The J series of Plex player apps is a popular choice for streaming media, but transcoding is not an option. Instead, users should use media files that their clients can direct play correctly. This is not the cheapest option, but using the DS220j for media and running a separate Plex server is recommended.
Adding streaming services to Plex allows access to content from platforms like Netflix, Hulu, or Disney+ directly through the Plex interface. However, there are issues with the J series, such as not adding seasons 2-3, season 4, and season 5-8, as all files are saved as.mkv.
Plex Pass is available for premium users, which unlocks advanced features like offline downloads, TV DVR support, and parental controls. It also grants access to a library of TV shows currently available to stream.
Play series is another issue with Plex, as it requires a Plex Pass to unlock HW. Astrolology has transformed all twelve iconic Zodiac symbols into fun characters with big personalities. Plex offers player apps across a wide range of smart TV manufacturers and models, with native video support typically limited to MP4 container, H.264 video encoding, and AAC audio.
Matthew J. Kok, a Canadian actor born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, has a Capricorn zodiac sign and is associated with the Chinese Astrology. With free movies, documentaries, and TV content, as well as top movies available to rent, Plex can help make your mediaverse bigger than ever.
In conclusion, Plex is a powerful tool for streaming media, but it is essential to use media files that clients can direct play correctly.
📹 TOP PLEX MEDIA SERVER SETTINGS – BEST STREAMING SOFTWARE 2022
This is the Official Plex Media Server Guide 2022. We go through every aspect of the Plex Media Server. We include prime …
Why is Plex not illegal?
Plex is a trusted partner with content providers, but users possess the ability to illegally exploit its powers. This can lead to piracy, where users can upload illegally obtained content on their personal media server. Plex is perfectly legal when streaming from their server or uploading legally acquired and reproduced media. However, users can put illegally obtained content on their personal media server, as it is not a peer-to-peer media sharing platform, making the impact relatively low-profile even when the content is pirated. In essence, Plex can become an unwitting accomplice when combined with users’ capacity for malfeasance.
What is Plex compatible with?
Plex Media Server is compatible with all major operating systems and NAS devices, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. Standard Web technologies, such as browser cookies, are used by Plex and its partners to ensure the site’s functionality and security. Users can disable these cookies by changing their browser settings, but it may affect the site’s functionality. Analytics cookies, optionally enabled by Plex, are used to improve the website by collecting and reporting information on user usage.
Google and Facebook analytics are used to derive insights about user behavior and enhance the user experience. These cookies are only set if users agree to and enable them. Once accepted, a cookie is set to remember preferences. Users can change their mind and consent choices at any time by returning to the site.
Can Plex stream to TV?
Plex is a streaming media player that allows users to watch movies and TV shows on any internet-connected device, including streaming media players, smart TVs, smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Users don’t need to create an account to use Plex, but it offers benefits like access to a universal Watchlist, customization of streaming services, and the ability to pick up where you left off on any device. Create a free Plex account and add movies to your universal Watchlist, favorite channels to your live TV lineup, and personalize your streaming services.
Why won’t Plex work on my TV?
To troubleshoot issues with Plex Media Server, ensure that the current version is installed, the server is active, and the server is listed on your Devices page. Plex and its partners use standard Web technologies, such as browser cookies, to ensure the site works and enable core functionality. Disabling these cookies may affect the site’s functionality. Analytics cookies, optionally enabled by Plex, are used to improve the website by collecting and reporting information on user usage.
Google and Facebook analytics are used to derive insights about user behavior and enhance the user experience. These cookies are only set if users agree to and enable them. Once accepted, a cookie is set on the device to remember preferences. Users can change their mind and consent choices at any time by returning to the site.
What files can Plex play?
Plex and its partners use standard web technologies, such as browser cookies, to ensure the functionality of their site and core functionality. These cookies are necessary for security, network management, and accessibility. Users can disable these cookies by changing their browser settings, but it may affect the site’s functionality. They also enable analytics cookies, which are optional and used by Google and Facebook, to improve the website and user experience.
These cookies are set unless users agree to and enable them. Once accepted, a cookie is set on the device to remember preferences. Users can change their mind and consent choices at any time by returning to the site. This allows Plex to improve the site and user experience.
How to use Plex legally?
Plex is a software that allows users to create their own private streaming service, which can be accessed from various devices. Users can load up their own media, such as music and video files, and connect to the service from their devices. This allows them to play back the content without violating copy-protection measures. Users can also share logins with their friends and family, ensuring that they are using legitimately purchased media without violating copy-protection measures.
However, if the streams are private performances and only one copy is made, there is no need for a special license. This is similar to putting a legitimate copy from a CD onto an iPod. It is legal to use media purchased at the store without a special license.
Why can’t I watch Plex on my TV?
To troubleshoot issues with Plex Media Server, ensure that the current version is installed, the server is active, and the server is listed on your Devices page. Plex and its partners use standard Web technologies, such as browser cookies, to ensure the site works and enable core functionality. Disabling these cookies may affect the site’s functionality. Analytics cookies, optionally enabled by Plex, are used to improve the website by collecting and reporting information on user usage.
Google and Facebook analytics are used to derive insights about user behavior and enhance the user experience. These cookies are only set if users agree to and enable them. Once accepted, a cookie is set on the device to remember preferences. Users can change their mind and consent choices at any time by returning to the site.
How to get Plex TV for free?
Plex’s ‘Movies and Shows’ streaming service is free and ad-supported, allowing users to watch over-the-air broadcasts at their location. To access broadcasts, users need a compatible tuner and antenna. Plex and its partners use standard Web technologies, such as browser cookies, to ensure the site’s functionality and security. Users can disable these cookies by changing their browser settings, but it may affect the site’s functionality. Analytics cookies are also enabled to improve the website by collecting and reporting information on user usage.
Google and Facebook analytics are used to derive insights about user behavior and improve the user experience. These cookies are only set if users agree to and enable them. Once accepted, a cookie is set on the device to remember preferences. Users can change their mind and consent choices at any time by returning to the site.
Can you get caught using Plex?
The 2020 law prohibits large-scale streaming on Plex, which can lead to suspension, lifetime ban, fines, or legal action. To avoid this, users should use Plex responsibly and follow their guidelines. If you’re unsure about Plex and just want a basic streaming service, there are many other options available. RapidSeedbox’s high-speed seedboxes ensure a safe and secure streaming experience, offering faster downloads, improved privacy, and exceptional support.
By following these guidelines, you can enjoy watching your favorite movies and shows without worry. Ultimately, using Plex responsibly and following the guidelines can ensure a smooth and enjoyable streaming experience.
Is it safe to expose Plex to Internet?
Plex and its partners use standard web technologies, such as browser cookies, to ensure secure connections to the server. These cookies are necessary for core functionality like security, network management, and accessibility. Users can disable these cookies by changing their browser settings, but it may affect the site’s functionality. They also enable analytics cookies, which collect and report information on user usage, specifically using Google and Facebook analytics.
These cookies are optional and will only be set if users agree to and enable them. Once accepted, a cookie is set on your device to remember your preferences. Users can change their mind and consent choices at any time by returning to the site.
Can you play your own files on Plex?
Plex is a music library that automatically organizes songs and albums, providing cover art, artist bios, genres, and more. It supports playback of almost any music file format, including lossless types like FLAC. Plex is the industry leader in compatibility, offering a superior experience compared to other platforms like Emby, Jellyfin, and Kodi. It is designed to enhance the user experience.
📹 Jellyfin is Better than Plex and Emby | How to Use Jellyfin to Organize Your Media
—————————– Jellyfin is a program to organize your media. It’s similar to Emby and Plex, but it’s totally free… even the …
I’m using Plex Directplay since 2 years(I have a PC with Plex Media server running. I access my files from Samsung TV – Plex app). Everything was working fine. But from last week when I play any file in TV, it just keeps loading and doesn’t play. When I go in app’s settings, it shows Media server status – Indirect). Please help!
Is it possible within Plex to add a library that is NOT on the computer where Plex is installed? Because where-ever I look, I cannot find a NETWORK path in order to add a library. If this is so, then it kinda sucks, because it means Plex needs to be on the same pc as ALL your media files are??? The last thing I want is a noisy server (with Plex) near my tv.
Thank you for your article! Unfortunately, I can’t add any Libraries under the Settings. When I click Settings, I only get a few options ending with your “player” options. My plex was working great and recently all my Libraries disappeared and I only have the Live TV and Movies and Shows (default). Any suggestions on how to fix it? Thank you!
love the show wanted to get your opinion on a gpu I do not game on pc but game on Ps5 I have a plex sever running on one of my computers wth i5 12600k with MSI pro B760m-a looking for a gpu to do hardware transcoding and for future if I change and try pc gaming what would you recommend and I am in Canada
how do you add films in the same folder without it creating another folder with the same name; example; i created a folder called action/adventure in my library, and then when i want to add more movies to that same folder at a later date its creating another one with the same name, can you help mate cheers,
Plex is having weird behavior on my Linux fedora machine. When adding a library and selecting a folder it will locate all subfolders in the root directory, and in the home folder it will find the user folder but afterward, it doesn’t show any other folders. So I manually typed in the directory to my movie folder ( being /home/user/videos/movies) and it doesn’t locate any movies. So I’m guessing plex doesn’t have access to user folders; any ways I can go around to fix this?
Great article. I have been using Plex for several years on my home PC without really understanding it. I recently have a problem that I can not solve. In the past I have been able to watch movies from my main library on my PC and my Samsung TV or Samsung smartphone which are both on the same home network as my PC. Recently, however, I am not able to access Plex on either the TV or phone. I’m not really sure where to start. thanks for any advice.
OMG what am I doing wrong? I ripped a movie, I have it saved to the computer in a folder with movie name and date ( from IMDB). I used MakeMKV and Hand brake and when I follow your directions, the files do not highlight to be clicked. I have watched article after article and it’s not working for me. I have an external disc drive and a 2T Seagate portable storage ( backup plus slim).
Hi. I’ve used plex for years and have the Plex pass. I recently moved and had to reinstall plex. That all went fine EXCEPT the server does not show up in the list for me to choose as before. No servers are listed. I can see PMS on the task list and so it is running but somehow plex in my browser can’t see it? Any advice? TY
Hey mate. Thx for the article. I got a problem. When at home with wifi i can play 4k movies in an instant. When i disconnect and use 5G (i have enough bandwith, over 100 mbit/s) it says the server is not fast enough. I enabled remote access. 720p anime will play rather quickly, just a little bit slower than on wifi. I set the quality sections in the settings to max quality. Any ideas ? Much appreciated
I use plex and I have a problem. sometimes the pc’s fan wants to be at full power. it makes a very loud noise and sometimes it doesn’t even want to stop spinning. I use MP4 MKV files for the most part, so there are no problems but some files makes this problem. so I don’t know why this is happening or how to fix this. have you had or heard of this problem? can you help me?
This is such a great and thorough guide so I really wish it would work but no. All steps are easy to follow but still it will not work all the way for me. My library works fine on the computer, but on the Apple TV where I want to watch it just isn’t possible. Unless I unplug the ATV and connect with WiFi and enable the Relay mode, which both results in really bad quality. I’ve been at this for months no, I’m getting no help from Plex either, so yay.
Hello Mike. Im having a issue with my Nvidia Shield connecting to Plex after install and login. I see the Shield in the devices but when I play the Nvidia Shield it will not show up on the Dashboard. I also noticed my activity icon remain gray like is not activated or synced. The Nvidia shield is up to date and on the same network. Any pointers on how I can get the Nvidia Shield is show up on the Dashboard?
ugh… 1) it’s not illegal to download torrents, however you might incur a civil infraction, but you’re not going to go to jail for sharing a article. Not to mention you’d have to be a major torrenter for any of them to bother with you, but it’s not criminally illegal to download or share a article. Some locations they can take you to court for civil damages, and a monetary fine, but that’s the extent of it, and unless you’re torrenting hundreds of titles, the worst that will happen is a letter to your IP and they may or may send you a letter saying to knock it off. 2) Not everyone is going to have a static IP, in fact is quite common your ISP will assign you a dynamic IP in which case none of this helps at all. Ah youtube tech websites. Hammer it into place once, act like an expert!
didn’t work for me. when I connected with the app, I only got streaming tv, no connection to my content. I have no folders or libraries nor any connection to set any up. your screen is too blurry to read and you speed through the initial set up but I know I don’t have what you have despite following the directions.
Thank you for you information on how to set up a remote access. I been trying to get my plex to stay on remote access for a bit now. I been using plex for years and just start having this problem with the remote access. I tried the forum help and still it did not fix the issue I was having. After following the steps for the article. It’s looking good. I’m sure hopping it stays connected.:goodvibes:
Jellyfin is such an impressive project. especially because the emby dude was kind of a dick and taunted the free software community with “oh you have no idea how much work it is” and then fucking blew his project away. Because turns out 10 people doing something together in the open is better than one guy doing something alone in secret
I love Jellyfin. I’ve been using it for a couple years now in a Proxmox container. There are plenty of tutorials for setting up GPU passthrough to the Jellyfin container which honestly is the hardest part of the entire setup. Of course if you’re not using virtualization, hardware acceleration practically works out of the box. Same for Intel’s iGPU stuff. My only gripe with JF is that I wish their IPTV stuff worked a little better. There is no way to dedupe or manage iptv lists, you have to use something like xTeVe or TVHeadend to get that to work (or use a third party IPTV list editor). There also doesn’t appear to be a buffer, so the streams are susceptible to jitter, drops, and freezes. xTeVe, which hasn’t been updated in a couple years, helps a lot in this arena, but it also has its problems. But all-in-all, JF is the best media server out there, imo.
Thanks for pointing this out to me. Been using plex for a while and was unhappy about how inflexible it is. With Jellyfish is much easier to build my library how I want it rather than how the software wants it. Most importantly, I can keep my original folder structure and names and still have the software treat the data properly and correctly without having to do everything by hand.
Wrongly identified movies/shows can be avoided by naming movie/show files correctly. For example the Wicked City file should have been named “Wicked City.mp4”. This will then properly identify the movie. This is an issue with Doctor Who shows. anything pre-2005 can be in a folder named Doctor Who, then Series 01, Series 02, etc. But for 2005 and beyond, you need to put those in a folder named “Doctor Who, then each season in it’s own season folder named Season 01, Season 02, etc. I use Jellyfin with this naming structure and have no issues. I also use Emby, and use the same naming structure for that as well. Both servers softwares have extensive articles on their forums that explain how folder/file naming works.
I’m not convinced. I’m a long-time Plex user. My setup is my media is on a NAS and Plex is on a small dedicated used Linux box. Media is served un-transcoded to everything in the house as they are all able to digest it natively. For the few times I serve outside the home my server hardware does include the appropriate CPU to do light transcoding. Some of the actions you were doing in the Jellyfin are trivial in Plex like changing the artwork or fixing a match. A couple of clicks and you’re done. My biggest gripe is I have to manually upgrade the version of Plex. It’s not easy or automated. But it’s only 5 minutes or so. I’m already invested in a lifetime membership in Plex, but I’m sure a free version of a solid media platform is good for a lot of people. Thanks for the article.
After spending a day with Jellyfin, its going to be a no from me. Plex does collections wayyyy better and as someone with a massive media library, that’s of utmost importance to me. Collections aren’t just for grouping together a cinematic universe, but Jellyfin seems to be under that impression. Weirdly inflexible. Kodi+Emby just feels like Plex 10 years ago with far fewer security features.
With files becoming so much larger over the years, Im finally building a NAS. Im sick of my stuff being across different external drives and having to buy another drive to shove into my tower. Im just waiting until the rest of the parts to come in. Im guessing 44TB is going to cover me with Unraid. I have been looking at media server applications too since the tech has grown quite a bit since I was playing around with kodi 10 yrs ago. I am probably going to do the Jellyfin route since Im not interested in paying a subscription to watch MY own media. I have zero issues with donating or buying a reasonably priced lifetime license (did it with Launchbox and I was happy to do it). Plex has a lifetime option which feels a little to high for me, but the thing that turns me off now is how they treating the paid customers. Jellyfin it is.
I’m guessing jellyfin has come a long way since I last tried it but it’s just not as widely adopted on the vast range of devices that my family members use like smart TVs and such, when I tried it a while back it had inferior playback but that was a while back. The UI I dunno it’s so dated in regards to their apps and after dealing with emby for a while I’m sick of this UI personally. Still a great free option tho and is probably giving emby and run for their money in cases.
2:52 I use Jellyfin myself and I think it’s amazing, but I would actually suggest the opposite given this scenario. Jellyfin is best used on a local network, and Plex is better for multiple users. Obviously, if you already have a Plex setup for personal use, there’s little reason to change unless you absolutely despise the fact you need to use their auth servers or hate their ads (both of which I can’t stand). You did mention that downloading files remotely is locked behind a paywall, so maybe that’s another reason to switch, but Plex also has a massive advantage with their centralized auth and multitude of clients. An advantage which I hope will disappear as Jellyfin matures and gains wider adoption.
You conviced me and few months later i say thank you. I only have Jellyfin for my Anime collection bc it looks gorgeous compared to Plex dimming artwork and a simple image and description. I don’t need regular movies to look awesome before i play them but anime is art before playing it. Should be nice if in the future it will support manga content from digital media like .epub, .pdf, etc and it scrolls pages like an slideshow. You know what? every manga i have i made slideshows and now those manga are articles in my library, yes i prefer to read manga with japanese bgm.
I’ve tried all three extensively. Kodi/Emby is the only platform I can vouche for. Jellyfin isn’t there yet, there are a lot of missing features. I have no idea why Plex is so big. It’s slower than Windows Vista, it’s interface sucks and the transcoding is TERRIBLE. I highly highly recommended Kodi and Emby.
Jellyfin is not better. I have used both. Jellyfin is free, which is the only thing it has over Plex. Plex paywall is a one time payment not a monthly payment. I am currently testing both Plex and Jellyfin. Plex is a lot more polished and has more features. Plex supports LRC lyrics, Jellyfin doesn’t. Plex can be accessed remotely without port forwarding, Jellyfin needs port forwarding (I have been trying to get port forwarding to work on Jellyfin without success. Plex has free live TV (no tinkering), free tv shows and movies with ads, Jellyfin has no free tv show or movies. Plex has better support. Overall Plex is much better. I am not a Plex fan, I was actually trying to use Jellyfin because it is free but it just doesn’t stack up.
Jellyfin is better than plex and emby ? really ? LOL. For starters anything is better than plex but to say better than emby nah no way. Emby looks better runs better is better and it also has a free iptv guide for your websites and comes with a 24/7 help chat forum like a real chat forum that doesn’t look like something out of a corn flakes box. Jellyfin is fun to play with for a day or so but when it comes to a real deal media solution omg no not for me. Emby can map all your live cable tv websites to an awesome tv guide with cover art as well as rid the movie / show tags to not show as some torrent link which jellyfin seems to ignore. Also emby is faster more responsive and looks better for $5 a month I will stick with emby. Open source is yes good for an option but my only option is emby. Later
I like Plex and have used it for so long that I don’t even consider it software so much as just a part of my life. I’m glad this project exists though because recently Plex has been adding a lot of.. “new features” let’s call it, a lot of which have to do with ads, that I’m a little concerned about what the future holds. For now I am still a die hard Plex user, but if Plex treads a little too far down the ad rabbit hole, I’m thankful there is a good alternative to turn to.
i had tested this app, and let me tell you that it has the same source-code as emby! & from my experience of testing the both apps, emby is way better and faster than jellyfin! & i had one problem that i couldnt fix it cuz i didnt give it time & effort! but emby is an app ready out of the box, plug n play no worck needed or time waisted (i’m using the free version) yes i saw more option in jellyfin but at the expense of stability & comfort, i choose emby evry time.
So jellyfin is a fork from emby so its essentially all features from emby at a certain point. When they decided to go close source the team split up. I get why you would want to go for jellyfin because of the privacy part. It’s just that maintaining and developing mobile apps that are good and on so many platforms is alot of work and prob not something a team can work on full time for free. These things cost money and take up time and resources. I know the mobile apps for emby sucked compared to plex for a very long time and only got good relativley recently. They might have been at a good point when they broke off and made jellyfin but eventually over time, i have a hard time beliving jellyfin will be better than emby feature wise and especially the mobile experience. If you dont care about good apps on other platforms but only using it in the web browser and the privacy part than jellyfin is good, + it’s free. If you want the best experience and most features choose emby.
How does Jellyfin handle .ass subtitles? I’ve noticed in a lot of anime I use for Plex that they don’t have subtitles for words on screen or the title of the anime, but the subtitles online are only .ass subtitles which I cannot add myself without having subtitles on all the time (just so you know, because of my eyes, I can only use dubbed anime because I can’t read words on screen very well thanks to a macular hole in my eye). Thanks to anyone who can answer.
Sounds like your trying to get us excited for Jellyfin as your demonstrating how much more complicated it is to set up than plex. I can’t speak for emby but Plex works great and their pricing is a steal for lifetime and continued features with improvements. Customizable UI and media layouts look better in plex. The new “Discover” feature is a perfect addition. Just the metadata update demoed made you manually open websites and find ID info(copy paste edit etc,…), with Plex a simple right click and fix match solves the issue. Your demo of Jellyfin’s features looks like that of an early version release UI. Saying it’s better than plex? nope. Better than emby? maybe?
I’ve ran into a problem with seasons. All the seasons going above 10 would have repeats of season 1 through 9. I figured out what the problem is. It’s the numbering. Season folders being named season 1. That would cause duplicate. But if you name it season 01 The season then would not duplicate. I took the server offline to try it out. I have a way to rename folders in mass if you want to speed up folder renaming.
Came here to see what the alts were, but as a lifetime Plex subscriber cannot see any additional benefits. I’m happy to pay for the excellent features for Plex, I am happy to pay money for a product. Mobile downloads are great, playing when phone is locked, family and groups work great. UI is great and clean. Never had a problem, worth paying for.
I have Plex and tried jellyfin on my windows system. Results: Needed 3 installs to finally get it working. One movie folder added without a problem, after that no folders I try to add show up. Installed app doesn’t find the server automatically on the network. Tried 5 different movies where jellyfin was only be able to play one. So the windows version is not that good in my opinion. I would suggest Kodi or Plex with a lifetime pass as they work as expected
Jellyfin still hasn’t really caught up to emby, and while I would prefer to support an open-source approach, I don’t think emby is as ‘closed’ as some might make out. I’d take either over Plex, which became too controlling about 3-4 years ago and lost me when they needed me to log in to their service to connect to my server.
Hi, Jellyfin looks great! i was looking for NAS (Synology) software to organize my music collection, have access from everywhere and share them with some of my band members. Would you recommend this for just a large music collection? We are not interested in the movie or other functionalities, just the music option. Would like to hear your opinion!
I have been using Plex for many years now. The free version. It serves my purposes well. Easy to setup and manage libraries and metadata. I am now looking at Jellyfin. Been running it for a few days and dont really find how is it any better than Plex. I dont use hardware transcoding. So dont need a Plex pass. All my media is in a single library subdivided by media types. I have multi-language media and need/want to be able to manage metadata in different languages. It is very easy to do that in Plex. I cant find a way to do that in Jellyfin without having to separate my media into separate libraries for each language. Dont want to do that. With Plex it is easy to update metadata search to indicate language and quickly find the appropriate metadata without typing anything. Cant do that in Jellyfin. I also dont like the user interface. My preference. I will keep playing around with Jellyfin, but I think I will keep Plex as my main media server.
Just a tip for mismatching. Use sonarr for media management in series folder format till be {Series TitleTheYear} (tvdb-{TvdbId}) episode format {Series Title} – S{season:00}E{episode:00} – {absolute:000} – ({Quality Title} {MediaInfo articleCodec}) ({MediaInfo AudioCodec}{MediaInfo AudioChannels}) – ({Release.Group})
so its been a minute, but I started with Jellyfin on my QNAP nas in a docker container because it’s free, and as you said, better looking. That was good enough for me to give it a go. The problem I had, at least at that time, was the Android tv client was not the greatest and I had issues with playback where it would start tv episodes in the middle and I couldn’t rewind or something, I can’t remember exactly the issue, but I do remember that the client was ugly and unrefined compared to Plex, so i switched over. No hate for Jellyfin, it wasn’t quite ready for my use case at the time. Eventually I’ll probably try it again, but I’ve gotten pretty accustom to the nice features a plex pass offers.
Been using kodi for local streaming using (SMB) protocol. however windows machines work great my mac has issues with kodi and it crashes constantly. Was able to get plex to work on mac but do not feel i should have to pay someone to stream my own content remotely of from a Mobil device. I have an unlimited data plan so that’s not an issue. will this allow me to get access to files movies remotely. for free ? and is it secure?
Does JellyFin make sense for people who don’t want to “own” movies? I find the price of owning a move far more expensive than just renting it, plus I don’t usually watch a movie more than once. Same with music; cheaper to pay a monthly subscription and listen to EVERYTHING rather than buying music. I have a huge collection of CDs from way back, but I don’t need them anymore. You don’t “own” this stuff anyway. You just have a license to play it privately. So what am I missing? Why would I need JellyFin?
I run both on my TrueNAS Scale instance and I’m very happy with Jellyfin, it feels less bloated than Plex, and also lets you configure transcoding settings with more customization. On the client side, it’s not supported on every os (Eg. Tizen doesn’t have an official client), but if you use Android it works oob.
I got quite frustrated with Plex in recent years. Don’t get me wrong, it works like a charm, and other than most people as it seems, I’m not even bothered by the additions like plex Movies etc. But what really bothers me, is that they added all those features while Photos didn’t get any development time in years as it feels like. The last change to photos I can remember is taking away automatic uploads from mobile. You STILL can’t mass download pictures into a folder. No you have to download each picture seperatley. This is frankly ridiculous. I don’t know yet if Jellyfin does this better. But this utter neglect for user requests from plex for even the most basic functionality in some instances does make me angry.
Had to find something other than Kodi. I was never happy with how Kodi handles Sources and Libraries. If you changed anything, everything would be out of sync. It cannot handle new media and drives well. Updates was always in the background. That being said Kodi does a lot of things well. But it does a lot of important media tasks badly or confusing. Kodi would always be in a chaotic state. The music player was barely usable.
I just wanna be able to stream articles to my Apple Watch. I know it’s a niche usecase, but it’s handy when you’re mostly listening to something and just need to be able to glance at a visual here and there. And I’m sure plenty more people would like to stream music to it. YouTube works with a 3rd party app these days, but so far not Plex.
I have been just playing media files through vlc over a local network but windows default transfer protocols are getting worse with each update to the point where even increasing the buffer within vlc still led to stutter (jumbo frames enabled on the hardware side and all that jazz) and a fairly fat (bandwith) & fast local network. Gave this a try after your lastest article on it and its been great, no noticable loss of quality article wise. It will take a while to get it running how i like it, and it does wierd things like episodes of Father Ted (british/irish commedy) is named and displayed as an anime with a completely different name, something to problem solve anyway which is good for getting to know the software… Anyway rambling aside just wanted to say thanks for putting me onto this as i hate using paid for and closed software like plex, cheers dude!
Question: youre able to catogorize but can you subgenre films and tv series…for Instance 2 options. 1 – Button for Films & 1 for Tv shows. 2. Within each of them you might have main genres like Horror, comedy, action etc.. 3. SUB-Genres within each genre. Like in the horror you might want 1 for slasher, 1 for zombie, 1 for creature features etc 4. Within these subgenres still be able to groupovies into their own collections (Like Return of the Living Dead 1,2 3 4 & 5 within the zombie subgenres) Plex seems to allow genres like horror etc but then not subgenres within these groups for grouping without using collections. The problem is if you use collections for the subgenres youre not able to group each film series within the collections as youre already in a collection Cheers
I have my new TrueNAS installation and I finally got myself a living room and a proper TV, so planning to use Jellyfin with some android-TV box (nvidia shield is very tempting…) so I can OWN my media. I’ll just rip all my BD and DVD and get them on the NAS… F netflix and others who want me to rent my media….
You can bypass the online account issue in Windows 11 Home. During boot up, and at the connect to a network screen, 1. don’t connect to any network, 2. use shift+F10 to bring up a command prompt and type the following: OOBE\\BYPASSNRO (must be in caps). This will restart your system and allow you to install using a local account. Once the reboot is complete, you can skip connecting to a network and choose the sign in without a microsoft account option.
Is anyone able to recommend a article that’s still relevant in 2022/2023 that will show me how to convert a DVD collection (3000+ DVDs) to a digital format? I don’t know anything about movies but want to help my sister convert her DVD collection to a digital format for use with Jellyfin but so much of the stuff I’m finding is really old.
I have a lifetime subscription to Emby and it appears to look nearly the same as Jellyfin. One user mentions it updates and acts wonky for a week or so. So DON’T Update with every Update. I give them space to fix the bugs and only update maybe once a year. The remote access without having to configure port forwarding and App Are FTW!!!
I have Plex lifetime but recently found out I’m spending more and more time on Jellyfin. Plex’s live TV sucks and buffers / crash constantly on my side, issue has been around since 2016, which doesnt happen on Jellyfin Plexs needs of auth servers / API calls means that if their servers are down you can’t log in / cant access Plex ln LG Plex App because it needs constant internet access (but who uses crappy smart tv app these days when a Fire TV just works), in jellyfin if their auth, oh wait, it’s totally dependant from your router, not a remote auth server. Emby needs to phone their servers for Premiere Key validity Plex new transcoder is awful and introduce a lot of issues, I can’t rollback because I use a 11th gen Intel CPU, I need the new transcoder else it crash my iGPU. On Jellyfin the new transcoder update just works and fixes are rather quick.. Plex is good because its plug and play and have nice UI but it seems like it’s regressing as update goes, Jellyfin being open source means anyone can come up with an UI close to Plex, or even better. The only thing that bother me is that I like the Skip Intro feature from Plex but I’m sure it’s in the Jellyfin’s todo list.
This is neat, but Plex maturity makes for a more solid experience. I’ve been using Plex for 8 years. Open source is great as a software engineer I appreciate it but it certainly doesn’t make something automatically better. Plex has a lot of great developers paid full time to make it great and to put an app on every platform. Sometimes you have to be willing to put your money down, and I paid $120 once 8 years ago and they’ve never asked for another penny.
Is this available yet as a server client on the Nvidia Shield? Currently I’m running Plex only off of my Nvidia Shield which allows all my other devices to use it. Very low footprint and works fantastic. When this application allows me to run the server and client app both off of my Nvidia Shield I will take a look at it. Last I knew only The client app was available. They need to step it up because their competition, both Plex, and Emby have several clients available for the Nvidia shield and Android TV. The problem with a donation if you just want to give them money because you like them model is that things like this remain unavailable because of limited development.
I’ve been researching and trying to understand Jellyfin for the past few months and I just can’t seem to figure it out. I have about 300,000 music files on a Seagate terabyte external hard drive that’s connected to my dell laptop, I would like to be able to access and play these files on my android phone when I’m away from home. will Jellyfin be able to do this?
this thing still has a lot of problems and not sure why. plex and kodi work well with clients. tried the player for jellyfin and get nothing but connection failed. plex player no problem kodi player no problem. also the server randomly disconnects from DLNA player and i constantly have to restart to get it to work. Have to go back to PLEX till they figure this out
None of those solutions if perfect. In terms of functionality and best working apps, Plex is by far the best, but there are privacy concerns. It is even usable with its free tier because desktop app supports direct stream of almost all codecs and mobile app is behind one time small payment (worth it). Emby has really good Android app, but it is unusable with its free tier, because desktop app is part of the Premier subscription and it is a piece of garbage (try to maximizing it on a specific monitor with a multimonitor setup). Using web player means a lot of transcoding and HW transcoding in again part of the Premier subscription. Jellyfin is completely free, desktop app supports almost every codec, HW transcoding works well, but Android app is hot pile of garbage. It is better to use a mobile browser than the app. Android/Google TV apps worked fine for all of them, Plex has the widest Smart TV support, Jellyfin not so much. I used all of them for a reasonable long time. Plex was by far the lowest maintenance with best metadata downloader. Emby worked well, but only with subscription. Jellyfin is the least polished and it required more time to maintain than Plex. If you want something that just works and don’t mind some data collection, get Plex. Otherwise use Jellyfin. I have no idea why Emby exists in this ecosystem, maybe just when your watch time if mainly on mobile devices.
I find it a bit funny that you expect everyone else to work for free, but you not wanting to pay or not liking paywalls, but start your article with a sponsored segment. Appreciate the info on Jellyfin, even though I see no big enough advantages to change up my current setup. It’s good to know what else is available, and I can’t remember I’ve heard about it before.
I use Jellyfin but i have a few issues with it. I use the Android app on my Chromebook and cast it to CHromecasts. When i put it on shuffle it always feels like it plays the same bunch of tracks and misses out some others, and if i skip a track it will often just stop playing after the next track for no reason. i run the Jellyfin server on my Ubuntu server. Oh and the Android app does not have gapless playback, so Dark Side of the Moon sounds odd. There are a few apps that do gapless such as Gelli.
So my main (of the many, quite frankly) complaint as a long time plex user is now that I live in an area with very spotty internet service, if the internet is out you can’t change profiles on any player. Now, sure, this is an issue that will be resolved shortly as the fiber access gets built into our poor little mountain town, but this is such a ridiculous thing in my mind to have to deal with. If my 4 year old was the last one perusal tv in my room, too bad, no Rick and Morty or whatever for me. I’m about to migrate over.
Good timing. I just got a seedbox set up and now it’s the perfect place to host a jellyfin server so that I can watch my movies and shows without filling the hard drives on my devices. I was able to get it set up and watched the new Rick and Morty episode streamed from my seedbox to my Roku. Cool stuff 👍
I’ve had very little to no success with the anime plugins… I tend to just stick with folder/directory view for such content but I may revisit using the “library” view. The main reason I use Emby is for remote streaming and especially transcoding. Plex rubbed me the wrong way, but my biggest issue was the way that it consistently defaulted to “library” view instead of letting me default it to folders. Imagine me telling my boomer-aged farther, “oh yeah but somtimes you gotta go here and click ‘folder view” and worseoff, he rarely uses it and nobody remembers any such task that only needs to be done 14 times at random… but I digress.
Thank you for this extremely informative article. I am in the process of picking a media server to use and currently doing my comparitive research. I have a QNAP TS32PX NAS enclosure and I am trying to find out if it is compatible with all 3 media servers. I know that it is compatible with Plex because QNAP offeres it in their native App Center but don’t see JellyFin or Emby. Does anyone know if either JellyFin or Emby is compatible with my model NAS? I have posted the question on the QNAP forum and I am currently waiting for a reply. Thx…….
My biggest gripe with Plex is the desktop app. It’s trash. It has memory leaks. Lags and slows down eventually coming to a full stop. I have to close it and open it again everytime. I’ve ended up using the old no longer supported version in order not to experience the memory leaks. It’s a real pain in the rear. Perhaps I should give jellyfin another go!
Well I gave Jellyfin a try, and while it uses hardware encoding for free works well, But the organization in Jellyfin could be away better, I had audio issues with some movies on Jellyfin, Jellyfin doesn’t agree with Flac all the time, I dot some 8k 60fps articles to stress the transcoder, ffmpeg has many issues with 8k, its better with software but it just has issues, even some 4k movies wont play on it, even with hardware transcode off, my phone might play it, the 4k roku tv in the living room refuses to play it. aac audio is a no go, wma is a hit and miss as well, Organization of my huge collection music is painful, And when I do edit the file details for the Artist and album, Jellyfin will not sort by the Artists unless I edit the contributing artists as well. Like let me view folders that I have the artist in. Oh and folders in folders it don’t like at all. But at least it works without too much effort with no internet. Plex, yeah I don’t like how bloated it is, hot it just goes to the recommended tab on TV’s and shows things that are not even related to what I have on my server, but ya know all them issues with playback with audio, and 4k, I don’t have that issue at all with Plex, it will even play 8k 60fps, hammers all 32 threads but it plays it without a care, same with 4k movies, it likes Flac, it does fine with aac and wma, and it allows me to view folders in folders, so I got albums in a folder it will allow me to see them music and play it. Scrolling threw my music on Plex sucks though, no fast way to do it and its slow and when I back out from lets say a ZZ Top folder, it starts all the way back at the top of the list, and the search function sucks.
Subbed, I am so sick of Plex and it’s bullshit. My library has been completely fine for years and this past year all of my anime is matching to completely random stuff. Lifetime plex pass member… hoping to tackle the migration to Jellyfin this weekend. How does Jellyfin handle OVA’s and Movies? Are you able to store say the 10+ DBZ movies in a DBZ collection with the anime episodes? Plex tends to hit the struggle bus on this
Hello my media server is present in a place where internet goes down regularly and for long periods of time. I want jellyfin to replace netflix which is dependent on my internet. All my clients and the server is/are on the local network. Plex creates problems when streaming without internet connection even while using the local network. Does this problem present in jellyfin too ?. Is jelly fin better for “Offline LAN streaming ?”. Is the metadata locally stored and accessible for offline ?
I’m a long time Emby user and contributed early on, so I am grandfathered in, and never have to pay again. Its very dynamic and reminds a lot of Kaleidescape. Metadata gathering is autmoatic and easy. It has faults though. ISOs will not play. When I started my movie collection year ago, I used ISOs so that I got the menus and all of the extras. You have to load a different player that plays ISOs and set it as a player just for specific files. Another major annoyance is that they update the software a couple of times a year and then nothing works correctly for about a week. I will give this a try and see if I like it better.
You literally showed me nothing that I can’t already do with Plex. What was the point of this? For someone who has been operating a Plex server for over a decade and invested thousands of dollars into hardware specifically purchased with Plex in mind, I’m gonna need something more than some rando’s personal opinion seemingly based on not understanding Plex more than any empirical merits of Jellyfin.
It seems like all of these reviews that are picking Jellyfin base their decisions on price. While that’s fair, I’d like to see an objective review comparing the software/look/feel based only on that. Ask and answer the question, “If Plex was free like Jellyfin which would be the best?” I think you’ll find that many people would choose Plex over Jellyfin. I’m not dissing Jellyfin at all, I’m just baffled by how many people base their decision on money. I’ve come to the point where I’m not looking for what’s free…I’m looking for the best option. With that said I definitely do not want a recurring fee. If Plex did not offer a Lifetime Plex Pass I would definitely go the route of Jellyfin. Free software is great but it gets to the point where developers eventually become unmotivated and move onto other projects that receive higher donations. They have to earn a living too. With Plex I don’t have to worry about motivation going away. I’ve been a Plex user since back in the days when it was an XBMC fork. It’s come a long way since then and they have worked hard to make it what it is today. There are times I wish some features would be added and others would just go away but overall it’s been a pleasant experience.
Jellyfin is impressive, but I had serious issues with mobile streaming the last time I tried it (about 6 months ago). It really had problems whenever my server at home lost its connection due to a dc and got a new public IP (with the private not changing) which could only be resolved by restarting the service (or docker container its hosted in). In addition Filters on the Library (~1000 shows) takes way longer than it does on PLEX (a problem Emby sadly shares). I could live with the issues, but PLEX while getting worse every year is sadly still the better product. Emby is out, because it has features I need behind a paywall…
id like to move over to jellyfin from plex. jellyfin just looks so simple and neat and thats exactly what I need since i have family members on my server. that fact that i have to answer phone calls from my mom to help her find my server library because plex decided to un-pin everything from the side and plex is too cluttered for her to find it on her own is really pushing me to ditch plex and move to jellyfin.
Jellyfin has a problem say you want to goto bed and watch films with the miss’s or family you try connect to the server or the app on the tv the problems start but if you swap to Emby or Plex its away no problems i do love Plex the most but the only downside i don’;t like about Plex is while your on the tv flicking though the films takes a while to load but same setup same settings with Emby its fast as sound if you put Emby and Jellyfin side by side its the same thing just named different try run a Emby server and Jellyfin i bet you the emby takes over the jellyfin
I swapped over to Jellyfin after perusal this. I do like Plex, but I can’t justify the cost for the ‘pro features’ as I won’t use MOST of them. The one thing I really wanted is mobile phone streaming. With Plex I had to download the article from the NAS and then play it locally, now I don’t need to, with Jellyfin it can stream for free from my NAS and I don’t need a Plex Pass to do so. My NAS does come with some software to do this, but it’s clunky and doesn’t work well. Multiple users also is handy, my partner can now use this for her own playlists or whatever without logging in to my account, so all in all pretty good. The only thing I did notice is that Jellyfin works only from top level folders on the NAS, at least in my version and you need to give the user (it creates one) permissions to the folder so it can read/write. It does mention this during install, so I knew about this, but it’s easy to miss if you’re not paying attention
I’ve been a Plex user since 2015, and bought a lifetime membership in 2020. I have been nervously perusal the company’s attempt at integrating new methods to monetize their product, and expect that at some point Plex will be either bought or borked in some way. I’m glad to know there is a good open source alternative available. I hope Jellyfin works as well as a media server over WAN. I use the mobile apps a lot too, and rely on Plex to listen to my massive music collection as my own streaming service.
Nice article, but from my experience as a long time plex user, I must say plex is better for me especially when it comes to Dolby Vision content, Jellyfin simple can’t play them right away and since I have a working plex I never bother investigating why, I didn’t want to mess with tone mappings, programming other things I just want something that works out of the gate and for me that is Plex.
You talk about the itnerface but it’s pretty basic and looks almost just like Plex or Emby. I have been looking for alts to Emby because I pay for it and also it bugs out a lot. Definitely will check into Jellyfin. The interface though looks exactly like Emby but a little stripped down. It feels like it’s the same application. Emby looks a little more visually appealing though. Is Jellyfin a fork of Emby? I mean they look almost identical? Layout is the same, menu is the same, even the icons in the top right is almost the same as well as the “Home/Favorites” on the top. They even share the same themes.
Hi, Jellyfish is a great project but it’s not definitively better than Plex, for the simple reason that Jellyfish is not available as an app for Samsung TVs (probably others as well). Yes, you can compile it yourself and load it in, but still. But once it is available as a downloadable app in the TV app stores, yes, it’ll be better.