I hope the project succeeds and think this is a good move. But I have a lifetime Plex pass and Jellyfin still seems not as good. I have both on my box, but whenever I try to use Jellyfin theres just something missing. I will keep checking back.
I need a plex.com account to use my own self hosted instance? Uninstalled.
Yes it is not perfect and they made mistakes along the way but comments as such just tend to ride on the sentiment that vilifies all non OSS products as if it's something inherently bad, the "us vs them" attitude is something I see time and time again here.
The fact that this is all it enables just reinforces the idea that it should be optional. All of the core functionality is possible to implement without requiring an account.
> The fact that this is all it enables
Not sure where you got the idea that linking is the /only/ thing an account gives you. One feature I quite enjoy is syncing watch status between servers. So if one has multiple servers they use (multiple they control or friend’s servers) their watch status can be synced. In my case I have a travel/portable Plex server and my main Plex server so it’s nice to have my watch state kept in sync.
And there are more features from having a central account, this is just one of them to disprove that linking is the only reason you need an account or that it’s the only feature of having an account.
Even if they did have the account, the unforgivable part is that you cannot use the mobile app for your family and have people have different profiles because the plex pass is tied to a profile. That’s a sleazy cash grab that drove me off of plex.
An example of this is sunsetting Plex Sync and replacing it with Plex Downloads.
At the time they used the whole 'Sync never worked right' argument to justify why they got rid of it. In reality, Plex sync used to allow any user to download videos from any server where the server owner had plex pass.
Now with downlods, the user must have Plex Pass to download anything.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/downloads-sync-faq/
There are other examples where they have done this as well.
Plex still seems slicker than Jellyfin in some ways but after that experience I'd certainly consider a switch. Offline is the only reason I still use plex, but their offline setup is pretty buggy too.
Yes, they keep adding cruft, I just ignore or hide it. That said, I didn't know I wanted Plexamp until they gave it to me, and now I love it.
I buy all my audiobooks on Audible, remove the DRM, then put them on my server so I can use Prologue instead of the default Audible app. Yes, you give up WhisperSync but I rarely use that anyway.
There are few environments that seem to attract the sort of discussion where every single person feels justified in writing a 12 paragraph vitriolic entitled screed drawing from the same bucket of recycled quips. To say that you actually like Plex is some sort of great offence that attracts at least a few replies telling you that you’re wrong.
I’m so incredibly confident that there’s a large contingent of people that wouldn’t care an iota that Plex phones home, if not for the fact that they’re so deep into the Plex Hate scene that they’ve learned to be up in arms about it.
I’m not a gamer but have interacted with gaming communities here and there as I’m sure we all have to varying extents. I see the Plex community as pretty similar. I think it attracts the same sort of ‘power user’.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200430283-network/#:~:text=...
Wasn't this the case from the beginning?
The best of Jellyfin is that it's truly self hosted. But no matter how much set up I do, the experience is still never too good. I don't really like the UI/UX but I could get used to it. My biggest issue is how it handles the folder structure and metadata for series. They will always have to be neatly organized in folders to be properly picked up. You can't throw an episode file here, an episode in a folder there, the rest of the season in another folder and so on. They're just seen as independent material, no metadata. This makes the watching experience very stunted.
And anybody could log into their plex account on my instance! The way they handle accounts for self-hosted instances is either deliberately convoluted or ineptly designed.
Non-techie family though prefers Plex, hands down. Looks good and really easy to setup on any machine.
Hoping Jellyfin keeps going, maybe I'll check it out again at some point.
I know you can unfuck it, however I don't want to reward that toxic behaviour with usage
1) Jellyfin supports reading NFO files to help determining matching the file with the correct metadata (https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/metadata/nfo/). This is arguably superior than Plex's way (you have to name your file with IMDb id or tmdb id https://support.plex.tv/articles/201018497-fix-match-match/#...), but I still constantly find media w/o metadata in Jellyfin.
2) The way you fix the matching in Jellyfin has a pretty terrible UX. You select the movie w/o metadata (there's no filter to "find all media that Jellyfin fail to match w/ metadata) and click "Identify" in the 3-dot menu, then fill in the information and search (why can't Jellyfin prefill useful metadata, at the very minimum the year that should be easily identified using regex?), then pick either IMDb or tmdb (why do I have to choose one of them? Can I bulk-switch my library to use IMDb instead of tmdb?), with a checkbox to confirm you want to "replace existing images" (why do I have any images to replace? Jellyfin did not match the media to any metadata right?) you now have some useful metadata.
3) When I need to force a rescan of a library, there's no way (that I can find) to do that when you are viewing the library. The only way to do this is to go to Settings -> Dashboard -> Scan All Libraries.
4) There's no offline media playback support (AFAIKT).
2 - I agree that Find all without set metadata in a library would be nice. However when identifying you don't need to chose one or the other, you just type whatever info you have (the name, or the year, or both, or ...) and search and it search in all providers it has a plugin for (so in your case, both imdb and tmdb) and show all results from both.
The do you want to replace image is because it's very common to switch to another provider for obscure series for exemple, but want to keep you hand replaced image. It doesn't really apply to "blockbuster" series or movies, so I guess it could be nice to have a default you can set.
3 - It separates the admin part and the viewing part, I think it's good. If you're solo user it can feel bothersome, but for me it's a better thing.
4 - You can download the files for later viewing offline.
Overall the only one I agree with is the figure out which movie or serie you didn't identify and let me fix that in bulk, that process could be improved, but it's also a one time thing at first setup.
2) When I try to identify the media, I would expect Jellyfin to pre-fill the form with the name, year etc, basically anything it can find, either from parsing the filename or the NFO. But Jellyfin did nothing here to make it easier.
4) Oh I just found this functionality in the Android client! But this is over simplified, for TV shows it doesn't support "download the next N unwatched episodes". I also tried to download a movie just now and I got a notification "download unsuccessful" w/o more insight to debug the issue (although to be fair Plex is not better in giving a reason why download failed). And I don't see in the UI to manage all downloaded media (maybe because I haven't had a successful download?).
2) I understand what you mean,but I would disagree, usually it would get in the way for me (whatever it identified or thought it did was wrong).
4) The log will be on the server, admin, logs. There won't be a manage my upload though, it's a client thing and the current client does consider that outside of its scope.
Personnaly when needed it's download then use Vlc when I want to watch.
Are you advocating taking away an option other users might use because it confuses you?
I do not allow jellyfin to scrape online. Everything goes through tinymediamanager (kodi format). There isn't a single missing piece in my library .
1. I can't download shows from the iOS client. I can on my Android device
2. The music player doesn't interface with the device's media player. So you have to keep your phone open when listening to music
Source: am Fintunes dev.
[1]: https://fintunes.app [2]: https://github.com/jmshrv/finamp [3]: https://github.com/rasmuslos/AmpFin
Does Jellyfin work well on this platform?
I use Infuse with Jellyfin. My server’s way too weak for reliable transcoding, plus not using it avoids a large proportion of bugs in the Jellyfin issues tracker at any given time.
There’s a dedicated AppleTV app, which works great for a month, then reliably forgets its credentials. I use it, but the kids don’t want to learn how to type urls, usernames, and passwords so they don’t. That’s fair.