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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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https://jellyfin.org/
Alright, so I have had Jellyfin installed for years now, but my primary issue is that most devices myself or my users use lack official, readily-available clients. For example, the Samsung TV app is a developer mode install. Last I looked, nobody has put a build into the store.
I really want to use Jellyfin, but I feel like my users simply can't. I'm interested in others' experiences here that could help.
I run an Android TV box on my Smart TV, because I don't trust them on the internet.
I mean, except for Tizen OS isn't most available? You can find the client for Android, Android TV, Windows, Linux (Flatpak), macos, apple ios, and more.
https://jellyfin.org/downloads/clients/
I give all my friends the choice between Plex and jellyfin (I run both containers side by side pointed to the same media folders) and they all invariably choose Plex. I think it has a lot to do with the jellyfin UI, and I think an overhaul like jellyfin-vue or something that looks like findroid needs to happen in order for jellyfin to really appeal to regular people.
Yeah, I've written some custom css to get some better wrapping of libraries and such.
There's also the community themes worth looking into.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/css-customization/#community-themes
I can speak from my experience with an Apple TV, the application "Infuse" works amazing with a jellyfin server. Though the application is essentially $1 month subscription, but works across all your apple devices, if you have any. I think it's worth it.
Additionally, the official app for Android TV worked pretty well when I last tried it on an Nvidia Shield
A Chromecast TV device might fill your gap. There is a jellyfin android TV build in the app store and it works with every TV. Just costs about 50 dollarydoos
Similar price for a lifetime Plex pass (until end of April)... just saying...
True and while they are both enshitifying their services. Somehow in this one area Google seems to be going slower. And making slightly less bonehead moves
Yeah.
Jellyfin is spectacular for LAN usage on two computers. Once you start using devices (because, you know, that is what people tend to plug into their TVs...) or going on travel, it rapidly becomes apparent that it just isn't a competitor.
Hell, a quick google suggests jellyfin STILL doesn't have caching of media for offline viewing. Plex's works maybe 40% of the time but... 40% is still higher than 0%.
I have a lifetime pass for Plex and encourage anyone who even kind of cares to get one next time it is on sale (or shortly before the scheduled price hike). I have tried Jellyfin a few times over the years and... it is basically exactly what I hate with FOSS "alternatives". It isn't an alternative in the slightest but people insist on talking it up because they want it to be and that just makes people less willing to try genuinely good alternatives.
To put it bluntly, Plex is an "offline netflix" as it were. Jellyfin is a much better version of smbstation and all the other stuff we used to stream porn to our playstations back in the day.
Jellyfin allows you to download whatever you want to your local device. But in a world of streaming, it seems to be a much smaller usecase. I take my tablet camping with me all the time, download some shows via Jellyfin and watch via Jellyfin. Maybe you're using the term "caching" differently from the use case, but if local files is what you're after, it absolutely does it. Just click download in a couple of different locations.
Yeah, I don't know what that dude's on about. My kids download stuff from jellyfin to their tablets all the time for road trips.
Did they? Or is that still the old hack of "just download the raw file. Your tablet is just a computer"?
Because I didn't see it advertised on the main web page and a quick google got me to https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin/discussions/364 which is open and abandoned tickets for the ios apps.
https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-offline-downloads?pid=16373#pid16373 suggests it is also in the same boat for android. You can find workarounds but they aren't using jellyfin.
Which is "fine". I watched WAY too many movies over the years with VLC on a laptop. But... why are we using a shim to treat a library as a streaming service in that case? Which gets back to Jellyfin just not actually being a Plex alternative for the majority of users.
Oh no! Please GOD, anything but tHe rAw fIlE!!
Seriously though, wtf did I just read? That can't possibly be your real stance, can it?
Half of my collection is DTS HD MA or TrueHD and many have HDR. Offline caching with transcoding is an essential feature if we want jellyfin to pull ahead. Berating people who are pointing out areas of improvement is not a winning strategy.
This is a huge problem. The blueray remux might be 80 gigs. Most children’s devices will already be filled with other crap.
Your kids will be ok without the 4K60 version of Paw Patrol.
Correct, they could do without, which is why I rely on Plex's transcoded downloads to cram a cross-country flight's worth of stuff onto their iPads.
Good suggestion though.
Or you just get a smaller version to begin with and save your hard drive space and your compute time.
You've kind of keyed in on one of the things I was hesitant to say:
There are two big uses for an "offline" media library.
Some people just use it for all the stuff they grabbed off the pirate bay (probably avoid TPB in 2025 but...). You don't really care about quality and just want to consume media.
Others, like myself, primarily use it to rip/back up their blu rays and UHDs and the like. If I am watching on my TV in the living room? I want that to be the highest quality I have available and I want to revel in every shadow gradient and so forth. If I am watching it on my computer? I don't need anywhere near that much detail. And on a tablet? Compress that shit like an exec at netflix just saw the storage arrays.
That is the benefit of transcoding and offline caching. It means you, as a "server", just focus on backing up your library/finding the best quality rips or whatever. And you, as a "user", don't have to worry about figuring out how many different versions to keep so that you always have an appropriate version for whatever your use case is that week.
As someone who has attempted to switch to Jellyfin a few times now, I have to agree. Its a great project and my switch would have been successful if it was only me using it. But between my parents streaming remotely and my kids, its not even remotely close to what Plex offers currently.
I had the same experience with my parents. They have a Samsung TV and the Jellyfin experience was awful.
I ended up getting them a little N100 mini pc and installed Bazzite and the Jellyfin app from Flathub. You can configure it so it knows it’s on a TV, and responds to keyboard controls. I got them a remote from a company called Pepper Jobs that gives keyboard input and now they have a great experience with it. Even my mom, who’s a big technophobe, loves it.
My dad also has an LG TV in his workshop that doesn’t have a working Jellyfin app (cause it’s ten years old), and he uses the Jellyfin app for his Xbox on that one.
any recommendations to get it to work remotely? the good thing about plex was it was easy to set up, but the quality was medicore.
I've been testing out jellyfin for the last couple months but it doesn't really fill the void of this specific feature that's being locked behind a pay wall. If anyone has good recommendations for securely and reliably hosting jellyfin behind SSL and auth with email password resets where I don't have to worry about it as much as Plex.
I use jellyfin locally but for a handful of remote clients I have I may well block off their access they're not going to be able to figure out my hand spun services and wall of text.
I would go for a reverse proxy to get ssl running.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/networking/#running-jellyfin-behind-a-reverse-proxy
Handling users with forgotten passwords is, sadly, a manual chore for the administrator.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/users/adding-managing-users#profile
You can connect Jellyfin to an SSO provider. It still needs work, and client support is lacking. Ideally I think it maybe should be built in rather than a plug-in (would definitely encourage more client support). But it exists.
https://github.com/9p4/jellyfin-plugin-sso
Feature request for oidc/sso:
https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/230/support-for-oidc-oauth-sso
As it stands, you could enable both the SSO and LDAP plugins, and let users do password resets entirely through your auth provider.
Basically, this is all stuff that comes with Plex out-of-the-box, but you sort of have to glue it together yourself with Jellyfin, and it's not yet in an ideal state. Plex is much much easier to configure. I wouldn't allow yourself to believe that Plex doing all this for you will make you totally secure through -- there's been multiple incidents with their auth, and IIRC the LastPass attacker pivoted from a weak Plex install. Just food for thought.
Ah, that's good to know!
My jellyfin server is only available over vpn (and locally) so I haven't much looked into beefing up the security on the jellyfin server itself.
If I reverse proxy does the video stream itself travel via the proxy too?
In case this helps as a reference point, I use a $5 digital ocean droplet as my Plex and Jellyfin reverse proxy and it seems to handle the traffic of 3-5 simultaneous streams just fine. I use Haproxy in tcp mode (so no http interpreting, just passing packets) in an attempt to keep the CPU load minimal and just make it a pure I/O task.
i'm fairly familiar with reverse proxies and how to set them up, but I'm mostly worried about the monthly bandwidth limits here. especially with hetzner's recently lowered limits. since I have a life time plex pass i might be able to hold off from switching until I figure something else out, at least.
Gotcha, I've never actually considered the bandwidth limits. It looks like digitalocean includes 1TB per month and I used 242GB last month. If I ever get close to the limit I will just spin up another droplet. I don't think I would even need to load balance unless the first one is struggling since the bandwidth allowance across all droplets is pooled together.
If you aren't already using a reverse proxy, then do you currently just port forward or use the Plex relay? The only reason I use one is because of CGNAT. Before I moved to a place with only CGNAT I port forwarded for both Plex and Jellyfin.
I just port forward right now, so Plex’s system is basically an overpowered dynamic dns. I guess my next option is to self host a dynamic dns on a numbered xyz domain (yk the $1/yr ones)
Yeah, the reverse proxy will need to be able to handle the network bandwidth of your video stream too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy
Before now I was on the sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to teach my extended family how to use Jellyfin instead of plex but after this I'm already mid-way through setting up a Jellyfin docker container on my server and I only found out an hour ago