State of the Fin 2026-01-06

https://jellyfin.org/posts/state-of-the-fin-2026-01-06/

by wise_blood • 7 months ago

210 176 7 months ago

s_dev• 7 months ago

It's very interesting to see Plex users slowly turn against the platform primarily due to costs being imposed. Plex has better client software than Jellyfin but the 'proprietary vs open source' debate for NAS/video streaming software seems to be reversing. Jellyfin is catching up to Plex and in a few years despite Plex having a first mover advantage here -- I expect it to surpass Plex in monthly active users.

vachina• 7 months ago

Plex misjudged their market bigly. They’re turning into a streaming company, when what people paid for is a media server.

gadders4• 7 months ago

They've done so badly you would think the Mozilla Corp had bought them.

ninju2• 7 months ago

Plex Copilot 365 Office by Microsoft

paxys• 7 months ago

It's about more than just costs. Plex started out as a home media server (a direct port of XBMC/Kodi in fact), but over time due to its success the creators decided they wanted to turn it into Netflix instead. So using Plex to stream your own media to your own local or remote devices is being made harder with every update.

bombcar5• 7 months ago

XBMC is still somehow the best of them all, perhaps only in my memory.

But damn if it wasn't magical having all those movies at your fingertips in the early 2000s.

gf0004• 7 months ago

own media to your own local or remote devices

This was the point that made a bunch of people (me included) absolutely furious with Plex. Like I gladly pay for services and donate to open source projects. But it hits differently to pay for my very own hardware being used.

ziml77• 7 months ago

Accurate. I'd pay for Plex if I was supporting the development of software designed for watching your personal media collection. Genuinely I considered it not long ago, until I found out that they'd shifted away from caring about local media.

TacticalCoder2• 7 months ago

Totally. I'm not into politics and basically all I want is a local streamer and I'm running Plex (on an old HP EliteDesk NUC) but... I already tried Jellyfin (and trial was successful with a few movies), so I'll very likely be switching my entire setup from Plex to Jellyfin soon.

jdboyd• 7 months ago

I paid for Plex, but then they broke the the downloading features from the server to the Android client, and never repaired it to work reliably.

Meanwhile most of their updates were about streaming support, and then they started cramming their streaming service into it, and pushing it, and I just got sick of all of that. Eventually I just switched to jellyfin. It is far from perfect. The music player isn't as good as plex's, there is no download feature. But at least it hasn't turned on me yet.

NegatioN• 7 months ago

I feel like they did a somewhat recent update to the downloader which fixed things. I had issues before as well but not anymore.

The streaming issue is another matter though :/

crtasm2• 7 months ago

Jellyfin's Android app does let you download files but having to do music tracks one by one isn't very useful.

Finamp is the app to use for proper offline playback/sync of music from your Jellyfin server. Go for the beta version, it's far ahead of stable and works well.

1980phipsi• 7 months ago

Yeah, I don't mind paying for something, but they broke a bunch of stuff last year and it's still not fixed. That's what annoys me about plex.

Krastan• 7 months ago

I have the old version of the app pinned so it doesn't update to the new app. I occasionally check the reviews but they continue to be really bad.

add-sub-mul-div• 7 months ago

I've never paid Plex a dime because I don't need any of the paid features. But its usability gets worse with every update, which is an underappreciated reason to want off the platform.

observationist• 7 months ago

JellyFin is an open source project and is community driven and motivated by open source principles.

Plex is a VC funded project, they've raised some $50m to date. Crazy what money can buy, isn't it?

DANmode4• 7 months ago

Control over the user?, ability to turn them into a product (data)?

gosub100• 7 months ago

I also want to shout out to Emby, which is almost identical to Jellyfin. It seems a bit more polished, and works very well. I've been using it for over 2 years. It does have a paid tier and nags me to upgrade for 10s on my TV, but that doesn't bother me. I have it running in a freebsd jail and it's been rock solid.

Macha• 7 months ago

Note that Jellyfin is a fork of Emby from when Emby closed their source.

xienze3• 7 months ago

For me it wasn't even about cost, it was the fact that logging into my self-hosted Plex server required an auth flow that went to Plex's servers for some reason.

zen9282• 7 months ago

[flagged]

seniorThrowaway3• 7 months ago

Agree with others it's not solely about cost. For me it was about the very clear monetization drive Plex started doing years ago, while remaining nominally free to use for your own media. At some point, and I've already switched off it so maybe it's already happened, they will monetize tracking/meta data about what is in your own collection.

darknavi• 7 months ago

I have a Plex lifetime subscription but hold no strict allegiance to the company.

If Jellyfin was a comparable product (in user experience and ease of use for my extended family's platforms) I'd switch tomorrow.

horsawlarway2• 7 months ago

Yeah... worth looking again (or... with all due respect, maybe actually trying a first time).

Spoken as the person hosting a jellyfin instance for my extended family. I switched years ago and it's only gotten easier.

You can find things to complain about if you want to, but generally speaking - Jellyfin just works. The idea that it's not comparable is pretty silly.

driverdan2• 7 months ago

I have a lifetime subscription to Plex. I hate everything they've been doing over the past few years. They're completely ignoring their existing users in the quest for growth.

* Social sharing stuff that shows what you watch to others by default.

* Adding their streaming services and other paid services.

* Changing the UI layout to hide self hosted content, promote paid services, with poor UX for changing it back.

* Ignoring bugs that have been known and unfixed for years.

* Ignoring user feedback, doubling down on their poor decisions.

TheCondor• 7 months ago

Are they that terrible, or is it the market and those of us with our own media are becoming more of the minority? I do question, at times, the amount of effort I put in to curating and backing up and maintaining our media.

I too have a lifetime subscription, I don't mind a lot of what they do, but it feels like our media has become less centric, they want to stream pluto.tv channels and stuff like that.

The biggest thing I dislike was how I had a single app to all my media and then they blew that up and I need multiple apps. It's not that big of a hassle; I just wish I had more heads up to when it was going to happen. And while I'm not aware of them having any music-streaming media, the music app ever only streams my own media and feels like it might be on life support. Maybe music streaming is "done" but it feels kind of neglected.

barbazoo5• 7 months ago

We run a plex server and I hate it. Hiding "timer" functionality (turn off in x minutes) behind a paywall feels like a shit move to me as a parent for whom this is a pretty basic functionality.

jaffa25• 7 months ago

Ask for a refund.

barbazoo5• 7 months ago

Plus it's behind the $10 plex pass, not the $3 remote watch pass.

0x457• 7 months ago

It's not just that. It was great for all of us with large media archives, but every "big" release is making things better for those who don't run their media libraries at expense of those who do.

Syncing (a paid feature) was broken for years. It might download video, it might fail. You will find out on the plane.

When internet goes down, Plex becomes weird...my home network still works just fine.

Library navigation follows netflix pattern, but netflix pattern is to let me browse for hours without finding anything.

BowBun• 7 months ago

Not to pile on, but the reason we're pissed at Plex is because they did a classic rug-pull: advertise to nerds like us who own our servers + media, then slowly make deals with publishers, requiring them to police _my_ content. Then start adding subscriptions and limiting how I can share (again) _my_ content - what are they offering me anymore?

The irony is they won't have a customer base from my mom/dad. Why in god's green earth would a layperson pay for Plex when they can get streaming bundles? I just don't get it. And that's why I got rid of my ~10 year plex instance and replaced it with Jellyfin in maybe ~1 day.

Happy to help others do the same!

JuniperMesos2• 7 months ago

I never even looked into Plex, I don't want to run proprietary software I have to pay for on my own computer to serve my own music. I've only ever used Jellyfin and it works more or less ok for my use cases.

epistasis• 7 months ago

Jellyfin was super easy to get running on Arch a few months ago. With a Tailscale network, I have all my media devices connected to my very small but growing collection of DVD and Blu-ray media.

I'm old, I ripped all my CDs in the 1990s and early 2000s, but abandoned all of it when Apple Music replaced iTunes in a disaster of product launch. After a decade of streaming, I'm trying to head back to curated media files, at least for video. Music is far harder to obtain in ways that compensate the musicians, at least for the stuff I'm looking for.

hk1337• 7 months ago

That's pretty much exactly what happened to me. At the very least, I wish I had stored all the DVDs away somewhere. :(

I cancelled all my subscriptions this year and working on getting JellyFin up and I was thinking of paying for GameFly or some other DVD service and start putting a library back together. Torrenting just seems icky to me and I am not convinced I could find good copies.

spikej• 7 months ago

What about your local public library as a source? (that's worked for me)

bombcar5• 7 months ago

If you have a local library they can often get most anything eventually.

cheschire3• 7 months ago

I have to thank Plex for changing their cost model. It motivated me to setup Jellyfin, something that took slightly more effort than Plex. And by getting that inertia going, I then followed up with Navidrome, a local OSM service with routing, and finally my own mediawiki copy that has a starting point from the pre-AI days as well as an annual content refresh so my "compare" history is short and simple on all articles.

That inspired me to build a homelab finally, which then became a NAS, which then became an OCIS server to replace my commercial cloud storage.

I finally got proxmox setup, OPNsense, with Caddy for reverse proxying the externally facing services and tailscale for access to those services I want to keep only for me and not others in my family.

So yeah, all of this big massive avalanche of work started with the little tiny snowball of Plex deciding they wanted to charge me to use my own media while away from my house.

Thanks Plex!

And thanks Jellyfin for being a fantastic alternative for video.

hart_russell3• 7 months ago

Eh, I was happy to pay Plex a one time fee of ~$120 for a lifetime license. I'd rather just set up Plex in a docker container and expose that port than deal with a bunch of services constantly needing doctoring in my homelab.

toomuchtodo2• 7 months ago

I too have the lifetime pass. A group of us collectively manages >1PB of content via Plex. But we need an offramp to derisk enshittification, and Jellyfin is that readiness capability. If you have no option to switch to when the time comes, you are SOL. Even if I did not use Jellyfin today (I do for a music catalog, but it is not primary), I am willing to provide them recurring donations to make sure they are ready when I need them.

(ymmv, I work in risk management, a component of which is vendor risk management, so the professional mental model gets applied to home systems when applicable; rug pull? not on my watch, and the rug pull will happen eventually)

DJBunnies• 7 months ago

I see both sides, I paid $5 in 2013, but each time I use it I feel like they keep pushing their own content to the home screen.

seniorThrowaway3• 7 months ago

I've run both and Jellyfin is actually easier to run IMO, since it is in package managers. Also has free android/iphone app. What do you think you have to do in Jellyfin you don't in Plex?

gf0004• 7 months ago

If you already have docker containers setup, then it is absolutely no different to run jellyfin compared to Plex.

hamdingers4• 7 months ago

I was happy to buy a lifetime pass many years ago, but as they've removed many of the features I cared about (offline auth, plugins, photo backup, watch together, etc.) I have come to realize that I directly funded enshittification. I wish I could've bought a lifetime pass to the version of the software at that time instead of a lifetime of downgrades.

Jellyfin is also a single docker container, by the way. That would've been an easy thing to verify before making this comment.

LollipopYakuza• 7 months ago

I understand your reluctance, I was not very optimistic when I started installing Jellyfin.

Turns out it is pretty straightforward and I never had to deal with the hassle of maintenance. The two non-mandatory configuration steps I had to make were: - the file permission to share Jellyfin's library with my torrent daemon. But IIRC this is the same with Plex. - the nginx reverse-proxy with WebSocket for the "watch together like" feature to work

zamadatix3• 7 months ago

I sort of went the opposite way. I had a giant homelab already and paid for Plex lifetime (just because I thought it was good software after years of use, not because I really needed the features or anything) but then I ended up consolidating all of my media to just being a bare metal Linux standard PC case running a plain NFS share (I guess that's still a NAS, but perhaps more spartan than the usual connotation) which clients like Infuse or a local media player app can just load directly.

bombcar5• 7 months ago

I used a SMB share with Infuse for awhile and it worked well, but adding Jellyfin in the middle made it much easier for the kids/wife to understand how to find things.

(For awhile I was VLC off a ram SMB share but that was confusing even to me sometimes.)

MadnessASAP• 7 months ago

I would also like to thank Jellyfin and the other software packages in its orbit for motivating me to keep my homelab in good running order. That and Home Assistant.

When compared to the current breed of streaming services it really shows the difference between something designed to drive up engagement and revenue while driving down cost vs something designed to actually be useful and pleasant.

Also I hadn't heard of OCIS, but it looks like something I want. So thanks for that.

phailhaus• 7 months ago

This is like the infamous Dropbox comment.

- Plex

or...

- Jellyfin

- Navidrome

- Homelab

- proxmox

- OPNsense

- Caddy

- Tailscale

Plex is not worried about people like you, because you just described an insane amount of effort just to avoid a one-time cost. Most will not.

ibejoeb• 7 months ago

What does plex do? I installed jellyfin from its apt repo and it's running.

chung8123• 7 months ago

It is hard to beat the polish that Plex has. I setup Jellyfin to try it out and I couldn't find a client that was smooth or had the polish of the Plex apps. The AppleTV app was close but then I go down the rabbit hole of codec support. Wanted to like Jellyfin but without a nice looking front end it was a non-starter for me. Good news is you can have the side by side and if a time comes it gets parity with Plex I will be happy to change over.

iceflinger• 7 months ago

The only two of those you actually need to have a Plex-like setup are Jellyfin and Tailscale, both are trivial to setup and will run on basically any hardware you can imagine wanting to use for this.

samdk• 7 months ago

Most of that stuff isn't necessary just to replace Plex, the OP's saying them Jellyfin started them on a journey they're presumably enjoying, not that they needed everything there to replace it.

I think you're right the bar is still too high for most folks, although I will note that I think it's dramatically lower than it used to be. A lot of the tools are all-around way easier to deal with, tailscale makes a lot of "personal cloud" use-cases much more feasible, and then coding agents (I'm using claude code) dramatically reduce the labor costs of getting this stuff all working and fixing it when something goes wrong.

stavros2• 7 months ago

It's not a one-time cost, it's a subscription now.

DANmode4• 7 months ago

Why are we worried if they’re worried?

mikepurvis3• 7 months ago

I had a rough time with Jellyfin like 6-7 years ago, with media not populating/playing properly, and metadata being lost on upgrade, etc.

Tried again a few months ago and couldn't be happier. The whole thing is very stable and reliable. I think my only annoyance is that the HW I have it running on isn't beefy enough for transcoding, and my LG C4 can't play some of the 4K codecs natively (particularly around DV). Obviously this isn't Jellyfin's fault, but this kind of thing is just one more item for the list of stuff to have randomly be a surprise when setting up this kind of thing.

JamesSwift3• 7 months ago

Transcoding generally isnt about raw power and is really just a function of having hardware transcoding support. Minipcs with 'recentish' intel chips handle it with ease for a couple hundred dollars all in (pre-DRAM price increases at least)

jgauth2• 7 months ago

Which app are you using on your TV? I've had success direct-playing 4K content with the jellyfin Android TV app. On AppleTV, Infuse works well. Infuse isn't free, but it is worth the money to me.

jszymborski• 7 months ago

local OSM service with routing

Woah cool! Does it work well? Google Maps is the only Google service I really rely on these days.

cheschire3• 7 months ago

Ehhh, it’s a backup if, you know, the internet dies right when I need some routing. Seems to only be once every year or two. It’s not a good primary tool though.

There are a few approaches to tile generation, and the routing engine I used offers 2 alternate routes.

Claude Code whipped up a new front end for me that switches between various tile sets and provides a turn by turn instruction overlay.

It’s a tool worth having for me at least.

have_faith• 7 months ago

What does Navidrome add over streaming music via Jellyfin, is it just better more tailored client apps? The music client apps for JF are a bit bare bones, although the streaming itself I've found to work perfectly.

biotinker2• 7 months ago

The Subsonic API is pretty fantastic and the apps that support it are full-featured. The Jellyfin app, while completely capable of streaming music, is far far less feature-ful.

Personally I use Gonic rather than Navidrome, because I don't care about a web UI, but if you go to the Navidrome website and look at the "Apps" page it lists every Subsonic API compatible app. There's a lot.

cdrnsf2• 7 months ago

The streaming works well, but I like the focus on audio and performance of Navidrome. I've cycled from Plex/Plexamp to Jellyfin and am happiest with Navidrome.

I've written a client for Navidrome however, so I'm biased by the investment in time that required.

I've also spent time working with several of its private APIs to track my own listening activity.

throwoutway• 7 months ago

I haven't logged into Plex in a while but did decide that the next time I need it will just setup Jellyfin instead. Nice to see they support all my devices iOS AndroidTV FireTV

NoMoreNicksLeft4• 7 months ago

Can Jellyfin (or Emby, for that matter) get the interface half as slick as Plex? I keep checking every few months, and it leaves me underwhelmed. I've got the lifetime license from Plex so I'm less motivated maybe... but even ignoring that, there's the issue of badgering 20 or 30 other people to switch clients. It'd literally take me years to plan out such a project and I'm hoping someone can talk me into it.

gadders4• 7 months ago

JFC just write a proper Samsung client.

[I'm aware there is one I can muck around with and install via Samsung developer portal]

osamagirl69• 7 months ago

The second to last bullet point on the post is about the Samsung client, which (as you are aware) has been written but is currently held up in review Samsung. The first round of review took about 3 months(?!), and they are working through reproducing the vaguely stated issues found in the review.

It is thankless work, but they are actually quite close!

gadders4• 7 months ago

Finally! I can't wait to uninstall Plex.

hexbin010• 7 months ago

Ditch Samsung mate. Their consumer/appliance division products are trash

bigstrat20033• 7 months ago

Not the same person, but unfortunately one doesn't always have a choice. My wife is absolutely in love with the Samsung Frame TV, therefore we have one (much to my dismay).

gadders4• 7 months ago

Long term, maybe. Definitely not buying a fridge with a screen.

ZeroCool2u• 7 months ago

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen/issues/222#issuec...

mac-attack• 7 months ago

We have been moving quickly to address these issues, delivering four additional point releases with over 100 changes since the initial 10.11.0 release. To date, most point releases have focused on resolving general and migration-related issues. The remaining migration issues are largely isolated, one-off cases and are unlikely to be resolved.

I guess that's my cue to finally try and upgrade. I dragged my feet given how widespread the friction of the upgrade, but if this is as good as it's going to get, I might as well pull the bandaid off now.

pathartl2• 7 months ago

I've been having massive performance issues, specifically with the database locking. Disabling the Playback Reporting plugin resolved the issue.

Mydayyy• 7 months ago

I'm in the same boat, still on the older version and monitoring the new updates. There's an issue list on github for the .11 release, and while aaalot got resolved, theres still some big things open (#15045). But the jellyfin team is doing amazing work and I'm thankful.

A few of my users already messaged me that with the next version, the android tv app will cease to work with the old jellyfin version, so I guess I have to upgrade soon

grepex• 7 months ago

For anyone with a Radar/Sonarr/Jellyfin setup - do yourself a favor and set up Jellyseerr too. It's a request system for other to request library additions. Install moonfin on your firetv/androidtv and downloads can be initiated straight from your TV!

veilrap2• 7 months ago

The fact that Jellyfin lacks a AppleTV/tvOS app seems like it continues to make it a dealbreaker... at least for my setup.

I hear people recommending clients like Infuse, but it feels odd to swap out Plex at this point if I can't go all in on the open source side of things.

Am I missing something here wrt Jellyfin clients? I guess I could try running it side-by-side with Plex and see how it goes.

Crisco• 7 months ago

Swiftfin is the tvOS app: https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin

pathartl2• 7 months ago

My parents and brother use Infuse. I would use it even over the official Plex app.

CharlesW• 7 months ago

There Swiftfin, Jellyfin Mobile, and Streamyfin at least. My forthcoming iOS-only music player has first-class Jellyfin support (beta sign-up: https://forms.gle/AGLePh9RtaYEfDH6A) if you're looking for a dedicated, offline-capable music app.

wintermutestwin• 7 months ago

I use Infuse on an appletv and simply point it at a samba share. Easiest setup ever. What am I missing out on by not using jellyfin or plex?

bombcar5• 7 months ago

Jellyfin offers tracking across devices and easy notification of "new" media - Infuse alone had to scan the share now and then which was cumbersome.

tedivm2• 7 months ago

Jellyfin has three AppleTV apps!

SwiftFin is what I use, and it is the free and open source option. Works great.

Before that stabilized I used Infuse, but it wasn't great.

MrMC is another one I haven't tried, but it definitely supports Jellyfin.

veilrap2• 7 months ago

Ah! I didn't realize that the official client's page was filtered by "recommended" by default.

I wonder why the officially developed SwiftFin isn't shown as recommended? I guess maybe because it's still considered beta.

russelg• 7 months ago

There is also VidHub which I've been playing around with. It's also paid but it's cheaper than Infuse.

turtletontine• 7 months ago

I have Kodi running on a raspberry pi plugged into my Google TV. The Jellyfin plugin for Kodi works flawlessly so far for me. It’s just great! Sure if I could put Jellyfin directly on the TV, that would save me the RPi. But not a big deal for me.

eisa012• 7 months ago

It is in the pipeline at least: https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin/discussions/1294

As my needs are quite simple, I currently just use VLC with a SMB share. Works quite well, VLC is able to play standard .mkvs just fine! http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-appletv.html

eisa012• 7 months ago

Oh, and this just dropped - a new open source Jellyfin client: https://github.com/ghobs91/mediora

Even supports some of that *arr stuff

jgauth2• 7 months ago

Am I missing something here wrt Jellyfin clients?

Unfortunately, I don't think so. I had many issues with playback on ATV using Swiftfin. Infuse works very well, so it is worth the ~$15 yearly to me. I am hopeful that Swiftfin will improve over time, they have a few dedicated developers working on it.

JimBlackwood• 7 months ago

Jellyfin has Swiftfin, I’ve been using it for a few years now.

There are some small bugs that you can work around. The rework to the new version has been in progress for about two years but it works just fine right now.

KolenCh• 7 months ago

Small bugs? May be. But there’s a lot of lack of functionality and stability. I’d recommend InFuse if anyone is hitting those problems. If it has been running fine for you then there’s no need to switch. The problem is related to source codec. Depending on that you’ll have difference experience. So that’s why the experience varies because there’s vast differences in source formats. A good client not only handles well on some sources, but many if not all.

glimshe• 7 months ago

Jellyfin is love.

A game changing project that solved my streaming scenarios. It just works.

keytarsolo• 7 months ago

I like Jellyfin, and run it alongside Plex.

But they have a very long way to before they reach feature parity with even just the stuff I use. Let alone everything Plex can do.

I think this year I’m going to try and find an issue or feature I can contribute on. I’d like to end up moving to Jellyfin based on it being good and not Plex being bad.

austin-cheney• 7 months ago

Jellyfin, and my current job doing enterprise API management, inspired me to build out a home lab around a custom built application that does server monitoring and launches servers and proxies for both HTTP and WebSockets in seconds.

ninju2• 7 months ago

While nothing has been finalized yet, we are considering 'dropping' the major version 10, which would make the next release 12.0

You mean to say dropping version 11 (and moving straight to 12)

gavinsyancey• 7 months ago

The previous release was 10.11 and the next would ordinarily be 10.12. They're considering dropping the leading "10" so the next is just 12 (from the minor version).

ronsor• 7 months ago

The macOS (formerly Mac OS X) route

wishJFWorked• 7 months ago

Can Jellyfin finally passthrough audio like Atmos? When I checked mid-2025 on my Nvidia Shield it _still_ didn’t work properly.

tylerflick• 7 months ago

If you’re referencing the Android TV client, yes I have both Atmos and DTS:X streaming as passthrough to my receiver. One thing of note is that DTS:X only seems to work with MKV containers on Android.

zenoprax• 7 months ago

I've been running a Jellyfin server for nearly four years now. I never tried Plex or Emby but JF has been an impressive bit of software.

The availability of clients (Roku, Apple TV, Android, Xbox) is good enough that I have no problem inviting friends and family to join mine. I've learned so much about the tech bubble I live in simply from getting them onto the server.

I think the biggest obstacle to adoption beyond simple home servers is the reliance on SQLlite. If it were possible to set it up with Postgres you could run a monster server on AWS with RDS, S3, a Kubernetes. Not sure about the business case for that... but I would enjoy setting it up and pushing it to its limits.

cdrnsf2• 7 months ago

I'm glad Swiftfin is getting some attention. Their Roku app is solid and Infuse is an excellent option for Apple's ecosystem.

wackget• 7 months ago

Does anyone else not really "get" these media managers? Personally I still find it much easier to grab media from a torrent and watch it on a computer using VLC. It requires zero setup.

I do have the benefit of a PC connected to my living room TV, but even if I didn't, most TVs these days can natively play media from a network share.

jaffa25• 7 months ago

The benefit of plex ( and jelly fin falls down here) is that anyone with any smart tv can access your media library just like Netflix . So family, friends etc can download the plex app, sign in and start watching your stuff.

There’s wide compatibility with all sort of devices and you dont need to firewall tunnel vpn or do any setup. It’s totally grandma friendly.

Your approach works great for a single user with a tv connected PC. Lets say with your current system you want your parents, right now, to be able to view your movies files. How easy is that to do, and how much technical knowledge or assistance is required?

barnabee2• 7 months ago

It's mostly about the UI. Browsing a network share is pretty ugly (generic icons, filenames, etc.) and can be unintuitive. Basic things like quickly finding the latest file you've added can be quite difficult.

Ultimately if you just want to browse a filesystem, network shares are fine, but if you want a nice looking front end for that with logos/artwork, descriptions or reviews from the internet, or features that require the files and metadata to be indexed in a DB of some kind, then these UIs come in handy.

Plus they look nice are generally easier for other less tech. savvy members of the househould to use.

nvarsj• 7 months ago

I went down the rabbithole when I started getting into seasonal Anime watching. Doing that manually is a huge PITA for every show/episode.

Now I just get a pop-up on my phone that Plex has the latest episode. I sit on my couch, hit play on my nvidia shield, and watch on my giant OLED. It's great - and I've been doing this for years now.

Once you go through the initial set up, the UX is fantastic. Far better than anything Netflix, or any commercial provider has ever built.

And for music - Plexamp is an ode to Winamp and is worth it alone. It completely brought me back to the pre-Spotify world of music enjoyment.

kevstev• 7 months ago

I kind of hear you on this- its not super necessary, but it can be convenient. I use Synology VideoStation which is a part of their NAS Suite. We keep a small library of often rewatched stuff- holiday movies, a few of the wifes favorites, etc... and the nice thing is I can play it on any TV in my house from an app on my phone. I can also stream to say my local laptop when I am away if I wanted to as well, though I think I have done that exactly once.

What is a little nicer about it is that we can hear about something, have it downloaded to the folder that gets indexed, and have it available to play near instantaneously. My NAS also does transcoding if necessary, so that eliminates a lot of hassles around codecs and such as well.

A lot of people take this a step further and avoid all paid services and just use tools like radarr and sonarr to get whatever content they are interested automatically off the high seas and play it when they want to.

The network share is the hard part- well really having the always on server that hosts it- plex/jellyfin/emby etc are just a little bit of sugar on top that make it a nicer experience. And IME, you install once and you are done, there is no maintenance to deal with afterwards so there is little downside.

worksonmine• 7 months ago

As a hoarder the *arrs makes adding content seamless. I just set my preferred quality and it will download it as soon as it's released from the trackers I've setup. Even for movie collections it adds sequels I wasn't aware was in the pipeline. It's more about the ecosystem than the individual tools.

And my content is always available from my NAS no matter where I am or what device I have with me.

HauntingPin• 7 months ago

I use Jellyfish so I can access my library from anywhere using any of my devices like my phone or laptoo. My partner can also easily access my library using her browser.

flylikeabanana• 7 months ago

Beyond just playing the files from storage, I also get subtitles, metadata, play history / continue watching / next up, a nice 10-foot UI, and the ability to satisfy my ADHD curiousity by clicking around tags / actors / directors and seeing what else I have from them in my library.

TacticalCoder2• 7 months ago

Does anyone else not really "get" these media managers? Personally I still find it much easier to grab media from a torrent and watch it on a computer using VLC. It requires zero setup.

I do both. But when watching with the family it's much easier to have them a media streaming server than to have to hook the PC to the TV (or projector) and use VLC.

Now at times for whatever reason some media file won't play over the network: dunno why... Maybe it's a blue moon, maybe there's a space in the filename, maybe I didn't respect the directory naming scheme or the file permission or whatever freaking bullshit. When that happens, I put the file on a USB stick, then on to a laptop, then HDMI cable. And that always work. (just had to make sure the TV wasn't using interpolation to 60 Hz or whatever otherwise every movie looked like a soap opera).

dandano• 7 months ago

I'm almost like you, I just download what I want to watch. But instead of going through network files - I have Plex Media Server on my M1 Macbook Air. Plex looks at the downloads folder, indexes it into a nice viewing experience that I use Plex app on the TV to connect to my local Plex server. It's a very seamless experience.

monocasa• 7 months ago

Is anyone running a horizontally scaled instance jellyfin?

I have a weird setup where power isn't really a concern, have a bunch of ancient blades, access to a fast uplink, and am looking to set this up for a smallish collective of about 100 people.

A single node would definitely fall over, but a little cluster should be able to do a good job.

wise_blood• 7 months ago

My current setup, maybe to inspire someone or to get suggestions:

- server: my laptop. I manually download everything.

- clients: everything in LAN with a browser, plus Jellyfin android client.

- typical use: open android app, cast to big tv, watch on big tv.

next planned steps:

- move the server to a minicomputer. Still download everything manually from the laptop to the server

- convince myself it's time to use the *arr programs

- once Jellyfin has a Tizen client, ditch the android app + chromecast for good

cdurth• 7 months ago

I don't understand the jellyfin hype tbh. Every year I spin it up to test and am always disappointed. If you only consume your media on a web browser, then 100% recommend jellyfin. If you consume on anything else the apps are bare bones and seriously lacking, potentially not even existing. I despise the frequent and ugly Plex UI changes they push out, but the app works on every device and TV brand I've had.

The take away is the app ecosystem needs some serious bolstering. That's the holdup for most people I know who are still sticking with Plex.

anacrolix• 7 months ago

I can't understand the love for Jellyfin. Kodi lets you pick multiple sources of data, but Jellyfin flips it on its head and requires you pick a single server, choose the sources there, then add Kodi or something else all over again. It's just more steps for no gain.

State of the Fin 2026-01-06

Related Stories