I migrated from Plex to Jellyfin (+Tailscale) about a year ago (influenced by one of the other Plex “important updates”) and have been completely satisfied. It entirely meets my (modest) needs,...
I migrated from Plex to Jellyfin (+Tailscale) about a year ago (influenced by one of the other Plex “important updates”) and have been completely satisfied. It entirely meets my (modest) needs, and the avoidance of enshittification makes up for any minor UI shortcomings 100-fold.
It's been a while since I tried Jellyfin - how do they handle subtitles these days? That's probably my favourite Plex feature, being able to instantly find subtitles for most content.
It's been a while since I tried Jellyfin - how do they handle subtitles these days? That's probably my favourite Plex feature, being able to instantly find subtitles for most content.
I’m also using jellyfin after using plex. My server is in Linux mint and the client I usually use is Apple TV. Pros of jellyfin are obvious, including there is never any upselling to other...
I’m also using jellyfin after using plex. My server is in Linux mint and the client I usually use is Apple TV.
Pros of jellyfin are obvious, including there is never any upselling to other products or services.
Cons are:
the performance is worse. When starting a video the screen goes black for about a minute before the video plays
it may forget where I left off if I watch a video over several days
video quality is a little worse. In particular, dark or night shots have terrible artifacting. I messed with some setting and improved this
For me it’s been worth it. I’m sure I could improve the performance and video quality if I messed with setting some more but I haven’t felt like doing that. That’s the price of non-commercial software, you have to tinker and you have to be more knowledgeable
Which client are you using on Apple TV? If you haven’t tried it already I’d recommend giving Infuse a shot. I haven’t tried using it with Jellyfin yet, but when I was frustrated with bugs in the...
Which client are you using on Apple TV? If you haven’t tried it already I’d recommend giving Infuse a shot. I haven’t tried using it with Jellyfin yet, but when I was frustrated with bugs in the Plex Apple TV client (mainly audio desyncing) I started using it and it works very well.
Additionally, is your network high speed enough to support direct playback (e.g. streaming the original file instead of re-encoding it first)? Two of the cons you experienced seem related to encoding, and so if you can skip encoding they should go away. Switching over definitely improved my Plex experience.
I think the Apple TV client is swiftfin. I’ll have to check later. My network is definitely fast enough to do streaming very quickly without pausing or stuttering. When I used plex with apple TV...
I think the Apple TV client is swiftfin. I’ll have to check later. My network is definitely fast enough to do streaming very quickly without pausing or stuttering.
When I used plex with apple TV also noticed audio sync problems.
Edit: I can confirm that I am using SwiftFin
Also, I tried Infuse. It was able to connect to my Jellyfin server and also to my network share.
Unfortunately whenever I tried to play something it just had a page about upgrading to pro. According to their site it seems that they have ability to play things in the standard version. But maybe it's the codec?
Update: Looks like most of my stuff has Dolby Audio which isn't supported in the standard version. Including super old shows like The Twilight Zone. That's a shame, I don't think I want to pay for this. I would probably think about the lifetime for $100 but I don't trust companies to not enshittify things after you buy them.
This could be something you already know a lot about, but my two cents: I have recently set up a few streaming devices, playback apps on various platforms, etc on a new TV. One of the most common...
This could be something you already know a lot about, but my two cents: I have recently set up a few streaming devices, playback apps on various platforms, etc on a new TV.
One of the most common causes I would find for crappy quality has been a mismatch between what the display is expecting as a signal and what the set-top device is providing. That includes individual "upscaling," "clarity," and "AI-powered" video quality settings.
Most were fixed by painstakingly setting up individual picture/sound profiles for each app/device:
Artifacts and poor video quality were sometimes due to both the TV and the set-top device applying their own upscaling or smoothing.
Sometimes there were codec problems with UHD, DolbyVision, and HDR formats (this happened with the default Syncler player).
I've also noticed the extended dark screen before playing back some DolbyVision content on certain streaming apps (eg. Netflix), but those usually respond to a quick app restart. Annoying, but I assume it's a similar signal/display mismatch.
Sorry for the ramble. It may be totally off base, but your blank screen issue sounded familiar, among many other video degradation issues that were resolved with some tedium.
I wonder if Jellyfin in AppleTV needs some thorough manual setup to match your display.
I don’t know about Swiftfin (the Jellyfin client in question), but in my experience on Apple TV individual apps have little control over display settings and picture format. That’s mostly dictated...
I don’t know about Swiftfin (the Jellyfin client in question), but in my experience on Apple TV individual apps have little control over display settings and picture format. That’s mostly dictated by the system, which makes a pretty good effort to find the best format possible for your given TV (it makes an educated guess based on the info passed along via HDMI, then cycles through modes until the user confirms they can see a picture).
That sounds like a good system in general, but I wonder whether it lets the user settle on a crappy mode just because it shows a picture/has sound. It also makes me wonder if Jellyfin just isn't...
That sounds like a good system in general, but I wonder whether it lets the user settle on a crappy mode just because it shows a picture/has sound.
It also makes me wonder if Jellyfin just isn't sufficiently adjustable on AppleTV if that's a platform decision. I've found the Nvidia Shield Pro to work the best for streaming and highly customizable apps, but admittedly haven't tried Jellyfin or Plex for more than a decade, and that was over an early gen Chromecast casting from a mobile app.
It’s possible to wind up on a bad mode, but it starts with the most capable and works its way down which makes that unlikely. Of course there’s a bevy of factors involved which are difficult to...
It’s possible to wind up on a bad mode, but it starts with the most capable and works its way down which makes that unlikely. Of course there’s a bevy of factors involved which are difficult to account for, like if the user’s HDMI cable is the limiting factor for example this process won’t work.
Apps shouldn’t need to do much or any adjustment. The biggest variable there is HDR support, and so it’s the app’s responsibility to communicate to the system if it supports HDR or not, and if the app is re-implementing the video player rather than using the system player (which very few do) exactly which HDR standard is being used.
On Apple TV, have you looked into using Infuse instead of the official Jellyfin client? I find it provides a more capable and consistent playback experience, at the cost of a few UX niceties.
On Apple TV, have you looked into using Infuse instead of the official Jellyfin client? I find it provides a more capable and consistent playback experience, at the cost of a few UX niceties.
I was at the deciding point around two to three years ago. I had old server that I was going to shutdown and run new one. I installed both services and run hem parallel for a few days. My main...
I was at the deciding point around two to three years ago. I had old server that I was going to shutdown and run new one. I installed both services and run hem parallel for a few days. My main usage was watching movies and listening to music on tablets/smartphones and in TV via Kodi.
Plex had superior app on smart things and add-on in Kodi. Jellyfin was behind at the time. Also scraper was better in Plex. And user management (on TV/Kodi) as well, which was kinda non-existent (or user-unfriendly) at the time.
When my new server started up, it had only Jellyfin installed. Why? Actually a few reasons why I picked the "lower tier" one.
Jellyfin run better for me as Plex didn't start at boot and I didn't want to investigate (laziness). It started after restarting the service without any problem.
Jellyfin is open source and I like that a lot.
And the absolutely most significant reason for me - Jellyfin is completely offline service, no account anwhere required, no authorization or athentication, nothing. You can install and run it on completely offline machine or isolated network. This means you are not tied to any terms of service or any outside/provider's influence. And that was it for me.
I don't care if I pay for some service if it suits ME (ie. i paid for MakeMKV licence, I also have licensed Total Commander in the past both of which run fine even without licencing) but I have to get what I want out of it - and that is complete ownership if possible. If the service is open source or free I may consider and donate money for the cause - If it's useful for me (especially longtime or I used it a lot already), I deem it fair to pay for it in some way.
When reading about such licensing and usage changes I'm glad for the choices I made.
I’ll have to give Jellyfin a try when setting up my new home server, since Plex isn’t set up on it yet. When I tried playing around with it several years ago, it seemed very Linux-centric and...
I’ll have to give Jellyfin a try when setting up my new home server, since Plex isn’t set up on it yet. When I tried playing around with it several years ago, it seemed very Linux-centric and wasn’t fun to try to get running under FreeBSD.
The problem there is that .NET isn't officially supported on FreeBSD, so Jellyfin doesn't support it as a build target. There is an unofficial port that may be worth looking into, though...
The problem there is that .NET isn't officially supported on FreeBSD, so Jellyfin doesn't support it as a build target. There is an unofficial port that may be worth looking into, though personally I would want to see how current official versions run through Linuxulator first.
To throw in another thing that may be worth trying: containers. It's not clear if the official jellyfin container image would play nice with a FreeBSD host, but I've had great success with the...
To throw in another thing that may be worth trying: containers. It's not clear if the official jellyfin container image would play nice with a FreeBSD host, but I've had great success with the official jellyfin image for my home setup.
It wouldn’t be the first time a C# and/or .NET app gave me trouble. They’ve generally been cantankerous and fussy under macOS in the times I’ve had to use them over the past decade and change.
It wouldn’t be the first time a C# and/or .NET app gave me trouble. They’ve generally been cantankerous and fussy under macOS in the times I’ve had to use them over the past decade and change.
Yeah that's a whole other can of worms. Back then, .NET Framework was only supported on Windows, and Mono was an open-source reimplementation meant to provide cross-platform compatibility. .NET...
Yeah that's a whole other can of worms. Back then, .NET Framework was only supported on Windows, and Mono was an open-source reimplementation meant to provide cross-platform compatibility.
.NET Framework has been in maintenance mode and all new development goes into .NET Core (now just called .NET) which is open source and cross platform with official support for Windows, Linux, and macOS. I imagine the unofficial port of .NET to FreeBSD is less janky than Mono ever was since it truly is a port and not a complete re-implementation of the CLR and standard libraries.
I tried to use Jellyfin for a long time, but the Roku client is/was so buggy for subtitled content (embedded srt subtitles specifically) that I was completely unable to watch any of my foreign...
I tried to use Jellyfin for a long time, but the Roku client is/was so buggy for subtitled content (embedded srt subtitles specifically) that I was completely unable to watch any of my foreign content, so I ended up switching back to Plex. That was probably a couple years ago, but I ended up getting a lifetime Plex Pass in the end so I don't really have a reason to give Jellyfin another try, even though I was totally happy with it other than the subtitle problems.
I have issues with it pretty frequently and i'm just watching on my computer from a web browser. That said they're easyish to fix, but the most recent thing I watched need a 25 second delay to...
I have issues with it pretty frequently and i'm just watching on my computer from a web browser.
That said they're easyish to fix, but the most recent thing I watched need a 25 second delay to sync them, which is pretty wild.
I suspect some of this is just because subtitles are waaaaaay more complicated than they have any right to be.
I had a lot of issues with the Google TV client w.r.t. subtitles, too, actually, but I think they got fixed a few months ago. But yeah, if you've got lifetime plex plass anyways not a huge reason...
I had a lot of issues with the Google TV client w.r.t. subtitles, too, actually, but I think they got fixed a few months ago. But yeah, if you've got lifetime plex plass anyways not a huge reason to switch
I honestly think these changes are totally fine. I paid $79 for a lifetime pass many years ago and I haven’t paid a cent since. Even at $250, I’d still be happy with my purchase. It’s an app I use...
I honestly think these changes are totally fine. I paid $79 for a lifetime pass many years ago and I haven’t paid a cent since. Even at $250, I’d still be happy with my purchase. It’s an app I use multiple times per day and I’ve used for literally thousands of hours.
They’re being especially liberal with who needs a license to stream remotely it seems as if as long as the server owner has a license, anyone who connects is good.
There’s plenty not to like about Plex (the whole watch history being public and their move toward FAST services) but this all seems relatively well thought out.
Proud user of Jellyfin for several years here. I watch on my Android phone, Roku TV, and on my laptop. Zero issues. Server is hosted in a docker container on an Intel NUC, alongside many other...
Proud user of Jellyfin for several years here. I watch on my Android phone, Roku TV, and on my laptop. Zero issues. Server is hosted in a docker container on an Intel NUC, alongside many other containers.
Support free, open source software, and I guarantee you'll never have the rug pulled out from under you.
Just to be a curmudgeonly nitpicker, I think this has historically not been true. You're far less likely to have the rug pulled but you can still be bitten by disgruntled maintainers, malicious...
Just to be a curmudgeonly nitpicker,
Support free, open source software, and I guarantee you'll never have the rug pulled out from under you
I think this has historically not been true. You're far less likely to have the rug pulled but you can still be bitten by disgruntled maintainers, malicious actors, or just maintainers you disagree with.
I still agree 100% with your advice, though. Support FOSS because you're less likely to have the rug pulled, the decision making is transparent, and there is no single person with a financial incentive to make the product worse. And technically you can always fork and maintain your own, but realistically I think that's not in the cards for most people.
So what I’m reading is… even though I have a Lifetime Plex Pass myself, any users who have access to my server must now pay Plex a subscription? Did I read this right? EDIT: I jumped the gun....
So what I’m reading is… even though I have a Lifetime Plex Pass myself, any users who have access to my server must now pay Plex a subscription? Did I read this right?
EDIT: I jumped the gun. Users will not have to pay a subscription if the server admin has a Plex Pass. The wording in the main content of the press release wasn’t clear to me originally, but I get it now. I also probably just assumed the worst because Plex has been losing its shine over the years and I wouldn’t be surprised if enshittification came for it, too.
If you as the server owner have Plex pass your users shouldn’t have to have a subscription.
If you as the server owner have Plex pass your users shouldn’t have to have a subscription.
When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee.
Thank you. The wording in the release is not great. But in their FAQ near the bottom, it’s clearer:
Thank you. The wording in the release is not great. But in their FAQ near the bottom, it’s clearer:
I do not have a Plex Pass, but stream remotely from a Plex Media Server:
To stream remotely starting on April 29, 2025, you will need a Remote Watch Pass or Plex Pass subscription on your account or the admin of the Plex Media Server from which you stream will need a Plex Pass subscription on their account.
No, and here's the thing straight from the horse's mouth: FAQs How am I impacted by these changes? I have a lifetime Plex Pass subscription: Nothing changes for you. You continue to enjoy all of...
No, and here's the thing straight from the horse's mouth:
FAQs
How am I impacted by these changes?
I have a lifetime Plex Pass subscription:
Nothing changes for you. You continue to enjoy all of your Plex Pass functionality and you can stream remotely from any Plex Media Server to which you have access.
The verbiage around users was unclear. I’m not worried about myself, just my family who streams from my server. But elsewhere they have cleared it up that if the admin of a server has a Plex Pass,...
The verbiage around users was unclear. I’m not worried about myself, just my family who streams from my server. But elsewhere they have cleared it up that if the admin of a server has a Plex Pass, users won’t get charged.
I agree. It wasn't ambiguous, but sandwiched in between a lot of other irrelevant info. Luckily the FAQ is fairly clear: nothing changes for Plex Pass holders.
I agree. It wasn't ambiguous, but sandwiched in between a lot of other irrelevant info. Luckily the FAQ is fairly clear: nothing changes for Plex Pass holders.
I'm pretty sure they'll redefine what 'lifetime' means at some point. I've had so many software licenses offering lifetime this, or perpetual that, and when it came down to it, what that actually...
I'm pretty sure they'll redefine what 'lifetime' means at some point. I've had so many software licenses offering lifetime this, or perpetual that, and when it came down to it, what that actually meant was entirely at the whim of the software vendor.
I don't expect my 'lifetime' pass to last for very much longer. Plex has been going downhill a long time now.
I expect it when I buy lifetime subscriptions. When it happens I'll be incredibly annoyed for a while because they'll have forced my hand to migrate, but ultimately I will have had the service for...
I expect it when I buy lifetime subscriptions. When it happens I'll be incredibly annoyed for a while because they'll have forced my hand to migrate, but ultimately I will have had the service for years for a low price.
When I bought it, the literal translation for "lifetime" in their own official email was this: "you now have a shiny new Langdurig Plex Pass!"
Langdurig literally means "long lasting", and definitely not "lifetime".
It could've been an error, or a portent of what's to come.
That’s fascinating, and makes me wonder if their legal team said that “lifetime” is arguable in English, but in other languages they have to use different wording to avoid legal trouble down the line
When I bought it, the literal translation for "lifetime" in their own official email was this: "you now have a shiny new Langdurig Plex Pass!"
Langdurig literally means "long lasting", and definitely not "lifetime".
It could've been an error, or a portent of what's to come.
That’s fascinating, and makes me wonder if their legal team said that “lifetime” is arguable in English, but in other languages they have to use different wording to avoid legal trouble down the line
I don't think so. My account page does say Levenslang. It's just that email with weirdly incongruent language use. That quote was a copy, it really does say "shiny new Langdurig". It's.. odd.
I don't think so. My account page does say Levenslang. It's just that email with weirdly incongruent language use. That quote was a copy, it really does say "shiny new Langdurig". It's.. odd.
Jellyfin is not a service and does not have terms of service to modify. Jellyfin is just a piece of open source software. They could change their license, but that just creates a license fork...
Jellyfin is not a service and does not have terms of service to modify. Jellyfin is just a piece of open source software.
They could change their license, but that just creates a license fork point where the old code is still under the old license. Realistically if they did try to change the license to a problematic one a new project would arise almost immediately called like Rejelly or something that is just a fork of the code from before the license changed and a new set of maintainers that are against the license change.
I do not have a Plex Pass, but stream remotely from a Plex Media Server:
To stream remotely starting on April 29, 2025, you will need a Remote Watch Pass or Plex Pass subscription on your account or the admin of the Plex Media Server from which you stream will need a Plex Pass subscription on their account.
No. It’s pretty clear from the note in the blue box that as long as the sever owner has a Plex Pass, anyone who uses the server can stream for free (locally and remotely).
No. It’s pretty clear from the note in the blue box that as long as the sever owner has a Plex Pass, anyone who uses the server can stream for free (locally and remotely).
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS:
For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.
I had a Plex Lifetime pass from many many years ago (want to say it was like $50 or $75 when I purchased it), so I had no idea that they were even offering this as a free feature. I always thought...
We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature.
I had a Plex Lifetime pass from many many years ago (want to say it was like $50 or $75 when I purchased it), so I had no idea that they were even offering this as a free feature. I always thought it was part of the subscription, but I guess not? Are alternatives like Jellyfin free remote streaming without a subscription? If not it could push people to swap services.
Combine Jellyfin with Tailscale or another VPN or a forwarded port (if you're bold) and yes, you can do it for free. But the project is totally self-hosted and open source AFAIK so I'm fairly...
Combine Jellyfin with Tailscale or another VPN or a forwarded port (if you're bold) and yes, you can do it for free. But the project is totally self-hosted and open source AFAIK so I'm fairly certain there's no paid service for this even if you want it.
Plex mystifies me at this point. If I'm going to self-host, it's because I'm intentionally avoiding enshitification. Paying another company to self-host defeats its own purpose.
That means you’re a sophisticated user. Most people aren’t. Plex Just Works. You install it in your computer, and then anyone can go watch content on it. You don’t have to worry about finding out...
Plex mystifies me at this point. If I'm going to self-host, it's because I'm intentionally avoiding enshitification. Paying another company to self-host defeats its own purpose.
That means you’re a sophisticated user. Most people aren’t. Plex Just Works. You install it in your computer, and then anyone can go watch content on it.
You don’t have to worry about finding out what your local IP is, installing a VPN like a Tailscale, asking your friends to install Tailscale, exposing ports on your router, dealing with your ISPs dynamic IPs, buying domain names, or any of that.
Install plex, pay some money, and then go on plex.tv and everyone can just watch.
Yeah people want to own their media but don't want to have to manage the very detailed pile of issues that can come up trying to host it. Having something turnkey is hard to overrate.
Yeah people want to own their media but don't want to have to manage the very detailed pile of issues that can come up trying to host it. Having something turnkey is hard to overrate.
I've had a lifetime pass for years upon years now, so I haven't felt much from the weird direction Plex is going, but you're on the money here. Unless someone would spring for the lifetime pass...
Plex mystifies me at this point. If I'm going to self-host, it's because I'm intentionally avoiding enshitification. Paying another company to self-host defeats its own purpose.
I've had a lifetime pass for years upon years now, so I haven't felt much from the weird direction Plex is going, but you're on the money here. Unless someone would spring for the lifetime pass right now, I wouldn't recommend Plex over any other service available like Jellyfin or Emby. Simply because I don't know what direction they might take. Yeah they just re-pledged not to touch your personal media (thankfully), but there's no guarantee that won't change down the line when it becomes clear that no partner wants to work with a -true or perceived doesn't matter- piracy enabling service.
Jellyfin is behind Plex in the UX department on iOS. I can sort of manage with Jellyfin+Infuse, but it's easier to just recommend Plex to people not inclined to deal with issues. I also had to do...
Jellyfin is behind Plex in the UX department on iOS. I can sort of manage with Jellyfin+Infuse, but it's easier to just recommend Plex to people not inclined to deal with issues. I also had to do some debugging of "why isn't my video card passing through properly to the Jellyfin container" when Plex was seamless about it.
Jellyfin isn’t going to explicitly help you, it’s up to you to figure out how to tunnel through your routers firewall and safely expose inbound network connections. For “remote streaming” as a...
Jellyfin isn’t going to explicitly help you, it’s up to you to figure out how to tunnel through your routers firewall and safely expose inbound network connections.
For “remote streaming” as a feature, you’d need to host your own server which acts a proxy between the media server and any clients, which obviously isn’t really feasible as an open source project.
The previous benefit of the paid subscription for Plex Remote Streaming was to allow for hardware encoding as opposed to CPU-only encoding. It was pretty necessary if you wanted to stream 4K...
The previous benefit of the paid subscription for Plex Remote Streaming was to allow for hardware encoding as opposed to CPU-only encoding. It was pretty necessary if you wanted to stream 4K and/or HDR files.
I hesitate to bring it up because (disclaimer, disclaimer) I am not an unbiased party but if you want something inbetween Plex and Jellyfin, you can also consider Jellyfin's original parent...
I hesitate to bring it up because (disclaimer, disclaimer) I am not an unbiased party but if you want something inbetween Plex and Jellyfin, you can also consider Jellyfin's original parent project, Emby.
It's closed source and has an optional paid subscription offering (Premiere) that without going into detail offers some features similar to those of Plex. You can self host and remote stream for free though (I keep mine behind Apache). It has a pretty good, diverse plugin ecossystem.
As far as I'm aware, Emby's strengths include UI polish and performance, broad compatibility with a large number of native clients available for all kinds of platforms and TVs. I've also personally had an easier experience installing it. On a feature by feature basis, however, I'm not aware of how it compares with Plex or Jellyfin.
Discussion thread on /r/plex for reference. I have a lifetime pass from 2013 (that $75 is looking better every year) so my situation isn't changing now, but at least any other people using my...
I have a lifetime pass from 2013 (that $75 is looking better every year) so my situation isn't changing now, but at least any other people using my server won't need to pay the one-time fee for mobile app use that had been in place.
Even so, I've been wanting to take a look at Jellyfin for a while so maybe this is a good time to give it a test run.
For someone like myself who runs a server and already has a lifetime pass, this is all great news. Now my users can stream via the official apps for free and I am loving the beta apps so far. If...
For someone like myself who runs a server and already has a lifetime pass, this is all great news. Now my users can stream via the official apps for free and I am loving the beta apps so far.
If you don’t have a lifetime pass, I can see how the pricing updates might sting a bit, but I would always recommend buying a pass if you run a server.
Now seems like a great time to plug Jellyfin, a completely free and open source alternative to Plex that has become quite mature in recent years.
I migrated from Plex to Jellyfin (+Tailscale) about a year ago (influenced by one of the other Plex “important updates”) and have been completely satisfied. It entirely meets my (modest) needs, and the avoidance of enshittification makes up for any minor UI shortcomings 100-fold.
It's been a while since I tried Jellyfin - how do they handle subtitles these days? That's probably my favourite Plex feature, being able to instantly find subtitles for most content.
The same way plex does: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/plugins/open-subtitles/
I’m also using jellyfin after using plex. My server is in Linux mint and the client I usually use is Apple TV.
Pros of jellyfin are obvious, including there is never any upselling to other products or services.
Cons are:
For me it’s been worth it. I’m sure I could improve the performance and video quality if I messed with setting some more but I haven’t felt like doing that. That’s the price of non-commercial software, you have to tinker and you have to be more knowledgeable
Which client are you using on Apple TV? If you haven’t tried it already I’d recommend giving Infuse a shot. I haven’t tried using it with Jellyfin yet, but when I was frustrated with bugs in the Plex Apple TV client (mainly audio desyncing) I started using it and it works very well.
Additionally, is your network high speed enough to support direct playback (e.g. streaming the original file instead of re-encoding it first)? Two of the cons you experienced seem related to encoding, and so if you can skip encoding they should go away. Switching over definitely improved my Plex experience.
I think the Apple TV client is swiftfin. I’ll have to check later. My network is definitely fast enough to do streaming very quickly without pausing or stuttering.
When I used plex with apple TV also noticed audio sync problems.
Edit: I can confirm that I am using SwiftFin
Also, I tried Infuse. It was able to connect to my Jellyfin server and also to my network share.
Unfortunately whenever I tried to play something it just had a page about upgrading to pro. According to their site it seems that they have ability to play things in the standard version. But maybe it's the codec?
Update: Looks like most of my stuff has Dolby Audio which isn't supported in the standard version. Including super old shows like The Twilight Zone. That's a shame, I don't think I want to pay for this. I would probably think about the lifetime for $100 but I don't trust companies to not enshittify things after you buy them.
This could be something you already know a lot about, but my two cents: I have recently set up a few streaming devices, playback apps on various platforms, etc on a new TV.
One of the most common causes I would find for crappy quality has been a mismatch between what the display is expecting as a signal and what the set-top device is providing. That includes individual "upscaling," "clarity," and "AI-powered" video quality settings.
Most were fixed by painstakingly setting up individual picture/sound profiles for each app/device:
Artifacts and poor video quality were sometimes due to both the TV and the set-top device applying their own upscaling or smoothing.
Sometimes there were codec problems with UHD, DolbyVision, and HDR formats (this happened with the default Syncler player).
I've also noticed the extended dark screen before playing back some DolbyVision content on certain streaming apps (eg. Netflix), but those usually respond to a quick app restart. Annoying, but I assume it's a similar signal/display mismatch.
Sorry for the ramble. It may be totally off base, but your blank screen issue sounded familiar, among many other video degradation issues that were resolved with some tedium.
I wonder if Jellyfin in AppleTV needs some thorough manual setup to match your display.
I don’t know about Swiftfin (the Jellyfin client in question), but in my experience on Apple TV individual apps have little control over display settings and picture format. That’s mostly dictated by the system, which makes a pretty good effort to find the best format possible for your given TV (it makes an educated guess based on the info passed along via HDMI, then cycles through modes until the user confirms they can see a picture).
That sounds like a good system in general, but I wonder whether it lets the user settle on a crappy mode just because it shows a picture/has sound.
It also makes me wonder if Jellyfin just isn't sufficiently adjustable on AppleTV if that's a platform decision. I've found the Nvidia Shield Pro to work the best for streaming and highly customizable apps, but admittedly haven't tried Jellyfin or Plex for more than a decade, and that was over an early gen Chromecast casting from a mobile app.
It’s possible to wind up on a bad mode, but it starts with the most capable and works its way down which makes that unlikely. Of course there’s a bevy of factors involved which are difficult to account for, like if the user’s HDMI cable is the limiting factor for example this process won’t work.
Apps shouldn’t need to do much or any adjustment. The biggest variable there is HDR support, and so it’s the app’s responsibility to communicate to the system if it supports HDR or not, and if the app is re-implementing the video player rather than using the system player (which very few do) exactly which HDR standard is being used.
On Apple TV, have you looked into using Infuse instead of the official Jellyfin client? I find it provides a more capable and consistent playback experience, at the cost of a few UX niceties.
I was at the deciding point around two to three years ago. I had old server that I was going to shutdown and run new one. I installed both services and run hem parallel for a few days. My main usage was watching movies and listening to music on tablets/smartphones and in TV via Kodi.
Plex had superior app on smart things and add-on in Kodi. Jellyfin was behind at the time. Also scraper was better in Plex. And user management (on TV/Kodi) as well, which was kinda non-existent (or user-unfriendly) at the time.
When my new server started up, it had only Jellyfin installed. Why? Actually a few reasons why I picked the "lower tier" one.
Jellyfin run better for me as Plex didn't start at boot and I didn't want to investigate (laziness). It started after restarting the service without any problem.
Jellyfin is open source and I like that a lot.
And the absolutely most significant reason for me - Jellyfin is completely offline service, no account anwhere required, no authorization or athentication, nothing. You can install and run it on completely offline machine or isolated network. This means you are not tied to any terms of service or any outside/provider's influence. And that was it for me.
I don't care if I pay for some service if it suits ME (ie. i paid for MakeMKV licence, I also have licensed Total Commander in the past both of which run fine even without licencing) but I have to get what I want out of it - and that is complete ownership if possible. If the service is open source or free I may consider and donate money for the cause - If it's useful for me (especially longtime or I used it a lot already), I deem it fair to pay for it in some way.
When reading about such licensing and usage changes I'm glad for the choices I made.
It was an invalid link with an old security certificate, so just in case for anyone else: https://jellyfin.org/
I’ll have to give Jellyfin a try when setting up my new home server, since Plex isn’t set up on it yet. When I tried playing around with it several years ago, it seemed very Linux-centric and wasn’t fun to try to get running under FreeBSD.
The problem there is that .NET isn't officially supported on FreeBSD, so Jellyfin doesn't support it as a build target. There is an unofficial port that may be worth looking into, though personally I would want to see how current official versions run through Linuxulator first.
To throw in another thing that may be worth trying: containers. It's not clear if the official jellyfin container image would play nice with a FreeBSD host, but I've had great success with the official jellyfin image for my home setup.
Definitely worth a try, though I’ve never run a Linux container on FreeBSD and had just been running things in jails.
It wouldn’t be the first time a C# and/or .NET app gave me trouble. They’ve generally been cantankerous and fussy under macOS in the times I’ve had to use them over the past decade and change.
Interesting, I have no problem developing in .NET 5+ on my MacBook. Were the apps in question targeting Mono?
It’s been quite some time, but if I recall correctly yes they were using mono.
Yeah that's a whole other can of worms. Back then, .NET Framework was only supported on Windows, and Mono was an open-source reimplementation meant to provide cross-platform compatibility.
.NET Framework has been in maintenance mode and all new development goes into .NET Core (now just called .NET) which is open source and cross platform with official support for Windows, Linux, and macOS. I imagine the unofficial port of .NET to FreeBSD is less janky than Mono ever was since it truly is a port and not a complete re-implementation of the CLR and standard libraries.
I tried to use Jellyfin for a long time, but the Roku client is/was so buggy for subtitled content (embedded srt subtitles specifically) that I was completely unable to watch any of my foreign content, so I ended up switching back to Plex. That was probably a couple years ago, but I ended up getting a lifetime Plex Pass in the end so I don't really have a reason to give Jellyfin another try, even though I was totally happy with it other than the subtitle problems.
I haven't had a problem with subtitles, but I primarily watch on an Apple TV and an Nvidia Shield.
I have issues with it pretty frequently and i'm just watching on my computer from a web browser.
That said they're easyish to fix, but the most recent thing I watched need a 25 second delay to sync them, which is pretty wild.
I suspect some of this is just because subtitles are waaaaaay more complicated than they have any right to be.
I had a lot of issues with the Google TV client w.r.t. subtitles, too, actually, but I think they got fixed a few months ago. But yeah, if you've got lifetime plex plass anyways not a huge reason to switch
I honestly think these changes are totally fine. I paid $79 for a lifetime pass many years ago and I haven’t paid a cent since. Even at $250, I’d still be happy with my purchase. It’s an app I use multiple times per day and I’ve used for literally thousands of hours.
They’re being especially liberal with who needs a license to stream remotely it seems as if as long as the server owner has a license, anyone who connects is good.
There’s plenty not to like about Plex (the whole watch history being public and their move toward FAST services) but this all seems relatively well thought out.
Proud user of Jellyfin for several years here. I watch on my Android phone, Roku TV, and on my laptop. Zero issues. Server is hosted in a docker container on an Intel NUC, alongside many other containers.
Support free, open source software, and I guarantee you'll never have the rug pulled out from under you.
Just to be a curmudgeonly nitpicker,
I think this has historically not been true. You're far less likely to have the rug pulled but you can still be bitten by disgruntled maintainers, malicious actors, or just maintainers you disagree with.
I still agree 100% with your advice, though. Support FOSS because you're less likely to have the rug pulled, the decision making is transparent, and there is no single person with a financial incentive to make the product worse. And technically you can always fork and maintain your own, but realistically I think that's not in the cards for most people.
So what I’m reading is… even though I have a Lifetime Plex Pass myself, any users who have access to my server must now pay Plex a subscription? Did I read this right?
EDIT: I jumped the gun. Users will not have to pay a subscription if the server admin has a Plex Pass. The wording in the main content of the press release wasn’t clear to me originally, but I get it now. I also probably just assumed the worst because Plex has been losing its shine over the years and I wouldn’t be surprised if enshittification came for it, too.
If you as the server owner have Plex pass your users shouldn’t have to have a subscription.
Thank you. The wording in the release is not great. But in their FAQ near the bottom, it’s clearer:
No, and here's the thing straight from the horse's mouth:
FAQs
How am I impacted by these changes?
I have a lifetime Plex Pass subscription:
Nothing changes for you. You continue to enjoy all of your Plex Pass functionality and you can stream remotely from any Plex Media Server to which you have access.
The verbiage around users was unclear. I’m not worried about myself, just my family who streams from my server. But elsewhere they have cleared it up that if the admin of a server has a Plex Pass, users won’t get charged.
I agree. It wasn't ambiguous, but sandwiched in between a lot of other irrelevant info. Luckily the FAQ is fairly clear: nothing changes for Plex Pass holders.
I'm pretty sure they'll redefine what 'lifetime' means at some point. I've had so many software licenses offering lifetime this, or perpetual that, and when it came down to it, what that actually meant was entirely at the whim of the software vendor.
I don't expect my 'lifetime' pass to last for very much longer. Plex has been going downhill a long time now.
I expect it when I buy lifetime subscriptions. When it happens I'll be incredibly annoyed for a while because they'll have forced my hand to migrate, but ultimately I will have had the service for years for a low price.
When I bought it, the literal translation for "lifetime" in their own official email was this: "you now have a shiny new Langdurig Plex Pass!"
Langdurig literally means "long lasting", and definitely not "lifetime".
It could've been an error, or a portent of what's to come.
That’s fascinating, and makes me wonder if their legal team said that “lifetime” is arguable in English, but in other languages they have to use different wording to avoid legal trouble down the line
I don't think so. My account page does say Levenslang. It's just that email with weirdly incongruent language use. That quote was a copy, it really does say "shiny new Langdurig". It's.. odd.
I suspect they're using machine translation.
And Jellyfin and other services could redefine their terms of services too. Enshittification comes for everything.
Jellyfin is not a service and does not have terms of service to modify. Jellyfin is just a piece of open source software.
They could change their license, but that just creates a license fork point where the old code is still under the old license. Realistically if they did try to change the license to a problematic one a new project would arise almost immediately called like Rejelly or something that is just a fork of the code from before the license changed and a new set of maintainers that are against the license change.
(in fact, emby trying just that is the jellyfin origin story)
I don't think so:
No. It’s pretty clear from the note in the blue box that as long as the sever owner has a Plex Pass, anyone who uses the server can stream for free (locally and remotely).
I had a Plex Lifetime pass from many many years ago (want to say it was like $50 or $75 when I purchased it), so I had no idea that they were even offering this as a free feature. I always thought it was part of the subscription, but I guess not? Are alternatives like Jellyfin free remote streaming without a subscription? If not it could push people to swap services.
Combine Jellyfin with Tailscale or another VPN or a forwarded port (if you're bold) and yes, you can do it for free. But the project is totally self-hosted and open source AFAIK so I'm fairly certain there's no paid service for this even if you want it.
Plex mystifies me at this point. If I'm going to self-host, it's because I'm intentionally avoiding enshitification. Paying another company to self-host defeats its own purpose.
That means you’re a sophisticated user. Most people aren’t. Plex Just Works. You install it in your computer, and then anyone can go watch content on it.
You don’t have to worry about finding out what your local IP is, installing a VPN like a Tailscale, asking your friends to install Tailscale, exposing ports on your router, dealing with your ISPs dynamic IPs, buying domain names, or any of that.
Install plex, pay some money, and then go on plex.tv and everyone can just watch.
Yeah people want to own their media but don't want to have to manage the very detailed pile of issues that can come up trying to host it. Having something turnkey is hard to overrate.
I've had a lifetime pass for years upon years now, so I haven't felt much from the weird direction Plex is going, but you're on the money here. Unless someone would spring for the lifetime pass right now, I wouldn't recommend Plex over any other service available like Jellyfin or Emby. Simply because I don't know what direction they might take. Yeah they just re-pledged not to touch your personal media (thankfully), but there's no guarantee that won't change down the line when it becomes clear that no partner wants to work with a -true or perceived doesn't matter- piracy enabling service.
Jellyfin is behind Plex in the UX department on iOS. I can sort of manage with Jellyfin+Infuse, but it's easier to just recommend Plex to people not inclined to deal with issues. I also had to do some debugging of "why isn't my video card passing through properly to the Jellyfin container" when Plex was seamless about it.
Jellyfin isn’t going to explicitly help you, it’s up to you to figure out how to tunnel through your routers firewall and safely expose inbound network connections.
For “remote streaming” as a feature, you’d need to host your own server which acts a proxy between the media server and any clients, which obviously isn’t really feasible as an open source project.
The previous benefit of the paid subscription for Plex Remote Streaming was to allow for hardware encoding as opposed to CPU-only encoding. It was pretty necessary if you wanted to stream 4K and/or HDR files.
I hesitate to bring it up because (disclaimer, disclaimer) I am not an unbiased party but if you want something inbetween Plex and Jellyfin, you can also consider Jellyfin's original parent project, Emby.
It's closed source and has an optional paid subscription offering (Premiere) that without going into detail offers some features similar to those of Plex. You can self host and remote stream for free though (I keep mine behind Apache). It has a pretty good, diverse plugin ecossystem.
As far as I'm aware, Emby's strengths include UI polish and performance, broad compatibility with a large number of native clients available for all kinds of platforms and TVs. I've also personally had an easier experience installing it. On a feature by feature basis, however, I'm not aware of how it compares with Plex or Jellyfin.
Discussion thread on /r/plex for reference.
I have a lifetime pass from 2013 (that $75 is looking better every year) so my situation isn't changing now, but at least any other people using my server won't need to pay the one-time fee for mobile app use that had been in place.
Even so, I've been wanting to take a look at Jellyfin for a while so maybe this is a good time to give it a test run.
For someone like myself who runs a server and already has a lifetime pass, this is all great news. Now my users can stream via the official apps for free and I am loving the beta apps so far.
If you don’t have a lifetime pass, I can see how the pricing updates might sting a bit, but I would always recommend buying a pass if you run a server.
I think you can run plex through tailscale? I haven’t tried it, but that will probably be good enough for me.