Honest question, because I know multiple people who are not looking to jump ship since they already have the Plex Pass.
To add on to the top post: with Plex you only need 1 account and can exchange access to multiple servers. I can browse all the media my account has access to with ease.
Jellyfin needs an account per server. If the client multiplexed between them seamlessly, that would probably be fine enough. But it would be nice if they supported some method of federation.
And Jellyfin has a list of CVEs that they haven’t addressed in years, which makes not want to make it visible outside my network.
I want to ditch Plex, but this is the primary sticking point for me. No criticism to the Jellyfin devs btw, they’re doing the lord’s work, I have nothing but respect for them.
Another minor one is that the Plex app works with a controller on my bazzite HTPC, but the Jellyfin one was hit or miss. I could get it to work once, and then the next day the controller would do nothing and the UI would be acting weird. I will go back and try it periodically to see if it’s ready, but last time I checked it wasn’t.
After 22 hours and 291 comments, I can see that 80% is sunk cost, 15% never bothered to look at their Jellyfin client’s settings, and the rest use a device that doesn’t have a client for Jellyfin yet.
If your device doesn’t have a client it probably has a kodi port. Jellyfin libraries can be imported in kodi with plugins (and plex and emby for that matter). Then you get the benefits of kodi (better skin support, more robust plugins, better subtitle rendering, etc) with the centralized metadata administration of Jellyfin and retain the option to use Jellyfin clients on devices with locked ecosystems (eg ios) or where you don’t feel like setting up kodi
I don’t pay for plex so I don’t really care, at this point in time.
Lifetime pass, it still works well so why would I switch?
Same here, but I am also maintaining jellyfin alongside it. In case Plex decides that “lifetime” means something other than what I expected it to mean. I’ve long ago gotten my $80 of usage out of it.
Jellyfin is… ok. It works, it works consistently, and it is consistently almost great. But I provide “cable replacement” and “streaming supplement” services to family that doesn’t live in the same house, and will all likely break a box that managed a VPN.
Given the above, we’ll ride out Plex until they go nuts. Hopefully jellyfin will be polished enough for child use by then.
I tried Jellyfin once about a year ago and it was… OK I guess? Certainly nowhere near as polished as the rabid fan base would have me believe, and there was something in my library that it flat out refused to play.
If I didn’t already have a lifetime Plex Pass, and it was just me hosting my own media for a user count of one, then sure, I’d use it. But none of those things are true. I need something that “just works” and Plex fits that bill.
Like most people here, I bought a lifetime pass when it was $75 and it’s paid for itself over and over again in the time since. I honestly think I’ve had more than $750 worth of value from my purchase. Sure they’ve made some odd decisions recently, but until they start actively taking away functionality or rescind existing lifetime subs then I will continue to use it.
Meanwhile, not to belittle you personally, but the fact that every thread that mentions Plex in any way, good or bad, is guaranteed to be dominated by people circle-jerking over their beloved Jellyfin has put me completely off the project, to the point that I’ve had to add the word to my blocklist. Obviously that’s not working too well or I wouldn’t have seen this post!
Yea, Jellyfin might be good tech but the fans are insufferable
I don’t have a lifetime pass; I pay the monthly subscription. I would prefer to use Jellyfin, but Plex works better and the Jellyfin app on Apple TV is abysmal. That’s pretty much it. If Jellyfin worked better, I’d switch, but I’m not suffering through it for some principle against paying for software.
You should try out Emby. As someone who likes getting paid I think people who work hard should also get paid. So I paid for Emby :)
Kodi yo… Although my YouTube addon stopped working recently. aggg…
I tried Jellyfin and had some issues with it. I tried out Emby and everything was smooth sailing. Paid for premium and been using it ever since.
It’s a bit better supported on TVs than Jellyfin.
Never actually used or paid for plex
I started with jellyfin, and eventually let my partner convince me to pay for a lifetime pass for Plex. Plex just has better functionality. Not only can I access my library from anywhere, the subtitles work without fiddling with different srt files, the error messages are much more descriptive, and I find the documentation for adding OTA antenna and DVR functionality much more comprehensible with Plex.
I like jellyfin for what it is, but Plex makes it all work with far less headache and much better support. So Plex wins, in my mind for now.
And with all that being said, I got my Plex lifetime pass a few years ago, so the value I have will not be the same as yours if you are just now starting to consider Plex, so I can understand why you might have a different opinion
Subtitles are the main reason for me
The official JF apps do struggle a bit with subs, but 3rd party clients have solved that issue for me completely. I use kodi and wholphin on android tv and findroid on my phone.
I use Plex to save money on plumbers because I cannot solder. Plex gives me the ability to exact repairs myself.

Oops! I meant PEX. Kindly disregard.
I run jellyfin now after the whole plex pass incident (in not going to pay to host my own pirated content, and that’s just that)
But honestly plex has a better ui and featureset.
That said jellyfin has been perfectly serviceable for me. The app is good. I can select stuff. Play it. My wife can work it just fine.
Jellyfin doesn’t have a client/app for my Samsung Frame TV
When did you last check? I believe jellyfin apps made it onto tizen OS a few months ago
I like Plex.
When I bought my Plex lifetime pass I saw it as an investment. So far, it’s paid off handsomely.
I’m still getting great experiences, able to access it from anywhere in the world, on basically any device, seamlessly and simply.
I get it that the jellyfin community is really excited about their thing - I just am not.
I’ve run jellyfin, it was kind of cool I guess, but there was nothing compelling about it. So I uninstalled it. What is jellyfin’s “must have” feature, anyway?
I wouldn’t go out and build a new car when I’m perfectly happy with my 10-year old sedan. If you’re expecting me to go through that just because the new ones cost more than I spent years ago, you’re insane. I wouldn’t go and re paint my house just because the old company now charges new customers more for their paint.
I paid for it, it works well. There’s no reason (except all the FUD I keep seeing on lemmy,) to even think about dismantling and recreating it with something new.
Keep building your dream tool Jellyfin people - Godspeed, but your community should target acquiring net-new users instead of trying to scare and poach happy users away from what they already have.
I’ve still got my Plex up, I only use it for Plexamp though, and my brother watches stuff on it (lifetime pass since forever). I quit watching stuff on it because in order to log in you have to hit Plex’s servers (even when logging in directly to the self hosted server); that doesn’t work for me because we block them at work. If they would let me use my own IdP, I’d probably stay. At least with Jellyfin I can authenticate how I want.
I see so many here with the argument of 'I already have a life time pass, so this increase doesn’t affect me". And in all honesty, that’s a mostly logical take on this if you already have it.
However, the signs are clear. This is a first step. I don’t believe (and I’m very aware I could be wrong) for a second that the executives are actually expecting people to grab a pass for 750 dollars, but they expect a minimum amount of people to go ahead and do it anyway. Once they see this conversation is dying down, and that no money is coming in on that end, they will switch to another method of getting money (the investors need their money, right?).
From there, the sky’s the limit. Charge extra if your instance has more than 3 users, or charge the users that are not you. Cap your quality at 720p unless you fork over 2 dollars per month. Pay for this new AI feature that is not included in your pass. Pay to disable this AI feature that was forced into your pass.
For pass holders there is no problem with this increase, it’s what invariably happens when companies start moving towards the money grab path.
We’ll just watch from the sidelines and will be here to help you migrate once (not if) these things happen.
We’ll just watch from the sidelines and will be here to help you migrate once (not if) these things happen.
Would be nice if you guys could do that quietly. Not every change in how Plex does business needs to echo through social media. We’ll let you know when the time comes.
It’s like the standard ”I use Arch btw” meme, but maybe there are too many Linux users on Lemmy so these people need to find a new way to feel special.
You were on the right track but came to the wrong conclusion.
They’re pricing the lifetime pass out so no one buys it. The goal is to get everyone that doesn’t already have one to get a monthly subscription.
They’re not going to screw over the existing lifetime pass owners because those are the people that helped get the company to where it is today. They’re the people who bought it just to support the product, not because it was needed.






