docker. 🐳
Yep, exactly, when they screw me I’ll leave
Another longtime user here. If you haven’t already, you might want to disable autoupdates on all your devices. The “new experience” is not without its controversies.
Yeah, first thing I did after testing the new app. Still don’t know why they feel the need to push this out so aggressively instead of letting it run in parallel until its ready
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I don’t mean to diminish your comment, but I just went through the setup process for both Plex and jellyfin (moving to new hardware) and there was no significant difference between the setups.
Maybe this wasn’t the case a few years ago, but jellyfin is just a setup, point to libraries, and enable hardware accel.
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Yep. My son lives in another city and uses my jellyfin server. Actually since yesterday, because Plex stopped allowing him to watch remotely.
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Sorry, I meant “Plex took away free remote streaming”.
You’re being really, really snippy. Either have a coffee or take a breather, but calling strangers liars is way offside.
I’m not lying, I can show you my Fw config. My son called me yesterday saying he couldn’t watch Plex, something about the Plex pass. I just changed the Fw rule DST nat mangle port and told him to use jellyfin. The user is local, so that’s dead easy. Done in 10 minutes.
And yes, most users don’t have this kind of experience, granted. But Plex comes with its own stupidities, like in 2020 when my wife had to pay $5 for the Plex app so she could access our library. Or the exercise of sharing libraries if you don’t have a Plex pass, which is a real pain.
But that wasn’t my point. I was trying to relay that jellyfin isn’t as buggy and difficult as a lot of self hosters claim.
I don’t mean to add fuel to the fire with Gentry or anything but I can speak towards my experience with jellyfin here. When I started with jellyfin I didn’t know a lot about networking or even self hosting, I pretty much jumped in blind. Although it’s fair to say I am not new to technical concepts/troubleshooting so my experience is definitely going to be smoother than a non technical user.
For context I am using truenas scale to host jellyfin and I was able to install it, configure it, and get my library going on the first try and it was definitely under 20 minutes. Once I decided I wanted remote access to my library it wasn’t super crazy to figure out tail scale (maybe 30 minutes?) and have that available too. It might not have been under an hour total but coming from almost nothing as a newer user I didn’t really experience a lot of turbulence.
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My Jellyfin tunnels via traefik and cloudflared. However, the normal Android app somehow can’t login, but streamyfin works like a charm. I always had issues with plex, because it relied on their own service. But jellyfin now simply works, pretty nifty
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I mean, if they don’t want to learn, there is always netflix, prime, Disney +.
Or stay with plex, no shade.
Or you take an afternoon and build something cool like this.
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what? It’s not like everyone needs to run jellyfin at home. the only thing you need to use is the jellyfin webapp, which I don’t understand how is it more complicated than netflix or any other similar service. you log in, pick a movie and hit play. that’s it.
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Have you set up jellyfish at your home, given access to a friend outside of your network who could not setup Jellyfin themselves, and successfully got them playing on their TV, table tablet, and/or phone? Have you been able to set them up without them having to call you every week?
Yes. It’s very easy. It might not have used to be easy but it is for the last couple of years. Dead simple. About a dozen people use my Jellyfin server across TV’s, phones, tablets, laptops. None of them are what I would call techies. It’s as simple for them as Netflix.
If you have not set up a VPN for accessing your Jellyfin, I would suggest looking into the myriad of security issues the Jellyfin Backend has. Jellyfin has no business being accessible from the public internet
Plex never worked outside my network so I’m not worried about that on Jellyfin
Jellyfin is basically as easy to use as plex within the same network. I’ve set up both dueing the past 6 months. The only big difference is that Jellyfin is much more of a pain to work through port forwarding.
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I’ll switch to jellyfin as soon as it works nearly as well.
But for the moment it’s missing a lot of features compared to Plex.
I have Plex running alongside Jellyfin.
When transcoding video, Plex uses an extra 5 watts of power. Jellyfin uses an extra 55 watts.
Jellyfin also has security holes for accessing videos via URL without being authenticated.
I don’t feel like Jellyfin is ready for being exposed to the internet.
I host a Plex server for close to 70 friends and family members, from multiple parts of the world. I have over 60TBs of movies, tv shows, anime, anime movies, and flac music, and everyone can connect directly to my server via my reverse proxy and my public IPs. This works on their phones, their tvs, their tablets and PCs. I have people of all ages using my server, from very young kids to very old grandparents of friends. I have friends who share their accounts with their families, meaning I probably have already hit 100+ people using my server. Everyone is able to request whatever they want through overseerr with their Plex account, and everything shows up pretty instantly as soon as it is found and downloaded. It works almost flawlessly, whether locally or remotely, from anywhere in the world. I myself don’t even reside in the same home that my Plex server resides. I paid for my lifetime pass over 10 years ago.
Can you guarantee that I can move over to jellyfin and that every single person currently using my Plex server will continue having the same level of experience and quality of life that they’re having with my Plex server currently? Because if you can’t, you just answered your own question. Sometimes we self host things for ourselves and we can deal with some pains, but sometimes we require something that works for more people than just us, and that’s when we have to make compromises. Plex is not perfect, and is actively becoming enshittified, but I can’t simply dump it and replace it with something very much meant for local or single person use rather than actively serving tens to hundreds of people off a server built with OTC components.
Can I guarantee? There are no guarantees in self hosting. By this logic you can never move away from Plex. There’s always unknowns. There’s always new issues to trip over. Plex is hardly without it’s own warts, but because they’re ‘known’ to you and your users nothing else will ever be able to measure up.
It’s a logical fallacy and a trap.
I set up Jellyfin basically overnight when the Plex pass changes occurred. Reverse proxies are trivial, as are docker containers, don’t let the anecdotes about things being hard or VPN being needed intimidate you.
There were absolutely bumps in the road. I had to make users for each person and email them customized sign-up links. Yes, that kinda sucked, but that’s the price for running and controlling the authentication yourself instead of though a 3rd party service that can and absolutely will eventually use that data to snoop.
Most of the time, once sent the link the users were fine, 9/10 of my users had no further issues and quickly adapted. For the last 1/10, I had to trouble shoot a few things and eventually ended up recommending a different device to connect with (it was an old TV with a really old version of Plex for TVs, they ended up buying a $40 Google TV device from Walmart and got set up that way).
The whole time I was running both Plex and Jellyfin so the migration process could happen at my speed.
My point is this: no, it wasn’t painless to switch. Yes, some tech support was required. Yes, the user who was getting hundreds of dollars (annually) of streaming services effectively for free had to shell out a paltry sum to upgrade and actually enjoys their experience much more now. No, that didn’t make it impossible or not worth doing.
I’m not saying what’s best for you and your users, and I’m absolutely not guaranteeing you’ll have no issues beyond these, but I hope you understand your hands aren’t actually tied, you’re just boxing yourself in.
It’s not fair to characterize jellyfin as being unable to scale, and it’s just downright wrong to cast it as being built “for one single local user”.
Jellyfin has great support for setups that include numerous users. The entire dashboard is basically designed around this concept of an admin keeping track of dozens upon dozens of users.
You seem like you have many reservations about specific functions in Jellyfin, but you were vague in explaining thrm - what specific things are you worried about?
That’s just the nature of service migration; of course for people like you who are very dependent on it, it’s not a no-brainer, but for anyone who wants to start hosting one of the two, yes it will be.
In your case yes Plex is more appropriate but at the same time the clock is ticking for Plex if they continue on this route…
Because this is the selfhosted community, not the FOSS community. There is some overlap, but they are different. There are many reasons to not use Plex, it not being free and open source are not among them.
There’s no jellyfin app on my TV.
Probably because it works well, and has working clients on everything at this point. For some, a one-time fee was worth it when it was cheaper.
Sharing is also easier, as your friends just sign up to a plex account and you share your library with them. No need to send them an ip address and port, or fqdn that you have to maintain if your isp changes your ip address. It has its benefits, tbh, and the core sharing features still work for streaming. All the extra crap you can just turn off.
That why I think its still popular.
It’s already setup, and a lack of motivation/time/energy/urgency to make the change…
I completely agree. I thought Plex would be fast in the collective rearview mirror as soon as they started forcing connections to their servers, pay-walling, etc. I also had issues with the database corrupting and causing huge slowdowns. I spent days trying and failing to preserve my ratings, watch data, etc.
In the end, I switched to a much simpler setup of an NFS/CIFS share accessed by Kodi on my Nvidia Shield TV. If Kodi chokes (happened once since 2017), I can just wipe the app and/or reinstall and then import the local metadata (XML or NFO IIRC). That takes about five minutes. It just works. Kodi also gives me access to the IAGL, so that’s a huge plus.
Because it works. Call me in a few years when movies, TV shows, dvr recordings, live TV (with free, built-in guide support), and working picture support shows up. Oh, commercial removal too (again, built-in, just check a box). A not-shit setup process would be nice, too.
I’ve tried jf three times now across as many years, and it’s still got that ‘Linux developer feel’ of a tool where the devs got what they need the most mostly-working, and just don’t give a fuck about anything else - or a decent UI. No, blue boxes on a black background is not a decent UI. It wasn’t when W8 launched, and it’s not now. And when W8 is winning the competition, you’ve already lost.
Feature parity or the argument is moot.
I don’t know why people use dishwashers. It’s in the kitchen. A lawn mower is a no brainer, yet people still use dishwashers??
My TV doesn’t have a Jellyfin app, only a Plex app. I’m not buying a new TV just to use my preferred media server, sadly :-(
You can cast jellyfin to any receiver. I use a Chromecast.
Hearing people think they need an app just to use their TV as a TV is painful.
The point for me is, that I have an acient synology NAS (ds214play) which acts as my media server. There is a community made plex package which I can install easily. As far as I have seen, there is no way to install jellyfin on this NAS, as it doesn’t support docker
It might be because of security.
Can’t access remote unless u setup port forwarding, NAT rule etc etc. Too much work with jelly bin, plus it looks like 1990s UI created by illegal IPTV distributors
I don’t use either service. Do they serve the same purpose?
Relevant XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/743/
Every day of my life trying to explain to friends they need to quit using spoon fed software. Sigh.
Exactly why on so many things it’s like… even when it looks like they are getting it, they don’t get it. Kind of like watching bluesky rising right now. Unless I’m majorly missing something here. It looks like it’s kind of open and kind of federated…
Except in a form that no one can feasibly create their own node. One change in leadership or goals of leadership away, and it can turn into the same neo nazi trash that people are joining it to get away from.
it can turn into the same neo nazi trash that people are joining it to get away from.
And it will. Capitalism makes it inevitable.
spoon fed software
That’s a new one. I like it.
This hit so hard I wanna puke diamonds. Damn.
America always does what’s right, after they’ve tried everything else. - Someone
Oh, you expect proprietary software to behave nicely? That’s cute!
I’ll just be over here with Jellyfin, watching the chaos unfold with my popcorn!
I might actually have to switch to Jellyfin then…
I say that as a paying plex pass customer
This is specifically related to watching their free content. You can opt out of the sale & sharing of said data, which is used to play you targeted ads when watching their free content. I am not a big fan, but this is the typical “free” TV spiel. Was there something that changed recently or is it just being recognized now?
Seeing the replies in this thread it kinda makes me wonder what Plex actually has to do for these zealots to quit using their platform.
Like do they literally have to steal naked pictures of you and pass them around the office? Like wtf.
I assumed they already were.
No chance Plex wasn’t making money from those who didn’t pay for Plex Pass.
I miss when you could use something without it turning into spyware. Jellyfin it is then.
How else can they afford to stream samurai cop 3 and other things you never asked? You guys need to support them in becoming the best corp they can be! They want to be big boys now.
