I bought Plex pass years ago for £79. The new price of $749.99 is INSANE.
No wonder all the cool people are using Jellyfin.
Φορ 479 usd you by a coffee machine or something else. I got off plex and went for jellyfin. I only watch from home.
I use Emby. Works great.
I mean, yeah that’s crazy, but jellyfin does have a proper audio player yet? Plexamp is just way too good and the main reason I’m not switching…
What do you mean? there are so many audio clients that can can connect to jellyfin. finamp, jellyamp, sonixd, … What is it you’re missing in a jellyfin audioplayer?
Hmm, does finamp or any of those give me recommendations, sonic similarities, adaptive streaming, downloading, mood/genre playlists etc? The not so polished frontend I can neglect… Unfortunately I got really used to plexamp and am spoiled in some way
The jellyfin audio player is soo bad, I used it less than a week ago and the music was almost unrecognisable from playing it through copyparty
What the heck are you doing, doesn’t every single player just… play the music? How could the quality be worse?? I can imagine having gripes about the UI of some players, but the quality??
who is this for?
those unicorn users who make 150k++ a year and pirate all their media and then wanna share it with their friends that they don’t have?
I don’t think there is an actual target for this price. But I bet my left testicle it’s to push for subscription passes instead of a single purchase.
Edit: fuck it, take the right one as well
Wouldn’t they hurt use Jellyfin? Lol The only “value” that Plex seems to have to offer these days are the weird tv services things they keep trying to push
I know someone with a Plex who won’t switch to Jellyfin because it’s too complicated, but now is looking for other platforms. I hate to tell them… they’re all complicated.
It’s been a while since I used Plex, but is it really that much less complicated than Jellyfin? When I switched, it seemed like roughly the same amount of complication, but that was a long time ago.
No lol. The basic setup is: you point it to your libraries, it does the rest. Just like Plex.
Connecting remotely is maybe slightly trickier since you have to open it up to the internet, or just run tailscale.
travelling salesmen who pirate all their media??
To be fair there are plenty of users who rip their own media. But sentiment stands
I do wonder if this is a last ditch effort cash grab before they go under or a “we really thought we’d be acquired by now so now we have to plan ahead” move.
Been on jellyfin since day one. Works fine, UI is great and gets the job done. TV UI maybe not top notch, buy usable. Mobile UI just fine and usable.
Also, exposed on the internet (reverse proxy, OIDC, https the works) for years now with zero issues whatsoever as well .
There are a few users always throwing thrash on jellyfin, maybe pissed off users that paid for Plex, or Plex shills that like to denigrate jellyfin, I don’t know.
Just ignore them.
Jellyfin is perfectly usable, yes you need to setup port forward, VPN or whatever, but it’s exactly our target audience so move along and stop bitching, Plex shills.
Stay with Plex, use jellyfin, whatever fit your bill.
Anyway plex does not fit my concept of self hosting to be free from cloud lock ins.
I don’t see anyone “throwing trash” on Jellyfin, only pointing out that there are some downsides. Just as it also has some advantages over Plex.
Plex is undoubtedly on a downward trajectory, and I’m glad Jellyfin exists. But it does not yet have feature parity with Plex, and if you use it for music there’s simply nothing better than Plexamp. You waive away the requirements to remotely stream on Jellyfin, but the fact that you suggest simply opening up ports highlights that one of Plex’s strengths is it’s ability to remotely stream without jeopardizing your network security.
I run both concurrently, Plex for the remote streaming, OTA DVR, better living room apps, and (by far the biggest feature for me) for Plexamp. Jellyfin for proof of concept.
I’m not a Plex shill, and am preparing for a day that Jellyfin is the better answer. But for me and my users, that day hasn’t yet arrived.
Yeah I changed to Wholphin recently, and it’s pretty cool — though you may need to tweak a couple of things depending on your TV
How am I just learning about wholfin now? They need to add that to the third party clients list on the main site because at a glance that’s easily top 3 best looking jellyfin clients
Yeah, easily the best one I’ve used on TV; that’s for sure. I found it randomly on some forum a few months ago.
Wholphin
thank you for the suggestion, will try it out! I am using a Fire Stick
Moonfin is also pretty great on Android TV too imo
This is a new one for me. Looks pretty sleek.
I happened to setup jellyfin when i had first heard about it while I was already hosting plex, so when plex decided to charge for remote streaming years later I was already halfway there.
Even now - at the peak point of the Memory/SSD price bubble - about 1/3 of that lifetime pass buys you enough dedicated hardware to do it yourself for at least the next decade, probably more.
Jellyfin is fine if you’re an advanced user and you don’t care about streaming outside your network — and your software is made by an AI company (Microsoft) or an advertising company (Google). If it’s made by a computer company (Apple), you have a bit more work ahead of you. Mac users are a minority, so Jellyfin does not prioritise them. Even if you go all-in with ads and AI, you still don’t get remote streaming, which is kind of the point of Jellyfin.
iPhones come in up to 2TB (for the Pro Max) now. I have 512GB on mine, and I have a dozen HD-4K movies (one is actually 1440p) and a few TV shows. I use an app called Outplayer. It’s like VLC but it has folders, you don’t have to have everything in one place like VLC does. (Though, I suppose you can put your files in the Files app and have them open with VLC. But I mean in the app itself you can have folders.) Android phones have similar sizes, though I’m not sure they go up to 1-2TB. I’m not sure though. Older ones can get there with SD cards, but the read/write on those things is so slow, I would hate to move big videos to and from them. Like start that transfer and then go to bed, hope it’s done in the morning without errors.
Plex went from $120 to $250 a few years ago, and they warned people first. No one who had any sense waited for the price increase before buying. Like most others, I paid less. I think I paid $90? Anyway, at this point they’re just going after the whales. There were plenty of sub-$100 deals on Plex back in the day. Those who didn’t see any value in running your own Netflix chose not to pay, and of course they’re not gonna pay more. Plex was worth paying for at $120 or less. I could almost make the case for it at $250. At $750, if you’d told me 10-15 years ago when it was new how much value I’d get from it, I would have paid — and bought more hard drives.
If you do use Apple stuff, you kinda have the best option, but it’s not free, and it absolutely does not work outside your network. It’s called Infuse. First, the price. It’s priced old school, so if you buy lifetime, it’s only lifetime of the current major version. 6 or 7, I think. So when the next one comes out, you can buy at a discount or you can go to monthly. Yearly is actually the best option, it’s $10 a year. That’s not bad. Ten years of it is $100, and paying monthly or yearly means you’re always on the latest version. Considering lifetime is like $60-80, I think it’s a great deal to go yearly. The thing is, Infuse only works with Apple tech, and it’s not a web server and I don’t think you can make it be one. What it does do is catalogue your media and let you easily download to your Apple devices. It’s got some quirks I don’t like. For example, the player will work with a Plex (or Jellyfin) library, but it won’t write back. What that means is, if you’re watching a series on Plex hosted by Plex, you know, it’s gonna update what episode you’re on. Infuse will read that data (say, it knows you’re on episode 6), but it won’t tell Plex what it’s playing, so if you watch 2 episodes on Infuse, Plex still thinks you’re on 6. Infuse clients only talk to Infuse hosts. (Infuse also doesn’t need a host. Just share the files on the Mac using macOS’s built in file sharing feature like any OS has, and Infuse will read straight from that. It’s very smart and robust, and it’s also considered one of the best media players in the Apple ecosystem, rivaling VLC, and that other one that is only on Apple stuff that people love to recommend. I think it’s ugly, but I’m a dyed-in-the-wool VLC diehard, so I got no room to talk about ugly software. I just like the one I’m used to.
I don’t think Jellyfin is really good at much of anything but being free. It’s not Plex. It kind of acts like Plex, but it doesn’t do for its users what Plex users consider worth paying for. Infuse doesn’t, either, but Infuse takes a different approach. It’s one that Plex also takes (you download stuff to your device rather than streaming it remotely, which is based on you having an idea of what you want to watch when you’re not at home), but it’s not Plex’s priority and I don’t know about Jellyfin.
That said, Jellyfin does let you edit certain things. For example, both Jellyfin and Plex use The TVDB for metadata, but The TVDB tends to prefer foreign language casts when multiple exist, so if you don’t speak the language, and you don’t listen to that dub, the metadata is kind of useless. The problem is that there’s no source as good as The TVDB that provides multiple dub casts, so the media server apps don’t have the ability to let you pick the cast based on your language preferences. However, Jellyfin will let you manually change the metadata, per show. It takes time, but you can do it. Plex doesn’t let you do it at all.
I do feel for people who are looking at Plex’s $750 price tag, but it’s not like they weren’t warned. Plex users have been promoting the hell out of it for years. Those who thought “it’ll go down” and it more than doubled, and then thought, “oh it’ll go down for sure now” and now that it’s tripling… you kinda gotta lay in the bed you made. Or go build one from scratch. Or use a computer from a company that isn’t based around AI or advertising and find a different way.
Also, I don’t think you can pirate Plex, if anyone’s asking. The server runs locally, but the Plex Pass features are server-based.
What I’d suggest if you don’t like Plex or paying for media server tools is, work on Jellyfin or donate in some way or otherwise contribute to the project. Because at some point Jellyfin is probably going to start charging. So I would “get in on the ground floor” now. Be using it. Be advocating for it. Be contributing to it any way you can. Not just to avoid having to pay if and when they do start charging (I do not know that they will, it’s just my guess), but to make it something worth paying for before (if it does start charging), it starts charging more and you’re back at square one. Because none of us are getting any younger. If you missed the Plex boat, don’t miss the Jellyfin boat. Or get into the Apple ecosystem and pony up for Infuse. (Though, as an Apple guy/Mac guy/iPhone guy, I don’t use or pay for Infuse. I just copy the files over to OutPlayer and play them there. It’s not as pretty, but it works.
No way a human wrote all this slop
LLMs weren’t trained on every post on Reddit and forums. They focused on long-form comments that prioritised proper grammar and correct spelling. So while I don’t use AI to write my posts and comments, LLMs were likely trained on them, so even though you’re incorrect, I can’t really fault your assumption.
I can’t type like a kid to try to not sound like AI and I don’t want to do that anyway.
Bullshit
This is such an incredible long bunch of misinformation and nonsense…
Jellyfin is everything Plex used to be before it started sucking.
Streaming outside your home network might be slightly trickier with Jellyfin but that’s the cost of security and ownership… But really, setting up tailscale is dead simple as well, and would get you what you need in a way that is far superior to Plex…
I stopped reading beyond that because as I skimmed the post it was just more nonsense. Are you sure you’ve actually used Jellyfin?
Why should I answer if you don’t read things that are inconvenient to or challenge your worldview? Just block people who do that and enjoy your echo chamber. That seems to be what you want.
You’re not supposed to answer, you’re supposed to re-read your stupid comment and realize how wrong you are, then fix it? I’m not looking for an echo chamber, I’m looking for stupid users to stop being stupid before tech gets completely ruined by them all.
Start with the mirror.
The stupid user can always learn. Which is funny, because the more I learn, the more I realise how much is out there left to learn. I could never learn it all in ten lifetimes. Which makes elves so interesting, they have the time, but most of them just hang around in the woods all day. The stories are about the few who venture out into the world. Most do not. Which is probably some kind of reflection on our own society.
The hostile one usually has deeper problems that require therapy. But I can’t be your couch. I’d probably just make you worse.
It’s interesting you equate Google to advertising (search company). And you equate Microsoft to an AI company (software company). But you equate Apple to a computer company, which in theory it is, but over 50% of it’s sales and revenue are the Iphone.
Bias much?
Yes. I am a bit biased and I generally try to decorate biases when they aren’t obvious.
I do admit, I’m a bit older, so Apple was primarily a computer company while I was growing up. They were a bit of a media company before they were a phone company, with the iTunes Music Store. They still are with Apple Music and Apple TV.
To be fair, they run the iPhone like they run the Mac. They don’t allow pack in software, sometimes called shovelware, and including stuff like Facebook and Amazon. Though some say including their own apps counts. I don’t really think so, but I don’t think it’s worth debating. I think their rent seeking and not allowing third party app stores and sideloading is the more interesting criticism, and one I share as well.
The problem is that Apple is getting into services, which is where Google started. And adding ads is the next step and they’ve already begun that.
Was any justification provided for a nearly 10x price increase!?
Glad I started with Jellyfin
It’s because lifetime licenses aren’t sustainable. I’m surprised they still offer it.
Plex is an actual company that has an office and employees, so they have recurring costs every month. A lot of people already have lifetime licenses that they’re not likely to receive any more revenue from. It’s likely they’re increasing the price to help recoup costs or convince people to subscribe to a monthly subscription rather than get a lifetime license.
Nah, they increased the cost to drive people to the monthly subscription. I’m guessing in a year or two they’ll announce the lifetime subs have been revoked and everyone needs a monthly sub.
You know that even if you paid that ridiculous amount, it still wouldn’t be the last time they try to get money out of you, either.
I like jellyfin
I tried Plex once, before I knew about jellyfin. I just wanted an open-source self-hostable media server with my own media.
When I tried it, after installing Plex, I was presented with a login for a Plex hosted account. Iirc that was optional and I skipped it, after that came the nags for Plex pass. Piss off. That’s exactly the opposite of what I wanted out of something like jellyfin.
Oh yeah and apparently you can’t stream remotely without a subscription either? If it were a feature they had to spend time on I’d still not want to use it, but I’d understand at least.
From the application’s point of view, there is no difference between internet and intranet access. I just saw that downloading the media you already own, using your own infrastructure, requires an even more expensive subscription.
How tf did people stick around with this shit for so long.
If the owner of the Plex server has lifetime and other users that don’t have Plex pass at all and want to watch it remotely, they just need to be part of your home.
They don’t even need to be a part of your home. The server owner just needs to have a Plex Pass. None of my users are in my home group and can still stream remotely since I got a Lifetime pass back when they were, I think, $99.
The same reason most foss projects are barren. Plex focuses on ease of use and giving people what they want. Users mostly don’t care about the sub. It’s easy to use and works.
Meanwhile jellyfin doesn’t have a remote first interface that isn’t absolute dog shit and I need to set up a reverse proxy and potentially idp to get the ability for my family to log in.
This shit isn’t hard. The answer to the community is, make the product better, and start bundling shit in. But I’m sure I’ve already offended some nerd who thinks this is all just so easy and requires no work to tell me I just need to learn Linux better. And that putting in a reverse proxy by default will make maintenance a pain and I just have to put portainer and LE to fix it.
The shit y’all are bitching about is the problem.
This shit isn’t hard
Well it certainly would be hard for me, as I don’t know anything about the UX needed for these features, and very little about networking in general, and probably close to zero about the networking concepts required to make something like you describe work.
But it sounds like you know a lot, jellyfin is a project that is 100% volunteer developed. Maybe you could contribute your expertise either via code or by providing a concrete action plan to the jellyfin team?
Be the change you want to see and all that.
It really, honestly, is super easy to get going. All you need is a folder with your media and a compose file you can find in plenty of tutorials.
The thing we Linux nerds often forget, I think, is that we know what we’re doing (most of us at least I hope), and regular people don’t.
I can read a simple compose file and pretty quickly notice if there’s something off.
If you wanted to do that, you’d first have to read up on containers and compose and all that stuff. You can, of course, just grab a compose file and run it, but that’s generally not a great idea if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Haven’t used it myself, but wouldn’t something like Tailscale solve the remote access limitation?
It does, but the limitation just doesn’t make any sense.
Much like USA Mobile carriers treating hotspot data differently than the phone’s own data, under the ancient premise that phones use less data than PCs - something that hasn’t been true for well over a decade.
Jellyfin is always free, works great, and keeps getting better!
Isn’t jellyfin full of security vulnerabilities? (Not to defend Plex, just a thought. This is why I don’t have a video streaming server at all.)
You can avoid most security issues (with any sort of server) by not exposing it publicly. Use a VPN like Tailscale to connect remotely. If you share the server with friends or family, share it with them over Tailscale and use an ACL to configure which services they can access on your server.
things you shouldnt need to do…
It’s a good practice to NOT expose services to the internet unless it’s really needed. If they’re only for your use, then the entire world doesn’t need access. This isn’t specific to Jellyfin.
All software has the potential to have security issues.
thats, like, your opinion man. frankly slapping a VPN on top of everything else doesnt improve your security posture unless you have the skills to manage that system on top of everything, including ongoing validation that its configuration is restricting what you want it to.
a robust authn/authz at the application layer is what secures your environment. VPNs are just slapping a wall around your network that is trivially penetrated by the browsers (and their extensions) within your network.
stop spouting dogma seriously doesnt make you look intelligent. personally the only reason I bother with a VPN is so I can leverage my local networks dns to access services anywhere. its not for security.
If a service is publicly accessible, anyone can access it. Even if it’s secured, there can be security issues in the auth layer of the app, improperly secured endpoints, etc.
If a service is only available over VPN, nobody can access it unless they’re on the VPN. The service isn’t visible over the public internet and other people won’t even know it exists. You can require two factor auth to connect to the VPN.
I’m not sure why you seem to think that a private network isn’t more secure than a public network. There’s a reason why practically every company requires people working remotely to connect to a VPN to access company resources.
If a service is publicly accessible, anyone can access it.
false.
Even if it’s secured, there can be security issues in the auth layer of the app, improperly secured endpoints, etc.
true, fun fact a VPN is also an application with an auth layer. dun dun dun!
If a service is only available over VPN, nobody can access it unless they’re on the VPN.
which is basically anyone soon as a browser is in the mix. which it is.
I’m not sure why you seem to think that a private network isn’t more secure than a public network.
because I’ve done network hardening and know that they are only as secure as the devices and people that are a part of that network. it has nothing to do w/ private vs public and everything to do with what you do while within that network.
There’s a reason why practically every company requires people working remotely to connect to a VPN to access company resources.
uh huh. heard of lemmings? appeals to authority? etc, etc, etc. thats you right now. federal agencies guidelines regarding VPNs search terms for you: Federal Zero Trust Strategy (notably via OMB Memo M-22-09). Individuals like yourself are literally the reason they had to release these updated guidelines. because people kept quoting out of date security practices from their old guidelines as ‘good enough for the feds must be best practices’
like i said you dont know what you’re talking about. historical foot note: when the federal agency updated their recommendations regarding VPNs they were criticized by security experts for taking so fucking long to finally remove the misguided position that VPNs improve security that you hold.
here is a relevant snippet for everyone:
Regardless of the approach selected, agencies must move away from the practice of maintaining a broad enterprise-wide network that allows enhanced visibility or access to many distinct applications and enterprise functions. Accordingly, agencies should choose their zero trust approach early enough to permit them to align that approach with their plans for IT investment
Literally use ‘authn/authz’ and dont rely on VPNs for ACL. Here is another gem from that memo for today’s lucky 10,000:
Agencies must remove password policies that require special characters and regular password rotation from all systems
and yet companies still put that nonsense into their security policies.
I never said anything about using the VPN as an ACL. All I said was to only expose the service over the VPN. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the app doesn’t have authentication or authorization.
I’m also only talking about residential use cases, where it’s a common practice (when not using a VPN) to just expose everything via port forwarding. Businesses aren’t setting up Jellyfin on their servers.
true, fun fact a VPN is also an application with an auth layer. dun dun dun!
Sure, but someone would have to first get on the VPN, and then find vulnerable apps once on the internal network, as opposed to just scanning the internet for public-facing vulnerable systems. Wireguard (and thus Tailscale) doesn’t respond to port scans at all - it only responds to packets that are signed with a known key.
Admittedly, networking and network security isn’t my specialty so I’m absolutely sure you’ve got more knowledge in this area.
Wait what. $750? I think I paid like $100 years ago. Damn.
Same. It was my Xmas gift to myself. If not, I’d learn Jellyfin.
I paid 75 for mine and 150 for work.
Now I run both and use JF for myself and local and Plex for friends and family.
When Plex finishes fucking us over my friends and family can decide wether they want to deal with tailscale or go without.
