You can disable all of that though. I do.

I've considered switching but I have a very large and disorganized media library that Plex does a great job of organizing. About 10TB worth

Edit: NVM, this is pretty neat. Just loaded it up alongside Plex and it's surprisingly good. Going to use it for awhile and see how I like it.

FYI That setting seem to be in Settings > Network under "List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth"

I had no idea this was there :/

I remember trying this, and could still not get it to work. :(

I sincerely tried to disable cloud login, and could not figure out how.

Same

You can either navigate all the dark patterns Plex has put and will put in the way to force you to pay, or you can simply install Jellyfin and ditch Plex. I did the last.

Sure, except despite the dark patterns the actual experience of using Plex is much better than Jellyfin.

I have a smallish 100TB library I'd really love to move away from Plex, I regularly test out Jellyfin to see if they've finally made it usable. But sadly Jellyfin is still very far from being a good Plex replacement, it's just janky as fuck.

Constant playback errors, terrible client support, significantly higher resource usage.

100TB is not smallish. Here I was, thinking my setup of 8TB was small... What's your hardware? And, if you don't mind me asking, how is that you are using so much space? 4K movies? Honestly curious.

I have paid though and it was money well spent. I've mostly praised Plex because managing my media was a source of constant stress.

I still think Jellyfin is interesting and I'm going to keep it running alongside Plex to trial it.

Thank you for the extremely valuable edit! I am going to try it now too.

They’re easy to spin up in a Docker too.

Linuxserver.io hosts containers for Plex, jellyfin, and a bunch of related apps, with example compose or shell scripts.

This happened to me recently.

The internet went out, but I had some tv shows I wanted to watch already downloaded and indexed by my Plex server. So I tried loading Plex locally from my phone and it kept trying to "phone home" to have me login to the Plex website, which failed due to not having any internet access.

Yes, for a while Plex was usable without creating a SaaS account, but with some features blocked, and this (reaching the server from outside its LAN) was one of them.

(I say "feature" but of course what actually happened is that the plex developers decided to block requests from outside the LAN unless you sign up for their SaaS offering, which is kind of the opposite)

Isnt that the main feature of Plex? Playing local files? Seems ridiculous to require this....

It has to be setup for local network streaming (and requires a network connection to do so the first time). Plex is far from perfect but its pretty much the best local media service I've found, so I'm not too mad at some of its idiosyncrasies.

Getting plex pass is a must if you use it regularly in order to support hardware encoding.

You need plex pass for hardware encoding? Wow that is a turdy way to get people to pay.

Plex works without Internet just fine, but very annoyingly to enable local streaming without Internet, you need internet.

Had to enable hot spot on my phone briefly when I had an internet outage. Annoying but now just works.

There's a setting that tells it not to require authentication for clients on the local subnet. Pretty much everybody should set that.

How/why is that toggle not part of the configuration process during installation?

I can't really speak for the Plex developers. But as an ecommerce developer myself, I feel confident that the answer is that best practice is always to make the default settings the configuration that maximizes security protections. If you, the user, want to back that off trading security to get more convenience, fine, but it's on you, not on me.

Installation wizards ask the configurer to set various levels of security. It's not apparent that this option should be elided from any and all installation workflows.

Dark pattern?

What if I want different users locally?

The mobile app for Emby isn't as polished but I haven't had issues with local streaming.

It has an option to disable the login requirement for certain client IPs, or your whole LAN. Maybe it's erring in the side of caution, but most users just want to stream, disabling login in your LAN should be the default.

Enable DLNA in Plex and you should be able to play things from VLC

DLNA is a horrible experience compared to Plex, just above a network share. Did you know you can install Jellyfin and point to the same storage that Plex uses? That way you keep Plex (in case you bought the pass), and have Jellyfin as a backup.

Interesting

My main complaint with Plex is local searching is hit and miss - a little while back I typed in a string I knew was in the title of a file (confirmed using 'locate' in CLI) and it returned 'no results'

Plex does some wonky things, like missing external subtitles right there in the same video subfolder, or forgetting/failing to detect a compatible video file for some reason. My goto solution was simply to touch the files so Plex would think they were new and index them.

I used extf4 as storage, but changing to NTFS (yuck) has caused less issues. With the last version the search for subtitles is broken, but at least I can add them manually. I bought Plex Pass for life, but stayed with the free version because it's more stable.

I only had a brief test, but searching seems a little better since this update

I'm on the monthly plan because I wanted to play with GPU transcoding - despite what a lot of folks say it does work in Windows on an AMD iGPU, although I've switched to discrete now (previous server was Ubuntu, but Linux GPU fan control seems to be a mess and we all know the Nvidia driver saga)

Ditto. Plex was great but I'm not creating a web account to use local open source software that decided to be something else.

Can't emphasize this more: Plex was awesome compared to the alternatives years ago. XBMC (Kodi now) was my goto, but all media was played locally, Plex not only transcoded and streamed, it has native clients even for smart TVs.

I'm still annoyed that by default it requires a login to their cloud to stream locally, which I found when my Internet failed and Plex refused to stream locally. Also the useless third-party stream channels, and the insistence on enabling DRM on Firefox when none of my media needs it to play.

I've installed Jellyfin in parallel, and I agree it lacks polishing compared to Plex, but it gets the job done without getting in your way.

As you said it’s not the default but a simple check box to disable local auth.

It a bit more complex, you have to go to

Settings | Network | List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth

And add your local LAN range, like 192.168.1.0/24

The Plex software that you'd be running on your local machine (server) is closed-source/nonfree anyway, so yeah.

Jellyfin is a much nicer alternative.

I basically never see Plex adverts (and I only use local streaming really). Where do you normally see them?

I think what I meant was the Home screen being full of Crackle & other movies/tv on demand.

You can remove those if you want. It's a bit cringe to deal with, but I'm not going to call it a line that should never be crossed.

Plex doesn't allow system admins to remove them for all users - each user has to do it themselves. The intention behind the decision is pretty obvious and soured me considerably on Plex.

System admins are the only ones that will be bothered by this. Uncle and Auntie will see an extension of your library.

Uncle and Auntie won't understand that they aren't part of my library, and will complain when something goes wrong with them despite the fact that they're beyond my control.

As the person who owns and operates the service, I should have the control to set default configuration for my users. Just like I should be able to shut off all the ads for everybody, I should be able to set the default quality setting to max.

I can't do either.

Exactly this.

I never asked for the support burden of content that I'm not interested in offering MY users of Plex. They're not Plex's users, and it speaks volumes of their motives that they think it's appropriate to Trojan horse monetization services onto my users.

I also went the same Plex to Jellyfin route. Though it took me a couple of tries because Jellyfin wasn't quite up to snuff the first time I tried it, but the server/web side seems to be pretty great these days, at least I don't have any issues. While I'm glad they finally have an iOS app, I wish I didn't have to rely on a thirdparty app for Apple TV.

There is an AppleTV app called Infuse that seems to work pretty well with Jellyfin. That said, I am pretty newb to Jellyfin and local streaming in general so YMMV.

Piggybacking off of this, does anyone know of any PS4 apps that can stream Jellyfin content? I have a TV in the spare bedroom with a PS4 attached, but it's not really worth my time to go get some other dedicated device just for Jellyfin.

When I did this, the web interface worked fine in the ps4 browser

There is a Jellyfin Client for Apple TV, SwiftFin[1]. Even though it is in beta it seems to work really well.

[1] https://github.com/jellyfin/swiftfin

Reasonably happy Jellyfin user here, though my install is old enough that I guess the Fire TV app doesn't work with it? I'm a little scared to upgrade.

If you're running it in docker, just backup the config and cache dirs and try the new version. If there's a problem, roll back. If that breaks (probably not, but maybe), restore the backup, then roll back.

If you're not running it in docker, that'd probably still work, if you track down those two directories. Just a bit less clean, and a little chance there's some important stuff configured to be saved other places in the non-dockerized version, so it's a little riskier.

Appreciated! I am indeed running it in docker, but it's one of those home servers that doesn't get touched very often, and every time it does get touched seems to end up needing half a day to untangle everything.

> every time it does get touched seems to end up needing half a day to untangle everything.

This is exactly why I run everything in docker :-) One shell file or docker-compose file per service, and each concisely documents exactly what's running and where all the important stuff is.

Now, if I have to touch zfs for any reason at all... that's half a day of sweating bullets, worried that one of those arcane commands will wipe out the whole volume. The UI is like Git, but what's at stake is all your stuff instead of one easy-to-restore code repo. "Oh you want to do what must be one of the five most common things someone might want to do to a zfs pool? Sure just run these six arcane commands in order. Don't mess any of it up or all your stuff is gone."

Are Emby and Kodi not popular alternatives anymore? I have been out of the game for awhile

As for Kodi, it's somewhat of a different class of software to Plex/Emby/Jellyfin - Kodi is more a player interface for local files and with the option to install plugins to play from other sources like DLNA, or even from Jellyfin [1] (and I assume Plex and Emby as well)

Jellyfin is more a network player - your jellyfin server does the heavy lifting, like transcoding etc. so your client basically just needs a web browser (though there are native apps too).

1: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/kodi.html

The devs of Emby were always fairly hostile to the spirit of open source and when they closed the source in v6, the community's opinion shifted in favor of Jellyfin. As far as I can tell, Emby is pretty irrelevant now.

You can put me on that list, too. The minute I found out I couldn’t block my plex server from the internet and keep it working was the day it went in the trash. Except instead of finding another transcoding server, I just stream local media with Kodi over nfs and choose not to watch media outside of my home network. So much more problem free

How would you get your content metadata if you don’t let it on the internet?

Plex continues working if you disable local auth if the plex main server goes belly up.

Why not just organise and tag your media before uploading it to your server?

I've had issues with some stuff getting the wrong metadata and it became annoying enough to fix that I now use MediaElch to tag my files before uploading them to my server.

Honest question: why would I want content metadata? As soon as I know the title of the media file, I’m golden. Is there something super cool I’m missing out on without it? Maybe I’m rare in having a well sorted media library?

Cover art is a must for me, as it makes it easier to find the movie again rather than reading the title.

Also, while I know what the movie is about, my SO wants to see what year and genre the film is, and if it passes that first hurdle then she wants to read what the film is about before deciding if it's a pass or a go.

Finally, I enjoy being able to quickly find related movies by clicking on the director or actors and see what other works I have with them. I know I could do this in IMDb but it's nice having it right there.

I find cover art very useful (especially for young kids).

I made the switch recently as well. I just don't trust plex not to engage in creepy stocker behavior by analyzing my viewing habits.

If you can write what about plex do you miss, I could also suggest you emby, if that makes sense. I also grew to dislike Plex, the UI detached from the base system, the continuous bugging, (it was also very slow for me, and buffery), but I got a lifetime license for emby and never looked back, I wasn't using anything in particular from Plex, but I also have IPTV + integration with the kodi "filesystem", and auto subtitles + conversion + own music streaming, but yeah if you have anything in particular missing I can maybe help, I kinda like Emby so I'd like to help them grow

Jellyfish is a fork of Emby.

I think it’s the other way around? But emby went the paid way?

Jellyfin is a fork of the Emby code back when they were OSS. They stopped being OSS, and Jellyfin forked.

Mh are you sure about that? I use emby because I like open source but I despise free stuff (at least when one can afford to pay), and I've seen that their server is definitely release under GPL license? But is paid? https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/blob/master/LICENSE.md

Afaik I am not sure anymore who forked who but I've seen convos on IRC back then and the issue was solely the fact that emby devs wanted to be paid

Aaaa you’re right I just noticed that the last tag is <3.6

Making a project open source doesn't mean you can't close-source it later on and cease distributing updates, like what Emby has done. Jellyfin forked from the last open-source version of Emby that was available under a liberal license.

Yeye I just didn’t notice the last tag on GitHub

It is unfortunate they did not just do the paid route and keep it Open Source.

Yeah it is a shame agree

Which is why Jellyfin forked from Emby, and why you'll find 540 references to the word "emby" in the source code.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/search?q=emby

admittedly it has been awhile since I tried it, but a good amount of the stuff I acquire is anime and plex handles it better than anything else, with the AMSA plugin at least. Anime can be a little weird with a different naming formats, multiple language audio and subtitles, fansub preferences, and sequel seasons sometimes having a different name from the first.

I also need to be able to set a language preference for both audio and subtitles since I am one of those subs>dubs weirdos. If I have to set the audio track every single episode I am just going to hook up my laptop and play it in mpchc.

Whenever I look at open issues for emby or jelly I get the impression that anime is annoying to deal with so I'll just stick with the plex plugin that already works.

I have a ton of anime and it indexes it quite well. Its organized by Sonarr though

Mh yeah sorry I have never watched anime so I am not sure how emby would handle that, it's a segment I have no experience with, but about setting default language for sub/audio it's possible, but not sure how much would it help ^^

I've got about a dozen (yeah, I know, not a lot) anime series on my Jellyfin, and also prefer subs in nearly all cases. I've had a problem with them. But, if someone's got something that's already working, they should probably just stick with that.

If you are open for suggestion, there is a software that would work for you. Shoko Server[0] would be best for managing Anime. I like them since they made my anime folder easily to be managed. And they uses AniDB as their anime lookup. Basically it is a cataloger, file manager, file renamer, database lookup, file tracker software.

They have a plugin for JellyFin, ShokoFin. And I believe they do have a integration with Plex.

This replaced my previous setup and it works amazing with my Kodi.

[0] https://shokoanime.com/downloads/

Oh good lord, I meant to write "I've not had a problem with them." Jeez. Too late to edit now. That is, Jellyfin's been fine for me but it might only be because I've been lucky, since I haven't tried a ton of anime on it.

I guess I wasn't hurt so much with their ads yet, but I've been seeing wonky behavior on Streaming to mobile and some other transcoding issues because of which I keep running into frequent pauses while I'm watching stuff. Was looking into alternatives but haven't found much yet.

Plex shines when transcoding, but sucks with direct streaming. Unfortunately direct streaming has to be disabled on the client, but the buffering and stuttering will go away once Plex always transcodes to that client.

I still use Plex for outside the house but most of the time I use Jellyfin.

Twonky. PlayOn. TVersity.

All good options. Although some are trying to push a yearly subscription now. I bought one time licenses for all 3 when they were 20 a pop.

Check out Emby which I found way better than Jellyfin.

Would you mind sharing what you found better? Asking as a happy Jellyfin user who hasn't tried Emby (mostly audio focus, for me -- maybe Emby is better for video?)

Emby is overall more polished, specifically the mobile app. And I can't remember the Jellyfin Android TV app but there's a cracked version of the Emby app out there.

I tried both Emby and Jellyfin and preferred Jellyfin. It's been a while since I made the switch so I don't remember why I disliked Emby, but my gut tells me they seemed to be going the way of Plex in some regards. Perhaps things have changed since then, but I've been a happy Jellyfin user ever since.

afaik Jellyfin is a fork of Emby once the Emby Team decided to close source the project, which was very unfortunate for me to hear back then as a Emby user. However, I've tried Jellyfin two times since then and found it (also) to be the inferior product. This might have changed since my last adventure, so might give it another shot.

Them you didn't learn that you should disable all other sources and feeds than your own servers.

You should not have to do this at all, and you didn't have to with older versions of Plex.

You also used to be able to log into "your" Plex server with a local account, but some years ago it was changed to require authenticating with Plex, Inc. to log in.

No you can log in with your local username and password. Use the local IP and port. It lets you log in without contacting plex

Perhaps it's changed in the last couple of years, but Plex made the process of not letting it call home extremely difficult, and defaulted to new garbage being turned on as they added new garbage, and re-enabling garbage that they made big changes to.

After multiple internet issues resulted in me not having access to my local Plex server and not being able to fix that, I decided to drop it. Maybe tons of backlash prompted them to fix this? I don't care, I'm a happy Jellyfin user now.

Plex probably has changed this, but a couple of years back it asked for my Plex account on the clients when my Internet went down. It let me login from localhost, and I had to disable login for my LAN so other clients were accepted. IIRC later Plex Inc also was down for a short while, and many people complained on the forums that their servers couldn't stream if Plex Inc. was down.

Yes _technically_ you can go into settings and whitelist local IP ranges, on which you can log in with local credentials. But it's not on by default, and you can't turn it on if the Internet goes down and you can't auth with plex.tv.

... from every device. Each time you install. Sometimes after an update.

does jellyfin have apps for tv?

There's a webOS client that works great, but you need root (https://rootmy.tv).

They're looking to push it official via LG though.

I use a Roku, and yes there is a Roku app. Can't speak for the other Smart TV OSs.