Projects like Plex, they started out from the open source community, had free contributions, and then monetized. People are bastardizing open source.
The reason Plex is as popular as it is is because of their infrastructure and software that lets users stream video and music remotely on any device at the press of a button. That costs money to build and maintain.
Really? Cuz Jellyfin literally does the same thing and doesn’t cost money.
It certainly doesn’t cost what they’re charging. They have a cache, a relay and an auth service. I’ll grant them some more allowance for an active security team. They’ve wasted manyears on features nobody wants and have eliminated any feature that costs them any amount of money to maintain if they can’t make money off it. (sync, client serve, yada yada)
In fairness to Plex, I bought a Lifetime subscription during a Black Friday deal over a decade ago and it’s still serving me well to this day.
I have jellyfin set up ready to go but Plex has the UX down at this point. I’ll keep using it whilst my lifetime subscription remains valid.
Same here, JF is on reserve but I’ll be sad if I ever need to switch. Ever since they fixed downloads I have 0 major complaints. Plex just works, and it works very well for my and my family’s needs. I am perfectly happy paying once for software that I use every single day.
God I hate their last UX change. It’s like they specifically designed the roku client to hide your own content and favor theirs, used to be one click into my library and everything was there.
Plex is a series C for-profit company and is 100% beholden to its investors who expect a handsome return on investment; the enshittification & price hikes are literally guaranteed to continue. Existing users can, and should expect to be squeezed for profits until they have nothing left to give
Strange, I haven’t paid another cent since I paid like AUD$50 for the lifetime pass well over a decade ago.
You can’t say their service hasn’t gotten worse though :)
I paid $75 USD, but they took my plugins, (pour one out for youtube on plex for my DanTDM obsessed kid back in the day) made my interface hard to navigate, try constantly to shove their own content down my (and my users) throats. Hey, remember when you used to have that sync feature that kept you up to date with a selection of titles, then you could use the client on your phone to serve to other phones even offline, god that was awesome with kids on vacation.
made my interface hard to navigate
How? What is hard to navigate in Plex?
try constantly to shove their own content down my (and my users) throats.
I assume you don’t know you can customize your home screen and menus? You can only have your own content showing if you want.
You can’t say their service hasn’t gotten worse though :)
I absolutely can. It has only improved since I’ve been using it, which is from the very start.
How? What is hard to navigate in Plex?
That last ui update was a open abomination and every plex forum out there was all over it, you can’t hide that by saying nuhhahhhh
Since you’re so enamored with plex and I’m quite versed on it, Let’s talk about the horrors of plex
They are collecting data on your and your friends, what you’re watching and what media you have. If the country or state you live and ever decide to go after pirates, they will absolutely hand that data over to whatever state wants it for a song.
Using plex is selling your self and your family out.
They have consistently removed features that people loved and used to focus on delivering you ad content and enshittifying the average experience until they pay. And how much are you paying to watch your own content? What other services could you be spending that on?
I assume you don’t know you can customize your home screen and menus? You can only have your own content showing if you want.
I assume you’re either shill for the company or an outright PR plant, that last ui change was pushed to put their content first. that’s BS. I had my stuff customized, I disabled their crap, they undid it again. My family had to have me go and dig through those tiny top menus on roku to find my own shares. The average person watching my stuff complained to me that i put ads in my stuff. that’s not by fucking accident, it’s a business decision to give me and mine worse content so they can make an extra buck off me. Every change they make is company first, every requrest we make is forums for user helpful change is years old.
The whole company is absolutely horrible and selfish.
I absolutely can. It has only improved since I’ve been using it, which is from the very start.
How about give me examples instead of just shilling. The people here are owed the truth, not your company first attitude.
There are two ways to increase profits:
- Charge more for the same services
- Remove services or features from paid subscriptions
Plex has done 2 a few times now.
If you like being told you can stream remotely and then later have the feature yanked and slapped behind a paywall, then by all means use Plex.
I bought a lifetime license on day 1 iirc. I wanted to support the software that was so good and better than everything else at the time. I have had zero features yanked.
I want to stream remotely, share my library, and watch on any device I come across, so I’ll use Plex.
That’s all well and good for you, but they pulled many rugs out from under free users. This is arguably bad, depending on who you ask, but they most certainly did flat out lie about, which is the core issue.
There’s no “rug pulling” for free users. Expecting a service run by a for-profit company to keep everything free forever is naive and just plain dumb.
This is arguably bad, depending on who you ask, but they most certainly did flat out lie about, which is the core issue.
What did they lie about exactly?
deleted by creator
You were right to switch whether the price increased or not.
Imo anyone who stayed with Plex after they required you to create an account is insane, especially considering there have always been good alternatives.
This exactly.
I looked into setting Plex up a few years ago. It installed, and then starts talking about making a cloud account. I don’t want to talk to a cloud I just want to organize my own shit on my own network. Why does that need a cloud?
I uninstalled it. Everything I’ve seen since, and I mean EVERYthing, tells me I dodged a bullet. Not once have I read an article that makes me wish I’d continued the install.
I have a Jellyfin server as backup, but its clients are shit for anything that uses subtitles. I bought plex pass years back for $80 on sale, can’t complain, but I’m never going to wholly rely on something closed source that requires online credentials.
Plex still costs the same to me. Lifetime pass means no price hike, and it “just works.”
it just means the costs to you are less visible, you are still the product you have paid to pretend that you are not the product.
I’ve finally switched to Jellyfin, even though I have a lifetime Plex pass. It isn’t really a downgrade. I think I ran into more bugs on Plex. Using Jellyfin is like switching from Windows to Linux, on a smaller scale. Plex was always trying to sell you something, get you to use the other features, etc, whereas Jellyfin just gets out of my way and lets me watch media.
Sure but Jellyfin just works too so thats cool, it took me like 5mn to switch our devices and the fact I could stream anything instantly on any of them without warning or whatever was immediately a breath of fresh air
Unless you want to stream remotely of course.
But when you want to give access to others outside of your network they need to subscribe to a plan to get a watch pass. That’s the main issue a lot of people are facing.
The person you replied to has a lifetime-license, so no need for the clients to have a separate plan. Edit: Only thing where a separate license is needed afaik is the Download/Offline Watching feature. This will not work if a plex license owner adds a new User. Old/Existing Users can still use the download function. Here Plex made a change i think around 2 years ago.
Not if you’ve got a lifetime license, which anyone running a Plex server should already have.
Also if you want to give access to your jellyfin server to people, well you’re shit out of luck basically. You’re out of luck if you want to even watch jellyfin on most devices that aren’t a pc or android device.
But tailscale gets around that by creating a secure external tunnel that allows others to connect to your inside from anywhere in the world?
Tailscale isn’t on 99.99% of TVs and devices that people want to stream videos to, and asking people to connect to your VPN whenever they want to stream video is a no-go. Anyone suggesting it is has never actually done tech support for regular people.
Not quite, I’m a software engineer that was literally a support technician before this role and I’m the go-to tech support person for my friends. Most of the complexity is on the hosts end ~ https://tailscale.com/docs/features/tailscale-funnel
I’ve never used Plex, but I have my own server at Hetzner with large drives and I love my Jellyfin server. I use it every day for shows, movies, and tons of music at home, in the metro, and walking around town and traveling. I’ve never had a problem with it. Honestly, it’s fantastic.
I can’t comment on Plex vs JellyFin, but it’s an interesting perspective that $3/mon for remote access is too much
I use another piece of opensource software, where I consider that a plus. It takes the headache and security issues off my hands, while I can support the developers with a small contribution for an optional feature
$3/mon is $36 a year. That adds up - most people have to work several hours to earn that money.
Plex may also be harvesting your data. When I used it years ago it was already trying to send logs back home, blocked by the firewall.
Plex may also be harvesting your data.
You mean to say “Plex is harvesting your data.”
I like to not legally commit myself
🤣
I’ve been self hosting for about 2 years now. I never gave Plex a thought. I immediately went with Jellyfin and setup tailscale for remote access and its been awesome. We have our phones and tvs with android boxes all connected. Only we use Wholphin on the android boxes bc its better but extremely happy with the Jellyfin/Tailscale setup.
If I could get Jellyfin to work remotely I would never use Plex again quite happily. I pay £4 a month and my in laws have to pay £2 a month for remote access, it’s starting to add up for content I download and host on my storage.
“But my parents can’t use a VPN!!”
Was that line in the sand drawn before or after footing the bill, installing a media server, and an entire arr stack?
Their house is right there, bro.
You just can’t securely watch anything from your jellyfin server remotely, or let others stream from your server.
The 20+ people who stream from my Plex server have never paid a cent because I have a Plex lifetime pass. In terms of value it’s one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
Tried Jellyfin, lacked critical functionality, got Plex, was amazed and got a lifetime pass and never worried about it again
Critical functionality like what? I just switched to Jellyfin and hardly noticed a difference aside from a few different bugs.
Remote play……
Library sharing…,
Apps on everything….
You can do all that on JF. Apps are def available on most things.
If you really wanted to try to complain about it, you should complain about security, search speed and subtitle support.
Remote play you can’t unless you want to open your network up to the internet, which is a terrible idea, and even then most TVs and devices don’t have a JellyFin app.
Remote play you can’t unless you want to open your network up to the internet,
That’s absolutely wrong. You can remote proxy the same way they do, sure to the edge. you can open just the port and sandbox the container. There are ways.
and even then most TVs and devices don’t have a JellyFin app.
Almost every streaming device outside of TV’s are covered and many tv’s already support it. Every roku and android tv support it, along with most samsungs.
Tell me, are you guys getting paid by a plex PR firm or something, you all feel lots of ways about things with very little information and tons of white lies.
It’s a perennial thing with Jellyfin that it doesn’t have the app / remote access support Plex provides. By itself it’s a fully functional network media server, but by design it doesn’t have the ability to reverse tunnel and it doesn’t have the corporate infrastructure that gets it’s app onto devices.
Yes you can set up wireguard / VPN access. Yes there are workarounds that can get Jellyfin streaming to most devices.
None of that matters when trying to talk someone on the phone through connecting to your server through the internet.
Plex is an account, it looks like a streaming service, it requires zero knowledge. I’m fairly certain some of my relatives have no idea it’s streaming from a server in my basement. Jellyfin they have to trust you enough to setup separate other apps / configuration and have the patience / attention span / ability to follow directions to do so.
Reverse proxy to jellyfin looks identical to a normal streaming service from a user’s perspective.
It’s been a decade. That should be in JF by now.
Reverse proxy doesn’t fix their unprotected endpoints. It doesn’t give their clients 2fa, it doesn’t make their search work reasonably well or their music client be able to preload the next song.
They’re kind of stuck in a rut and are down to basic maintenance for releases
Jellyfin has plugins fro both LDAPand OIDC, though IIRC the OIDC one isn’t great.
Out of curiosity, what “critical functionality” was it lacking?
My media player is an ancient Chromecast 4k Ultra (yes, I hate google, but I also hate buying new things) and I can’t cast from Jellyfin.
Ohh! ohh! I have a wishlist!
- Finish the DB upgrade. The search is unusable on large collections, as a matter of fact, why not just go MySQL/PG?
- Protect ALL the endpoints if you’re not logged in.
- Include 2FA on server/clients
- Closed captioning still turns on in some clients if you have caption language->default instead of captions->default
- Add a failed login file so we can use the actual fail2ban instead of the static one that’s included.
- Release a full music api so we can control the playlist status from a client and preload the next song for crossfading without breaking the playlist.
- Put in hooks to properly support elasticsearch
- Clean up the plugin workflow, it’s confusing AF
- Better playlist support. The only way to bulk create a playlist is to generate m3u, but once you generate m3u, the client is unable to manage it. Either make a clean bulk playlist editor or have the editors be able to import and delete the m3us.
It’s not really about cost for me. Accounts in control of someone else and increased fees to use my own hardware can take a long walk off a short pier.
If only people applied these principles to all software…
