Well I already have jellyfin running in a container, just have to figure out how to get mum’s TV to work with it I guess
<edit> log in on a local IP and not the network name and it’s working again. but I’ll be moving to jellyfin from now
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I got the Plex lifetime pass over 10 years ago for pretty cheap and Plex has served me well over the years. But it’s just so damn bloated now and the biggest recent change to their android app is atrocious. The app is so laggy and slow now. And downloading movies to watch locally on a tablet is just painful.
So I decided to start experimenting with Jellyfin this month and I am blown away at how fast and snappy everything is. It still isn’t as refined as Plex but there’s something to be said about privacy and using FOSS apps.
I’ll be using Jellyfin going forward now.
I’m glad I really only use it for music, but the fire TV app works decently well. Better than the fucking Netflix app, at least.
I jumped ship early on. They didn’t include skipping intros (or removed the plugin or the capability to use plugins, I don’t remember).
Went to Jellyfin, took like 2 hours to figure out what’s different. I don’t even remember, are there any features worth it staying on Plex? At least I’m not missing anything.
Also for watch together you start a watch group and can watch a show episode for episode. Instead of having to open each episode separately and having everyone join again (but maybe Plex fixed this already, I wouldn’t know).
ur missing out on seeing 20 dollars a month go down the drain. fool. jumped ship before the good stuff
Just as an FYI, Jellyfin doesn’t charge money for… well, anything.
Genuinely Plex has become so obtrusive about NEW FEATURES, NOW WE HAVE THIS, USE THIS THUS WAY!!! and then also my libraries have somehow become even slower to load. I’ve been using jellyfin way more often
Longtime lifetime Plex Pass holder here.
FOSS is important. Having control over how you use your own hardware and files is important.
But even if none of that mattered, once I actually used Jellyfin for a few days the snappy bloat-free feel of it won me over. Switching between Plex and Jellyfin felt like switching between windows and linux.
Very new to using Jellyfin but I also feel the difference in loading and such. Feels so much cleaner! Already uninstalled Plex :)
I have a lot of custom artwork, covers, etc. How easy did that data migrate? I’ve got 6,500 movies
Fellow jellyfin user 😍
For a perfect pairing, Jellyfin + Tailscale.
Oh, this is so true. I set it up and now can watch things anywhere. Even my kids who live 6 hours away can just jump on and watch that stuff. Jellyfin is what plex wanted to be, like 10+ years ago. I remember how stupid it was when they first started charging people to watch their own local media, it was funny at first because it was only on iphones that you had to pay. Then it was everywhere. They will continue to take features away until you pay.
Can you do it from someone’s roku TV easily? Im worried about having too much networking trouble getting my mom’s TV hooked up to my jellyfin but don’t really want to open a port to the raw internet.
Imagine wanting to charge to stream your own media with your own hardware and resources… Hey wait, we don’t have to imagine it anymore, Plex already did it.
I forgot as I am a Plex Pass Lifetime user, and oh boy I’ll be sure to milk that out (actually after all these years I think I have already done that) just to keep being an annoying stat for Plex and nothing else 🤣
Aren’t they charging because it passes through their servers so you don’t have to expose your server directly to the public Internet?
Like, I pay $5 a month to access my Home Assistant setup remotely, although I could do it cheaper with my own AWS setup. But the money goes to development, so I’m happy to contribute.
Yeah… That only applies for non CGNATED networks, and as we are in 2025 I’d say most users worldwide are CGNATED or don’t have an IPv6 address… Or worse, both.
If you are CGNATED Plex approach is useless, as their relay sucks as it only lets you play up to 2 (or 4 can’t remember) mbps 720p files lol (server will transcode to meet those requirements), if they wanted to charge for remote streaming they should at least increase the minimum Mbps allowed in their relay, that way I understand they fall into server costs by proxying our media… But until that happens, charging for remote streaming is a completely joke (much more if we have free alternatives to keep doing so in a plethora of devices thanks to Tailscale and Zerotier, the true GOATS with a CGNAT environment).
I used Plex about 12 years ago. The first time my internet went down, and I couldn’t use it, I stopped using it. Garbage. Not what I wanted.
I used Windows Media Center as long as I could, I loved it. But, eventually, I had to leave Windows 8 behind. Now I use Jellyfin and SABnzbd, it works okay most of the time, but I don’t serve media to the outside, so I don’t know if it works for that.
Jellyfin or Emby.
What’s plex better at?
Getting people to pay to watch their locally stored media?
It literally says ‘remote access’
I think the GUI is more refined and the initial setup a bit easier for casual users. I’m a Jellyfin user, because my online entertainment budget is exactly $0.
Yeah it took me a few hours of research and plugin setup to get feature parity with Plex, and then even so I don’t have anything to replace plexamp yet
Not sure how features compare, but finamp exists for jellyfin if you’re looking for a jellyfin-music-player-thingy
So glad I installed jellyfin years ago and never bothered to set up Plex.
Remember when Plex tried to sell you a subscription to use outdated versions of open source game console emulators?
Plex wants to be a profit-driven company, but their business model is piracy. They’ll squeeze you for subscriptions, while making your experience worse to try and broker a peace deal with content owners.
idk I find $2/month to be very reasonable. I don’t feel squeezed.
EDIT: Just to be clear there is no amount of condescending replies form trilby wearing neckbeard keyboard warriors that will change my opinion.
To stream remotely from your own server?
If I chose to use Plex’s
plex.tvservices to expose my server to the internet, that’s one thing. But I have my Plex server exposed through my own infrastructure (NPM + Let’s Encrypt), so fuck that shit.The $2/mo is for the Plex relay service. If you access the server directly it should be free.
It’s not. Now you need to pay any time you want to connect to your server from outside of your LAN.
Would a VPN be a solution to that?
Yes. You only need to pay if you’re connecting via their relay or trying to use the remote hosting functionality. But since a VPN would land you inside of the network, you’d be fine. You’d probably need to dig into the plex settings to specify that the VPN subnet is LAN traffic. But after that, you should be good.
Yes, a VPN can resolve it. Depending on how you do it you may need to add a subnet or list of IPs to the local allow list like so. This also, for me, fixes my wifi subnet being treated as remote.
You can use ZeroTier to connect from anywhere. It only makes you pay to use the plex router/relay.
I much prefer jellyfin + tailscale
I’m switching to Jellyfin myself.
Sorry to have annoyed you.
Unforgivable, have a wretched hour and a half.
Setting up ddns takes 15 minutes for a professional (mostly setting a 1-line script to reload a simple url every ten minutes)
and poking a hole in the firewall takes maybe half an hour (since every router puts the relevant page in a different spot)
And for this you think it’s reasonable to pay ~$25/year for the rest of your life? You’re not wrong in the sense that you’re welcome to choose your own values, but I … disagree with you on the value position.
I’d be fine paying $25 a year to not maintain that shit myself. Plus the money should contribute to development efforts.
It should. I agree, but speaking as someone in the industry - usually it doesn’t. Just lines some rich guy’s pockets.
Fair in the instance of Plex, but I’m happy to pay for the feature with Home Assistant.
Good call! 100% (at least for now 😅)
I would be ashamed of myself and be tempted to leave the industry in disgrace if setting up DDNS and allowing a single port through a firewall took me 45 minutes.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. I want the newbs to feel accomplished when it only takes them 2 hours to figure it out. 😉
But seriously, you and I have it on reflex, but there’s merit to the notion that we also have our mise en place - we’ve read the manual, we’ve saved or memorized the script, already know our local equipment passwords, etc - all things we took the time to do before and now have at the ready.
I mean, you just listed the most insecure way to host Jellyfin. Poking a hole in your firewall will technically work, but that doesn’t mean it’s the correct way to do things. A good setup would use a reverse proxy, and some sort of authentication wall like Authentik or Authelia.
All of that would only take about 15 minutes for someone who knows what they’re doing. But the vast majority of people setting up Jellyfin for the first time won’t know what they’re doing. And seeing the inevitable “lol just open your firewall” comments only serves to scare them away, because even the noobs have heads that’s the wrong way to do things.
ok
👌 ok!
Aaaand that’s one of the reasons why I got rid of Plex. “Bought” it, then they found some other feature to paywall. Bought that, then another feature. Then it stopped playing files of certain extensions through chromecast. Fuck that. Put together Jellyfin and moved my collection over. Zero trouble since.
People often involved with piracy probably love entering personal information in that context…
I know it’s fashionable to shit on Plex here, but OP either has his server misconfigured or is just trying to stir the pot:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202526943-plex-free-vs-paid/
Free to Use: Video (movies & TV) streaming of personal content on the same local network as the Plex Media Server
except not via mobile devices. you have to pay for the app to work.
Right, the $2 is to use the relay service, which costs Plex bandwidth. They can’t just do it free for everyone forever, bandwidth costs money.
They charge for remote access whether it’s through their relay service or not, and you can’t opt out of fallback to their relay service.
If you connect with the IP address it doesn’t charge you. You can use ZeroTier to connect from anywhere.
That’s not quite the same - that gives you the appearance of being a local device, which is enough to fool the restriction.
Their policy and technology enforcement is to charge for remote access, not relaying.
Can you give me an example of remote direct access that would be blocked? You can use nginx to forward your public IP to your Plex and it’s fine, you can forward ports directly on your router and connect to your public IP, you can use a VPN to connect from a different network; what are they limiting? It’s the same hurdle you have to overcome with Jellyfin. Relays are convenient, but they also cost money.
Yes, however using the relay is not a prerequisite to being required to pay for a Plex subscription. That is what he is trying to say.
I can run Plex on the open internet and not use their relay at all, however if the IP of the viewer is not an interal IP on the same subnet as Plex (I assume the same subnet is required) then you’ll be greeted with the Plex paywall.
You are absolutely correct that it costs money to run a relay, but the relay has nothing to directly do with the paywall.
That isn’t how it used to work.
Why would they care what subnet the request is coming from? That’s wack.
Thank you! That is exactly my point.
But there are dozens of people in this very thread who if I am understanding correctly are willing to offer the same service for free to prove their point that Plex is evil.
People are free to take some rando on the Internet up on their offer.
It means the same specific subnet. If you have multiple subnets (one for wired, one for wireless for example) it will also trigger that limitation unless you go in and manually tell it hey these are local.
I have always connected via a FQDN, for some reason last night it decided to shit it’s self. Resolved by accessing via local IP, then the FQDN worked again
I’ll shit on Plex as much as anyone, but I wouldn’t rule out some kind of DNS nonsense here.
Think they worked out that using the IP instead of the hostname solved it.
I have always connected via a FQDN, for some reason last night it decided to shit it’s self. Resolved by accessing via local IP, then the FQDN worked again
Yes, but they’re still sending emails to people even when it doesn’t apply. I had a Plex pass and still all of my users received emails and freaked out. They’re trying to trick people into thinking they need to pay, that’s the asshole move here.
Watching people realize this toejam eating weirdo was right about everything makes my day everytime.
