Having tried everything from Plex, Emby, and JellyFin to casting on various platforms and RaspPi with HDMI, I found the best experience for me was to get the VLC app on my AppleTV. It plays straight from my NAS over SMB, doesn’t need any transcoding, and let’s me download subtitles on screen directly.
I don’t much care about browsing through a pretty interface and would rather be able to rewind/forward as needed without buffering hell. I wish VLC app had some better features like saving settings or autoconnecting to my default server. But it is great for playing hidef videos. If you want to watch stuff more than organizing and polishing your library, give it a shot.
The one thing that keeps me locked into a pretty interface is remembering:
1. What has and has not been watched
2. How far through a film/episode has been watched
3. One click to start watching the film/series from where I left off
What keeps me locked into these solutions is that I'm totally sold on the ChromeCast concept where your TV is just a dumb screen with barely any interaction (on/off, volume and pause/resume (but only if the stars align and HDMI CEC works)) and your phone/pc tells it which content it should play. Haven't been able to get DLNA working on my current TV.
I highly recommend Jellyfin. I've been running it as a front end for my media server for about 2 months. There's some slight hiccups, but it's not Plex.
The only real downside is there are not a lot of native apps available yet.
I also recommend the linuxserver docker images that are a great shortcut to getting it set up along with a suite of complementary software.
Please elaborate -- is "it's not plex" supposed to be positive or negative?
I'm a heavy Plex user and I'd love to switch to an open source alternative. But Plex is really good, and I love the native Trakt.tv webhook integration (which means everything I watch automatically gets tracked on trakt.tv).
I moved over to Jellyfin after Emby started sufficiently pissing me off. I don’t really want to pay a subscription fee to self host stuff, but I especially don’t want to be pushed to pay for something that was already free and open source. (I certainly do so voluntarily. Krita comes to mind.) Jellyfin lacks many of the native apps, but at least I don’t feel like I’m being pushed into someone’s annoying monetization scheme.
The website looks great, but does not offer a lot of detail.
Can someone explain:
"Holds your entire movie collection" - does this mean it rips your DVDs onto a hard drive? Or just catalog them?
"Collect your TV Shows, and have them automatically organized by season." - is this over the air TV? Over the Top (Cable). Does it include Netflix, PrimeTV, Hulu? IS this just a catalog of what you like or does it Copy these to the hard drive as well?
"Enjoy your own music collection. Make playlists, and listen on the go." - Can I transfer songs I bought song on Apple, GooglePlay, or CDs?
"Watch Live TV and set automatic recordings to expand your media library" - is this over the air and/or cable? Can I record from streaming services? Once I record, can I watch it on my mobile?
It, and apps like it (plex, emby) are a fancy front end for all your pirated media or personal backups. It requires the media exist in digital form on a network attached device, be it your PC, NAS or server. It will not interface with any legit streaming services you have like spotify, netflix, et cetera. Think of it as a personal netflix-like UI for your local media, and nothing more.
It catalogs and let's you play/transcode to devices. It's a replacement for Plex based off a fork of Emby; however, Jellyfin is completely open source.
I just installed it a few weeks back, and like it a lot. Much less clutter and overhead compared to Plex. The Roku app is what's missing for me, though. When that is finished (it's in development), this will be a great full replacement for Plex, for me.
From what I'm reading in comments, clients are the biggest UX gap. I'm planning on finally setting up a solution for my family and was initially leaning towards Plex for simplicity client-side.
If you were to convince me to try Jellyfin, what would your recommended setup for an LG WebOS TV? Ideally one that allows me to continue using the TV remote.
Switched to Jellyfin a few weeks ago from PLEX and it has been rock solid so far. I especially love how much better managing users is. Having more control over who can download, stream, and transcode when doing either of those things is A+.
If you use a media player/manager like this, where do you get your movies? Is there a online movie store that you can download in appropriate format? There was a place for this before good streaming services existed but how do you legally obtain movies and store them on a NAS to feed into JellyFin? Are people ripping their blurays? I ot out of watching all the latest and greatest movies 10 years ago where we would just torrent everything into a folder called /movies. Now it's just the odd Netflix series so I am interested to know how people manage their movie collections and how they acquire them.
The only thing that keeps me from using Jellyfish over Plex is because of the TV apps. My Samsung Smart TV has a really outdated but functional Plex client, meanwhile, my Netflix and YouTube apps are updated regularly, although they're not as feature-rich as the Roku versions.
The Samsung Smart TV OS apparently is being cycled out for more modern alternatives. Surely the Jellyfish team knows this but with the ever-changing landscape of TV OS's, it seems like it's really difficult to support a large quantity of devices.
They've made it pretty clear in a number of threads on Reddit that native apps for Samsung and LG are very low on the priority list. The standard advice tossed around is either to drop some coin on a shield, or cast from another device. I eventually ended up buying a shield, but once I did that, the main things that were annoying me on plex that originally motivated me to investigate Jellyfin turned out to be issues with the native TV apps, with the android version on the shield having none of the problems, so I ended up just switching back to plex. shrug
Jellyfin also functions as a dlna media server so might be enough to get the job done (depending on what you're using it for). I use Jellyfin dlna with my Samsung TV to stream OTA, iptv, ipcams, movies and recorded TV. I have a bunch of other devices in the house that can access it this way as well.
I've only hopped on to Samsung's TV platform with recent hardware, but it seems to me like they've gravitated towards shipping Tizen enabled TVs for the last few years. Is there significant fragmentation in Tizen land?
I've been using Jellyfin for about six months and have been overjoyed with it. Amazing alternative to the nasty proprietary apps like Plex and Emby.
Previously, I was pointing Kodi at an SFTP server which worked fine, similar to the guy who had a good experience with VLC. Those are both great standalone solutions.
However, adding "media server" software like Jellyfin into the mix gives my users a much wider variety of clients to choose from (including the Jellyfin addon for Kodi) without compromising freedom.
Various other perks include tracking watched status across devices, Chromecast support, and re-encoding video files so they play on old clients or slower connections. The playback reporting plugin is fun as well.
I really want to use Jellyfin. There is one major thing holding me back right now which is no Roku app without hacking an emby app. I'd love to even help develop or test a Roku Jellyfin app, but I know nothing of their code base (or .NET)
I'm in the process of trying to move to Jellyfin from Plex, especially as Plex tries to shove in more "features". Right now the only thing that's holding me back is the state of the Roku and iOS apps, which are still pretty rough around the edges(and neither officially available yet).
Since the audience here is developer-centric, I would like to share that I contributed a small amount of code to jellyfin and the interaction with the developers was very positive.
Shameless plug: I built Video Hub App that does something similar: gives you a nice YouTube-like layout (and many more previewing and searching capabilities) for videos on your computer (no streaming though).
Has anyone have any overview of how robust the security situation is? I attempted to setup Jellyfin behind an nginx proxy with basic auth enabled because I didn't know how trustworthy their security is, but ran into various issues with the setup that couldn't be resolved at the time. It sometimes worked, but mostly ran into issues. This was around the time when the fork happened and Jellyfin was very much a new thing, I have not tried it after that.
Jellyfin is really good, I've switched from plex and haven't looked back; it doesn't really have a native client I liked but the jellyfin addon for kodi works pretty okay.
It's also much faster to scan my library with jellyfin than plex, (few minutes vs an hour and a half) though I'm not sure why as I only have ~30 shows.
Any recommendations for a remote control when using it as a HTPC? Didn't see anything on the site but it's not specific to Jellyfin and IMO that's just as important as the media software itself.
I used to use a Gyration[1] universal remote control that had a trackpad built-in that allowed my thumb to easily move & click the mouse cursor on my HTPC. Alas I used it so much over the years that it eventually lost responsiveness to my thumb. The manufacturer doesn't make this remote anymore and I never found another computer that made remotes with this kind of mouse technology :(
If you've got a newish there's change that your TV's remote will automatically work via HDMI using CEC. Kodi on an rpi worked out of the box with the remote from my store brand best buy tv for ~5 years ago.
I've given this a go, I'd love to use it over emby, but until it has an LG WebOS app, so my family can use it easily, I can't make the switch.
They'd benefit hugely, I feel, from focusing effort on the native apps. Some of this is more challenging; WebOS for example never had an OSS app, so there's nothing for Jellyfin to fork
[+] [-] chime|6 years ago|reply
I don’t much care about browsing through a pretty interface and would rather be able to rewind/forward as needed without buffering hell. I wish VLC app had some better features like saving settings or autoconnecting to my default server. But it is great for playing hidef videos. If you want to watch stuff more than organizing and polishing your library, give it a shot.
[+] [-] zirobi|6 years ago|reply
1. What has and has not been watched 2. How far through a film/episode has been watched 3. One click to start watching the film/series from where I left off
If the VLC app can do that then I'm sold.
[+] [-] aequitas|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jafingi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BadBadJellyBean|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuschku|6 years ago|reply
-tune fastdecode and -movflags +faststart are the magic keywords
[+] [-] Youden|6 years ago|reply
There's no transcoding or buffering in Infuse (even with subtitles) but you'll sometimes need transcoding for subtitle rendering in the Android app.
[+] [-] yumraj|6 years ago|reply
For music I liked Kodi since it was able to get lyrics, but really haven't found a good use for Plex.
[+] [-] oAlbe|6 years ago|reply
How do you do that directly from vlc?
[+] [-] ironarm|6 years ago|reply
The only real downside is there are not a lot of native apps available yet.
I also recommend the linuxserver docker images that are a great shortcut to getting it set up along with a suite of complementary software.
[+] [-] scrollaway|6 years ago|reply
Please elaborate -- is "it's not plex" supposed to be positive or negative?
I'm a heavy Plex user and I'd love to switch to an open source alternative. But Plex is really good, and I love the native Trakt.tv webhook integration (which means everything I watch automatically gets tracked on trakt.tv).
[+] [-] ekianjo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jchw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prplhaz4|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb666|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opendomain|6 years ago|reply
Can someone explain: "Holds your entire movie collection" - does this mean it rips your DVDs onto a hard drive? Or just catalog them?
"Collect your TV Shows, and have them automatically organized by season." - is this over the air TV? Over the Top (Cable). Does it include Netflix, PrimeTV, Hulu? IS this just a catalog of what you like or does it Copy these to the hard drive as well?
"Enjoy your own music collection. Make playlists, and listen on the go." - Can I transfer songs I bought song on Apple, GooglePlay, or CDs?
"Watch Live TV and set automatic recordings to expand your media library" - is this over the air and/or cable? Can I record from streaming services? Once I record, can I watch it on my mobile?
Thank you for your help!
[+] [-] krisroadruck|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eblah|6 years ago|reply
I just installed it a few weeks back, and like it a lot. Much less clutter and overhead compared to Plex. The Roku app is what's missing for me, though. When that is finished (it's in development), this will be a great full replacement for Plex, for me.
[+] [-] prplhaz4|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anthonylavado|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hysan|6 years ago|reply
If you were to convince me to try Jellyfin, what would your recommended setup for an LG WebOS TV? Ideally one that allows me to continue using the TV remote.
[+] [-] ct0|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BadBadJellyBean|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavyset_go|6 years ago|reply
If anyone is looking to contribute, the React client needs some work and its success would open up support to more platforms.
[+] [-] regnerba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vxNsr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benboughton1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fixmycode|6 years ago|reply
The Samsung Smart TV OS apparently is being cycled out for more modern alternatives. Surely the Jellyfish team knows this but with the ever-changing landscape of TV OS's, it seems like it's really difficult to support a large quantity of devices.
[+] [-] krisroadruck|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m-p-3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prplhaz4|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavyset_go|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keyle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] branon|6 years ago|reply
Previously, I was pointing Kodi at an SFTP server which worked fine, similar to the guy who had a good experience with VLC. Those are both great standalone solutions.
However, adding "media server" software like Jellyfin into the mix gives my users a much wider variety of clients to choose from (including the Jellyfin addon for Kodi) without compromising freedom.
Various other perks include tracking watched status across devices, Chromecast support, and re-encoding video files so they play on old clients or slower connections. The playback reporting plugin is fun as well.
Keep up the great work everybody!
[+] [-] charwalker|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamBam|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PenguinCoder|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsharitt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coppernoodles|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabeelms|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yboris|6 years ago|reply
Website: https://videohubapp.com/
MIT Open Source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
[+] [-] throwaway-9320|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cfjgvjh|6 years ago|reply
It's also much faster to scan my library with jellyfin than plex, (few minutes vs an hour and a half) though I'm not sure why as I only have ~30 shows.
[+] [-] mistermann|6 years ago|reply
Is this how one would watch media from Jellyfish on TV, install Kodi+JellyFish AddOn for iOS/Android and then Chromecast to TV?
[+] [-] hbcondo714|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hbcondo714|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.newegg.com/gyration-gyr3101us-universal/p/N82E16...
[+] [-] lozaning|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control
[+] [-] regnerba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alias_neo|6 years ago|reply
They'd benefit hugely, I feel, from focusing effort on the native apps. Some of this is more challenging; WebOS for example never had an OSS app, so there's nothing for Jellyfin to fork
[+] [-] mrmlz|6 years ago|reply
It annoys me to no end. Kodi has had support for ages (back in the XBMC-days) but the feature-request and bountys seems to fall on deaf ears.
Other than that i've found the meta-data to be "better" in emby/jellfin compared to Kodi.