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Comment by surgical_fire | Hacker News Reader

I went straight to Jellyfin and I find it awesome.

I wonder what exactly am I missing.

Same. I started out early in 2003/2004 with XBMC, and used all sorts over the years - probably Plex for 4/5 years or so in there… the writing was on the wall 4(?) years or so back when the nag emails and data capture all started ratcheting up. I dumped it for Jellyfin and never looked back once. I pay for Infuse to make it work on Apple stuff, but it’s < £10 year (mainly to cover codec licence nonsense?), which seems a small price to pay compared to any other alternatives I could find.

One thing Plex does better is media detection. Like you can plop all your shows in a folder and it still will make sense of it. Jellyfin insists on a very specific directory structure and file naming. It’s very frustrating if you only want to watch a show and not interested in maintaining a perfect library.

They both insist on their own systems and both are wrong.

It's astounding how much every single system out there fights and fights and fights against showing you your directories, as they are.

I started but didn't finish a Rygel + local-search (nee Tracker) plugin to try to finally get that. I wish the upnp media services were better. I keep telling myself I'll build a nice client/controller... Some day.

It's one tickbox away in Jellyfin: Libraries > Display > Display a folder view to show plain media folders

What're the chances VLC will do what you want as both server and client?

Is there anything around that does _not_ force a management system? I really just want a thing that primarily just tracks if I've seen a particular file, secondarily maybe let me control playback from a different device. Actually figuring out what media those files map to is a distant third.

DLNA usually doesn’t force any system and more or less exposes fs. Some TVs natively have a client. Otherwise Kody or some other client app can be used to browse and play files.

Torrents go in, properly matched Plex entries come out, 99% of the time

I do agree that both systems are wrong. At least Plex's is more compatible with the even-more-wrong conventions of the high seas

As far as I can tell plex only wants separate folders for different kinds of media and file names that give at least some clue to what it is. Plex is much more lax.

The problem with Plex is that is has a very opinionated system that ignores how things are in real life.

One example I can point to is Stargate SG-1. Episode 1 is a two parter and depending on who you ask it's either Episode 1 and 2 or Episode 1 which causes all subsequent episode numbers to be thrown off by 1 depending on how you count.

This confusion is further complicated by the release order on DVD/Bluray, the order of airing, and the fact that all of these things can be different in different regions of the world.

And that's just one show.

That has more to do with TheTVDB than with Plex itself, and it's really nothing compared to what Jellyfin demands. Plex at least supports several different alternative directory structures and file naming schemes. In order to transition to Jellyfin I would have to rename thousands of files to comply to its specific requirements, whereas Plex was mostly okay with the way I had organized my files offline.

Plex hasn't bothered to work on this in 15 years. It's been the same since I was in college and I'm almost 40.

I actually discovered the advanced item ordering menu where can you change the series episode order source, it solved this exact problem for me yesterday

This is not really a big deal. If you want it organized arbitrarily put the files in other and it will be.

It's a big deal because there's no rhyme or reason why it's one way or another way in different series so when you ask your TV through voice command to "Play Season 3 Episode 2 of [Show] through Plex] and then your TV plays the wrong episode it becomes a big deal.

It's really not a Plex problem, it's an "Internet TV metadata" problem

Use your remote or organize your files accordingly such that the integration works

You are not listening. There is no way to make it work properly all the time.

Use remote and put everything in other, it will use your file directory organization. People, man.

Funny, I found no issues with it.

Maybe the way I organized my library intuitively sort of matched Jellyfin's expectations?

For a time and I have no idea if this is still true Plex had a serious advantage in the sheer range of client platforms it supported (iOS, Android, smart TVs, Roku, etc.)

Plex's outrageously heavy Android client (on my admittedly older phone) was actually what pushed me the rest of the way over to Jellyfin

They support (or did previously support) more platforms, but Jellyfind is what runs at a reasonable speed on my phone, so that's what'll get used

Ouch. I wonder if this is related to when Plex tried to unify development of their mobile app in late 2025 so they’d have a single shared codebase for both Android and iOS?

I’ve heard from a lot of people who accidentally upgraded to the latest version of Plex on their iPads that it’s a shadow of its former self: tons of features are missing, SRT are unreliable, picture-in-picture flakes out, etc etc.

It's possible, because I used the Plex app on that same hardware for years. It certainly wasn't Google's software gettng heavier (it was already RAM and battery-hungry enough I'd dropped it), but trying to use Plex became an exercise in frustration around that time

Jellyfin's outrageously heavy Android client was what made me switch to Plex

Jellyfin works awesome on Android cellphone and Android TV.

No native app for LG TV, but I have an Android TV box anyway.

I can't say how well it works on Apple devices and other TV brands.

Jellyfin has had a native LG TV version for 4 years

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