Hi, all. So I want to set up a media server using my Raspberry Pi. It will be used by me and my partner, who is very much tech illiterate. She knows how to use Plex, but I’m tempted by the open nature of Jellyfin. How steep is the learning curve there? Should I just go with Plex and keep it simple? Or is Jellyfin manageable if I set it up for her?
Plex vs Jellyfin is a lot like Windows vs Linux in my view.
There are things in Plex you can point to that you think keep you from moving. I point to things in Plex I am glad I left behind.
I haven’t really used Plex a whole lot but I have found Jellyfin from a user perspective to be extremely easy to use. The quick connect codes are one of my favorite features.
friends don’t let friends use plex.
its paywalling yourself
Conversely, letting friends use your Jellyfin is complicated.
eh, maybe. for me it was opening a port and adding a dns record. took me all of 4 minutes
im kinda lucky in that my isp uses ‘sticky’ ips so while its not static, ive had the same ip for 5 years
But now you’ve exposed your network to the open internet without any sort of security.
oh noes! im so ddead!
Peak “bad things only happen to other people” energy here. Ignorance and flippancy will surely protect you!
yes my world will burn when they crack into my jellyfin instance and magically break out of its docker container and then what? goo nowhere on its vlan?
literally thousands of self-hosted jellyfin/emby instances and the support forums are just chocked full of people getting hacked via it! so many!
oh wait, no there arent
How steep is the learning curve there? Should I just go with Plex and keep it simple?
You’ve got it the wrong way round. Jellyfin is simple. I’ve never understood Plex.
Honestly I found plex a lot simpler to set up when I started out.
In Jellyfin I had to wrangle the settings a lot when trying to set up hardware encoding since my streams kept crashing due to some codecs not being dupported by my CPU.
I wish I’d have gone with Jellyfin when I migrated from Plex. I’m on Emby, it has a few features that I like that are not available in Jellyfin.
The media import is nice. That’s why I haven’t switched either.
Kinda hijacking this a little: what do the cool kids use on a “normal” TV as a client to watch Jellyfin?
Chromecast? A PI plugged into the HDMI port?
This hasn’t been on my radar, but with Winter coming (John Snow) I’m thinking this might be something to look into…
My wife is pretty normal. She uses the Jellyfin client on our Fire Sticks, Roku Soundbar, and TV.
She has no idea what Jellyfin is really. Just another Netflix or Prime in her mind.
Good analogy… that’s really answered the question I wanted to ask
My Chromecast has been going strong over multiple years and multiple TVs.
I’m not a cool kid, but I gave up on fighting “smart” TVs and use the jellyfin app on them.
I don’t like it, but I also don’t like a separate hardware client for each screen either. Plus my wife likes Tubi, ads and all.
I use an HTPC, only because I had a gaming computer I wasn’t using laying around.
I’ve been meaning to switch over to Bazzite, but haven’t gotten around to it.
Yeah, I have MythTV setup in a passively cooled box in the corner of the lounge… works fine…
But, I’m considering oprions for the rest of the family, both local (other rooms) and remote, so rather than reinvent wheels…
I haven’t heard of any learning curve with Jellyfin. It seems easy to set up, and the apps are about as user friendly as you can get (especially the third party ones)
Only learning curve is naming. Jellyfin seems less forgiving about filenames and folder structure than Plex was.
On the other hand, jellyfin’s identify feature works better than plex’s did for me, and it lets you rename stuff very easily whereas Plex needed you to find the exact piece of media in a database.
My mom asked me to rip a set of weirdo bootleg tai chi DVDs years ago, back when I used Plex, but I couldn’t figure out how to get them to show up in the library because, again, weirdo bootleg media and I have no idea where she got them. But I switched to jellyfin last year and on a whim decided to mess with them, and getting them to show up in my jellyfin library was basically automatic
Edit, another fun example of fucking with Plex’s identify feature just came to mind. For some reason it kept deciding that random movies were actually some movie named “A Fish Called Wanda.” I’d never heard of it before, the movies it would misidentify were entirely random as far as I could tell, and no amount of fuckery would get it to identify the movie correctly. It would decide that, say, The Matrix was actually AFCW, I’d remove the files for The Matrix, and it would decide something else was AFCW. Eventually I got fed up and downloaded an actual copy of AFCW, but it still refused to play the correct files if I navigated to AFCW in my library. Never did figure that one out.
You should definitely watch “A Fish Called Wanda” though. It’s a classic.
Speaking of third party apps, here’s some recommendations:
Android: Findroid
Works absolutely great, it’s very rare that I even find a bug.iOS: Swiftfin
I don’t use iOS but this is the one I installed on my friend’s phones.Linux (and maybe Windows): Delfin
This is a GTK 4 app for Linux and maybe it has a Windows build too but I didn’t check. It’s not perfect, there’s bugs here and there but it mostly works fine. The developer isn’t very active (which is understandable), so it would be nice if someone, who has the time for it, would help out.Here’s also the official page with Jellyfin clients: https://jellyfin.org/downloads/clients/all
It doesn’t seem to include Delfin though.Finamp was pretty good, but offline mode and playback had some quirks/struggles for me. Maybe its cuz im on graphineOS. The true winner for me on my pixel8 is symphonium. Its a one time purchase, with a free mode… absolute knockout. Zero bugs, great, easy UI, smart playlists, scrobble integration for discovery, etc etc etcccc
You can always run both and see which you prefer. I use jellyfin for me because the devices I use have clients that work really well. Older TVs for family members weren’t as simple and I couldn’t be bothered to figure it out so they use Plex.
While jellyfin itself is very simple, you might run in to problems if you want to use it while not on your home network. For this you’re either wanna use a VPN (or tailscale) or use something like nginx to give your server a web address, while you get this for free if you use plex.
Giving yourself a public address might be easier for the person trying to access jellyfin, but it it comes with a bunch of security considerations and you probably (definetly) want to do some research on the inns and outs of that. I would recommend tailscale but either way it’s gonna be some extra fiddling, unless you already have something like that set up.
I remember an announcement that the feature enabling remote viewing (outside of network) has/will become a paid function on Plex. But I haven’t followed it so don’t know all details
I’d recommend Jellyfin. Dead easy to use.
I have only recently started with self hosting and after some minor frustration, i am in love!!! Plex isnt just worse cuz its paywalling your own files, its install, support and ui are pretty trash, imo. The one advantage i saw was that it was easy to share w folks. If your jellyfin is going to be secure AND accessible, thats more work to do.
Keep in mind jellyfin does NOT recommend using a pi, bc it struggles w transcoding etc. That said, my first go was an rpi5. I used this guide and it was pretty brainless… ezpz: Indian tech guru to the rescue!
Beware, uptime w the pi is pretty bad… had to restart server all the time, and some devices would not stream properly. It did work, mostly though, and it was a great intro for me since i just had it lying around.
Have fun!
The main difference between Plex and Jellyfin is the network setup. Plex takes care of that for you, while you have to set it up your self with Jellyfin. Another difference is that Plex can combine content from multiple servers ( I think. I’m not a plex user, so I don’t know for sure), while it will always be seperate servers in jellyfin.
Jellyfin will always have my heart though, because it’s open source and not here to make money. Plex also have a reputation to show ads and other stuff from streaming services.
The networking aspect is basically the only thing stopping me from switching from Plex to Jellyfin. I got Jellyfin running and accessing my server myself, while on my home network is easy. However, when it comes to accessing outside of my network, it gets complicated, and when it comes to other people accessing my server it gets more complicated, and then accessing my own server and friends’ servers it gets even more complicated.
With Plex, all of that is super easy. I can watch stuff from my own server and my friends’ servers on any device, including a web browser, and I can tell my mom, for example, “install Plex on your Roku and tell me what email address you use to log in” and boom, she has access to my library.
Jellyfin is A-ok for the tech illiterate. I actually think it might be easier to navigate and use because it’s a bit more simple than Plex.
IDK about the RPi5 but earlier models don’t do well with transcoding. You’ll want to make sure to convert all of your videos to a format widely compatible with your clients. H264 is usually compatible with any device of the last 10ish years.
