Tbh JF is faaaaaaaar from a ‘great UI’, it suffers from the ‘open source design’ of developers who have no idea how to design a good UI as the designers for the UI. I shouldn’t need to click vaguely in the direction of where I think the X (close) button is to make it appear in the first place. The settings for a user should be in the same location as the admin settings. The main screen shouldn’t look like it came straight out of 2000, it should have the categories all visible by default, it should be easier to setup https (plex was WAY easier in this regard), ota channel guides shouldn’t be outsourced to a paid project, there is no built-in import/export (I recently moved to a docker image and found that out, yay)…
It ‘works’, but fuck me it’s so rough around the edges that it draws blood. Plex has issues (downloading content from a server is wonky, metadata can grab the wrong movies, paid sub/lifetime etc) but it’s so, so, so much closer to what an all-in-one media platform should be, imo.
I’m not arguing that any of your complaints are invalid. I just want to say that I use jellyfin to organize my movies and TV shows and access them from other computers on my home network. It works, is easy, was free. I like it.
Yeah, there’s a reason I keep it installed and at the ready, but it’s just less user-friendly and that is essential when my users aren’t tech savvy, they just want things to ‘work’. If JF reaches feature parity I’ll migrate my users, but I can’t be asked to explain why they need to pay a monthly fee for ota guides or why everything looks different, if I also need to explain that features are missing and why can’t I move their watch history. It’s got to be easy for them, but also for me too.
I’ve found that most FOSS projects just have a “for us, by us” mentality where nobody cares about making things easy to use to the point that it’s not even possible if you’re not an experienced coder AND have strong knowledge of networking.
That’s because it’s a fork of Emby from 13+ years ago, still running 90% of that old code. They’ve kept it functional, that’s about it.
If you want something that’s actually still being developed/improved look to Emby or Plex. Emby is more focused on ‘personal’ media servers with your own content and users under your own control; plex is more focused on cloud services, integrating content they can run advertising on and requiring your users to authenticate through their public servers to be able to access your local/private server.
I’ve had plex running on my nas for 6+ years now, and have it set to where all the cloud stuff is available but out of the way, as I have a small collection so I don’t need to lean into the cloud streaming. I remember trying Emby in my evaluation of Plex, but as I recall the UI was bleh and it too followed a paid model. I know of Kodi but I haven’t looked into it in a long time, and I never ended up actually trying it.
Plex is fine for my needs, but I decided to get setup with JF just ‘in case’ plex takes a sharp new direction or something (I’ve had it installed since the whole ‘watch stuff free with ads’ kicked off), so if/when I can just be like ‘hey all plex did [stupid thing] so I just need you all to uninstall plex, grab this jellyfin app, and login with [credentials] and we will be all set’.
Emby used to be entirely open source, it’s free to use the base product (server software and the built in web browser based app) but requires a license for the installable apps and some server features so that the developers have some income from their work and incentive to keep spending their time+efforts on it.
Some people don’t like paying others for their hard work so they’d regularly fork Emby as it releases updates so they could remove those paywalls.
Unwilling to continue supporting this, Emby went closed source so their work could no longer be stolen. Jellyfin is the final fork of emby before it officially closed its source code. They have since kept it running, but have made little to no improvements or changes beyond that.
Not to mention the setup for hardware encoding which basically expects deep knowledge of the matter to even get it to run, let alone run well. Plex on the other hand hides it behind a license but it JUST WORKS, there’s no setup or anything.
I really wanted to use Jellyfin, but there’s just too many pain points
I highly discourage 1337x. They got caught not banning a user who intentionally uploaded malware. Forgive the reddit link, but there aren’t a lot of piracy news sites.
Damn. Just learned that trusting 1337x and IGGGAMES was a bad idea. Trying to teach my little pirate how to be safe on the high seas only to find out the places and people I thought were safe aren’t so.
Realdebrid just finds the torrents for you though, right? You’d still need a VPN since you’re technically downloading the movie to watch it. I know a lot of ISPs send notices if you torrent a copyrighted movie
Nope. It also downloads the torrent for you and gives you download link or stream link to the video. Most of the time, the torrent is already on their cache, so it’s instantly available to you.
They’re more like a private storage server. You can’t see what movies they have. Technically you can only download what you ‘add’ there, but they cache everybody else’s downloads too, so your download is readily available. I’m not sure of all technicalities, but there are a few different debrid services, so there must be some way they are able to do this.
I’m like you, hadn’t pirated outside of games since early 2000s and just started again. Wait until you see the shit we have now, it’s mind-blowing how far it’s come.
And with Jellyfin if you have the upload speeds you can even host for family etc, so anyone sharing your Netflix now can just login to your Jellyfin server, for them it will be a comparable experience.
Pirating games is basically unheard of for me, unless it’s a product not readily available on a modern storefront.
Nintendo has a problem with me playing Pokemon Omega Ruby on a 3DS emulator? they are free to offer a switch version.
This is because steam is not an asshole, which is a big reason why I kind of got disappointed when they stopped offering movies. I like having those on the same platform
I’m still maining plex, and at least there, they just create a plex account, you grant access to that account, and that’s it. Don’t even have to open ports. My guess is with JF since there isn’t a central account host, you’d probably have expose some ports on your network to be able to login without a VPN.
Nevermind that shit, Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid. I’m fucking done with these greedy-ass companies. I was paying Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Apple, Paramount , MLB.tv and HBO, and pretty content to do so, and they all continually removed content and adjusted their pricing to reduce what I was getting for my money. They finally pushed me beyond my tolerance limit a few months ago and I’ve been back to sailing the high seas for the first time in 20 years.
I have more content now, all at acceptable quality options, all with good subtitles instead of the mess HBO was, and all on the same platform instead of having to jump between 7 different apps. I’m done with them and I’ll stay done with them until they pull their heads out of their asses.
Edit: if you get a cheap computer, a Chromecast, a FireTV, or what I have - an Nvidia Shield TV, then you get even get a nifty remote controller and a good standard browsing platform for everything.
Just set this up on a cheap Onn 4k box from Walmart. Works fantastic. Also setup the Trakt integration to keep up with what I watch across multiple devices.
There’s now a whole ecosystem of applications to streamline the download of series (sonarr) and movies (radarr) using torrents or Usenet (prowlarr). Pair those with a good player like Jellyfin or Plex and you have a nice media center that for sure won’t stop working everytime your family tries to watch a movie…
Facts. I run both but JF is not ‘family-ready’ and thus sits on my server, receiving updates and idling until that changes. Plex took 5 minutes of explaining and the folks have been happily using it for a few years now.
But it’s totally free. You don’t need app unlocks, you can have as many devices as you want, and you can hardware transcode without paying for premium.
Paid ~$100 for the lifetime license 9 years ago. So less than 93 pennies a month.
Throughout that time Emby has constantly been developed bringing bug fixes, UI improvements, and new features; while also providing excellent support as needed on the forums.
TBH I think I’ve vastly underpaid and plan to donate to the project shortly.
In that same time, I’ve seen very few meaningful updates to jellyfin. Just scrolling through their changelogs it’s mostly filled with:
I was a long time pirate back in the day, and thinking of sailing once again. However all my old booty spots are gone. What is Jellyfin?
A great UI to stream your movie files from your TV. A bit like Plex, but open source.
Tbh JF is faaaaaaaar from a ‘great UI’, it suffers from the ‘open source design’ of developers who have no idea how to design a good UI as the designers for the UI. I shouldn’t need to click vaguely in the direction of where I think the X (close) button is to make it appear in the first place. The settings for a user should be in the same location as the admin settings. The main screen shouldn’t look like it came straight out of 2000, it should have the categories all visible by default, it should be easier to setup https (plex was WAY easier in this regard), ota channel guides shouldn’t be outsourced to a paid project, there is no built-in import/export (I recently moved to a docker image and found that out, yay)…
It ‘works’, but fuck me it’s so rough around the edges that it draws blood. Plex has issues (downloading content from a server is wonky, metadata can grab the wrong movies, paid sub/lifetime etc) but it’s so, so, so much closer to what an all-in-one media platform should be, imo.
I’m not arguing that any of your complaints are invalid. I just want to say that I use jellyfin to organize my movies and TV shows and access them from other computers on my home network. It works, is easy, was free. I like it.
Yeah, there’s a reason I keep it installed and at the ready, but it’s just less user-friendly and that is essential when my users aren’t tech savvy, they just want things to ‘work’. If JF reaches feature parity I’ll migrate my users, but I can’t be asked to explain why they need to pay a monthly fee for ota guides or why everything looks different, if I also need to explain that features are missing and why can’t I move their watch history. It’s got to be easy for them, but also for me too.
I’ve found that most FOSS projects just have a “for us, by us” mentality where nobody cares about making things easy to use to the point that it’s not even possible if you’re not an experienced coder AND have strong knowledge of networking.
That’s because it’s a fork of Emby from 13+ years ago, still running 90% of that old code. They’ve kept it functional, that’s about it.
If you want something that’s actually still being developed/improved look to Emby or Plex. Emby is more focused on ‘personal’ media servers with your own content and users under your own control; plex is more focused on cloud services, integrating content they can run advertising on and requiring your users to authenticate through their public servers to be able to access your local/private server.
I use Plex for music because it is very good there, but Jellyfin for movies/tv which I like more for that kind of content.
I’ve had plex running on my nas for 6+ years now, and have it set to where all the cloud stuff is available but out of the way, as I have a small collection so I don’t need to lean into the cloud streaming. I remember trying Emby in my evaluation of Plex, but as I recall the UI was bleh and it too followed a paid model. I know of Kodi but I haven’t looked into it in a long time, and I never ended up actually trying it.
Plex is fine for my needs, but I decided to get setup with JF just ‘in case’ plex takes a sharp new direction or something (I’ve had it installed since the whole ‘watch stuff free with ads’ kicked off), so if/when I can just be like ‘hey all plex did [stupid thing] so I just need you all to uninstall plex, grab this jellyfin app, and login with [credentials] and we will be all set’.
Why did they fork Emby if Emby is still being actively developed?
Emby used to be entirely open source, it’s free to use the base product (server software and the built in web browser based app) but requires a license for the installable apps and some server features so that the developers have some income from their work and incentive to keep spending their time+efforts on it.
Some people don’t like paying others for their hard work so they’d regularly fork Emby as it releases updates so they could remove those paywalls.
Unwilling to continue supporting this, Emby went closed source so their work could no longer be stolen. Jellyfin is the final fork of emby before it officially closed its source code. They have since kept it running, but have made little to no improvements or changes beyond that.
Not to mention the setup for hardware encoding which basically expects deep knowledge of the matter to even get it to run, let alone run well. Plex on the other hand hides it behind a license but it JUST WORKS, there’s no setup or anything.
I really wanted to use Jellyfin, but there’s just too many pain points
Tbh, all you need nowadays for most stuff is a VPN , Qbittorrent and 1337x.to
Download speeds are such that a 1.5gb film takes about a minute to download (in Europe, not sure about third world countries lol)
If you need something more obscure, look up how to add the search engine to Qbittorrent
I highly discourage 1337x. They got caught not banning a user who intentionally uploaded malware. Forgive the reddit link, but there aren’t a lot of piracy news sites.
What is the alternative?
torrentgalaxy.to is pretty solid, but cya with antivirus etc
Viruses or pay for your shit? That’s the alternative.
If you don’t know how to use a computer, I agree
Yeah, because nobody’s ever embedded some sort of crypto spam in their content online. Y’all are way too smart to fall for that. 🙄
It doesn’t matter if I fall for it because all my pirated content run through a VPS and isn’t on my hardware. You think I was born yesterday?
Damn. Just learned that trusting 1337x and IGGGAMES was a bad idea. Trying to teach my little pirate how to be safe on the high seas only to find out the places and people I thought were safe aren’t so.
Dude… Malware comes hand-in-hand with pirating. You just have to exercise caution and you’ll probably be fine.
Never hafta worry about malware on private trackers!
Realdebrid costs equal or less than vpn and you don’t need to jump any hoops.
Realdebrid just finds the torrents for you though, right? You’d still need a VPN since you’re technically downloading the movie to watch it. I know a lot of ISPs send notices if you torrent a copyrighted movie
Nope. It also downloads the torrent for you and gives you download link or stream link to the video. Most of the time, the torrent is already on their cache, so it’s instantly available to you.
Wow I had no idea. How are they still running if that’s the case?
They’re more like a private storage server. You can’t see what movies they have. Technically you can only download what you ‘add’ there, but they cache everybody else’s downloads too, so your download is readily available. I’m not sure of all technicalities, but there are a few different debrid services, so there must be some way they are able to do this.
Oh wow that’s a pretty interesting approach to streaming. Thanks for the explanation 👍🏼
You’re welcome! I only learned about it a few months ago. Along with plex-debrid and trakt, my jellyfin experience is a lot more awesome now.
Goated thank you so much
I’m like you, hadn’t pirated outside of games since early 2000s and just started again. Wait until you see the shit we have now, it’s mind-blowing how far it’s come.
And with Jellyfin if you have the upload speeds you can even host for family etc, so anyone sharing your Netflix now can just login to your Jellyfin server, for them it will be a comparable experience.
Pirating games is basically unheard of for me, unless it’s a product not readily available on a modern storefront.
Nintendo has a problem with me playing Pokemon Omega Ruby on a 3DS emulator? they are free to offer a switch version.
This is because steam is not an asshole, which is a big reason why I kind of got disappointed when they stopped offering movies. I like having those on the same platform
Do you need to set up a VPN for doing that? Or can they just log in straight up?
They can just log straight in, there is an android app or they can even login via a browser
I’m still maining plex, and at least there, they just create a plex account, you grant access to that account, and that’s it. Don’t even have to open ports. My guess is with JF since there isn’t a central account host, you’d probably have expose some ports on your network to be able to login without a VPN.
deleted by creator
Nevermind that shit, Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid. I’m fucking done with these greedy-ass companies. I was paying Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Apple, Paramount , MLB.tv and HBO, and pretty content to do so, and they all continually removed content and adjusted their pricing to reduce what I was getting for my money. They finally pushed me beyond my tolerance limit a few months ago and I’ve been back to sailing the high seas for the first time in 20 years.
I have more content now, all at acceptable quality options, all with good subtitles instead of the mess HBO was, and all on the same platform instead of having to jump between 7 different apps. I’m done with them and I’ll stay done with them until they pull their heads out of their asses.
Edit: if you get a cheap computer, a Chromecast, a FireTV, or what I have - an Nvidia Shield TV, then you get even get a nifty remote controller and a good standard browsing platform for everything.
Just set this up on a cheap Onn 4k box from Walmart. Works fantastic. Also setup the Trakt integration to keep up with what I watch across multiple devices.
There’s now a whole ecosystem of applications to streamline the download of series (sonarr) and movies (radarr) using torrents or Usenet (prowlarr). Pair those with a good player like Jellyfin or Plex and you have a nice media center that for sure won’t stop working everytime your family tries to watch a movie…
It’s like Plex, but with fewer features and a worse interface.
Facts. I run both but JF is not ‘family-ready’ and thus sits on my server, receiving updates and idling until that changes. Plex took 5 minutes of explaining and the folks have been happily using it for a few years now.
Same experience for me. Is worth the $5/month for premium access.
If you think you’ll be in this long-term, get a lifetime license. What would have got me 2 years has got me 6 and counting.
Yeah buncha haters in here but you’re right.
Personally I prefer Apple TV and infuse.
Ten bucks says anyone downvoting has no idea what XBMC is.
But it’s totally free. You don’t need app unlocks, you can have as many devices as you want, and you can hardware transcode without paying for premium.
Paid ~$100 for the lifetime license 9 years ago. So less than 93 pennies a month.
Throughout that time Emby has constantly been developed bringing bug fixes, UI improvements, and new features; while also providing excellent support as needed on the forums.
TBH I think I’ve vastly underpaid and plan to donate to the project shortly.
In that same time, I’ve seen very few meaningful updates to jellyfin. Just scrolling through their changelogs it’s mostly filled with:
@Wermhatswormhat
Check out Stremio, if you are used to streaming services it is the best equivalent.
@Candybar121 @reddit_sux
!c/opensignups @c/opensignups @opensignups@lemmy.world !opensignups@lemmy.world
I think one of those should work… Sign up for a private tracker or two
https://jellyfin.org/