Understandable, but like I told the other person in another comment. Setting jellyfin on a friend’s device is as easy as setting up plex if you get a domain name. I have one from cloudflare that I pay $10 a month for. I create the user account on my end and only give my friend the server address and login

That’s subjective. I’ve never had an issue with it, neither has my wife or son or the couple of friends who use my media.

It just werks.

Sure, but I’ll use myself as an example: I don’t want any of my services exposed to the internet, so Tailscale/Netbird/other Wireguard solution is the best choice.
Some family members have their TV’s online with no Tailscale or media box, so that solution is out.

Sure I could route all their Jellyfin traffic to my me via an exit node or VPN, but then we’re way deeper into this than my 60-something mother would ever want to. And I am on the hook for both her and my uptime. So phone/tablet/PC only if they don’t want a streaming device with native support.

The built in functionality on Plex is really practical, and practical is good for us creatures of comfort.

So I’m not disagreeing with you, just explaining what edge Plex still has over JF.

(And yes, I could do what you do and run with Cloudflare, but I don’t want to pay for it and I don’t want any traffic via third party I don’t trust)

That's the spirit!

Of course it's subjective, but it was you who asked why people continue to use Plex. This is a reason, and the reason is valid whether you share the same experience or not.

I wouldn’t call it subjective. The issues that it has are all objectively there, whether or not you’re bothered by them is what’s subjective. If you’re personally ok with all the quirks, bugs, missing features and general lack of polish that plague Jellyfin but not Plex more power to you. But those problems exist regardless, and they are the answer to the question you asked.

I have Plex and Jellyfin but if I want to watch on my PS5, Plex has an official media app on there that's really convenient to use.

Jellyfin but you not being able to follow a dead simple guide.

The fact that others had the same problem without solution means it isn't follow a dead simple guide. There are multiple guides. Just setting up docker means you have to already know to not use it and run podman. Because if you follow the online guides on docker's own website, you end up with a docker gui and their AI assistant installed.

And to think you were running a whole ass ISP...

You are arguing that setting up an Internet server is as simple as it was 30 years ago. You are arguing for the sake of arguing.

What the fuck are you on about?

1. Docker doesn't require podman at all
2. Learning the basics of Docker isn't that complex. Certainly isn't as complex as learning how to run VMs on a dedicated headless server.
3. If you look up "install docker", the first hit is, 9 out of 10 times, Docker Engine. NOT the desktop app...
4. No, I am aguing that if you were capable of setting up Cisco BGPs in the mid-90s, when documentation was ass, network gear management was ass, and you didn't have forums and Reddit and Wikipedia and websites hosting manuals, tech blogs and guides and so on.... Then setting up Jellyfin, which is a fraction of the complexity of your job 30 years ago, should be straightforward. I am arguing that if you were capable of configuring complex services and devices 30 years ago, then today, with a million times more information readily available at your fingertips, you should be able to set up a simple service.

Not that I want to disagree with you, and I have never used Plex. But I was shocked how polished and easy Jellyfin is for an open source project when I used it the first time. It feels like a very mature piece of software to me. My gf really loves it, too.

I agree setting up tailscale for remote access was a bit of a learning curve though.

If you think there’s anything polished about Jellyfin there’s a whole world of open source projects out there for you to discover. The world is your oyster.

It definitely isn’t mature by any measure. It’s been stuck in the process of fixing technical debt and poor design decisions from the project it was forked from for years now and still isn’t finished, though they’ve made some progress in the last couple years. But I’m not sure if they are going to keep the momentum up since several lead maintainers have left the project recently. Jellyfin still hasn’t figured out table stakes features like native intro and credit skipping, OIDC support, etc. There are some devastating bugs that having been around more most of its lifetime too. One they fixed like a month ago was if Jellyfin couldn’t access your media files for even a short period of time, it would delete all media from your playlists and you’d have to recreate them one one.

I don't think that is how it works. I don't necessarily need a reference to tell something is a good or a bad product. I have never said that Jellyfin is more polished than Plex is, just that my impreession is contadictionary to yours of Jellyfin being a duct-taped mess. No idea why you would argue against another persons obviously subjective opinion?

I’m not saying you don’t think it’s polished, I’m saying that if Jellyfin is where you set the bar for what “polished” means to you, then the rest of the open source world is going to blow your mind. Like you have nowhere to go but up from here.

Jellyfin being a duct taped mess on the other hand isn’t part of any subjective opinion, that’s just the state the software is in. Like it’s just missing basic features of its competitors, and has been stuck in relative development hell trying to rework the internals it inherited from Emby.

You're misrepresenting how it works. There is nothing "random" or "opaque" about Nuvio. You pick and choose the exact file you want to see, just like browsing torrents. I go with the REMUX every time.

And It's better because you can watch anything you want instantly without having to download it first then transfer it to your Jellyfin library, and then delete the file when you're done watching. Nuvio simplifies the entire process. (Of course you can also save your download to your library to watch again).

You people frustrate me so much; you rather make up lies than simply try the app and see for yourself how much better it is than Jellyfin. Nuvio can do everything Jellyfin does, except better.

The lack of AirPlay 2, and the indignant dismissal by the lead developer when challenged on its omission, calls into question their technical comprehension and competency. That was around 5 years ago, and it’s still not been implemented.

I'll check it out! Thanks for the recommendation

I looked at it earlier... and it seemed ot be just another media app. Decided to take a closer look since you're so gung ho about it, and came to the same conclusion based on their website. Given what you're saying about it, and the complete lack of any of those claims by the company... you're the one not including relevant information.

The Nuvio website doesn't mention bittorrent usage at all. In fact, it doesn't mention acquiring media in any way. All of the advertising says the exact same thing that Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin all say.

Nuvio does not come with a catalogue. It plays the media you already have, and adds everything around it: the artwork, the numbers, the subtitles, and the memory of where you stopped.

That's literally what all of these media apps do. They take your existing media and make it pretty anbd easily accessible across devices.

It plugs into what you already use.

Nuvio plays from your own media server or from the addons you install. Tracking, ratings, artwork and skip markers come from the services you already use.

Hmm seems to be advertising the app as something that i playing YOUR existing media, going going out to get new media you don't have... except for that bit about addons. What you're describing doesn't seem to be native functionality of the app, but probably something provided by one of the add-ons they mention. Of which there is no apparent way to browse their addon library without installing the app, and I'm not going to do that just for a random discussion online with someone that is leaving out relevant information to try and make the claim something is better, when the app claims to do the exact same thing.

In fact, the subreddit, also seems to indicate that content acquisition isn't in the scope of the app or community.

Nuvio welcomes community addons that provide metadata (TMDB, Trakt, Simkl), subtitles, and custom catalogs. However, discussions or addons that facilitate access to copyrighted content, stream scraping or debrid link troubleshooting are strictly prohibited on r/nuvio. Posts containing images of unauthorized streams or stream-scraping addons are subject to removal. Violations of these rules will be removed.

So you're entire basis for proselytizing this app over the several other existing ones the community has already verified and ensured quality of for years... is an unsupported addon that the app's own community denounces and could stop working at any point because it's not officially supported in any way

You can keep your year old app that already seems to have a dozen other vibe-coded forks using the same name without anyone enforcing any sort of trademark. I'm sure there's absolutely no astroturfing going on here at all for what seems to be a chinese clone. I'm sure the piracy community has gone through the entire source code with a fine-toothed comb to ensure there's nothing hiding in the main apps or the community addons and that all code review is d=properly verifying quality and security. /s

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Docker doesn't require podman at all

Podman isn't an addon for docker. Podman is the open source alternative containerizer to docker. When I first encountered Docker's AI Bonzai buddy called Gordon, Lemmy responded with, "Lol, everyone knows to not run Docker."

:

No, I am aguing that if you were capable of setting up Cisco BGPs in the mid-90s, when documentation was ass,

Documentation was far more thorough and accurate than today. First was everything was simpler. No VMs, No Containers. No https certificates unless they were e-commerce. The second reason is that documentation wasn't an afterthought because the project is done by volunteers. I got a 100+ page binder from Netscape just to cover how to configure their build kit. (The software to make a customized installation CD.) Today many projects documentation consists only of, "Check out the Discord."

The last important factor was the rate of change was slower so the documentation you got in 1996 was still completely accurate in 1999.

Edit:
Re docker engine.

The guides say install docker engine and point you to the docker website. Once on the docker website, the docker documentation tells you to install the docker gui to get the engine installed and walks you through the procedure of installing docker gui.

Out of the box, Nuvio cannot do much (hence why it's allowed in app stores).

Research more into now its plug-in system works. Specifically look into one of the following plug-ins: Torrentio or Comet.

Also learn what a Debrid service is, and then we can talk. Until then, knock it off with the conspiracy theories. It is mind-blowing to me how much effort you've put into wanting me to be wrong. That's fine; nobody's forcing you to use it. Stick with Jellyfin if it helps you sleep at night. I'll continue to enjoy pirating the easy way.

I didn’t know this was going to trigger so many people. lol. People paid money and are trying to justify their purchases. Good for everyone who uses it. I’ll continue using my “ugly, duct-taped-together mess” jellyfin I guess since I have zero issues with it and I don’t go out of my way to find “bugs” and “missing features” to just point out some things plex has that jellyfin lacks. Eh, it is what is.

You didn’t know that when you asked a question to the community that people would answer it? Ok.

So you asked the question rhetorically in bad faith because you just wanted to evangelize Jellyfin, got it. This is exactly why the Jellyfin’s Witnesses have the reputation they do lol

Apparently not using Arch is the only thing keeping me from reaching my peak in life

You mean watchtower by containrrr? That repo seems archived.

Also, if you don't mind me asking, how does that even work? There is a far from zero chance of potentially breaking changes on any given update, so with auto-updates, do you just accept that something might suddenly stop working, or do you just get notifications that a new version is available and update manually?

Plex is a bit more abstracted behind their services and auth, jellyfin runs exposed on the public internet in your case, I'm not willing to do that at present.

What are admin keys that you're referring to?

They’re cryptographic strings that plex uses to identify you on the back end. You reset them by changing your password and checking the sign out all devices button.

Thank god I have auto update for my exposed dockers...

Wildcard SSL does help a lot, since every subdomain isn't broadcast publicly in the issuer logs.

It's easier to setup and use for less technical people, also just more widely known.

I run Jellyfin but logging in is definitely a pain, have to manually enter the URL (including https:// for some crazy reason, why doesn't it just default to it??) and username and password using a crappy TV remote.

If it breaks I either fix it (often it's just an issue where the new version needs extra config added), or roll back to a backup and pin the old version temporarily if it really went wrong and I can't recover otherwise.

Backups run early AM before any auto updates start, and no one is using services and changing data then, so nothing should really ever be lost by rolling back.

Jellyfin has plenty of issues with public instances too. It's just the reality of exposing to the public internet, unless it's something that has a lot of dedicated work going into security it's going to have problems.

Could you specify any of those issues? I ask because the only one I'm tracking allows unauthenticated playback, but only if they know the path to the file on the machine which is very easy to change from default.

The difference in your comment between the two is only entering the URL, which is normally the first screen you are created with on jellyfin clients. you’re using the same crappy remote to enter the username password, no?

I use one of the maintained forks of watchtower.

I use it to auto update within stable versions for things that are reputable enough to not make breaking changes, so nginx, apache, wireguard, traefik, etc. In over 10 years of running Plex I don't think I've experienced a breaking update in the last 5-7 years at least, so I consider it safe enough. Any other software like Immich that I'm not sure if that's safe, I keep it behind a vpn and update manually. But for things as big as nginx especially I feel very safe letting it auto update within a major version.

I just assumed it was because it lined up with them destroying the GUI, the new layout is the hot garbage that finally got my wife to opt for jellyfin.

Plex uses a code signin system where you open the app on your phone or just a browser, and enter the code there.

So there's no typing/entering anything on the TV at all.

There have been a few major ones this year, I'm sure they are fixed at this point though. https://app.opencve.io/cve/?vendor=jellyfin

Jellyfin has “Quick Connect” that does the same thing

It's been years, and there's only now a handful of programs that offer some of Discord's best features. If we had open source alternatives back then, I certainly would have entertained them.

Well exactly. The VC projects get to accelerate their "right now" factor with money. Money that doesn't need to make a return on investment for another x years. That means, before those products start their hostile monetization campaigns, they will be unequivocally the best in their field by any metric other than "libre as in freedom".

Look at Twitter. Did people that jumped ship jump to the relatively mature but "fiddly" federated platforms, or did they jump to "it's literally Twitter but without ads and grok" in Bluesky?

We're on Lemmy, so we're obviously in a group more willing to tolerate "it's an open protocol with some weirdness but that's better than being on one corporation's server beholden to their rules and TOS".

Anyone switching from Plex to Emby in 2026 instead of to Jellyfin chose Emby for a reason. For them, Emby is a "better" product and "still free" the way Plex was free for all meaningful features (hardware acceleration, remote streaming...) in 2018. Maybe it'll never happen, maybe it'll take until 2030, who knows, but Emby is in the exact same state that Plex was before Plex closed the source and started rent-seeking.

I mean...I'm on both of those, but I know I can use Bluesky as a linear feed like Mastodon, and as long as that still works with no algorithm, it solves my Twitter problem. I think the cycle of software innovation is that you have the first proprietary tool that solves a problem, like MS Office or 3DSMax, and then the most important parts of those programs are solved in open source software after a lag, like LibreOffice or Blender. Discord would always be replaced in time.

I used the nicholas-fedor Watchtower branch for a while.

I use Dockhand now (switched to it when Portainer accounced their enshittification), and that has auto-update built-in. So I no longer needed Watchtower.

I believe Arcane also has auto-update, since Dockhand has hinted at their own enshittification a few years from now...

Your welcome and good luck!