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Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

So what I'm getting from the thread, this is Plex, minus the cancer, but also minus the features?

I think the biggest downsites for most people are the clients. Plex has still better client support on most TVs and mobile devices.

And then maybe watch offline support.

What features is it missing, exactly?

I have always had issues with playing high bitrate BluRay remuxes, with HDR and DTS 5.1+ audio. Granted the last time I tried JellyFin was January 2025 so it is possible this has changed.

Have there been improvements on this front?

Are you sure the client and the server are powerful enough? Do they support all required codecs? I have issues with 4k movies because my Jellyfin is served by a mac mini, and my client is an old Android tablet that doesn't support hardware decoding, but that is hardly Jellyfin's fault. Though they just updated ffmpeg to the latest version, so it might help.

I've been using Jellyfin for roughly 5 years, most of my library are Blu-ray remuxes (50-100 GB) and I haven't had a single one fail to play. My setup is Apple TV with Infuse connected to a LG C9 with a modern Yamaha receiver.

Transcoding is a whole can of worms I chose to avoid by playing everything directly.

I currently use the plex direct play feature on android tv with a Nvidia Shield Pro. Is there an equivalent jellyfin android tv app?

Yes there's an android TV app. It's not the greatest feature-wise but never had any issues

Infuse is the magic ingredient that avoids the codec/transcoding issues other people sometimes experience. It supports direct play of pretty much every possible video thx to its built-in codecs. I’ve been using it for 2 years and I don’t think I had a single case of transcoding. It is paid, but worth it IMO.

This is almost certainly a you problem. Tons of people play remuxes with Jellyfin.

I would check that your client supports the requisite codecs, and has a sufficient network connection. Or alternatively check that your server has enough horsepower (GPU or CPU) to transcode.

oh, i don't know, an easy means of sharing your library with friends, one of the best features of plex?

What's wrong with making a friend an account on your server so they can log in? I've done it, it works fine.

Open Source Plex that anyone can write a client for. I’m not missing any features after switching.

Jellyfin client on android is/was just a wrapper for webplayer so no native format support.

Jellyfin server (when i last tried it 5 years ago) couldn't run on same raspberry pi that hapily ran Plex

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