Selfhosted

Something that's getting glossed over in these comments is the ability to easily watch or listen to friends' media.

I have my own library with about 1k movies, a bunch of anime and TV, and 10k albums. But I have like 6 or 7 friends with libraries even larger. My one friend has 37k albums, they all have thousands of movies I never even heard of, etc. It really makes it like my own mini streaming service, and I love throwing on a huge music library on shuffle via plexamp while driving to/from work.

I paid like $70 for a lifetime pass years ago, so I'm along for the ride I guess. I really rely on the music aspect of it, I haven't had a spotify subscription in like 7 years.

I know they changed a lot lately, and particularly what pisses me off is how vague and how they intentionally obfuscate how their model works now. I have friends that for years used my library, and recently have been like "I saw Plex started charging now so I stopped using it" and I have to be like "no it's still free because I have a lifetime pass". It's definitely just to trick people into getting monthly subscriptions.

I got the Plex lifetime pass over 10 years ago for pretty cheap and Plex has served me well over the years. But it's just so damn bloated now and the biggest recent change to their android app is atrocious. The app is so laggy and slow now. And downloading movies to watch locally on a tablet is just painful.

So I decided to start experimenting with Jellyfin this month and I am blown away at how fast and snappy everything is. It still isn't as refined as Plex but there's something to be said about privacy and using FOSS apps.

I'll be using Jellyfin going forward now.

I jumped ship early on. They didn't include skipping intros (or removed the plugin or the capability to use plugins, I don't remember).

Went to Jellyfin, took like 2 hours to figure out what's different. I don't even remember, are there any features worth it staying on Plex? At least I'm not missing anything.

Also for watch together you start a watch group and can watch a show episode for episode. Instead of having to open each episode separately and having everyone join again (but maybe Plex fixed this already, I wouldn't know).

Just as an FYI, Jellyfin doesn't charge money for.... well, anything.

Genuinely Plex has become so obtrusive about NEW FEATURES, NOW WE HAVE THIS, USE THIS THUS WAY!!! and then also my libraries have somehow become even slower to load. I've been using jellyfin way more often

Longtime lifetime Plex Pass holder here.

FOSS is important. Having control over how you use your own hardware and files is important.

But even if none of that mattered, once I actually used Jellyfin for a few days the snappy bloat-free feel of it won me over. Switching between Plex and Jellyfin felt like switching between windows and linux.

Fellow jellyfin user 😍

For a perfect pairing, Jellyfin + Tailscale.

Remember when Plex tried to sell you a subscription to use outdated versions of open source game console emulators?

Plex wants to be a profit-driven company, but their business model is piracy. They'll squeeze you for subscriptions, while making your experience worse to try and broker a peace deal with content owners.

Imagine wanting to charge to stream your own media with your own hardware and resources... Hey wait, we don't have to imagine it anymore, Plex already did it.

I forgot as I am a Plex Pass Lifetime user, and oh boy I'll be sure to milk that out (actually after all these years I think I have already done that) just to keep being an annoying stat for Plex and nothing else 🤣

So glad I installed jellyfin years ago and never bothered to set up Plex.

Be prepared for a barrage of "Jellyfin" in your comments.

But yea seriously, use Jellyfin.

I know it's fashionable to shit on Plex here, but OP either has his server misconfigured or is just trying to stir the pot:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/202526943-plex-free-vs-paid/

Free to Use: Video (movies & TV) streaming of personal content on the same local network as the Plex Media Server

Aaaand that’s one of the reasons why I got rid of Plex. “Bought” it, then they found some other feature to paywall. Bought that, then another feature. Then it stopped playing files of certain extensions through chromecast. Fuck that. Put together Jellyfin and moved my collection over. Zero trouble since.

I used Plex about 12 years ago. The first time my internet went down, and I couldn't use it, I stopped using it. Garbage. Not what I wanted.

I used Windows Media Center as long as I could, I loved it. But, eventually, I had to leave Windows 8 behind. Now I use Jellyfin and SABnzbd, it works okay most of the time, but I don't serve media to the outside, so I don't know if it works for that.

Jellyfin or Emby.

What’s plex better at?