Jellyfin is not just good... but better than Plex now?!
Jellyfin is not just good... but better than Plex now?!
I've feel like I've used Plex forever. I also feel like every couple years I try Jellyfin to see how it's going. Recently I tried it again because of Plex restriction on more than one user.
Well, I just tried it again and it's substantially improved! This time it actually properly detected most of my library!
Also the Android TV app is AWESOME! No more glitches, lagging, and freezing trying to play my stuff like Plex did. It is butter smooth.
Wow! I'm impressed and I just deleted Plex. Good riddance.
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It's curious that I'm almost in the opposite boat, have been using Jellyfin without issues for around 5 years, but recently was considering trying Plex because Jellyfin is becoming too slow on certain screens (probably because I have too much stuff, but it shouldn't be this slow).
Edit: this made me want to check in Plex, so I'll leave my story for people amusement:
My experience with Plex:
- Write the docket compose
- leave out the claim because it's optional and I have no idea what it is
- launch it
- asks me to create an account
- not really comfortable creating an external account to access my local server, but okay.
- discovered I already had an account. Huh? I wonder why I don't remember ever running Plex then.
- login to that account
- shows me a bunch of stuff
- find it weird that it already scanned everything, especially because I didn't pointed it to my media
- proceed to try to watch something
- can't play due to DRM
- WAT?
- go back and discover there's a bunch of content that's not in my library
- ok, so this must be some free content
- how do I configure my local library?
- spend 15 min navigating the UI trying to find it
- open the docs, they say to click the settings icon
- that icon is nowhere to be seen
- click a similar one
- can't find anything the docs say I should
- maybe I'm not on the right site? site is <IP>:<port>/web/yaddayaddayadda so it seems correct
- try to go to <IP>:<port> get to the same page
- look at the docs on how to access the web app says to go to <IP>:<port>/web
- try that, get a message about not being authorized
- WAT?
- read some more docs discover I need that claim
- spend some time trying to find that in the UI
- google it up, find the link
- go to that page, grab the claim, set it up on the server and restart the server
- I'm able to get to the web app now
- Do you want to access it from the internet? If this works it would be great, so yes!
- setup my library
- let it scan and try to watch something from it
- UX sucks, video plays in a sort of popup in landscape on my phone.
- Ah, dumb of me, I probably have my browser set to desktop mode
- No, I don't.
- Ok, so the web is maybe only expected to be used on desktop, let me install the app
- Install the app, login to my account, only have the Plex provided content
- Look around trying to find the media I scanned, find a thing saying my server is disconnected
- WAT?
- Go back to the web app via IP, try to look into settings
- "You are not connected directly to the server"
- WAT?
- everything else seems okay, I even enabled remote access there and it says it's working
- Every few minutes the page says my server is not available for a few seconds then comes back
- It's now been 1 hour and I haven't been able to watch anything.
It's now been 1 hour of trying to set this up and I give up. Jellyfin is much more easy to setup, and even if Plex was instantaneous I could have loaded my TV library hundreds of times in the 1h I just wasted trying to get this to work. Probably every other time I tried I got similar results which is why I have an account there even though I don't remember ever using Plex.
Edit2: after some nore more fiddling managed to get it working, not sure what I changed, so now:
- Open the app, see my content there
- Try to watch something
- "You're watching in indirect mode, quality might be bad"
- Ok, so it's not connecting directly to my server, anyways, let's ignore this for now, maybe it's getting confused because it's in a docker container
- "Activate Plex"
- Ah, ok, it's the "pay or not now" screen, not now
- No subtitles play
- Try different subtitles
- Still nothing
- Plus quality seems shit
- Confirmed, it's reproducing at 720x300 even though it's a 4K video
- Look at docs, figure out the direct play is about converting the video
- Select maximum quality which according to docs should use the original file
- Still get a 300p video
- Figure out maybe it's the android app that's the problem, go to the TV, install Plex and connect to it
- Video takes forever to load
- Give up again after a couple of minutes waiting for the movie to load
This is more about familiarity than difference in ease of use. I've used both, they are both super easy.
Some of it yes, the claim for example, but the rest is still pretty bad UX (and even that is stupid, I shouldn't need a claim to watch locally), I'm an experienced self hosing person and I'm getting frustrated every step of the way, imagine someone who doesn't know their way around docker or is not familiar with stuff... Jellyfin might be less polished as some claim, but setting it up is a breeze, never had to look at documentation to do it.
I set Plex up as an inexperienced selfhoster in 2020 and it was easy.
I would bet that the problem is with Plex being inside docker. Might be one of those situations where being more experienced causes issues because I'm trying to do things "right" and not run the service on my server directly or with root or on network host mode.
But being inside a container causes these many issues I can't even begin to imagine how it would be to get it to do more complex stuff like be accessible through Tailscale or being behind authorization.
Bullshit. Docker Plex is easy af. You calling yourself experienced is the real joke here
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what do I know, I only do this for a living plus manage a couple of home servers with dozens of services for almost a decade.
And you are still so bad? Wowzer. Fake it till you make it I guess. Try to overcome your fear of containers, it will help you with your work.
Oh no, a random on the internet who can't read the list of issues to understand they are all service and not deployment related, with no qualification whatsoever and who reads like an angry teen thinks I don't know about a technology I've been using since before he knew how to talk. I'm devastated.
The quality was probably bad because you were routed through Plex Relay services which have a bandwidth limit. It is honestly quite a nice free service because it means it will work pretty much regardless how your network is setup but the quality will be bad. If you want to directly connect to your server you need a public IP so CGNAT won't do you might also have to open some ports.
Even though they're both on the same LAN? That sounds stupid, why would I need my videos to travel half across the globe to go from one room to the next?
No, that should work straight out of the box. Maybe you have some network configuration that stops that, like a firewall.
Nope, Jellyfin works directly same as always has
Weird. It has always worked perfectly fine for me. You must have something interesting going in in your setup.
You should not be using NAT to access your Plex externally, I will explain.
App.plex.tv and the apps use Plex services to generate a point to point connection from remote clients through your router to the server. This is important because you never need to expose a private IP to the Internet, and the authentication can be protected with something robust like a Google account which support 2FA and even phishing-resistant 2FA.
The combination of more advanced security and secure/convenient SSO authentication are one of the biggest benefits of Plex in my opinion.
If you enable the "remote access" in Plex you are essentially port forwarding you server to the internet using UPnP (by default. You can also port forward manually if you'd like).
It's indeed a point to point connection but a point to point connection the same way your connection to normal websites are point to point.
If you knew the public IP of anyone that's using Plex you can likely go to [IP]:[Random PORT] and access their server. You still need to login though.
Source: My own tests and https://support.plex.tv/articles/200931138-troubleshooting-remote-access/