In the media streaming world there’s specific setups that go overlooked. Edge-cases, if I may. I am one of them, and there’s nothing that satisfies me more than Plex. But there’s always the “but” factor in this.
Even though I’m a profound and proud Plex shill, the price change for lifetime is stupid and exorbitant. I reacted to it in the nicest way possible:
Needless to say; I’m still picking it over Jellyfin for multitudes of reasons.
Reason #1: Emby is shittier
The main reason Jellyfin even exists is because Emby switched from an open model into a closed model. It doesn’t take half a braincell to realise that Emby has a subscription, much like Plex.
Their web UI restricts you to abnormally abysmal limitations. You can’t try features, you don’t have a month free. Their site is straight out of 2014, and their footer says Copyright in 2024.
I was seriously considering trying out Emby Premiere – but since it’s barely getting maintained with bullshit on all sides, I’ll digress.
Emby’s apps have been native. I didn’t say “are”, since their app store pages are filled with Web App Wrappers, much like Jellyfin. One could argue the (slow and shitty) behavior of both apps is consistent across platforms, but it’s 2026. Plex is miles ahead with React Native apps that work (and look good while we’re at it).
Reason #2: Jellyfin is even worse
Now that I’ve explained some things with Emby, let’s move over to Jellyfin.
Jellyfin is just… subpar. I dreaded every second I used it because nothing worked.
Firstly: The open model is detrimental to its ecosystem. Various apps, none of them work. Nothing official, just garbage that piles up in app stores, built personally for the developer, and expecting you to use it, all the while you expect it to work, which it doesn’t.
There’s not a single full feature app on any app stores. Plex has 3, because putting everything in one place would make it borderline Chinese in the worst way possible. It’s got the Video Viewer (The Main app), Plexamp (The Music app), and Plex Photos. The thing is, Jellyfin has web app wrappers that barely work, NO music apps that are on-par with Plexamp (which, for the record, has a fucking algorithm and can make mixes for you, which Jellyfin can’t) and realistically can’t compare to Plex.
Another thing about Plex is accounts. Jellyfin has self-custodial accounts, which means everything from password resets to access in general is delegated to the admin. In Plex, you can give a Plex account access, and they have all the controls over passwords. Furthermore, Plex has OAuth2, which makes it WAY easier to integrate into apps like Seerr (f.k.a. Overseerr) and gets rid of headaches like “Hey, I forgot my password, can you please reset it for me” and then you having to go through the process of finding out someone’s password is BigDicks2011 or having to delegate the device to them or having a bad actor snoop on that specific user and gaining access to your whole server because they caught the password reset prompt at the right time.
When I switched from Jellyfin to Plex, Live TV became less of a headache and more of an enjoyable experience with Dispatcharr. Same couldn’t be said with Jellyfin.
Jellyfin’s Live TV was a hit or miss. Now it’s always a miss, despite being fed a cleaner stream than before. Dispatcharr is actively transcoding for the highest compatibility with everything, and even then it’s being fucked.
To be fair – the computer was under HORRIBLE conditions (which is why the stream was buggy on Plex) but it Works. Unlike on Jellyfin.
And another thing – DLNA doesn’t work. I put it on Host Networking on Docker every time and yet… nothing. I used 2 different hosts, and only Plex showed up, played shit back and worked.
Another thing – Jellyfin doesn’t have a proper music app. Everything is broken, ugly, barebones and/or paid. Take Manet for example. Eyecandy, functionally bare. Finamp – functionally broken, ugly as well.
Plexamp is none of those things. You have an app tailored to you, you can customize it, use it however you want, and it features everything you can think of.
Plex also has a better content matching service. Metadata on Plex, when it comes to music, doesn’t need insane levels of maintenance or editing. It just matches, and has an overall better UI when it comes to views than Jellyfin.
Another thing Plex excels in is transcoding. It works. It doesn’t require rocket fucking science to set up, and all you have to do is either figure out where your GPU’s encoder/decoder sits in your device tree or set your container to be privileged. There’s a dropdown. A. Fucking. Dropdown. No guessing games. No research needed. Hell, it even recognized my good-for-nothing GPU.
Yet another thing with Plex is that you can make TWO libraries point to ONE folder. This is important, because Jellyfin spazzes out when this is in play. I have JDownloader folders with both audio and video files, and want my Music Videos and their accompanying Music in different libraries. I can do this with Plex. Not with Jellyfin.
Skip Intro and Skip Outro is built in, and doesn’t require a plugin repo to be installed with shaky support across apps.
I will NOT contribute to Jellyfin.
Before any one of you goes “Talk is cheap, send patches” beware that I will not send patches for a program that’s pragmatically shit from the core. There’d have to be a total UI reform that completely ditches whatever they had with Emby, and no, their Vue-based frontend is also shit.
It’s not just the UI though, it’s countless more pragmatic errors.
I will not “patch” software I’m not willing to use in the first place, with opinions that a lot of people can, will and have all the right to disagree with (ESPECIALLY when it comes to accounts), so I’m not going to touch that rancid shit with a 10m pole.