I’ve got Jellyfin up and running right now on a DS620Slim NAS and it’s running pretty good so far. I’ve seen a lot of people say they prefer Plex over Jellyfin. What are the main advantages to plex?

  • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Jellyfin:

    • Free
    • Gets the job done
    • Not in financial trouble
    • No layoffs
    • Not trying to sell you stuff
    • Not selling your watch habbits
    • Mainly develops features people want

    Plex (paid):

    • Decade of development with pretty solid pay features
    • Easy sharing with friends and remote watching
    • Decent clients for almost every device and more solid transcoding
    • Fairly quick fixes for problems
    • Great intro/credit/commercial skipping
    • Only develops features that might make money
    • In the middle of layoffs
    • Centralized authentication makes is impossible to watch if offline or they’re offline unless you removed local authentication before it went offline.
    • They sell your viewing habbits

    Plex is super convenient and slimy

    Jellyfin is pure and behind on features, clients and comforts.

    • Fisch@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      You can get intro skipping for Jellyfin too with a plugin. It even works with Findroid, which is a native Android app for Jellyfin. I’ve been using it for a while now (maybe a month or so) and it’s always worked perfectly.

    • Hizeh@hizeh.com
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      1 year ago

      Question about the viewing habits data. Is this only related to the Free Ad Supported Streaming content Plex pushes or are they also tracking viewing habits of users personal libraries?

      • 418teapot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There’s no way of knowing, which is the whole problem with their model and why a lot of us self host things in the first place. Even if they super duper promise not to use the data, they could be lying. And if they are actually true to their word today, that could change tomorrow.

    • HomelessCanadian@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Seems like I’ll continue to stick with Jellyfin because of the offline access. My internet is very spotty where I live so it seems to be the best option.

      • Guilty Tangent@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Same here.

        My internet connection isn’t too spotty, but having gone through it I found it really annoying not being able to watch my own shows off my own systems just because I can’t auth to Plex’s login servers.

    • SRo@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      ?! I can watch stuff locally from my Plex server even if my internet is down.

    • snor10@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Great list of comparison!

      Worth noting that Jellyfin is not only free as in beer (if you selfhost), but also free as in Freedom i.e. open source.