Jellyfin has this, but it’s kinda busted: https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-syncplay. There was one guy working on it and he apparently vanished. It still does work for some use-cases but be prepared for some rough edges.
Maybe someone will pick up the torch now that Plex is axing it?
It shouldn’t be any faster or slower if you’re using the exact same transcoding settings
That’s sort of the point, both are based on ffmpeg but neither is using vanilla ffmpeg. Plex’s seems to work a lot better on the same hardware for me, but more importantly it’s not something you have to fiddle with. You just check the box and it figures out a decent setting. Jellyfin has some basic defaults for Intel/nVidia but there are a ton of tweakable settings that you have to go figure out.
There’s probably some way to fix the issue but it’d take a ton of fiddling, and that’s the jank I keep referring to. A lot of people on Lemmy just ignore the rough edges and act like it doesn’t matter just because they can get past it or because it’s FOSS and they refuse to use anything else. Not everyone on here is a full-time software engineer, though; IMO it’s better to be honest about shortcomings and set expectations well. More people self-hosting their media is a net positive IMO.
Plex has people they can pay to make their product better (and at least for the moment they’re still paying them), Jellyfin straight up doesn’t have those resources. I hope that changes because Plex is not on a good trajectory as a company. The Homeassistant model seems like a good one that gives people a good reason to contribute code and money, I really hope the Jellyfin guys do something along those lines.
The Plex app for some versions of Android TV is way too chunky for the resources available. I’ve noticed it performs really badly with smart TVs and it seems to do worse the more background apps you have open, so I’m guessing it’s memory related. It generally seems to work better on dedicated devices like Google TV, although it does still wig out sometimes and need to be restarted.
My big beef with the Jellyfin app on Android TV is that they don’t include the fast scroll alphabetical bar the web UI has and the title layout is just posters. Everyone I’ve ever had use it complained that it’s just too hard to read. Plus if you have a big library, that leaves you with 2 navigation options: scroll a bunch or type something in with the on screen keyboard. Both of those kind of stink.
I’ve also run into weird edges with plugins in Android TV. I could never get automatic subtitles to work consistently. The skip intro popup just doesn’t appear sometimes or doesn’t skip correctly when pressed. I suspect there’s some translation error between the Android interface and the plugin interface.
Intro skipping works pretty well once you set it up and give it time to scan. Functionally, it identifies common audio to determine likely intros, so it can get confused with shows that have different intro music between episodes of the same season.
Don’t have to change any folder structures unless you were storing optimized media alongside the original files in Plex. All the metadata for both Plex and Jellyfin lives in a SQLite database in your config dir.
You may wind up transcoding even if you think you really shouldn’t have to. Browsers are weird about supporting some encodings, and both Plex and Jellyfin will automatically transcode to satisfy the client.
Hardware transcoding is huge, don’t underestimate how impactful it can be. A single 4K CPU transcode could saturate my 72-core server, but one A380 can transcode 3-4 4K streams at the same time. This admittedly doesn’t matter much if you only have one user, but keep it in mind if you ever have to share. It’s so annoying to have a stream start hitching because 1-2 friends decided to start watching something at the same time as you…
I still don’t have a good replacement for Plexamp either. I think Jellyfin can play music too, but I haven’t tried it myself. I spent a lot of time getting the metadata right in Plex and just haven’t felt like trying to find a way to migrate yet.
You can look at some of my other comments for more specifics, but from your language alone I don’t think you’re being objective here. OP states that Plex is flatly better than Jellyfin, and a bunch of Lemmy users hype it up because of a clear bias for FOSS. A reality check is a good thing, IMO; you can prefer a solution and acknowledge its faults, but people talking on the Internet tend towards extremes instead and that will disillusion anyone who tries Jellyfin expecting all the good parts of Plex but better.
I prefer FOSS everywhere it’s reasonable, but I think a reality check is healthy here. Jellyfin is full of jank that you may run into because a bunch of independent devs are all doing their own thing to make it. Plex is a for-profit entity pulling in the same direction, so the experience is generally going to be more seamless and supported.
I run both Plex and Jellyfin simultaneously. I use Jellyfin on my devices, except on Android TV because the app is painful to navigate. Plex is way better for sharing, but I usually offer both. I’ve yet to have anyone prefer Jellyfin, Plex tends to just work on their platforms of choice so they go with it. Unless they’re a technical person, it’s unreasonable to expect them to muddle through the edges of Jellyfin.
The performance of hardware acceleration in Jellyfin is markedly worse in my experience. My A380 can handle 2-3x more streams in Plex than it can in Jellyfin. My theory is that it’s the jellyfin ffmpeg port slowing things down, but I admittedly don’t have much evidence to back that up beyond the fact that Plex’s transcoder is built on ffmpeg as well.
Plex Relays are a feature, but that’s sort of the point. You get that stability from Plex by default and it works on all clients. There is no realistic way you’re going to get all remote client devices on a VPN for Jellyfin. Maybe one day Jellyfin can offer that as a paid option, a la Nabu Casa for Homeassistant.
Media servers tend to get shared around with friends and family and these edges will start to drive you nuts if you have more than a handful of users. I do not want to try to walk a family member through setting up a VPN on their smart TV.
Yeah, that part about Plex has always bugged me. You can disable logins for your server with allow-listed networks, but most of the non-desktop apps have to log into the Plex platform to run.
This isn’t about want, it’s a reality check. OP said jellyfin is better than Plex now, and by objective measure it is not better for most people yet. False expectations hurt Jellyfin adoption, you need to try it with the expectation of jankiness or you’ll just be annoyed by the edges.
There’s a really strong bias on Lemmy for OSS projects. I’m glad they get so much love here, but everything people say here about Jellyfin has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. It works and you can use it. Depending on your needs, it may even work perfectly for you. There are tons of rough edges though.
Here’s a few:
Jellyfin is improving all the time, and I hope the recent EFCore update improves performance and development velocity. I’m also holding out hope it will eventually lead to externally hosted databases and active-active servers.
Disclaimer: I run Plex and Jellyfin and regularly check in on the state of things in Jellyfin. I donate to Jellyfin. I want Jellyfin to be better than Plex. I don’t think any objective measure bears this out yet.
I’m in the same boat, I use Jellyfin where I can but Plex is still so much better for sharing, especially with non-technical people so I run both. Really hoping the Jellyfin folks realize they can sell a relay service to make some money and fund their development to improve the app. Seems to be working well for Homeassistant!