this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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Plex is starting to enforce its new rules, which prevent users from remotely accessing a personal media server without a subscription fee.

If anyone needs it: https://jellyfin.org/

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[–] BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca 143 points 2 weeks ago (39 children)

Why would anyone use Plex over jellyfin anyway? The writing was on the wall years ago.

[–] kindred@lemmy.dbzer0.com 114 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

I set up Plex on my mum's TV and she can just push play. The UI is intuitive (read: familiar) to her.

Jellyfin has a reputation for giving users more control and customizability, but the other side of that coin is that it's more "fiddly".

My users don't want to fiddle.

[–] tehmics@lemmy.world 44 points 2 weeks ago (13 children)

That's the opposite of my experience. Jellyfin just works and immediately exposes the content we're looking for, plex tries overloading you with bullshit and burying your actual content

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 22 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I set up Jellyfin on my mother-in-law's TV, it's just push play.

My mum has an Apple TV (the device, not the subscription) and on there she uses swiftfin. The only issue has been sound not working on certain audio tracks on certain movies, but in general it is easy for anyone.

Both are very familiar interfaces for anyone used to playing something from a streaming service.

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[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 2 weeks ago (27 children)

Because I don't have to learn about things like proxies to try and open the service up outside my network in a secure manner or try to explain to family they need to run tailscale at the same time and then inevitably have to provide tech support for another aspect of "why is this not working?"

I just check allow remote access and it just works and I can go about my day doing things I enjoy more because fucking about with Linux and providing tech support are pretty low on that list for me :)

[–] AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Same. For whatever reason Jellyfin just does not want to work outside of my network. I have fiddled with port numbers, settings, and everything else. I have no idea why it won't work.

[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Sounds like you're behind cgNAT, which essentially means there's another router owned by your ISP that's between yours and the open internet, which also requires port forwarding, but your ISP will never do that for you.

It complicates things, but the solution(s) are tools like tailscale, cloudflare Tunnels, or to rent a VPS just to host a proxy/vpn.

Plex solves this by using their own public servers as a proxy for you, but this is part of how they have control over your users/server/data, such as blocking remote streaming... That makes more than a few people uncomfortable.

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[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 22 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Plex is more polished, jellyfin is basically functional but we use Plex in our household because we watch movies all the time. I have my own personal jellyfin server on an old computer

[–] amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

How much more polish you need to watch a movie? Jellyfin has everything you need. I keep seeing these discussions and for the life of me I cannot figure out what is missing from jellyfin that people use Plex after all they have been doing for years

[–] abfarid@startrek.website 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (9 children)

Currently my biggest complain with Jellyfin and the reason I can't switch to it completely is the bad subtitle support. There's a bunch of clients and some subtitles work on one, but not the other and vise versa. It's annoying to jump clients depending on what you watch. Sometimes subtitles just don't want to load by default and you have turn them on for each episode. And even though I have Bazaar, sometimes I still need to download subtitles, and Plex has that built-in.

Either way, I already have lifetime subscription, there's no point in switching. At this point I'll only switch if JF becomes better or Plex becomes worse.

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[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 15 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

I’m ready to replace plex but unless something major has changed in the last several months I simply can’t understand how people feel jellyfin is a comparable solution to plex. I couldn’t even get past the user interface and it falling flat on its face with media recognition.

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 13 points 2 weeks ago

Jellyfin is the solution if you have a media file on your computer and you want to stream it to your TV in a different room and Bare Bones works fine. It serves my use cases for a lot of things pretty well, but for hardcore self-hosted streaming Plex still has more features and polish

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[–] SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org 73 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

To anyone saying they're happy since they already have a lifetime Plex pass, do you really think they won't come for you too?

[–] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 40 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I paid 79€ almost a decade ago. I got more than my moneys worth. Even the current lifetime (on sale) is less than a year of Netflix. More expensive than piracy + Jellyfin ofc if that’s your benchmark 😀

I have a Jellyfin instance running anyway, I’ll switch to that if Plex enshittifies.

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[–] Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz 21 points 2 weeks ago

Introducing "Plex pass plus"! With no advertisements!

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

This is a "slippery slope' argument and thus a fallacy.

Let users decide how they want to run their own stuff. Right now if you have Plex pass this isn't an issue. If it becomes an issue, then you're in the exact same position you'd be in today if you decided to move away from Plex now.

I moved away from Plex years ago, but I don't blame users for sticking with it, it still has a lot of advantages over jellyfin.

EDIT: Y'all are trippin' over yourselves to complain about what other people choose to deploy on their own hardware.

[–] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 week ago (4 children)

If it becomes an issue, then you're in the exact same position you'd be in today if you decided to move away from Plex now.

I disagree. Right now you got time to do the research, plan the move and test it out with a demo setup. You do not know if you got the time if Plex decides to screw their lifetime users.

Yes this is hypothetical.

[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The steaks are very high. I could lose access to my media library for 1-2 evenings (the time it would take me to switch to Jellyfin).

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[–] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 55 points 2 weeks ago

Enshittification intensifies

[–] ftbd@feddit.org 45 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Imagine hosting a software on your own hardware and still choosing the one that makes you dependent on the whims of a corporation lmao

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

When I first set up my server this year it was a VERY easy decision between this and jellyfin. Why would I ever go with the corporate, closed source option?

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 32 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Plex is not free. Plex is paid software, just like Google Photos or iCloud. The only free software is open source. Open source everything. Doesn’t matter if the client is open source. If the server isn’t, it’s not open source. (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, SNAP!)

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[–] littleomid@feddit.org 30 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Am I the only one who thinks jellyfin is not only superior to pure, but also way more intuitive to setup? I still don’t understand how plexs routing works, and why I need a central account in order to connect to my own server.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 19 points 2 weeks ago (17 children)

Is it more intuitive to set up for remote streaming to friends...? That's the use case here and as far as I know the answer is a big "no".

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[–] fluffy@feddit.org 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

Probably not the only one, but configuring your server for outside access is way easier with Plex.

Since I mainly use these services for streaming my music collection (long time cd collector), I declare that Plexamp is simply superior to jellyfin. It is really awesome and feature-rich and jellyfin does not even come close to Plexamp regarding music in my opinion.

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[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Anybody still using Plex kind of deserves what they get at this point. They've been announcing these anti-consumer "features" for a while now.

[–] buttnugget@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

People don’t deserve to be mistreated but it is surprising that folks haven’t abandoned it if they’re so actively anti consumer.

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[–] de_lancre@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

Two years ago, when I found out that you need damn subscription, to watch YOUR stuff with transcoding on your device in local network, from your local server - I complained on reddit and a lot of people was disagree with me for harsh position.

They_got_what they_focking_deserve.png

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[–] puppinstuff@lemmy.ca 21 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Jellyfin users, how is the transcoding situation? I have a mix of AV1 and H265 and I need to get smooth playback to my living room Apple TV for families’ sake.

[–] Routhinator@startrek.website 18 points 1 week ago (5 children)

All dependent on the hardware you run the server on. Give it a good GPU and you're off to the races

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[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Lol, guess who just made themselves a target. They are now profiting directly on people who stream content they don't own from other people's servers. Plex is going to go down when Hollywood sues them.

[–] nixon@sh.itjust.works 25 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I believe if the server hosting the content has a plex pass then end users are allowed to stream from it without any additional subscription or membership. At least that is how it was several months ago when they announced this.

But you are right, even with the above being true, there will still be a non-insignificant portion of users paying to stream from servers.

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