I thought the last couple moves were the nail in the coffin, but this might be it 🤣
Unless, like me, you got it for $49.
Still, jellyfin.
Exactly, got mine with an Nvidia shield purchase, still moved to Jellyfin like a year ago and never looked back
Was the conversion easy? Could you keep your watchlist and whatnot?
I have… a lot of data.
Um honestly I didn’t even try to port shit, I’ve only got about 12 TB of stuff anyways so it was easier to just start fresh
Lucky you. I’ve got almost 750Tb the transition might be rough.
Holy shit! That’s downright impressive!
He must’ve downloaded all of One Piece
Sign up for trakt.tv. It will sync your watched statuses. i am sure that plex supports it, and i know for a fact that jellyfin does.
Holy smokes that’s a lot of data
750TB!!!??? Good lord, how much did your RAID array(s) cost?
Uhmmm so, yeah. It’s… a significant investment. Let’s say, I look for HDD sales constantly and I’m eating less these days to feed my habit.
For the curious, I run on Synology hardware. Most of the drives are 20-24TB each.
I have their 12 bay sever with two 12 expansions (36 total) and then another 8 bay server with two 5 expansions.
I started with the 8, and when I quickly hit 18 total drives with redundancy… I realized this was going to be a lot more than I had initially planned for.
These are also direct disc rips. No downloads. That’s actual discs in hand, ripping, saving, typing. It’s mostly from my amazing city library, the local video store, borrowing, and then the rest are purchases.
And I’ll answer the next question, dual income no kids… and my partner shares my interest (or at least benefits!). They always know what to get me for a present.
Option 1: Sync to trakt, then backsync to jellyfin
Option 2: Use something like yamtrack to track it externally
Yamtrack can ingest plex and jellyfin. Just no backsync :/Thanks for the tip.
I thought the last couple moves were the nail in the coffin, but this might be it 🤣
I got it for 20 bucks! Good times!
37.5X price hike
Buy low, sell high. Follow me for more financial tips!
Sell pork bellies, buy gold
I think it is. A price hike this massive can only mean they‘re banking on panic buyers who think they can save hundreds of bucks if they buy it now. Meaning Plex probably knows it‘s over and they just want to make as much money as possible before filing bankruptcy or something. At least that‘s what it looks like to me.
My guess was almost this. They obviously want to cash in on the panic-buyers. But I don’t think it’s because they’re going under. I think the goal is to put the lifetime pass out of reach for most people, meaning they’ll default to the subscription instead. Because Plex wants people on subscriptions. They’re more reliable income, which the company can more accurately budget for. There’s a reason everything is moving towards SAAS, and Plex is doing the same. This is simply an attempt to push/lock everyone to the subscription model instead of the single purchase.
I have to agree with this, I think they bet on more people subscribing as a result of their external connection subscription requirement, didn’t and are panicing because they don’t want to downscale enough to be able to be maintained.
the plex lifetime pass is a solid “stop beating him he’s already dead” scenario for me because I lost any interest in it like 4 price ups ago now.
Insane
Wow… Rough! I get they’ve “added value” over time, but they’ve also enshittified it too…
If only Jellyfin were simpler to setup for the masses…
The reason Jellyfin is harder to set up is because they don’t run TURN servers. Those cost a lot of money, hence why Plex keeps raising their prices. I wouldn’t be surprised if Plex’ “lifetime” subscriptions didn’t last for much longer.
That being said, Jellyfin is fairly easy to set up. You just have to watch some tutorials.
I’m waiting for plex to announce that lifetime subscriptions don’t cover certain features like secure connect, and that those features will require an addon if enabled. The writing is on the wall.
Does that affect me if I already use my own reverse proxy or Cloudflared? I think not.
At that point, if you have your own reverse proxy, just use Jellyfin.
Or Emby.
Emby is on the path of enshittification too. Jellyfin is a free and open-source fork of Emby. It’s like its spiritual successor.
“On the path…”
How?
I would… If I didn’t have my Plex pass lifetime subscription since 2020, and several friends using it with my Arr and Decypharr setup.
“Added value”: prescribed, trickled-out, tiptoed smidgens of steps forward
“Enshittification”: unscripted, greed-backed, frantic, top-speed Thomas Salto tumbles into the corner and off the mat.
Yep, sounds about right. “Progress”.
If only Jellyfin were simpler yo setup for the masses…
This.
I got in on Plex Pass at $150 so it’s a no-brainer to keep it up for my friends and family who are less tech inclined, but I’m running it concurrently with Jellyfin on my server.
Wait. Jellyfin’s client isn’t any harder to set up than Plex…
It very much is on some TVs. While there are apps in the corresponding store for Roku, WebOS, Android TV, and Xbox, that still leaves out Playstation and Samsung for instance. Samsung has more than 50% marketshare of premium TVs.
While you can install an app by jumping through hoops, it’s not an easy one click install which is what average users need. You can install a Jellyfin server by clicking next a bunch of times. You can get your media there by dragging and dropping it into the media folder. You can install the TV app on most TVs just as easily, but for Samsung you need to do all sorts of extra steps.
A quick Google does give step by step instructions on reddit for instance… but it requires users to download a specific version of Tizen Studio with the CLI (which most people are scared of, they need a GUI to use their devices). They need to connect to their TV remotely via that tool. They need to generate and install security certificates. They need to get specific versions of the Tizen Jellyfin app, that aren’t managed by the Jellyfin team, from a random Github. Then rename those files to extract them, inject their certificate, rebuild the package, and send it to the TV remotely… all in the CLI.
That is WAYYYYYY too complicated for the average person. Even with the step by step instructions, people skip steps and skim things without even thinking about it. Most people can barely click next a bunch of times to install things without messing it up somehow. Anyone who’s ever worked support can tell you that. My parents and probably half my friends would NEVER be able to follow those instructions without messing it up to connect to my server. And that even assumes they have a PC to run the software in the first place, many people no longer have a PC, they just have their phone and maybe a tablet.
On the other hand, Plex has an app in the Tizen store. Emby, which Jellyfin was forked from, also has a Tizen app in the store. Those people can just go and click install and they’re done.
Your information is outdated.
Ah yes, by… 3 months. After over a decade of no support.
Jellyfin has actually been on the Tizen store since February
It’s in the list on samsungs website
Next youre gonna offer a solution for accessing a Jellyfin server without installing a whole vpn along with it?
I just raw dog it. Opened up a port. Keep my server updated, and hoping for the best
Not so much a solution… But using a wireguard overlay network such as Netbird does make it simpler to connect smart devices to a VPN as you don’t need to install a wireguard client on each device
But how do you encrypt remote streams? That’s the issue with JF, outside the home there’s no streaming encryption, so what’s to stop you from DMCA notices? For some family, were running a Wireguard VPN through Ubiquiti but nobody else can with ease. At least not that I’m aware of.
Nobody is going to deep inspect your home packets.
There’s a big difference between running a piracy home server between you and your friends and downloading torrents where you announce to everybody that you have that particular file.
So you just run a bunch of insecure connections to your home network?
Yes. What’s the problem of that? It’s just HTTP instead of HTTPS. And it’s just movies, not private data that I’m afraida a man-in-the-middle attack could spy on the other end.
Best solution is probably what those commercial pirates do -buy a bunch of cheap android boxes and pre-configure with your choice of client and VPN, then hand those out. Something goes wrong, they bring it back.
That’s… Actually not a bad idea 🤔
I don’t know why you have trouble with this. Everything runs through the same SSL protected connection. Router -> Nginx Proxy Manager w/ TLS -> Jellyfin.
Just use a reverse proxy. Everything goes over https.
You all afraid like the feds are monitoring your home network between each other…
Yeah, if that was the cause they would have bigger problems to think about.
Not in my experience, but I keep my Plex up for my brother. I shifted away personally a year or so ago because I couldn’t watch at work anymore (despite self hosting, login still requires a connection to Plex… Which is blocked at work). With Jellyfin, I can just auth against my Authentik server.
I had zip experience self hosting home lab or with linux. I messed around in ubuntu for a couple weeks then just ran the commands on the jellyfin documentation for setup.
It mostly just worked. Web ui started right up and i loaded my library. So glad i never touched plex.
my lifetime pass for jellyfin cost me $0, pretty good value
Apparently they are going to DOUBLE that amount every year! Outrageous!
I didn’t get into self-hosting until recently, and people recommended Jellyfin, so I don’t even know what I’m missing with Plex, if anything. It feels like Jellyfin does everything I need.
You’re missing the early days when plex lifetime pass was ~$50usd and jellyfin wasn’t a thing (that I know of). I believe Kodi was the only real competitor at the time, and it was much less friendly.
Plex has slowly moved in a less user friendly direction, but still meets my needs and I’ve easily gotten over $750 in value from the…almost 20 years, wow…I’ve been using it.
I felt the same way with my Kodi installs, I had a pi in every room that used a shared library db so I could pause in one room and resume somewhere else, nfs shares for media, a config file and done.
I bought a lifetime Plex pass a decade or so ago and shifted everything except my music to Jellyfin about a year ago. Now I’m looking into dispatcharr to round everything out.
Dispatcharr is pretty neat for m3u streams.
Working great with jellyfinNice! I’m giving it a go with some dumb free m3u’s now and so far it’s been pretty great. I haven’t tied it into Jellyfin or Plex yet but one I decide on a decent iptv provider it’ll be happening.
Had some issues with streams not loading in Jellyfin.
I needed to set up a user-agent and streaming-profile like this:
User-Agent:Lavf/61.9.107
Streaming profile:
-> command:ffmpeg
-> parameters:-http_persistent 0 -extension_picky 0 -i {streamUrl} -c:v copy -c:a copy -fflags +genpts+discardcorrupt -b:v 4M -maxrate 4M -bufsize 8M -f mpegts pipe:1This is (still depending on your m3u source) to avoid most of the transcoding or double transcoding of the streams :)
The dispatcharr page is mostly self-explanatory but had some issues with the m3u and epg.
Make sure to properly align your streams with the epg guide you are pulling.
Do all (M3U and EPG XMLTV) through dispatcharr
Provide these to Jellyfin:
M3U:http://dispatcharr:9191/output/m3u/ActiveChannels
XML EPG:http://dispatcharr:9191/output/epg/ActiveChannels?tvg_id_source=tvg_id(Notice: I am using docker. I also set up a group for channels so I can de-/activate channels however I please without deleting and recreating them constantly.)
Jellyfin is amazing for a lot of things, but it shouldn’t be available externally. There are a few critical security concerns that devs have openly stated will never be patched. And that makes it a non-starter for sharing with people who can’t figure out how to use a personal VPN connection. It may be fine for me and my household… But there’s no way I’m going to be able to walk my tech-illiterate grandmother through it over the phone.
In contrast, Plex makes sharing server access very easy. Since they run a centralized server to handle all of the “which servers do I have access to, and where are they located” automatic discovery traffic, sharing content is as simple as sending an invite link. That centralization flies in the face of what Jennyfin stands for, so they won’t ever implement it. I even have a burner Plex account that already has access to my server, which I can use to sign into TVs when I don’t want to bother with the whole account setup process. Handy for things like parties, because I have a few “just hit play and drunk people will enjoy it” types of playlists ready to go.
Basically, Jellyfin for yourself and your household. Plex for everyone else. Luckily, the two will happily run side-by-side without any issues.
This is a concern if you just port forward through a router. This isn’t a problem if you simply use a reverse proxy, which is standard and normal and expected and not difficult at all.
It’s a concern even with a reverse proxy. The reverse proxy encrypts your connection from A to B, but does nothing to stop the various security concerns that have been noted. Because those concerns don’t rely on intercepting unencrypted traffic. If you can reach Jellyfin’s main log in page, you can exploit it. Full stop.
The only way a reverse proxy would stop someone from being able to exploit it is to include a separate login on your reverse proxy, meaning attackers wouldn’t even be able to hit Jellyfin’s landing page unless they know your proxy’s password. But notably, this breaks basically everything except for browsers. All of your smart TVs, mobile apps, etc would stop functioning, because they’d bounce off of that reverse proxy login page.
I don’t proxy the port, I proxy the routes needed for auth and interface. This isn’t that hard.
EDIT: ah I see what you’re saying, you’re talking about the app surface rather than the raw admin API. The risk is small enough with the remaining attack surface that I’m not particularly worried, though obviously I’d like it to be better.
I’m not confident enough in my knowledge to ever open up my server externally, even after reading some methods that are allegedly safe (or relatively safe). I’d just rather not take the risk of me misunderstanding something or failing to keep current with vulnerabilities.
I suppose I see the appeal if Plex handles that without hassle, but man… not for $750. Lol
You got the arr stack up too? Feels like magic when it’s all setup
No, not yet. I took forever to manually rip what I have, which was a lot, and I’m still working my way through boxes of music (which I’m also hosting on Jellyfin). I’ll figure out that step next.
Trash-guides will be your savior
Wow, this is so much good info. Thank you
Ah fair, just take your time and feel free to ask
If you haven’t already, you may want to look into FileBot. It’s the only reason I was ever able to properly rip and rename all of my files so Plex/Jellyfin can automatically detect them.
Oh my god, you mean I didn’t have to do all this manually? I’ve spent so much troubleshooting time fixing file names.
Nope.
It does feel magical :D
You’re missing getting to pay for it. Imagine how good it would feel to see $750 less in your bank account.
I mean Plex definitely has a value add. Around here people will scoff but Plex is far easier to work with for non technical users.
If you shared your library externally Plex was definitely easier it’s just that they have started to extract value from that which does suck.
Easier sure, but it comes at the expense of all traffic (even streaming to a device on your local network) going through their servers. If you have an internet outage or their servers go down, you can’t even stream media locally with Plex. No such issues with Jellyfin.
This is incorrect, bordering on outright FUD. Plex only uses their servers for the initial server discovery. When you sign into Plex, your device basically contacts the central plex discovery server and goes “hey, which servers do I have access to? And where are they located?” Plex’s server then passes that info back to the device, so the device can reach those servers directly. No actual content hits Plex’s servers by default. Hell, Plex wouldn’t want content hitting their servers by default, because it’s a truly astronomical amount of bandwidth that would be required on their end, for no real benefit.
You can technically use their relay option to bounce the video stream off of their server, but they specifically say that it’s a last-ditch workaround for troubleshooting. Because their relay server is intentionally bandwidth-capped and will throttle your video quality. So the relay is only really meant to be used for troubleshooting and edge cases.
“Aha! But you need to contact their server to get access even on LAN! So it will stop working when your internet goes out!” You can just configure the device to use a direct connection instead. This will allow you to connect directly to a server on your LAN. No need for their handshake server.
Thank you, it needed to be said.
I tried to use it about 3 years ago on an apple tv. It tried finding the server on my LAN and never could do it reliably, so I found it more annoying.
With Jellyfin/Swiftfin I do have to punch in the hostname or IP, but it works fine for me and the people in the house. The only annoyance is getting signed out every few months, but I’m not sure of that’s a server or client issue on Apple TV and happens infrequently enough that I have not bothered to look up the reason.
Edit: should have said that I used to use Plex before ~2012-2018, and with more ease that after the updates that dumbed down the interface. Maybe its changed and better now, but no reason for me to care.
You can totally stream locally without internet, I’ve done it several times. I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that Plex doesn’t do direct streams, especially locally?
I got that idea from the times when I couldn’t stream to my TV in my home while my internet was down. Switched from Plex several years ago though
I won’t doubt that. I’ve just had Plex for at least 6 years and never had the complete inability to stream directly when the internet is down. It has always fallen back to local streams in my experience (when I had Comcast, this was a frequent occurance and would have otherwise resulted in me returning to emby).
I like shitting on Plex but you absolutely can stream entirely locally without internet.
There is a server side setting you need to switch off. If I remember correctly it deals with the way you sign into plex.
You’re not alone. The first time I lost access to my locally-stored content when my internet went out, I searched for a solution. There is, one, but it’s not obvious–or at least wasn’t back when I encountered this problem. I don’t know why it would be the default setup, I can’t think of a good reason, only nefarious ones. It’s one of the reasons I dumped Plex, in spite of having a life-time pass I paid $75 for, I stopped trusting them.
Plexamp is GREAT; I’ve not found another app like it that works with a home hosted music streaming server.
If you want to go all the way down the rabbit hole look into unraid and the galaxy of self hosted media clients
Ha, I came here to make this joke.
Ok, you got dibs on this joke next time plex raises prices
Ho-lee shit.
I remember when they were like $90 and I got mine discounted at $45.
Yeah, i got mine for like 80€ 10 years ago. Really have to wonder what’s going on there. Tripling the price can’t be expected to increase sales and combined with the last few changes they must be aware of the reputation damage
Oh, I’m already on the Lifetime Hard Pass and it’s all but free —ad-free, slop-free, greed-free, bullshit-free, etc.
IIRC, the cost is ~$5/mo for upkeep, took me no time at all to set up, and I get to listen to/watch whatever the fuck I want, whenever & wherever I choose.
Fuck Plex. I hope it dies gurgling & terrified. 🥰
Died before I could even buy a home to set up my own home network with.
Buy a home? 🥹 If you’re in the US, you were born decades too late for that, citizen. 🤌🏼
Jesus fuck.
Time to learn how to safely expose Jellyfin, I guess.
VPN is the safest way for most, but if you do want to expose it to the internet just blacklist all IP’s and whitelist the known few, maybe slap Fail2Ban on it but honestly doesn’t make much of a difference.
Traefik’s DDNS Allowlist plugin works great for such a task.
VPN. There is no safe direct option.
I’ve had my instance open to the internet for about two years with no issues.
depending what is on it, and your risk factor, theoretically an attacker can check known resource paths to confirm or deny whats on the server. That’s my main complaint currently on it is that the jellyfin team is aware of the fact that it doesn’t need authentication, but are looking for some miracle solution that won’t toss legacy clients out in order to fix, so therefore the issues are just perpetually open.
So far. That you know of.
I mean, the worst that could happen is they delete everything on the server and I have to spend time restoring from a backup. Not exactly the riskiest thing to do.
I am using a non-privileged user on jellyfin.
Admin stuff needs to be done with a hidden user.
I might should be bothering to do rootless docker at some point…Well, the worst that could happen is they start hosting CSAM out of your house and then the FBI knocks on your door.
Ok, fair enough. I don’t think that’s likely though.
No. More likely is an automated botnet mining cryptocurrency or running a DDoS. That’s usually what happens.
I’m on your side. I don’t really see the difference hosting Jellyfin or Plex to the internet.
If you want max security and headache for jellyfin, set up a VPN like they say, otherwise keep it exposed, It’s very unlikely for your server to be targeted and It hasn’t been worth the hassle for me.
Edit: well not directly directly, do the minimum and put it behind a reverse proxy that adds HTTPS of course, but thats recommended in the docs so yah
Setup up tailscale and run jellyfin and your services all through it and you’re good.
Great; how do I do that on a Roku streamer?
Best I’ve done so far is crowdsec + pangolin geoblocking to just my country. I cant install tailscale subnet routers at all my friends to get their TVs to work. Non starter.
Fucking lol
I have 2 Plex licenses I bought for something like $80 AUD each, but I then went and bought an Emby license and moved 6 months ago. I have tried Emby, Jellyfin and Plex. If anyone if curious on some feedback
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Plex has the best interface, it is logical and everything works. That said, the stuttering on some the Apple TV on hdr /4k files for years without being fixed was the breaking point for me
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Emby has some quirks in the player where some functionality isn’t logical, the android apps on a 4K Tele look terrible, but the server software itself is fantastic
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Jellyfin does what it says on the box, but it is terribly slow to index and is very basic. I use it to host some music, but that is about it
Also, I found the Jellyfin default client(s) to be pretty mediocre. But they have an excellent Jellyfin for Kodi plugin.
Now, Kodi has had 2 decades of development and has just about everything you could ever want from a client (way better than Plex IMO).
Can I use Kodi the same way I use plex? Like can it be my replexment?
I just want to watch content on my home network 99% of the time, and occasionally use it on my phone/tablet/laptop while traveling (if I have good internet)?
I was always under the impression Kodi was something else…
Everything the jellyfin mobile app can do via vpn (or without if you feel brave)
totally, have Jellyfin as well actually but tbh it doesn’t always feel super stable, especially if I leave my home network.
Not sure what Kodi is exactly though.
Can’t confirm for me.
Rock stable.
Only stutters on bad cellular coverage or my upload at home being insufficient for the requested bitrate.Might by my build out, definitely have it on a pretty antiquated set up.
Could be.
Or maybe some setting.When configuring my setup 1 or 2 years ago I had someone point out my older kernel and that I should use the linuxserver opencl mod for the jellyfin container.
After that it worked like a charm.
The free Jellyfin apps are bad on iOS and AppleTV.
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sooooo Jellyfin time?
Emby time.
I have not tried emby, is it much/any better than plex or jellyfin?
try it and see.
Turns out, lifetime is difficult to budget for
It would be fine if Plex wasn’t hooked on VC capital and needed to make the line go up constantly. Most self-hosters like me have zero interest in what they are funding with subscriptions.
Just checked: I’ve paid 10% of that 12 years ago. Inflation is really bad ;)
I think I got it on sale for 5% of that.
I use jellyfin now. Plex was too bloaty and restrictive.
Good for you! I’m still finding it useful and doing exactly what I’ve paid for.
I paid… $74.99 for a lifetime plex sub in 2014. Is this the same service?
Yes, if you bought the lifetime pass years ago, you still have it. This price increase only affects people who don’t already have a lifetime pass.
No it’s worse. Old accounts are grandfathered in to downloads when a library is shared with another user. Otherwise the library recipient needs a plex pass too.
Afaik, if you didnt have the lifetime pass
Original lifetime Plex Pass for $74.99!
That’s what their email said. So my understanding is I must have been grandfathered into the pay one time and have it forever thing.
yup
