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Comment by firecall | Hacker News Reader

Feels like only a matter of time with Plex doesn't it!

I've got the lifetime pass, but it really does feel like a Sword of Damocles situation...

Yes it really does, and I intend to switch eventually but from what I heard the last time I looked into it, the end user clients are a big area where plex still beats Jellyfin. Since that’s where my non technical friends and family mostly interact with the system, it’s the area I need to be the most polished and hands off.

Jellyfin's Android clients seem to be fine. Android TV and smartphone at least. Have been fine for at least five years.

Can't speak to other platforms though.

Yes, this is the big one for me. Seemingly unlike a lot of folks, Plex is my main music server. Years ago I ripped all my CDs (1800+, IIRC) and Plex + Plexamp is really, really, really good for listening. I haven't yet found anything else that works as well.

I use Plexamp on desktop/laptop computers and then the Android and iOS apps for on-the-go music. I tried Symfonium [1] because it seemed promising and would give me a Jellyfin path, but it was weird and kinda buggy and ate my phone's battery.

I'm hopeful there'll be a good replacement available eventually, but for now, I just have to stick with Plex.

[1] https://www.symfonium.app/

yeah I'm in a boat of similar shape. plex and plexamp is very simple and plug and play - it handles the IP stuff for remote play, which is the tough part for me.

I don't mind lacking features in the server or the client honestly, if I can find and play an album or playlist I'm good. But the connectivity piece can be hard if you're not familiar with self host stuff. I tried to do Jellyfin and Tailscale and some client and it... kind of worked? But it was definitely not as seamless.

I do hope every year that it's my last year paying for Plex. Maybe this year!

I'm fortunate that somehow I ended up with a lifetime PlexPass for... I want to say like $50 a bunch of years back?

Because yes, the remote stuff -- and PlexAmp just working the same wherever I am -- is the huge part of it. Music sits on my NAS and things... just work.

I also really like how easy the caching and offline mode is, because I frequently find myself driving in areas without mobile data service. I keep a couple favorite albums downloaded to my phone, then knowing the app will cache the next ~2 albums of queued tracks generally makes it Just Work.

Yeah PlexAmp is amazing. Feels like it's the only music client around these days that has a functional "shuffle by album" option, instead of treating my library as only a collection of individual songs.

woahhh this exists? I have an Apple Music playlist called Sunday Albums and have always wanted exactly this.

Lyrion (fka Logitech Media Server ) does album shuffle

Another up-vote from me for Plexamp.

I find the mainstream subscription players to be excruciating to use to play what I want at the time.

Yeah me to... Also I love plexamp for the android auto support.

> Feels like it's the only music client around these days that has a functional "shuffle by album" option

foobar2000 has this!

After trying dozens of music clients (including PlexAmp) I eventually settled on simply using foobar2000 pointed to an smb share - nothing else seems capable of properly handling playback by folder structure. (e.g. I've got all my Led Zeppelin albums in the "Led Zeppelin" folder, and I want to just select it and play their discography in album release order.)

I use (and contribute to) Finamp the Jellyfin PlexAmp alternative and it's just done a 1.0.0 release which brings it up to parity with PlexAmp for me. I've previously been a long time PlexAmp user but FinAmp now does everything I want it to.

That 1.0.0, and 1.0.1 is in Beta. Is that ready to be moved into stable? Or am I looking at the wrong project? https://github.com/finamp-app/finamp/releases#release-1.0.1-...

This is promising. Thanks! I'll check it out. I hope it gets the major features and works well.

Looks like it isn't on the android play store though? Any info on this? Play tells me there is a version for a prior version of android, which is won't let me install. Not helpful...

My audio needs have been satisfied for many years with subsonic, then airsonic, and now navidrome. They all expose the same subsonic API, which gives quite some flexibility on the audio player client to use. At the moment, Tempus (Android) seems well maintained, but I miss from DSub the lower clarity as to what is cached for offline consumption.

This gave me an idea, what if I let an agent make a proxy for Jellyfin to act like Plex? Best of both worlds!

Maybe worth a try.

I’m interested in helping with this. Let me know if you start a repo. I was considering the same approach, though I’m not sure how feasible it is.

I don’t think it’ll work because Plex gates everything with a sign in to their online accounts, so auth would have to go through them and there might be server-to-Plex verification going on too.

That said, I’m very interested in this space - I’ve been building a music server that provides compatible APIs for Synology and QNAP mobile apps, with a few more on my todo list. I’d love to include Plexamp so if it is possible please let me know!

> I don’t think it’ll work because Plex gates everything with a sign in to their online accounts...

That isn't true. You can configure the server with which subnets are trusted, and do not require auth.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who set it and can still access Plex over their LAN in a network outage. I have set this multiple times according to docs, and it worked only once ever, thereafter apparently resetting to online login. Of course, they do not make this an easy setting to change!

You need plex pass to do this now. They changed it recently you didnt used to need it.

I have had lifetime pass about ten years.

The mobile apps require signing in through the Plex website before you can do anything?

Performance was also a big issue for me the last time I tried running Jellyfin on the same hardware as my Plex server. I’m happy to see that has been their focus.

Its hard to tell if the folks at Plex understand the position they're in. They definitely are dancing right up to the line of pushing people too far. I could see them trying to boil the frog with stuff like putting their garbage free streaming stuff front and center more. Like so there won't be one specific thing they do that makes everyone realize its time to leave.

I think one silver lining is that whenever it does reach a tipping point there's going to be a ton of support for projects like Jellyfin, so hopefully we see more feature parity - in particular for shared access for friends and family.

I left this year when they told me I'd have to re-buy my lifetime pass. I suspect they rolled it back, but as you said that was the last straw. All of these streaming nonsense that keeps getting re-enabled, totally troublesome to help friends with the same settings

I couldn't help but think with all the ads they were serving me directly, that they must be selling my data as well. That's not the point of self-host. No thank you.

Jellyfin still missing download w/ transcode, but with space getting so cheap I don't miss it. I do need to improve the music side though

The "vendor" page for their data collection is... impressive.

https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us/

they'll eventually come out with a completely new overhauled version of plex that's sub only but your lifetime pass will still be good for "plex classic" which they'll stop supporting

Or just end the lifetime tier and make people pay like fastmail did. If even the HN beloved fastmail would do it I pretty much expect it from everyone.

I think this already happened. They increased Plex lifetime to 750 bucks. That’s effectively an end.

I mean, I have a lifetime license for Plex, but even I would happily pay some nominal amount every year if Plex stopped making their software worse intentionally.

Fair, I mean, I still use fastmail :)

Or if like PlayOn, they’ll simply replace your legacy lifetime license software with their new version that no longer does the core functionality that has to be kept up to date — recording different providers — without upgrading to their new extra-special monthly cloud licensing that replaces your “lifetime” license you bought to support their fledgling business. One thing is almost certain, any software claimed to be “Lifetime” will become a lie if given time and one should assume “lifetime” in software almost never means more than 5-10 years before a new executive has a bright idea to generate more revenue.

The Plex rug-pull is just around the corner. I've been running Jellyfin pointed at the same content as Plex for some time now. I still find some rough edges on Jellyfin but they smooth out a few more with each release so I'm confident I'll be just fine when I need to switch. The clients are getting better too, I'm using Infuse on Apple TV and Moonfin for everything else.

> The Plex rug-pull is just around the corner.

I've been hearing that for as long as Jellyfin has existed :-)

Until they handle OTA (along with its EPG), and DVR properly, it's the inferior option for me.

I have a lifetime pass as well, but switched to Jellyfin years ago.

Maybe I'm naive, but I feel like if Plex was going to do anything to existing lifetime subscriptions, they would have done it by now. I think we're fine for now.

really is just the normies access to it via samsung and LG TV's that hold me back.

There is a nice Jellyfin app for LG now

I am currently on vacation and used jellyfin via the browser on all the smart TV. And it just works great. I didn't expect it to work this good.

Newer TiZEN models has a jellyfin app now in the appstore!

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