I hate headlines like this. I’d love to hear the REASONS WHY Plex are doing all of this. But no, it’s just “4 ways in which Plex now sucks” which we all know already.
Before someone says “the reason is money” we need to ask: do the developers of Jellyfin not use money? Why won’t the same thing just happen to them too?
Before someone says “enshittification,” we need to ask: does this mean Jellyfin will soon have the same problems?
We all seem to love Jellyfin so I think we need to understand the actual reason why, or this will just continue happening.
Plex is a private company…
I hate headlines like this. I’d love to hear the REASONS WHY Plex are doing all of this.
- Greed… do you really need 3 more?
Before someone says “the reason is money” we need to ask: do the developers of Jellyfin not use money? Why won’t the same thing just happen to them too?
Plex is a private company wanting money… Jellyfin is a voluteer-drive effort
Before someone says “enshittification,” we need to ask: does this mean Jellyfin will soon have the same problems?
Enshitification happens to privately develop products due to <checks notes> greed… Jellyfin is not a private company pushing a product for profit
We all seem to love Jellyfin so I think we need to understand the actual reason why, or this will just continue happening.
Back to “greed”
I use Plex for audiobooks and TV shows primarily.
The fact that you can’t (or at least can’t easily) scan library files from Plexamp is utterly insane to me. Especially after they made audio libraries completely unavailable on the regular Plex app.
I’ll probably switch to Audiobookshelf or something else down the line.
You can scan from plexdash.
+1 for audiobookshelf, after using tools like Plex for a long time I was honestly shocked by how much more user friendly it felt. And it’s a one man team! The only significant demerit is that the IOS app is stuck in test flight limbo, so you have to find another player. Though most do that already I think.
Capitalism.
Yeah, only one reason. It’s always capitalism.
Enshitification has entered the chat
I prefer open source, but if I’m buying proprietary software, let’s do it fairly and sustainably. Don’t charge me a 1-time fee and then enshittify what I bought because your business model isn’t working. On the other hand, don’t charge me multiple times for the same software with a subscription. The most fair arrangement to both of us is to sell perpetual licenses for a specific version and then charge me for major updates. If your newer versions introduce massive improvements, then I might give you more money. It’s also fair to do free upgrades for a period of time and then charge for major upgrades. Finally, don’t force me to use your software always online and if you must have an activation process, provide a way to activate from a different machine by uploading an activation file or whatever.
There’s only one reason, money.
But it’s at least four $1.
Serious question. I have been using the free version of plex for years and been happy with it. I have no desire for remote access and I never consume media on my phone. I just use it to watch TV shows and movies in my living room. I don’t want anything more from it so I’m fine with the free version. Is there anything else I’m missing out on my not using jellyfin? I’ve considered it but to me it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort to switch if I’m happy with the free Plex. But I’m willing to have my mind changed
It may have very well changed recently or I could be misremembering, but the reason I switched over was being unable to play certain codecs/media types (types of hdr?) over stream while converting on host… unless I had a subscription.
Utter lunacy to want me to pay to convert on my own machine. I’ve since swapped to jellyfin, donated, and am happier for it (and the open source part is such an added plus).
For your use case its pretty much identical.
I prefer the plex interface slightly. But id rather use open source
I never had issues with Plex, same use case. But when my old pc died I opted to buy the 4k ONN device and store the files on USB.
Oof I had one of those at work and they were really particular about the file formats they played. This was like 5-6 years ago tho, have they gotten better?
The USB drive has to be the right format but otherwise I’ve had almost no issues. Works much better than the $30 android box from china.
I would say get to know how to use it at least so you can hit the ground running if they ruin Plex for you.
Stopped using Plex and moved to jellyfin around 12 months ago and have never looked back
I have both but Jellyfin is not good with duplicates. Having several versions of movies in different languages just puts multiple copies of the movies in Jellyfin, with no distinction between them until you click into the details. Plex does this well with “Play version”.
But Plex is worse for other reasons, on my LG TV. It’s painfully slow and doesn’t play the correct audio track that I select.
An mkv with multiple audio tracks would save you some storage space.
Same brother
You guys are still using plex? I just make it publicly available on a webserver. Access control? Why would I care, I stole it.
Idk. Maybe you don’t want to spend the bandwidth and power on streaming it to a bunch of randoms.
Bandwidth is free, as long as it doesn’t get to the point its tanking my performance I don’t care. If people do start to abuse it I will bother to change it but until then no reason to bother. Obviously not giving the URL out here because then immediately it is going to get hammered.
Security through obscurity is fine when the only thing you are securing against is a bit of an inconvenience and the benefit is its easy to give friends a URL to go to. But sure, if it became a problem I would probably look into something else.
Wireguard, or even just jellyfin with a password
Sure, you can disable a lot of features from the home page, but even the remaining bits push you toward Plex’s ecosystem with things like recommendations. And I’ve even seen people complaining about needing to re-disable promotional content after updates. It’s simply a shady business.
Edit: It’s just occurred to me that he might literally be referring to the Recommended tab on your home page - which you only have to interact with by choice.
If anyone would care to tell me where I’m being pushed towards Plex’s ecosystem I’d love to understand what the flying fuck he’s talkin about. The only thing I could find that could generously be called part of the Plex “ecosystem” are the social features. Does it give more “ads” if you have a free account or something? Also I’ve had a server for 15 years and I’ve never had to re-do my customization from an update.
I believe I experienced what they called “re-disable promotional content after an update.” Everything was reset and my media was hidden with only their streaming options available. Similarly setting up a new Chromecast it only had their streaming content and I had to hide their content and unhide mine.
I seem to remember there being some weaselly link that would re-enable their content after it was disabled too.
Generously, they’re providing more content and a way to support the development of the product through ads. But all the changes and the way they’re happening show me a picture of a company with changing priorities. So I tend to agree with the sentiment of the author.
Ad supported content is their bread and butter. More users use it then run a server and they make more off of it.
I’m not sure I’ve ever used it, but according to Wikipedia, ad videos started in 2019, live tv is 2020, and rentals in 2024. During that time it’s become more and more intrusive, now replacing your media entirely out of the box.
That means for 10 of its 16 software purchases and software subscriptions where it’s bread and butter and has grown into different revenue streams. It’s still software, but now it’s Ad based revenue streams. Adding more and more fees. You might say it’s growing into the thing it was supposed to replace, corporate cable and streaming service.
On mobile if you install Plex for the first time you’re always dumped on the stupid pointless recommended page.
The writer claims that plex drives people towards recommendations even after disabling the recommended tab, that’s the part I’m trying to figure out.
You mean this part?
“Sure, you can disable a lot of features from the home page, but even the remaining bits push you toward Plex’s ecosystem with things like recommendations. And I’ve even seen people complaining about needing to re-disable promotional content after updates. It’s simply a shady business”
If so I’ve definitely experienced that where all of a sudden the damn tab is re-enabled by itself. And it’s not even “disabled” it’s just not the default selection anymore. I can still see it down there.
I wonder what causes that. The only time I’ve had customization reset is if I wiped the metadata during a server migration on accident, or decided to clear it intentionally.
Moved to Stremio + A debrid service. I’m good.
Stremio
At a glance, it looks like it requires signing up with their service, which means they can track everything I do. No, thanks. I’ll stick with Jellyfin.
Just use a throwaway email. The point of the account is to sync your watch history and (most importantly), your plugins/configs, which are what do the piracy stuff for you.
Its so good and you can just login on anyone else’s device lol
3 Things stop from using jellyfin 100% of the time.
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TV tuner is janky and loading a guide for local channels is garbage. I like watching the morning local news and jellyfin just does not cut it.
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I want sub accounts. They used to have something similar but took it out for security reasons. I want to log all my TVs into one account but then have each user select their profile. So I can easily have a restricted profile for say kids then another for my parents then one for me then one for SO under the same roof. It will track each persons watched profile so when someone watches ahead it doesn’t mess with someone else’s.
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On the same note, controller/ HTPC remote configs feel janky. I know its there but its not a smooth and easy as Plex. This goes along with above for anyone who says just make another account. You try entering half decent passwords with small HTPC remotes or controllers. Every time you go to watch TV.
If they could fix these things I would ditch Plex all the way. But as it stands I use Plex for my TV and jellyfin for my phones, tablets, PC.
You can already do number 2 (with some restrictions). You have to set up your networking tab correctly, use blank passwords, and uncheck “allow remote connections” for the “local” accounts. i have things set up so that external users are forced to log in and local users just pick a profile. If you also add your external users’ IP addresses to the LAN Networks box, they’ll be treated as an internal user too (though how you keep that up to date is a bit more challenging). It’s not precisely the Netflix experience but it works well enough for us
I’ll have to look into that. Last I remember they removed that and local simple pin. Because it could be used to bypass security even from outside network. You are running current version right?
Ya - or close enough (10.11.3). My LAN networks are my server and workstation subnets (both /24s) and my external NAT (my public ip). I also have my reverse proxy address (from jellyfin’s perspective) in my known proxies. From there, my external users are set to allow remote connections, have passwords set, and are set to “hide this user from login screens” and my internal users are set to NOT allow remote connections and to NOT hide from login screens. After that, i just use my public dns for every device whether it’s internal or external and call it a day
TV tuner is janky and loading a guide for local channels is garbage. I like watching the morning local news and jellyfin just does not cut it.
I DVR local stuff with Plex and play it back in Jellyfin.
I do that sometimes but I like the morning news and I feel it should be current so not a great solution for me. Jellyfin just needs a bit more polish. Its great I like it but also at the same rate the appear to fix some things like their security bugs I’m not going to hold my breath. I do hope they push through though like Immich.
Jellyfin has local channels? Why don’t you just watch local channels?
Does plex have local channels? Seems like that is a use case that doesnt make any sense to me.
In the US there is still a thing ad broadcast TV. Stick a TV antenna up in the air, free TV. Get a tuner card for PC and TV for your PC before streaming was ever a thing. Used it on my laptop when I traveled more. But with setting it up in jellyfin it works but is janky and needs polishing, and setting it up to download the TV guide is kinda a nightmare. With Plex life pass ( this is the feature that made me get it and dropping Comcast cable TV) it just works auto scans for channels and auto downloads TV guide, easy to flip throughout channels even my mom does it.
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Jellyfin is great :D
Just to think of replacing the mount points in the docker container from Plex to Jellyfin (in order for it to read my Riven and Decypharr symlinks) scares me… Mostly because after I finish a docker project my mind seems to go blank lol.
At least they still kinda honour the Plex Pass lifetime users…
Does jellyfin have an easy way for remote streaming? I have a couple dozen people on my Plex server, most not very tech savvy, so setting up tailscale and running remote that way isn’t an option. I have a Plex pass so I haven’t been screwed by Plex yet, so I’m not rushing to get out, but I could see myself running both.
Yes-ish, it’s harder for you than the users. But you will have to secure a URL and they will have to remember that URL. Also there’s some security issues with some unsecured endpoints on Jellyfin. That said I have mine out there exposed to the net and am comfortable enough with it.
I already have to expose my Plex Media Server with a Tailscsle funnel (for IPv4 only) for IPv6 I use my Synology NAS reverse proxy which can be accessed globally.
I have been maining this setup for years now that I forgot if I can access my PMS outside without either those solutions lol (I am GGNATED but IPv6 works fine as stated).
The main thing here is that I don’t need my users to do anything, they just open the app and access it, no need to remember IPs/URLs or install VPNs to my server… Is that possible with Jellyfin as well?
I have mine behind a caddy reverse proxy that forces https. I think that handles most sniffing concerns
You could just get a domain and set up a reverse proxy. Or use Cloudflare tunnels.
The first one, yes. That’s what I do. But IIRC hosting media via cloudflare tunnels goes against the TOC and they reserve the right to ban users over it
All possible, but currently I have lifetime Plex pass and just need to share with people I want to share with. No extra config. Once Jellyfin can do that or something similar, I’ll look at jumping ship. Until then, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
Once Jellyfin can do that or something similar
Once Jellyfin does that then it’ll be time to look at jumping ship to something else, because that’ll be the indication that Jellyfin is going down the same road as Plex.
Fair enough. I doubt Jellyfin will ever offer something like that. Its designed to be completely self hosted and not rely on a central server, which I dont see changing.
no, tailscale is still the easiest option.
So I don’t get it, I have mine up with a domain without tsilscale… The clients are quite happy wherever. I don’t even see that much “crawling” traffic that goes to the domain, most just hit the server by ip and get a static 401 page that the “default” site is hard coded to give out.
Bummer… unfortunately, that’s a deal breaker for me to completely drop Plex. Maybe someday.
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Can you fly out to my MIL every time her router breaks and fix it for her?
Edit: holy shit, your edits are insane
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I swear every single Plex related thread has the same Jellyfin fanatics coming in. Same energy as “my MIL has trouble with her computer” “just install Linux bro!” comments.
Still better than the army of Plex fanboys that all claim to have dozens of senior citizens streaming from their Plex server.
Yeah that’s totally how it works. 👍
e: lots of 🤡 in here
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I set mine up with HAProxy for TLS offloading and ACME for the server cert. Restrict your access to just your country/region by GeoIP and you are pretty good to go.
I moved away from plex as well. I do have remote access but had to set up Tailscale on the accounts that access it. It’s a bit of a hassle initially but works well.
I’d love Jellyfin if not for their incredibly infuriating seek behaviour. Why do I have to press play to start the video again?
In case this helps, for me when I use it on Android TV with said TV’s remote, the arrow buttons on the direction pad for anything require pressing play/OK button after. But if I use the fast forward buttons, it does seek and then just keeps playing.
For me I just want a fast forward button. They have something they call fast forward, but it seeks instead.
Except the sync / group watch feature is pretty broken which makes me sad
Agreed! I stayed with Plex for a long time because Jellyfin had a rough time with live TV (antenna) and I already had a PlexPass because of a sale a long time ago. Now Plex is only still running because I love Plexamp.
Dude, yeah. Plexamp had me keeping my server up far longer than I should have.
I struggled to find a decent plexamp replacement and ended up using symphonium, if you’re looking for any suggestions. Its been working out pretty well with jellyfin.
Symphonium is awesome. Still looking for a nice desktop alternative to Plexamp, which I can’t stand for its interface on desktop.
The way you switch between two servers you own is more than inconvenient; it’s what keeps Plex in my life.I wish things would change because everything else is better.
Thats how I describe Jellyfin, it works fine, its just inconvenient to use.
That’s why I use Emby. Paid for lifetime within a day of switch from Plex (which I also have has lifetime for like a decade) because it has a ton of plugins that have been useful and has a cloud server switch function.
For the love, as a Plex alternative, they don’t even have a native app on all major tv stores. It should be a P1 feature. I would throw money at them if they get Apple TV support. Right now, there are no functional apps running on the latest Apple TV OS.
For the love, as a Plex alternative, they don’t even have a native app on all major tv stores. It should be a P1 feature.
Are you really bitching this hard about a completely free and open source project?
It’s not technology or finances that kill most FOSS projects and burn out the devs. It’s this kind of shitty entitled unappreciative demanding attitude from users.
As others have pointed out, there are fully functional and good quality frontends available, such as Swiftfin.
I maintain open source projects too, and I fully understand the burnout, the pressure from supporters and such. What I was saying is they can do better from a project management perspective. Otherwise I love their work :3
Swiftfin is buggy atm, like my other comment.
I haven’t used apple tv in a few years, but like, swiftfin worked just fine for me??
I believe Infuse has Jellyfin support on Apple TV. But they want like £100 for a lifetime license or £2 a month / £13 a year.
Yeaaaaaaaah, I mean it’s a good app, but I don’t know if it justifies a $100 license.
Swiftfin?
For me the audio is desynced and subtitles are completely broken. :(
Oh weird. I would guess a transcoding issue, maybe double check those settings to make sure you have the right config for your hardware.
Theres also Infuse, its a video player that supports jellyfin, but I think some features are behind a premium purchase.
Yeah. The entire jellyfin support is behind subscription.
No, it’s not.
No shot you linked to fucking sora
Playing devil’s advocate, I understand one point of pressure: Plex doesn’t want to be perceived as a “piracy app.”
See: Kodi. https://kodi.expert/kodi-news/mpaa-warns-increasing-kodi-abuse-poses-greater-video-piracy-risk/
To be blunt, that’s a huge chunk of their userbase. And they run the risk of being legally pounded to dust once that image takes hold.
So how do they avoid that? Add a bunch of other stuff, for plausible deniability. And it seems to have worked, as the anti-piracy gods haven’t singled them out like they have past software projects.
To be clear, I’m not excusing Plex. But I can sympathize.
There is that but it’s primarily that they’ve taken over 40 million dollars of venture capital. They are almost certainly under immense pressure to turn profitable asap and converting lifetime pass users into revenue streams somehow, converting new users into SaaS, etc are going to be things they pursue more aggressively.
Don’t take the devils money if you don’t want the devils stipulations
They’ve taken other measures as well. Nobody knows the details besides them, but they blocked an entire cloud provider called Hetzner because too many people were using it for pirate Plex servers. They absolutely have to maintain the image of being legitimate like you said.
I wish more people understood this perspective
It’s really nice of them to fight the good fight while I use Jellyfin instead.
You may (half) joke, but MPAA attention on Jellyfin would suck.
I’d like to call this “the Ubuntu buffer”.
Which doesn’t have half the features and crap security compared to Plex/Emby.
The security thing is ironic because my personal Jellyfin server (nor anything else on it) has been hacked, but Plex itself has had their database leaked recently. It’s actually the main reason I switched because I don’t like their auth servers being a giant common target. (Also, technically it theoretically means Plex employees can just let themselves in to people’s private servers)
From their blog post about it:
An unauthorized third party accessed a limited subset of customer data from one of our databases. While we quickly contained the incident, information that was accessed included emails, usernames, securely hashed passwords and authentication data. Any account passwords that may have been accessed were securely hashed, in accordance with best practices, meaning they cannot be read by a third party.
The passwords were hashed and, I’m inferring from their language, salted per-user as well. Assuming a reasonable length password (complexity doesn’t matter much here, what we want is entropy) it would take a conventional (i.e. not quantum) computer tens to hundreds of millions of years to crack one user’s password.
Yeah, I’m not really worried about it. I changed my password and moved on. It’s just that hackers have every reason to try and exploit Plex, while individual servers are hardly worth someone’s time and effort to go after when the payoff is maybe 1-2 usernames and emails
Simply not true. There is no person out there deciding every fry is too small. They just pick an exploit and send some bots after it. Every target is a good target because every target is a platform for more. It’s currency. The discrimination happens at the userbase level which is why jellyfin will always be safe. Kidding 😂
Sure, apart from charging for remote access.
Dynamic DNS does cost money. But not $8 a month. Development also costs money which falls under the $8 a month, but really not my problem, which is why I use Jellyfin. I used to run Plex off of my Nvidia shield, which was a cool gateway drug to self hosting and I’m grateful to them for that, but I like handling the technical stuff myself.
That serves the purpose too. It’s harder to pin Plex as an “illegal distribution service” when you have to pay for access. Either the streamer or “distributor” can’t be very anonymous, which makes large scale sharing impractical.
On the other hand, the more money they squeeze out, the more they risk appearing as if they “make money from piracy,” which is exactly how you get the MPAA’s attention.
Remote access via their servers.
I admit I’m very out of the loop, but my understanding is that remote access via their servers is the only supported remote viewing solution? Anything else is a “hack” so to speak.
Everything else is “a hack” in the sense that it is literally just the way to get Jellyfin working outside your network too.
If you have a static IP, or dynamic DNS set up, you can set up your own remote access with a reverse proxy like nginx. The nice thing is I get to use my own SSL certificate and all the actual streaming goes directly to my server, not through their proxies.
The only “hacky” part about it is that the Admin dashboard shows “Not available outside your network”, even though everything works perfectly.
It’s really not. They handle authentication but then everything is sent to your server.
If jellyfin was easier to use and had the same options as Plex, id switch over. But I’ll keep my Plex lifetime pass as long as I can until they make all lifetime passes null in the next 2 years and make us all pay monthly.
If jellyfin was easier to use and had the same options as jellyfin
Just guessing here, but I think it just might.
not sure your logic here. Why would Jellyfin have the same features as Jellyfin?
Individual user accounts, so multiple people can use the same device without needing to log into a new account each time. For example, User A watches a show on the TV. Then User B opens the TV, and has to log in to be able to access their own watch history. Then User A returns, and has to log back into their account.
Braindead remote access. I use a reverse proxy so it’s not a need for me, but plenty of people don’t understand how to properly set something like that up.
Single Sign On. It flies in the face of what Jellyfin stands for, because it would require a centralized authentication server that everyone’s servers phone home to. Just like Plex. With Plex, you log into one account, and can see all of your available servers, because they’re all tied to the same account. With Jellyfin, every server requires its own authentication, because there is no central server to manage all of the “Account XYZ has access to libraries A, B, and C” stuff. If I want to watch something, I can’t easily just search all of my servers at once; I need to individually log into and search each one to see if it has the content I want to watch.
The writing was on the wall when they started getting American VC money.
American VC culture is anthenema to truly user focused products.
