Think I’d rather pay that towards the development of Jellyfin
I used to curse and scream at my jellyfin software and apps, now I swear by them.
I took a day out of my life, not even a full day lol, and just watched countless YouTube videos on how to set it up and how to customize it how I like.
Now it’s my absolute favorite. I’m learning about building a home server and all that jazz now and I feel nostalgic, like a kid building his first computer lol!
That blows. I just use the Plex app on my TV for free streaming channels. 24/7 Top Gear reruns FTW!
Guess it’s time I listen to all those jellyfin Fanboys
So they think it’s acceptable to charge people to access their own files. Good Luck with that morons.
I pay a dude to access his files 😎
As long as their not Plex’s files I see no Issue that they should be compensated for.
So the media that I host is now no longer streamable when I am outside my home network? The fuck?
That’s my server, my bandwidth, my electricity and they are blocking it?
That’s enshittification for ya.
Meanwhile, all “lifetime pass” holders are encouraging this, while they have no skin in the game.
That $75 Lifetime Plex Pass is looking like a good decision by past me.
Until they remove or add something that this tier doesn’t get.
Jellyfin is the future.
Jellyfin is so much better anyway. I used plex for years and it has steadily enshitified.
Honestly I’ve tried jellyfin and I have a hard time agreeing with this for a few reasons:
- UI generally more unresponsive than Plex;
- changes to correct a show/movie being assigned the wrong show/movie metadata very slow to propagate if at all, same for changing other library options like title language preference;
- generally slower to buffer and get into videos;
- very rough android lollipop UI;
- not as easy to set up tech illiterate friends for play together.
I’ll give you that morally jellyfin is less customer-adverse than Plex management is at the moment and it is more open in some ways so you can have more plugins and add-ons that Plex lacks, and sure it’s a free product so it should be given some leeway.
… but if I just listened to all of the people saying jellyfin is just so much better I’d think it was an objectively better offering, but it’s not. When it comes to what I care about, it fell short, so just giving my 2 cents. Still worth trying, considering you can just point it to the same media folders, but yeah not god’s gift on earth.
Thats fair. I haven’t really noticed any of those issues. For my use case of just organizing and streaming my desktop’s media library to my TV, its fantastic.
i’ve had none of those issues and i’ve been a jellyfin user for the past 5 years or so, but I do use containers for the server.
Android client is not great, but there are alternatives like Findroid, which is pretty great.
Last point is literally a couple of clicks. You just need to understand what libraries are and how to add them.
Agreed. Started out in Plex when j knew nothing about self hosting, very quickly made the switch to Jellyfin and haven’t looked back. If I’m hosting my media, storing it locally, and running my own server, I’m much better off not integrating the software of some company that feels entitled to bleed some extra revenue from me.
Could you explain why you feel that Jellyfin is a lot better? I’ve seen lots of folks saying it lately, but as someone with an unraid server running plex to back up and view my music and movie collections for years, I don’t get it. I’ve tried Jellyfin twice now. The most recent time was a couple of months ago. While it is good, I honestly have a hard time seeing what makes it much better than Plex. While I disagree with a number of things Plex has done, I still recommend it to friends who want a personal media server or place to rip and backup their CDs to. It’s still the easiest to setup and most intuitive imo. Am I just missing something?
The most infuriating thing about Plex for me was when they shifted to force you to start with their BS streaming service at open. I only used Plex for my personal media collection. So having to jump through a bunch of menus to get to the only thing I want to use in their app was the biggest reason to switch for me. Maybe there is a way to fix that, but I could never find one.
Jellyfin just does your personal media library and opens right up into it when the app starts. Its simpler, faster, and FOSS.
RIP Plex
Well, sounds like I have six weeks to spin up Jellyfin side-by-side with Plex to see if I can get away with not paying the $120 ransom…
Plex is the current war front. May it hold for many years
the idea of stockpiling a lifetimes AV entertainment being within normie’s grasp must have media congloms terrified. Problem is - that accessibility poses risks for us filesharers too, cause a panicked animal is an aggressive one
New USD prices as of April 29, 2025 will be:
Monthly: $6.99
Yearly: $69.99
Lifetime: $249.99
Oof I paid $75 in 2013 for lifetime lol.
I like how no one is mentioning that they removed the one time fees for their mobile apps to be able to play media at all. Also, only the server owner needs Plex Pass and anyone they share with can stream for free.
They are removing it to make money from a subscription instead. You’re making it sound like they are doing something good!
How so? My friends need to use my account or else they need to pay to watch my movie? Did that change?
Read the article
The US$75 Lifetime price has traditionally been their Black Friday deal, regardless of the usual price.
Anyone’s guess if that deal will still be a thing, given their recent behaviour, though.
Paid 99, worst investment i did till now.
Me too 🫢
I have a lifetime Plex pass.
I tried out Jellyfin last month.
Now Plex is uninstalled.
Even if we ignore the differences when it comes to matters of FOSS, cost, corporate control, privacy, etc, Jellyfin’s performance is just so much better.
Setting it up to run over https while fully self-hosted was a learning process for somebody who isn’t a web dev, but holy crap was it worth it.
I tried Jelly Fin last month based on a thread here and it was a damned dumpster fire. As bad a Plex is for remote streaming, JF is far worse for the average person.
Hard disagree. I think jellyfin is much better than Plex.
In what way? I share my server with 8 friends/family and it does everything I need it to.
Unable to set up a working server for outside of the home network. Also, the UI is terrible and didn’t organize things well.
Setting up remote access is the same for Plex and Jellyfin so I’m confused. All you need to do is to forward port 8096 or use a reverse proxy like nginx if you want a domain.
I have plex.domain.com and jellyfin.domain.com and it was the exact same process for both.
i’ve been using http://playit.gg/ to set up a simple proxy that i can share with my friends! You just forward the port that jellyfin uses and share the link (and it works for all manner of other servers)
When I tried that service recently I found that it’s incredibly slow. It’s like all the ISPs in the Philippines intentionally throttle it or something. In contrast to that, using Zerotier to connect instead gives me normal speeds.
It’s just not the same. If all you need is local access or tailscale to your instance it’s fine, sure you can cancel Plex. If you’re sharing with friends or family or like the easy access to it that doesn’t require being part of the private network. Also I like subtitles and Plex handles this way better than Jellyfin. At least last time I played with it
There were some hoops for me to jump through in order to get secure remote access working for sure. Fortunately for my family that connect remotely, it’s transparent for them and doesn’t require any kind of VPN or tunnel. They just need URL, user, and password.
And for subtitles I’m not sure what the differences are between the two, but I’ve used them plenty on jellyfin and they seemed to work well and render nicely.
Deceptive title. If the person hosting the server has Plex pass then it’s still free for other users to use remote playback.
How is it deceptive? No plex pass on the server? No remote streaming.
It’s deceptive because it leaves out the most important part. That is if you aren’t using the free version of Plex (AKA you have the lifetime pass), this doesn’t affect you. It’s a non-issue for anyone smart enough to get lifetime subscription.
Jellyfin is free. Your own domain is like $10 a year or less.
Tailscale is also free.
Possibly a bit annoying for family members used to just logging in though. It’s an extra step.
There’s always other free options like duckdns, etc.
Duckdns is not stable enough. You’ll have downtime multiple times a year.
It was my go to dynamic DNS provider for years, but after noticing that it would take a good few seconds for my Jellyfin instance (among all the other stuff I self host) to load, I traced the issue down to duck DNS taking too long to resolve.
I switched to using ddclient in docker which updates my own domain’s records on Cloud flare with my dynamic IP. Now things load instantly.
It’s a free service, I think that’s fair.
If you don’t kind connecting directly with your IP address, you don’t even have to pay a domain. Been doing this for around 2 years
Just shared in another comment, instead of doing this you can also use http://playit.gg/ to create a proxy without requiring an account and also not requiring port forwarding. They lease you a domain name, too
No love for Emby here?
I have a lifetime membership to Emby premium. I just switched to Jellyfin. Emby is kind of dead in the water as far as development. Not abandoned but not really forging ahead. And it doesn’t have as much community plug-in support. If you like the features as they are, it’s a good platform. I got enough years out of my premium payment to not fully regret it, but I’m not going to let it anchor me to a stale feature set. I don’t need the support and I can always fall back to it if I have to.
