this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
316 points (97.6% liked)
Technology
84807 readers
5456 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't know why anyone would pay that instead of using Jellyfin. I've had my server up for years now and it works great.
Last I looked, jellyfin auth and public facing security were less than ideal.
How far has that come in the last few years? I have plenty of people using my Plex and it's been secure. I had heard a public facing Jellyfin wasn't super secure.
Honestly, 95% of the reason I use Plex is so I don't have to manage user passwords and troubleshoot issues for my friends and family. I just grant access.
I moved from the default jellyfin login method to using Authentik as the identity provider. Now its part of my homelab setup where all services have SSO, and I don't have to create/manage an account for each person for each service.
Does that break Jellyfin apps on smart TVs or media devices?
A lot of people seem to have concerns with how Jellyfin handles access control and some have stated that the developers marked some major issues as “won’t fix”. Is there somewhere I can catch up on that?
LDAP works fine, OIDC not so much, only the web client would work.
There are still talks around making OIDC a first class citizen and IIRC it is planned as per the feature page but I guess the major core upgrade around the DB took a lot of attention the last 6-12 months.
But in the meantime I've just spun up an LDAP outpost for my Authentik that my Jellyfin connects to. It breaks MFA but otherwise it works. It may be a bit confusing for users that they log in at jellyfin.site.com but anything user-related like updating password is at authentik.site.com and requires an extra login.
I only need my server to work locally so I haven't messed with that part personally. But I've read that setting up tailscale is straightforward and works fine. There are many other solutions to the problem. I would definitely invest a lot of effort before paying for Plex.
Great; how do I setup Tailscale on my mother’s Roku TV?
https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar300m/
Configure one of these to sit between the TV and your mother's network and pass all the tv traffic through an exit node on your jellyfin network.
Most smart TVs have a tailscale app you can install directly on device. Roku is an exception to that.
Unfortunately, that's probably not gonna happen without some new hardware.
You could setup a wire guard at the router (can you setup tail scale on a router? idk). If she's renting the ISP router, replacing that could save a 100+ a year, depending on how much the isp is scamming her for it.
or you could repurpose a minipc/nuc from bay and set up a jellyfin streaming box with tailscale.
If you have the extra hardware, you could also setup a local server with her jellyfin and use wiregaurd/tailscale to remotely connect to it and run backup/sync during off-hours.
So, no answer because I can’t. I’m not replicating buying hardware for all of the people who are on my plex account to move them to some free software because all y’all who shout “Jellyfin” do so because you do t want to pay for anything.
Why doesn’t anyone ever mention Emby? Oh, right, because you have to support the project and no one wants to do that.
Plex isn’t in the right here, but yelling Jellyfin ever. Single. Time. Is like using a hammer to tighten a screw; it’s not always the right tool for the job and tall look like morons for just blindly parroting what others say.
Bro, if you want to use Emby, nobody is stopping you. Jellyfin is the popular solution because it is open source. Emby isn't a project, it's a product just like plex is a product. Both Emby and Plex started as free methods to host your media and converted to a paid closed source solution. Jellyfin is a fork of Emby from before they moved to closed source and remains free and open to this day.
Are you OK? I didn't realize my comment was so inflammatory. I just love Jellyfin and don't appreciate Plex's actions over the years. You love Emby. That's cool! Use what works for you.
You could also set up a reverse proxy in front of your Jellyfin and hook a domain up to it. That way you don't have to worry about the client at all.
Still have that nasty vulnerability where people can delete your data remotely.
The data for me is shared read-only to the Jellyfin container, so that's not a problem.
Can you explain more about that vulnerability? It would necessitate a pretty serious privilege escalation to be possible.
How much do you donate to jellyfin? If I sum up my 20 bucks per year for the next 50 years, I end up with 1000 bucks. If I wanted to pay today, I'd donate even more to jellyfin. (Neglecting inflation)
I haven’t checked in on Jellyfin for a while now, but don’t they still have issues with hardware transcoding support?
Not to mention the lack of software clients on other platforms for just playback that Plex has been established on for years and even multiple device generations like with PlayStation, Roku, Fire Stick, etc.?
Also you have to configure your own reverse proxy / Tailscale set up to securely access a content library remotely, right - as opposed Plex’s relatively simpler remote access configuration?
Surprise, surprise, a paid product with salaried developers has more features than a volunteer project!
More people using Jellyfin, more people who will contribute, through code or donations. It's worth a downside to swap over.
Hopefully that gets better - I run both side by side pointed at the same folders so the exact same media is available in both. I offer all my friends the choice and list every alternate app I know of, inevitably they all prefer Plex.
Because default settings arent always ideal...
Some goes for the TV they use and whatever codec they can digest.
What defaults are you talking about? If you meant to reply to my other comment, I'm talking about hardware transcoding codec support settings on the server, it has nothing to do with what codec is chosen for a client - that decision is made separately. Once the codec the client needs is chosen, the hardware transcoding setting only changes whether they codec is decoded using CPU or GPU/quicksync by the server - it has no effect on codec selection. The only reason you would disable hardware transcoding for a codec that your server is capable of hardware transcoding is if your hardware is faulty or produces undesirable output for that codec when using hardware transcoding - most people don't do this, it's a fairly uncommon edge case. And disabling it won't stop clients from accessing that codec, it just means that your server will CPU transcode it if requested instead of using hardware acceleration - so again it has nothing to do with client support or TVs because all it does is switch your server between hardware and software encoding / decoding. The only sane default for that setting is to hardware accelerate codecs that your PC is capable of hardware accelerating if hardware acceleration is enabled. There's no reason not to automatically detect hardware capabilities like Plex does, instead of the current "default" where you enable hardware transcoding and then have to figure out what your hardware supports to be hardware accelerated.
Like even if they copy pasted the quicksync codec support table from Wikipedia into the server hardware acceleration settings that would be miles better because then you wouldn't have to look up that information separately. Or, hear me out, just show next to each option which ones your computer is capable of hardware decoding vs CPU decoding.
Especially given the new "lifetime" price. More people will switch to Jellyfin. Plex lifetime might be shorter.
Doubt.
What about Emby? Why is that never mentioned?
Because Emby is a closed source application and Lemmy is an open source platform with community member who prefer open source solutions to closed source. Your out here screaming at Linux bros "why not choose apple??"
I have not personally experienced any issues with hardware transcoding. My server is an old Dell Optiplex and I use clients on Linux, Android, Roku and Shield.
Yes you are correct about remote access and if that was a priority for me, I would happily learn that part instead of paying for Plex.
Especially on non-GPU systems, Jellyfin is slower at transcoding than Plex. I don’t know the internals, but I have both running in the sam machine, and Plex is always noticeably more responsive. Not by a huge margin, but still it is.
I have zero experience with those two products but when it comes to transcoding there are various toggles that affect the quality and speed.
It looks also like commercial products generally optimize for speed while open source tends to be more concerned about quality.
Of course this could be completely wrong in this case but that's the general tendency I noticed. Do they allow to change settings?
It's essentially a one time fee for an indefinite service of handling the vpn side of the setup.
I use Jellyfin on my local network and plex externally because I don't know how to route specific traffic with openvpn on my phone and can't be bothered switching it off and on when streaming things 😅
I'm not sure how it's sustainable, and am surprised they still offer the life pass at all though.
I guess a lot of people buy it who don't need it?
I still probably wouldn't pay the current price for it though, I got it about a decade ago lol.
Oh also plexamp has a better UX than jellyfin for music, but I don't think that alone would justify the current price.
Tailscale is the answer to easily and remotely access jellyfin and your server. Its easy to setup and very secure.
Dude seriously it's so much easier than anything else. For a personal media server with remote access, jellyfin + tailscale on an old computer you may have laying around plugged into your router is all you need
Yep, exactly what I've been telling people. And then they complain that tvs dont have the ability to have the tailscale app on them. So, then buy a cheap android box, even an Onn 4K from Walmart would work for like 25 bucks and install tailscale and jellyfin on it.
I didn't find it that easy to set up 😅
but I'm sure I would find it easier if I was more motivated e.g. saving $750 by setting it up 😅
It really is easy to set up though lol. I didn't know anything about self hosting about 2 years ago. There's so many guides and tutorials to use to help set it up too.
You're not wrong. I would just rather learn Headscale or nginx or any other option than pay that Plex subscription. But I'm sure there are people out there who have extremely valuable time and wouldn't hesitate to fork over 750.
ah yeah, I paid $50, not $750 😂
I don’t believe plex pass acts as a vpn.
yeah but it removes the need for one in most use cases
It kinda does when streaming remotely, if you don't have any open ports it gets routed through Plex's servers
It's not literally a VPN no but it does route data
What about Emby?
I haven't looked at Emby in a long time. Last I checked, it wasn't as capable or feature rich as Jellyfin or Plex
Not as feature rich as plex, sure. Emby be Jellyfin? Emby wins by a country mile.
If it works for you, great!