I use Plex every day. Lately I’ve been wondering if I should stop.
The software, which allows you to turn your personal collection of TV shows and movies in a Netflix-style streaming service, is extremely convenient. But Plex is offered by a company that, these days, seems more focused on adding features than improving the cluttered user interface. Recently it added a social platform and user reviews, two features I quickly turned off. I want to watch stuff, not talk about it with strangers. (I have friends for that.) The company continues to make design choices that push its ad-supported streaming choices over the personal media collection and DVR features I use the service to enjoy.
This could make sense from a business perspective. But that doesn’t make sense for my personal use of Plex, which is watching live TV and TV shows that I have recorded and stored on my own computer. I pay an annual subscription fee of $70 for this. I could avoid the annual subscription by purchasing a lifetime pass, but Plex increased the price from $250 to $750. That’s over a decade of annual passes, assuming Plex lasts for the next decade.
All of this is to say that there are reasons to be frustrated with Plex. And that’s enough to examine Jellyfisha free and open source application that offers many of the features that make Plex so attractive. Is Jellyfin a good alternative? It depends.
Solid foundations, rocky remote access
If the main thing you want is to watch your digital collection of TV shows and movies at home, I have good news for you: Jellyfin works great. You can download the server, point it to your media, and access that media on other devices on your network, all in minutes.
Scanning works well. In my case, a few items were mislabeled, but I ran into similar issues when setting up Plex and know I can fix it without too much hassle: it’s a matter of naming the files correctly.
You can access your server on the local network by typing the local IP address into your address bar, which is convenient. And there is Jellyfin Customers for every major desktop, mobile and smart TV platform you can think of. Simply put, you can get local media streaming working very quickly. If this is your primary use and you are tired of Plex, I can confidently say that Jellyfin is ready for you with no problem.
But sometimes you’re not at home. Surprising, I know. One of the good things about Plex is relatively simple remote accesswhich lets you watch your media outside of your home network. With most modern routers, you won’t need to do much: networking is taken care of. This is possible because the Plex company operates an infrastructure that points other devices to your home server.
Jellyfin does not have such an infrastructure. If you want to access your Jellyfin server when you are away from home, you must configure the network infrastructure yourself. This may involve paying for a domain name and redirecting it to your server; that could mean configure a VPNor it could mean playing with port forwarding. There are instructionsbut they are very clearly aimed at experienced users.
Basically, you’ll have to tinker. Now the kind of person who runs their own Plex server can probably navigate all of this. But if you share access to your Plex server with others, Jellyfin will be harder for them to set up and use.
This is especially true for people who access multiple media servers. Plex makes this simple: a single account gives you access to each server. Jellyfin is a little different: each client must be configured to connect to each server individually. This isn’t necessarily an obstacle, but it is one worth thinking about.
Setting up your live TV might not work
My favorite Plex feature is Live TV and DVR. I have a tuner card in my PC and a sturdy antenna connected to it from the other side of the house. It works perfectly for watching live TV on all my devices, even when I’m not at home. Many Airbnbs don’t offer live TV, only streaming, and I’ve used this feature several times to stream sporting events to TVs that otherwise wouldn’t be able to pick them up. TV shows I record are added to my Plex library and ads are automatically skipped.
I use this feature almost every day, but I haven’t really been able to get it to work in Jellyfin and have tried. My TV card is a Hauppauge device It works perfectly in Plex. Jellyfin officially supports only a hardware device to watch live TV channels: HDHomeRun. This means I can’t natively point Jellyfin at my TV card: I have to buy an HDHomeRun or find a workaround. Fortunately, I did find a workaround. I was able to configure another application called NextPVRusing forum instructionsand show it to Jellyfin. With this I could watch live TV through Jellyfin.
That’s a lot of work for an easy-to-set-up feature in Plex. And I wasn’t finished. NextPVR supports pulling TV programs from the antenna, which, depending on the channel, gives you a few hours of programming. It’s a good idea, if you’re trying to use a personal video recorder (PVR), to have more data than this, and this information isn’t free. Plex aggregates these lists, which is part of why I pay for Plex Pass.
But there are other services. Direct schedules is the best-known service of its kind, offering electronic program guide data for $35 per year (half the price of an annual Plex pass). The problem ? Direct schedules states that using Jellyfin could lock you out because of a bug. This is before setting up more complex things, like skipping ads, which require adjustments in Jellyfin. I’m sure with enough digging I could make this work. It could even keep work for a while. But Plex makes everything so simple, which makes it difficult to change.
One caveat I would add, however, is that Jellyfin’s PVR supports Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), something Plex doesn’t do without equally elaborate workarounds. IPTV is not widely offered for legal TV streaming in North America as it is in other parts of the world. But it’s still a nice feature. (My NextPVR workaround depended on it, for example.) So Jellyfin might work better for certain configurations.
An imperfect replacement
It might sound like I’m being harsh on Jellyfin, and I don’t mean to be. It’s a great tool for some things, but it just isn’t for everyone. If you’re the type of person who likes to constantly tweak things, Jellyfin is a dream.
There is there are so many customizations for Jellyfin. There is a built-in plugin repository and support for adding third-party plugins. You can theme the web interface the way you want, or even design your own branding for your server. Plugins make it easier to do things like download subtitles, watch trailers before movies, and create a newsletter about new media added to your server.
This is the strength of an open source ecosystem: the community builds a lot of interesting things on it. If you’re interested, Jellyfin might look like an upgrade over Plex.
Gardiner Bryant, free software advocate and Jellyfin fan, described the flaws of Jellyfin quite well– his article is worth reading. He mentions some things I don’t talk about here, like how Plex offers simpler downloads for offline viewing and dedicated smartphone apps for music and photos. He also points out some bugs.
Even with all these caveats, I think Jellyfin is a perfectly viable alternative to Plex if you’re willing to put in the work. If you’re the type of person who likes to constantly tweak things, it might even be better than Plex in some ways. But if you want things to work without too much hassle, Plex has a real advantage. This is especially true if you’re a heavy user of the live TV feature, at least in my experience.
I’ll probably continue paying for Plex. But I’ll also keep an eye on Jellyfin, because I have to imagine it’ll continue to get better (and Plex might continue to get worse).
