The open source alternative to my sponsor - Jellyfin vs Plex
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- čas přidán 27. 05. 2024
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When we shout about home AV servers, it's like we're shouting into a canyon. We scream "PLEX!" and an echo rings out "JELLYFIN! JeLlYfIn! JellYFiN! jellyfin! ʲᵉˡˡʸᶠᶦⁿ...." So we listened to the void we screamed into, and decided to give Jellyfin a shot. Does it succeed where Plex fails? What are its shortcomings? Is Jellyfin the chosen one where Plex was unsuccessful?
Discuss on the forum: linustechtips.com/topic/14849...
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:39 Device Compatibility
3:31 Server Setup
4:30 Library Setup
5:30 Filtering
6:35 Parental Tools and Account Management
7:50 Video Players, Skip Intro, and Plugins
9:08 Google TV
9:57 Android Mobile and the Download Problem
12:16 iOS, the Apple Problem, and Disappearing Features
13:05 Plex as a Sponsor and Switching to Jellyfin Longterm
15:05 "bUt WhAt AbOuT eMbY?!"
15:39 Closing Statements - Věda a technologie
Have you switched from Plex to Jellyfin or vice versa? What was your experience? If you've tried Emby, how does that compare?
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Plex - it really whips the llamas ass… oh wait wrong decade
What about LG jellyfin app? Is it good?
Had connection issue all the time when i was using plex. Since i switched to jellyfin i just works. It might not be the best featurewise but it works without problems for me.
Using Emby for years and I love it.
why dont you try emby?
FFmpeg dev of Jellyfin nyanmisaka here!
For the past two years I've mostly been busy polishing the hardware acceleration. As of Jellyfin 10.8, we have supported the complete transcoding pipeline include using AMD GPU. And use GPGPU filtering to accelerate video scaling, subtitle burning, tone mapping and other features. We are the first to support transcoding Dolby vision profie 5 to SDR. By the way I've been playing with the ARC A380 for a few months, so AV1 encoding is on the way.
If you are familiar with developing with FFmpeg and would like to improve Jellyfin please let me know.❤
Awesome stuff, thank you!
just switched from nvidia windows to amd linux i just wanna say thank you
Bump
@@AhmedMohammed23 very based.
we need this pinned as well!
A very fair and balanced review, thank you for this Linus!
There's one comment I want to make regarding money. We've always explicitly wanted to keep money out of the project because, exactly as you said, capitalism ruins everything and we don't want to "start the cycle" again. We forked because Emby jumped headfirst into that cycle, and I made a commitment - to myself, to our team, and to our users - to never become part of that bandwagon. Period.
What that means is - we've already seen an uptick in donations. Which is nice, thank you everyone! But I want to reiterate that we only use the money donated to us for infrastructure costs, for which we currently have a huge runway (we could pay for our DigitalOcean VMs for like, 3-4 years at this point).
What we need as a project more than anything is talented, experienced developers who are willing to contribute to the project. So if you, or someone you know, is good with C# (core server, plugins), React (main WebUI), Vue.js (alternate WebUI), Apple Swift (Swiftfin), Kotlin (Android), Brightscript (Roku), or Python (Kodi), a high-quality contribution makes a far bigger impact than any amount of money ever could! Contributions to our documentation are also a huge help, especially for some more niche (for us homelabbers/selfhosters) areas like a solid Windows setup guide.
Happy watching!
This comment should be at the top
@LinusTechTips pin this please
Whoa! Jellyfin project lead here. LTT staff, please pin this comment?
What's wrong with capitalism if you don't compromise on the quality of the user experience? You could use donations/other revenue to pay devs and keep being faithful to the audience(at least let people finance specific features)
I know asking for stuff doesn’t help you find more talent but a Samsung TV app would be amazing! I could finally ditch Plex.
But also, thank you thank you thank you so much for all the work you have done!! I love the app and prefer it over Plex any day!
(Running it on a docker on my UNRaid server 😊)
I think it’s a massive advantage that the Jellyfin developers are IN your comments section, and are fully engaged with what you’re saying. It’s one of the beautiful things about the open source, nature of the project. I’m sure Plex developers also have their opinions, but are bound by contract to let the PR team speak for them. Hopefully this stands as a good reason for Plex’s decision makers to get competitive again. A little bit of healthy competition is always good. As for me, I will probably be going with Jellyfin regardless, and finding a way to support the devs over there.
Edit: grammarz
Devils advocate position,, maybe the Plex developers are coding, whilst the Jellyfin developers are on CZcams comments? :)
@@simona4693 ^^ least charitable take. Engaging with your community is an important part of open source. There's more to it than just programming
@@simona4693 I’m personally disinclined to agree with that take, but I *do* think it’s important to have someone play devils advocate. Good thinking, but I think it’s probably a mistake to assume that the developers luxury/personal time doesn’t include a little CZcams. Linus has also been talking a little about this on The WAN Show in recent weeks so I suspect that the devs were tuned into the fact that a video about their project was probably in the pipeline, and ready to demonstrate good-faith engagement with the community.
Plex would have to have every comment approved and would most likely come back to Linux directly given the sponsorships. I know my employer would not be happy with me commenting about their software. That said they may allow some people to make public comments on behalf of the company. Really depends how much jellyfin is hurting them. I can tell you I installed jellyfin and didn't regret it. Plex is a dinosaur in comparison. Plex our time together was good but my new lover is so much better.
Nah, Plex doesn't care at all. If they cared, it wouldn't be proprietary. Being in a community or in a corporate setting doesn't matter if you restrict user freedoms.
Hi, I wrote the configurable HDR tone-mapper you mentioned at 14:48, and also added support for Dolby Vision playback :D
Thanks for the shoutout!
amazing thanks!
The fact that Linus rips on his sponsors is what keeps me here. Keep it up, Linus.
Its more constructive criticism then ripping, but i totally agree.
@@HanZie82 Yeah him being rude won't help anyone
I dont know doesn't seem like he tried that hard to find the source of the problem. Plex isn't bug free but some of the issues he described were user error and not understanding how it all works.
@@nsxxtreme non geeks and those dealing with non-geeks just want 'stuff that works without having to understand it'
Heck, even us geeks have limited time to fix the stuff that should be working.
So when Plex tells me it has downloaded things then it should work. No ifs or buts, no coconuts.
@@nsxxtreme you shouldn't need to try hard to find root cause of bugs of paid software lmao
Lifetime Plex user of 10 years. I feel the exact same. It's changed a lot, and mostly not for the better
@Akkbar I'm pretty sure the video did a great job of listing many of the concerns that many plex users have, including me.
@@Akkbar21 bloated software
15:06 what he said about funding, I've seen some open source projects also do Patreons and Patreons-like funding. So a in-between solution is possible.
@@Akkbar21 . 1)Offline viewing.
2) Requirement for internet connection to use server on home network. Yes, there is a work around, but I should not need to.
@@robertt9342 #2 is a HUGE one
Netflix: increases fees, prevents password sharing.
Linus: Anyway here's a video about Plex and Jellyfin
This seems like a timely opportunity to ask LTT to do an updated "Build your own HTPC" system video.
literally plug a pc into your tv and you're done. Why do you need a video on how to do this?
@@flyingtentacle7631 A good HTPC is a balance between getting as much power out of it (especially when used for gaming) as possible, but keeping it quiet enough to not be a bother during movies.
Discussion of the various software available, remote control situations, keyboards, 3D mouse options, audio boards, speaker setups, etc.
But by all means go plug your 1995 Dell into your CRT TV and go nuts.
@@flyingtentacle7631 That is not a HTPC
@@dustojnikhummer What's an HTPC then??
Why? You can just run the app on your TV and you're done. Or get an Android box if your TV can't do it.
Jellyfin continues to improve little by little, wearing down every little bullet point Plex used to call out as an advantage. Some of the biggest things are being able to transcode without paying, having a native Apple TV and iOS app, and all the little plugins for weird edge cases like eBook integrations.
It needs niche system support. Like WebOS or Tizen
@@ligametis being open source it probably has been unofficially ported, but also due to being unofficial finding that port may prove difficult
@@ligametis WebOS has a native app already
The biggest advantage for Plex is honestly friction and by the way Jellyfin is designed, will always be harder to setup than plex.
Even this video glosses over it but if you want to watch Jellyfin outside of your house. You either need A) to port forward, hopefully with a domain or reverse proxy. or B) A VPN wired into your home network. If you knew how to do either of those properly, you're golden. Plex has no such needs. Relay handles that for you, even if it is limited, it does just work.
And that's what plex is good at it. It does just work (when it does work, that is. It's still a finicky beast.)
Until Jellyfin actually reaches feature parity, i'm running both side by side with synced watchstates per profile. Because no one said you ever had to choose one or the other.
@@Dwykid1 You still have to port forward in Plex tho.
As a relatively long time user of Plex who just moved to Jellyfin not too long ago, I'm glad LTT is finally making a video about it.
I am a current plex user, but I like this kind of content.
Yeah finally
I wish I could switch too, but i'm on truenas, so not very possible...
I still like plex, tried jellyfin and gave me a couple issues from day 1 so I didn't bother to spend time in it since plex was already working
@@robertt9342 Plex is garbage. Try Jellyfin and get rid of commercials.
I have been using Jellyfin for a number of years now, since it forked from Emby, it is by no means perfect but has steadily improved throughout the updates to be a genuinely competent competitor to Plex. I am so thankful for the project and it’s amazing devs. Great to see it is finally getting the praise and coverage it deserves.
I switched from Plex to Emby some years ago and have been (mostly) very happy with it. One feature I like, which Plex didn't have then, although I don't know whether it has now, is that when watching TV series, it knows to play a Special that has been allocated to Season 00 in TVDB in the right order with the regular episodes. The development team are also very responsive in their forums. There is lots of available customisation. Linus should really give it a go. I would love to see a LTT video on Emby.
I moved from Plex to Emby because Plex's styled subtitles support is dogshit.
.ass files look like shit on Plex while Emby is able to display the correct font, size and colors without issues.
Yep, I moved from Plex to Emby 3 or 4 years ago, and it's perfect for what I want. Plex lost their way when they scrapped the "classic" interface which was exactly what we all wanted here at my house (nice and simple) - yet another company that flippantly ignores their users, and consequently loses to a competitor.
@@Jonathan-fw6ty for the record, works fine on Jellyfin too, in my experience
No, Plex still can't do that (that I'm aware of). I try Emby again once a year or so but for our use, I have always found far more negatives with Emby than Plex. Always rooting for Jellyfin and Emby to be great as the competition is welcome to give us options to choose what works best for what you want to do.
Been an emby fan for years. I concur, I don't want other services in my media server. Just MY media 😁. Every year I look at Emby Premiere but wind up saying nah. Well it's 2023 time to compare I suppose.
I would love to see more videos like this - an in-depth comparison of software options.
Yeah, seriously. Would love ones like Photoshop vs Gimp, or Libre vs Office. Could be a whole series in it.
@@DampeS8N A vid about alternatives to the core Adobe suite would be amazing!
@@DrakkarCalethiel They kinda sorta did that, but not in this format.
I paid for the Plex lifetime license and ended up switching to Jellyfin after a few months of dealing w/ the Plex issues. A big factor for me was the plugin library that PLEX USED TO HAVE too, but that allow me to expand into supporting things like SSO (OIDC & LDAP) and more!
same
I was going to say, Jellyfin’s robust plugin support means you could probably just use an OIDC plugin to avoid resetting passwords
FYI: Filebot is great for getting the naming right for meta data. Can also be used to source subtitles
Totally agree, it feels like plex has abandoned its roots as a private media server and put all its efforts into paid/advertisement driven avenues. I feel like a lot of the feature requests that have been there for years have been ignored to push in the less self managed direction which is frustrating. PLEX: you used to be by the people, for the people... lets move back in that direction eh?
I recently built a NAS, and went with Jellyfin to serve media off it because I prefer an open source solution with no online accounts. I've been impressed by it so far - there's even a native app for my LG smart TV. Very grateful to the devs for all the work they put into it!
"there's even a native app for my LG smart TV"
And what can be added to your comment is, that this app was released Q3/Q4 of 2022, so the whole Jellyfin ecosystem is in pretty active development.
@@jonas_security_kolinski but is also for every WebOS version?
@@w00tt03t Apparently it's available for WebOS 2/3/4/5
@@w00tt03t no 5 and up but they are working on it (the problem is in LG to verify app it takes months)
Hmmm, I have an old ASRock Beebox and a 5TB Seagate USB3 external drive.
I see some possibilities here.
Gold star to the editor, it was noticeably nice this episode.
I've had emby since 2018-2019 and it's been a near flawless experience. Sometimes it will have issues identifying movies/shows but the downloads work great as well as transcoding
Thank you Linus. I have been a long term user of Plex and downloading the kids movies onto their iPads is an essential component of Plex that continues to be a nightmare.
Please keep pushing them to finally get this fixed instead of wasting time on all this extra crap that no one wants. Just make a good media consuming app that works off line. It’s my media let me watch it the way I want without glitches and headaches!
FYI for the missing audio issue it might be the case your tv doesn't have the codec for that specific audio format, I've had this issue for weeks on windows too but it was caused by me using LTSC which doesn't come with a Dolby dll that's required for EAC3 and DDP5.1 to work.
And if native app doesn't work, often just casting it to the Chromecast (or Chromecast feature of the TV) will work fine
doesn't it usually show a notification or something when the audio codec is not supported?
It could be the container? Maybe the TV doesn't support that audio codec in whatever container the video is in, but when transcoding is enabled it just repackages it into a new container that it does support the same audio in?
I am pretty sure Linus uses a Nvidia Shield Pro on his TV and that should pretty much do it all.
@@kevinhoog no, plex doesn't show any such notification, at least the Plex for Windows client. not sure about TV apps
Love to see the Jellyfin coverage. There *are* more than just the two images (LSIO and official) for Docker that do add some more transcoding functionality, particularly on AMD hardware. I'm happy to see a fair blow-by-blow comparison between the two media server platforms.
The Linuxserver-Build also offers so-called "Docker-Mods", which allows Transcoding for AMD-, NVidia- or Intel-(i)GPUs.
I bet those two are somewhat up-to-date with the actual version.
Usually it's a bit of a gamble when other images get updated ... it's both a blessing (you get stuff that isn't standard yet) and a curse (you may have to wait longer for fixes and new features of the original) for open source software.
@@astorek8611 Yup! Just wanted to point out that there were other options.
@@NotTheStinkyCheese Fair. I've used both the Binhex and ich777 images in the past and, while they are both more Unraid-adjacent than anything, they'll still work just fine in any other Docker environment. I've been moved over to the Jellyfin official image for a while, but I wanted to point out to some others that there are options aplenty.
He only covers it to put some pressure on plex, so they fix what he hates. Same like he does with Nvidia and AMD, he will never switch. Just some crying so he gets what he wants
I recently took up Jellyfin, and over all it has been a great experience, had a few minor issues on the rollout but once it was up and runniung and had downloaded metadata and images for all the movies it was great and has been since. Have even set up a cert to allow limited remote access. Yeah I would love if it had some more features and a better UI, but to me those are pretty minor things. In time, I am confident they will be addressed.
I used the Jellyfin official image on unraid docker, but now I changed to the image from nyanmisaka. He is also one of the developers of the project, focusing on hardware acceleration. So many drivers are integrated in his image. This is very nice, especially if you don't know much about how the various drivers should be installed.
In addition, the official image does not integrate the Chinese font library. Even if you set the path of the external font library, the external subtitle file may still not be displayed normally. But he added a Chinese font library to the image, which perfectly solved the problem of subtitle display.
What bothers me now is that the cast introductions are displayed in the wrong language. The preferred language for all my libraries is Chinese, and most of the actors have Chinese introductions on TMDB. But they still show up in English in Jellyfin. This is not a problem for English users, but it is not friendly for non-English users. When I watch a Chinese movie and want to know more about the actors, I can only look it up online because their names and descriptions are in English. I can't even figure out what the corresponding Chinese characters are by the pronunciation of their names.
I'm definitely team Plex here (I have a Lifetime Pass myself, and it meets all my needs), but I'm also really glad Jellyfin exists, works, and is getting attention. It gives Plex something to compete against, and gives me a second option if Plex gets bad. Both of them are better than streaming from Netflix/Hulu/whatever, and setting up a server can be really cheap, depending on how much storage you need.
Same, it does everything just fine for me but when I get to upgrading my server and Plex is on the downfall, I’ll look into jellyfin
What kind of server would you recommend?
such an unbelievably based take, thank you!
@@AutumnRivers Honestly, for just one or two people watching, an old Optiplex 7010 will handle 4K video just fine and can usually be had for $70-90 on eBay. Just make sure you get the tower version and not the slimmer models.
let's be real here mate. Both of these solutions are better than Netflix, etc. IF you are a pirate. No way buying Bluray's at like 25$ a pop is better than 10$ a month for a giant catalog of media.
As someone who manages home media servers and appreciates consumer choice I love this video. I've used Plex for the past few years now and probably won't migrate to jellyfin just yet, but I will be keeping an eye on it and testing it from time to time. I really appreciate that you showcased both the pros and the cons of both services
I tried Jellyfin briefly a few years ago and it absolutely was not there yet. I have a limited use case, 99% of the time using Plex on my LG OLED only, no transcoding, and my phone has plenty of storage so on the odd occasion I want a portable copy, that's fine. But I can totally understand how I'm using the absolute basic functionality only and hopefully there will come a time where Jellyfin can satisfy that. Intro Skipping is absolutely essential though, plus I don't want to have to side-load an app on my TV as that's a hassle.
I do have a ShieldTV also mind you, but I only use that for movies with DTS audio as its more prone to video stuttering for some reason.
@@alexatkin yup. Hopefully this video encourages some of the loyal Jellyfin contributors to push the development of proper 1st party apps for more devices.
For me, considering that my family uses our main media server quite regularly on their TV and I use it on my phone and PC, having a consistent and functional user experience is essential. The annoying issues I have with Plex don't quite justify the switch yet because I'd be trading issues for other more different issues. Hopefully both Plex and Jellyfin are able to progress further and both improve as a result of the competition.
@@alexatkin maybe it has grown much more than compared to a few years ago...
I've got both Plex and jellyfin running pointed to the same media. I tend to use Plex on Google tv and jellyfin for mobile.
Plex's days are numbered
What a genius whomever it was that set up this intro! especially covering Yvonne with the plex logo. Got a good belly laugh out of me.
Thanks for making this video! I haven’t tried Emby as I like Jellyfin enough. I think in the future we will see more ways to support development of open source projects. One thing I’d like to see is bug/feature bounties
I think one of the major things glossed over here is that Jellyfin lets you have multiple administration accounts and a really granular permission system. Plex only allows one server admin and has a really basic permissions system. Everything else was pretty spot-on. ☺
This was exactly the reason I switched. The way Plex handles other users and permission is straight up broken on some devices.
@@DJ.1001 Same. I was sick of adding files or retagging them then having to ask for the library to be refreshed. 😵💫 It was especially bad with music, which is why when Google Play Music died, the switch to Jellyfin happened.
Don't forget the LDAP plugin... It's the reason why i got in contact with jellyfin first... Now it's just the older LG-TV's we have that plex is still running, but that's in the working too^^
I've been using Emby as my Media Center Server for about a year. It's working very good except for a couple of quirks with the subtitles (sometimes they take a while to appear) but apart from that I have no major complaints. It's running perfectly on my Intel 9900K with 16 GB of RAM. I have it on an Unraid server with other docker containers running I haven't seen any delays transcoding videos while listening to music.
No problem with the subtitles. But yeah, Emby is great. It works a lot better on my intel9100 than Plex did, I couldn't really get it to work well (even with the paid hardware acceleration)
For me, I also notice subtitles get out of sync when resuming content occasionally. The workaround is reopening, and starting it from the beginning, then skipping to the previous time
I'm running emby server off of an old 2nd gen i7 laptop with 16gb ram which i'm using as a Proxmox host and it worked extremely well. I was surprised given that the machine is only a 2ghz quad core with HT. I haven't explored all of the transcoding options but it worked with zero fuss with the Roku TV app.
Yea it'd be great if we got one more video in this series looking at Emby. Even though Jellyfin is based on Emby, they are worlds apart in their current iterations.
I moved to emby from kodi. Kodi was nice but I had so many issues over the years that I got fed up. I tried emby and Jellyfin and emby won it because it had some features that Jellyfin didn't. Bought emby Premiere and haven't looked back.
Thank you for calling this out, Linus. Maybe one day I will be able to listen to my downloaded podcasts on Android without the Plex app restarting them a million times.
Maybe Audiobookshelf is for you, I heard it has very good podcast support
You can run all 3 on the same server with the same libraries. So there is no "hassle" to transfer over. Just set all 3 up. Use them a bit, and see which you prefer.
Do you mean jellyfin, plex, and emby?
That's interesting! I'll probably do that, and then test drive all three options.
@@Agonylord52 Yup. Just install them all, point them to the same library folders, and they will all work side by side, creating their own metadata.
Correct. I'm doing this now just to compare. Jellyfin is the one I usek, as Plex's UI bugs me and I haven't paid for Emby Premiere so it's very limited in comparison.
I went for Jellyfin by default because it is free and does not lock any features behind a paywall. It does a good enough job for me.
not advertising a product even when you are using it because it is not good *enough* to actually recommend is a great thing! sometimes (actually way too often) we are forced to pick the least broken option, but our conscience just won't let us say "it's good, you should pay for it too!"
UI and native apps are probably the biggest problems currently, Server Side stuff mostly works
Yeah, the only thing missing server-side is federation and alternative database options
I think a transcode profile editor is lacking, sometimes old shows get offered at rediculous bitrates and i cant change/create in between profiles without source code hacks.
@@Undercoverfire Alternative databases are in the works. Though they have been for over a year, so don't count on it
This is one of the best LTT videos in recent memory. Thanks team, you hit this one out of the park.
I'm actually trying Emby for the first time and I find it better when talking about transcoding options. One thing that's making me think of switching to Emby is the ability to not transcode the video output when the audio track has to be transcoded but the movie has subtitles. In this case Plex will transcode video to sync the text with the transcoded audio source to burn them in again, while Emby has a neat little option to extract subtitles on the fly that should prevent video transcoding. It does says that the playback could stall during the extraction process but so far I've never experienced any hiccup with a bunch of movies I tried. I'm not that much into other features Linus mentioned (like offline mode and intro skip) and I'm barely scratching the surface of what Emby can do, but I'll surely try jellyfin before buying an Emby license. One great thing about Emby though is that it has an app for every device you want
That last issue you describe is almost certainly a codec issue. Whatever platform/device you’re streaming to is probably saying it supports that audio codec, when it in fact does not (or not in the way your source file has it encoded). I have this issue on Apple TV a lot. The solution I’ve gone with for now is to setup Unmanic, an automated tool that ensures all my media files have whatever codecs I decide. I then match those settings with what I know my Apple TV supports and I’ve not had any issues since doing that.
Plex is supposed to (and generally does) autodetec codec compatibility though. Expected behaviour would be to transcode the audio stream and leave the video stream as-is
Had a similar issue with my LG Oled. Plex was automatically set up with DTS compatibility but as LG doesn't support it anymore there was no sound. When you convert, it probably uses a different audio codec. I just had to turn off DTS compatibility in the settings.
If I had to guess, I'd say the audio codec was probably EAC3
I use Emby myself, and it does have the transcode download feature that works great! I think the transcoder on Emby is better than plex as well. It works very well and my girlfriend and I both reccomend
The Plex Transcoder is the best out there, but it's still lacking AV1 support in 2023 which is inexcusable. The weird part is Plex will play AV1 on the Linux client.
@@antikommunistischaktion They released the update recently. Plex now can playback AV1 direct and also transcode for devices that don't support AV1.
Emby user too. I tested the "Download Transcoding" myself, as I don't normally use it, and it works without issue in Emby for me. Transcoded a 4k bluray down to 480P 1GB. I have family that uses the download button occasionally and they haven't reported any issues.
Linus was capable of not talking about the most important thing about Jellyfin: free hardware acceleration.
He did mention it toward the end of the video.
this video deserves an update...
Please do more of these kinds of videos! I feel like they're way more useful to the average person than a PC building video.
i havve been using emby for 5 or 6 years with a lifetime licence. i never had an issue or a complaint. although my use may differ . but i use it on the plane. loaded my music to listen in the car, and watch on tv. works great. even set it up with https private domain. so i can view it from every where. works great. subtitles download is kind of working. although i dont use it that much
Dat bug @ 9:33 was excellent...
Probably the most interesting video they've done in a while (apart from Factory tours - those are awesome)! This comes from someone with no horse in this race, having just taken a long optical hdmi cable to connect my pc to my TV.
Would love to see more of these software analysis and dives, pc-build-slight-variation-#19 gets a bit tired after a while :/
I use plex without streaming just because having an organized media with all the posters is great.
Pretty much nailed all my exact issues, pros, and cons with both platforms. I hope Jellyfin can step up to Plex, and I hope Plex fixes their crap and dials back on all the useless crap they're injecting that absolutely no one wants!
Well said, though plex seems to skip intros under 20 seconds just fine for me even though Linus reckons it can't and also I can download compressed versions of shows in only a few seconds without issue, sounds like it is more a issue with his setup rather than plex itself. But yes 100% they need to stop adding useless crap to plex!!!
Hey, but they released a new logo design! .... that's absolutely shit compared to the old one and again like you said, crap that nobody asked for or wants.
@@phenry5083 I asked for it, and really like the new design much more.
@@lighthawk95 no, you didn’t and no, you don’t.
More than a few times have I seen my mom, brother and wife using the free movies/tv sections on Plex. I would never use those... but you can't say no one wants or uses it.
Thank you for your work here. I look forward to a potential solution for very simular reasons
I've had Jellyfin running in Docker for a few months now. It also worked well, I have migrated a media container to another larger drive. I also specified this with a changed path in the container. But since then no media has been showing up anymore. The volume is there and the all the rights are identical, but it still can't access any media.
15:45 Had also the same issue für Jellyfin
I run both Emby and Jellyfin but I mostly use Emby just solely for the stability, fixes, support & plugins that Jellyfin has yet to catch up on. It's a really good middle point till Jellyfin gets better imo.
I also run them side by side.
Jellyfin to me is still the unpolished version of Emby. The way they add features reminds me a little of Plex. Sure they add them sooner like intro skip rather than getting the clients to a better standard.
Maybe in the future Jellyfin will surpass it.
Agreed
I run both Emby and Plex with Lifetime License on both of them, I like Plex but sometimes it is heavier on bandwidth so it won’t load videos on LTE. I’ve used Emby for about 8 years, and Plex for about 2. Emby is a much more cleaner and simpler UI, I looked into Jellyfin but I was already using Emby, seeing how it is just a washed down “branch” off of Emby, I didn’t even finish with the SetUp.
@Miguel Sanchez I ran Plex the paid version myself for many years and it worked well, the fact that the privacy laws allowed some very questionable use of data convinced me to move to Emby only as s purchased product.
I've been an Emby user since it was MediaBrowser and I've always been very impressed with it. The community for it may be smaller but the devs are very active on the forums, critical bugs are often fixed very quickly. I've been able to maintain my library for years even moving to new systems or installations of Emby by restoring a backup that it takes nightly. There is an option within the transcoding page to boost audio volume when downmixing, though not sure why audio levels would change with a video transcode but it works either way. There's native apps on many devices, I personally have an LG OLED TV that I primarily use and there are some limitations but NOT because of app, it actually has to do with what LG makes available on the TV, mostly in relation to the subtitle formats especially if you're playing something in HDR but sometimes the type of audio track does play a role (again mostly related to HDR content, if it's SDR it can just transcode). I've read you can just hook up an Nvidia Shield instead and not have to worry about anything like that but I don't personally have one currently - it also has better networking than the TV does. Playing remotely works great if you have a good internet connection even though I don't do it very often, setting up a reverse proxy server was not that difficult to do either. 10 thumbs up from me!
Also the downloading feature with transcoded files works well, I've only used it maybe once but worked great. I think I had to wait for it to finish the transcode before it would download but I don't remember now, it was relatively small file anyway. Can easily transcode to a lower bitrate to download for mobile use while traveling.
I have also been an Emby user since it was Media Browser. Great results in my experience and the apps on Android TV, Roku, Web work great!
I am a big audiobook listener and tried to make the switch to Emby for that. It was really good. It did not have some of the features that I wanted and I switched back to Plex because it has better 3rd party apps for Audiobooks.
That being said I turned my Emby server into a media server for ummm, videos, the kind kids shouldn't watch. It did a very good job at keeping those segmented from my normal plex that was shared with other people. I was presently surprised that it did all of the normal video things with them. It worked well and I used it for a couple months before I retired the library and re allocated the space to different content.
Over all I was happy with it and if more of my friends had switched to Emby I would have made the switch. But library sharing with friends was why I ended up staying with plex. It handles my 8ish TB of audiobook relatively well with the help of some 3rd party tweeks and apps for playback. When Plex amp came out it almost made me even ditch the 3rd party audiobook apps. But it still did not have enough functionality and the "remember track location" feature was still buggy as hell with anything over 5 hours of audio.
Emby has been my go to since mediaBrowser also. I like that you can block folders for different users. I have a movie kids folder and one for tv shows. My login can see all folders but the kids can only see shows from the folders I assign them. Jellyfin does not have that feature and its in the free version of Emby.
InFuse for the win
Can Plex be used without an active internet connection, like Jellyfin can? The entire point is being able to still watch something on my smart TVs when the internet goes down.
Someone probably already mentioned this, but it looks like Jellyfin can use LDAP for user authentication with a plugin. Presumably, with an appropriate LDAP server, your users could then manage their own passwords. (Disclaimer: I'm just reading the docs; I haven't gotten to "install Jellyfin" part of the five-month plan for my homelab yet so I can't say whether or how well it works in practice.)
As someone who recently switched to Jellyfin--can confirm, LDAP plugin Just Works. If you can set up self-service password reset for LDAP, you have it for Jellyfin.
I read that as LAPD and was incredibly confused what Los Angeles police had to do with anything 😂
Yep, the LDAP plugin works, there is also a SAML one. Setting up your own auth provider with something like MIM works to create a more "plex like" user experience.
@@theredpenguin1354 sweet yeah with SAML support you can use KeyClock too, which has password recovery and multifactor support (plus you can use ldap as well if you wanted, essentially multiplexing your account management through them).
Yep, with LLDAP users can update their own password though there's no way to create their own account or recover it. SAML with Authentik or Keycloak would work better for that.
Amazing timing! I have actually switched from Plex to Jellyfin 2 weeks ago. I just love it! I have some slight problems with HDR to SDR transcoding though, but nothing that cannot be solved I guess.
Just being curious: why would you do that? The only real advantage that Jellyfin has is that's it's free. I've played with Jellyfin out of curiosity, but compared to my current PMS > PlexKodiConnect > Kodi solution it's lightyears behind.
@@stevenvanpelt486 Not having to pay. That's it.
It's not the only reason, it's the only reason that needs to be given. Plex is built on the back of free, open source software, and charged as though it's not.
I switched from a plexpass to emby subscription 2+ years ago, and ran both side by side for 2 months. I didn't need to offline download that you spoke about so I can't comment on that. But I love my emby setup.
I just tested the down load function, I can set the bit rate I want and a 2 hrs movie took less then 10 mins to convert and transfer to my phone, even not on my home network.
I love how LS does a live demo of the audio problem, they KNOW that the plex team will see this and probably have a collective mini-panic.
lol, they will do what they do best - not care..
Lol, no they won't
15:32 Uhh, isn't that like, your job man?
As a long time user of Jellyfin, this video could be a massive endorsement to a relatively small community. I genuinely appreciate this and hope that Jellyfin continues to mature past its already relatively stable state.
My breaking point for Emby was the TV app, which without paying for is pretty okay, until it pushes you to buy it, and stops working. The switch to jellyfin was seamless and has come with additional functionality, like syncplay (not on TV yet sadly, but seems to be WIP), which allows me and friends to watch content together (in sync and each at their own quality) without screensharing and stuff like that.
The audio/music features of jellyfin could use some improvements (like proper playlist support - or me figuring out how it is supposed to work).
Very interesting. I use plex for audio, and with the plex amp app it’s an absolute dream. As a subscriber, i get to stream all my music on mobile or wifi and the transcoding for both works PERFECTLY
Thanks for using your platform to draw more attention to the issues with Plex. Hopefully they see this and focus on the parts that actually matter to most of their users. They've been spending too much time on the the ad supported features and not enough time addressing stability and core features.
Completely agree. For pretty much every “major” feature they’ve introduced over the past several years, my reaction has been a resounding, “meh! How do I turn it off?”. I’ve been sorely tempted to apply for a job with them just so I could get time with someone senior on their dev team to ask, “Why do you spend so much time building features hardly anyone wants?!?”.
Agreed. Transcoding and downloading offline is an essential feature. All this other crap they keep shoving in is ridiculous!
Glad to see he took the community feedback and made a new vid about it
I really like emby, it basically just does what plex does, but the major different for me was just the simplified UI. it's a lot easier to use which was a major selling point as I share my server with my grandparents who think a power switch is a form of ai
🤣🤣🤣
Great video! After finally downloading and configuring Jellyfin about 2 weeks ago. The timing of this video was borderline creepy
Emby is also worth a try. Tried Plex, Jellyfin and Emby and sticked with Emby. Still not perfect but liked it the most.
My biggest gripe with Plex has been the audio issues with transcoding. I have to run my media through a ffmpeg script to increase the volume just to compensate for it, because a lot of stuff (especially stuff with surround sound channels) just becomes way too quiet for me.
i have the same issue on my apple tv when using the tvOS plex app. When using Infuse as a client for my plex content, the audio is fine though. Unfortunately this has been an issue for months now and the plex team probably doesnt care anymore.
Tried jellyfin with infuse. But unfortunately, the jellyfin server is way too slow compared to plex.
Can you share how you do this please?
@@AmirKhan-qx2lr I use a .bat file to run the script, it's basically just iterating over files with an FFMPEG command. You will need to have FFMPEG set up on your system to use it. I want to explain what it does exactly, as it might not fit everyone's needs: It will only take .mp4 and .mkv in the same folder and create copies in a new folder. The copies will not have any surround sound channels, it will be converted to stereo (I watch most things with headphones, so I do not care much about surround myself). It will also have the volume boosted, although I am not sure if it actually boosts it by much. But it's usually enough for me either way. And, it will remove the title field from the metadata if present, as it tends to override Plex's metadata.
When you run it, it will show a cmd window. It will complain that the volume feature is deprecated but I haven't had any issues with it, I think most of the boost comes from changing it to stereo anyways. Honestly I'm not sure if the -vol tag is even doing much, I might even have it at a way higher value than it should be.
Also I want to say that I am not an FFMPEG expert, so what I am doing may or may not be the best way of doing it. If you're going to use it, I recommend testing it first.
The code of the batch file is below:
@ECHO OFF
md converted
for %%i in (*.mp4) do (
echo Converting %%~ni.mp4...
ffmpeg -i "%%~ni.mp4" -metadata title= -c:v copy -c:a aac -af "pan=stereo|FL=0.5*FC+0.707*FL+0.707*BL+0.5*LFE|FR=0.5*FC+0.707*FR+0.707*BR+0.5*LFE" -vol 1024 "%cd%/converted/%%~ni.mp4")
for %%i in (*.mkv) do (
echo Converting %%~ni.mkv...
ffmpeg -i "%%~ni.mkv" -metadata title= -c:v copy -c:a aac -af "pan=stereo|FL=0.5*FC+0.707*FL+0.707*BL+0.5*LFE|FR=0.5*FC+0.707*FR+0.707*BR+0.5*LFE" -vol 1024 "%cd%/converted/%%~ni.mkv")
pause
FOUND IT: Settings > Plex Web > Player > (Disable) Normalize Multi-Channel Audio
Yo I had this issue to, its due to a setting under advanced playback options (pretty sure) called something like equalization support for multichannel audio or normalization. Something similar.
Uncheck that box and viola all surround sound content is fixed.
All this is done on the web client under settings, not on individual devices
@@Mr.FastZombie Thank you!
Have switched from PLEX to Emby and I did not regret it one minute, easy to setup and manage and it has support for my TV (manual app updates required but guides are available) while there was no support for JellyFin on my TV.
As someone who doesn’t prioritize any premium features like intro skip or live tv, I personally love Emby for what it offers for its non-paying customers. It’s the little things they offered for my use case that made me stick with them after trying Jellyfin for a day like being able to shuffle TV episodes or my entire music library.
Plex is not even close to being perfect, but still overall the better option for me. I've tried jellyfin, still needs some work before I would actually consider changing over to it. Always great to have options though!
Big vote for Emby here! Had nothing but issues with plex so moved over to Emby a couple of years ago now. Plex would have constant/random streaming issues to my family members, would miss movies in the library unless the folders were very specifically named and don't even get me started on how useless it was with TV shows. Had zero issues with Emby and the transcoding support seems much better than Plex for various different GPU's.
Question, how well does Emby play with NASs? I am thinking of picking up a computer from work that would be discarded anyways, slap an SSD or 2 in, and see if I can a home server going.
Emby is great, have been using it for years.
@@DrKosmos do you mean playing media back from a NAS or hosting Emby on a NAS? Either way Emby is well supported on most NAS devices. The transcoding capability would depend on the hardware in the NAS. If you mean playing back from a NAS then you would just have to map the NAS as a network drive in windows, or mount it on linux and it's the same as a library on any local disk.
What was your problem with Plex and TV shows? I've had ZERO issues and I'm curious.
@@chrisdsanders missing items in the library. Had so many missing, was the thing that really pushed me to emby. No changes to the folder structure or naming and Emby picked up everything. Along with that my transcoding and streaming issues went away also.
I appreciate this video being made Linus! Plex has some massive problems preventing me from bothering to invest in a new NAS. If they can make the transcoding be more efficient (Or even just work properly for all major formats), I'd love to get a new NAS!
incidentally, I'd love to see a follow up video to this highlighting the best hardware to get for a NAS. I know there's somewhat of a guide from a few years ago, but I'd love to see recommendations on prebuilt NAS devices (If any can be) and what kind of PC specs should be optimal for a Plex server with 1080p (or even 4K if viable) streaming outside the local network.
Love deep dive comparisons of software like this.
Also quite neat to note is the Jellyfin for Kodi Addon which I use. This way you can use the superiority of the Kodi player on most devices alongside your synced Jellyfin library. So basically once you watch something using Kodi on your Android TV, Phone or similar the progress is automatically synced to the main Jellyfin instance. Furthermore you can manage your library in Jellyfin (adding movies, tagging stuff, adjusting progress) and then once you open Kodi on any device it will sync with that library. Also allows you to use the more advanced Kodi playback features, support for Dolby Vision/Atmos, custom skins and so on and forth. It is a bit hacky to set up but once done works like a charm!
Substitute EMBY for JF and that describes the way I have mine setup. Like you said, works like a charm. Funny thing is I didn't like the Emby UI which is why I use Kodi yet when I found the Embuary skin for Kodi.. that's what I use. :)
I was wondering if that is a thing - will look into that, thx! (As of now: KODi only, working fine)
Can you compare it to PlexKodiConnect (PKC)? It's what I've been using and I'm thinking about switching to Jellyfin.
From what I've read so far it works the same way. Library syncs and the (plex) media server local paths are substituted by network location paths so all Kodi sees is that there is file X located at Y on network and that's it. Works (almost) like every other library. It's just that scraping is not a thing. So with the initial sync via PKC it's getting the base metadata from the PMS. I.e. I don't have IMDB ratings unless my skin is triggering a plugin to fetch that. But there are many skins out there that do so I can have alle the ratings :)
@@Prophes0r How is the kodi player not superior? Plex can't even play ISO files. It can't do double layer DV, it can't do true Atmos and it does not allow for many player specific settings that Kodi has.
@@TheExplodingCore It is basically the same with the added bonus that Jellyfin indexes ISO files which then can be played in Kodi. Furthermore instead of network path substitution the addon also allows for transcoded streaming thriugh jellyfin. That is slower though and drops ISO support. So in my case not necessary since the network paths are available to my devices.
You touched on a point that I brought up on their forums, user chosen quality gets set back to max after next episode. That and transcoding being the default option for all new users is a pain.
Oh right, can't forget the part where a Plex Employee would rather argue semantics than find a solution to an issue. A pre-processed low-quality version of a file is not visible in the transcode options list.
Transcoding by default is a major annoyance
Love to see all the smart home exploration, Jellyfin is where everyone ends up for media library streaming currently lol
No idea if this has been said but you can also show what the time will be when a movie or tv show ends on PLEX. This does only appear to be for the TV versions of the application currently from my knowledge, but you can activate it by using these steps:
Settings - Experience - Show End Time for Video Playback
This setting is completely missing from both the Mobile and Desktop versions of the app which sucks but it's nice to know that it does exist on the TV version of the app
Went from Plex to Emby a bit more than a year ago. I was using Plex for more than 5 years and had lots of frustration like you. So I found Emby, tried it one time on Android and Apple device, it works just fine. Same setup than any other, you can chose multiple plugins (like open subtitle or movie database) to intergrate, I'm happy with it and it's perfect for my usage. I'm eager to try Jellyfin, but Emby meet all my expectation
Jellyfin is a fork of Emby, right as emby went closed-source proprietary. If you like emby, you'll love jellyfin.
Been a pretty happy user of Emby. Have life time subscription. Especially happy with the hardware transcoding support. UI and playback can be a bit buggy at a times. But especially while being locally connected, playback is fast and responsive.
Offline media download has been a bit buggy for me, but I didn't have problems with it using the stable version of Emby. The latest beta did have some problems.
I used Plex for a while, then had issues so started trying Emby and Jellyfin. I really liked Jellyfin, the lack of push to phones isn't something we really use. But I ended up going back to Emby for one main reason. Google assistant. Watching anything via Emby on our TV, we can say "Hey Google, pause, stop, play etc" Not as polished as a Netflix/CZcams like experience as it occasionally doesn't work the first time, but it works most of the time. Last time I looked, it wasn't really on Jellyfin's radar, a lot of effort for a minor feature. So that's why I'm using Emby.
Honestly I'm so glad that this video is being made. Offline downloads just have not worked for me in a long time on iOS and it's been super frustrating considering I've already paid for this.
Don't be too upset, offline downloads on Plex haven't worked on Android or PC either.... like ever. I just keep Plex and expect to sneakernet any media to a device I'd want to watch on while remote.
What does sneakernet mean?
@@RWDtech it means to walk to..
@@SeanBlader Why doesnt it work for you? No problems with downloads here on android although the downloads are quite slow but I'm fine with it
@@rileyxbell Its slow buggy and prone to failure, I dont want to have to start the process a week out to get the handful of movies or TV shows ready. I gave up awhile ago and just download youtube videos now, maybe its gotten better but judging by the comments I dont think so.
Jellyfin has a port for BSD, like many things in bsd. I think it supports hardware acceleration with config (with supported hardware of course).
The problem with native support is dotNet only natively supports Windows, Linux, and MacOS. The port uses a cross compiled version of .Net package I believe, but performs pretty well.
@@densepixel Yep thanks for pointing this out. We're really hampered on BSD by the lack of native tookchains for it from Microsoft. It's possible to do of course but it's some major heavy lifting for the user.
Been a Plex user for a few years now, and have been considering jellyfin for a bit. This video convinced me not to switch lol! At the end of the day I just want it to work, and downloads is a feature that I've only wanted maybe twice ever, so I don't mind it being broken af. I am very interested in emby, but haven't even heard of it before this video. I'd love to see you guys try it out in a video though!
10/10 video, good shit 👌
Thanks for the level headed review of the pros and cons of FOSS.
It's the best opening you've done so far. Concise, well written and amusingly illustrated. 👍
I used to use Kodi and after reading the comments of the Plex video I changed over to Jellyfin
Gotta love when you can use custom CSS code to fine tune how everything looks
Plex + Tailscale for remote streaming works like charm , specially for self hosted server with CG-NAT internet connection, still jellyfin is Totally Free which is a hugh bouns for many of us, hopefully the Devs will keep improving it to mature more as an app for mobile devices
My dude-I preach often that when you support someone but know they’ve done something wrong-it’s okay to call them out. How easy would it have been for you to pretend like all was great and rainbows with Plex-but here you are being real, doing your thing, and being honest about other options. you just got another subscriber my guy
I run all 3 on my media library, and each have their pros and cons, but I tend to prefer Emby. It's similar to Jellyfin, but a little more stable, consistent and snappy than Jellyfin. Jellyfin has a couple of issues - slightly longer load times for larger libraries, along with pagination, which is annoying compared to Emby's fast-loading scrolling. Plus Jellyfin sometimes has issues with Albums appearing correctly (if you have music there too). Jellyfin on the other hand is easier to customise if you are into that. Personally I use Emby 95% of the time, but when I have issues I just switch to one of the others. You don't really need to choose just one. It's great that the options are out there and they are pushing each other to improve.
Linus said "doo-doo" at 14:38
OMG! Thank you for this Linus! I tell people why I dropped Plex because of the bugs and they raise an eyebrow like I'm a conspiracy theorist and deny issues. I've experienced so many bugs with Plex that I kept expecting it with Jellyfin, but so far it just keeps working as intended! It's so refreshing and I'm so pleased. Sure some of the features you mentioned would be good but the basics are solid and that's really the most important thing before adding features and more bugs!
Having owned and tested all of these options, I personally prefer Emby over the competitors. It has the advantages of Jellyfin, while having proper app support for all kinds of devices. Synced lyrics is one of the largest reasons I chose Emby over Jellyfin, apart from general app dislikes and issues. Probably my only gripe with Emby is its lack of audio transcoding for music, which sucks because I can't stream my FLAC music when driving because my LTE/5G connection can't handle it, so its almost necessary to download my music in order to listen in the car. (FYI you can try the paid version of Emby with a 1 month license for much cheaper then the lifetime license, which is what I did for testing)
I heard of Jellyfin last month, but was like "I have Plex, so I don't need it", but learning today that it is OPEN-SOURCE (and being a massive fan of such things), I'm now like "This changes everything"... So I'm probably going to implement it when I deploy my NAS/Storage Server later this year... 😅
This reminds me of imgur. It was a great place to easily/quickly upload images, make albums, add descriptions to pictures/albums. Easily to simple image edits (crop, rotate, add text). Then as they ramped the monetization up, those features slowly got more annoying to access/use.
An episode on Emmy would be incredible, it seems like the best in every regard so far, aside from library sharing.
Jellyfin was forked from Emby because the Emby devs did some really nasty things and completely lost the trust of the community. Keep in mind that Emby used to be the big Plex competitor that everybody talked about. They get mentioned much less frequently now because they screwed over their users and developers. Jellyfin was born out of this disillusionment with Emby and is a breath of fresh air.
@@forresthopkinsa What did they do to screw everyone over?
I 100% feel ya, Linus. Got a plex server running here (only for my own media library). Luv it to have some kind of my own Netflix here, but the "watch later feature" works by a 50/50 chance. In many cases it jumps back to a previous episode which is a really pain in the ass. You know, sometimes I even switch back to Kodi on my Bluechip Entertainment Cube when I want a reliable "watch later" session... :/
I have used Emby for a while now and I am loving it. I have had no issues with it whatsoever and ended up buying the lifetime license :) I can recommend trying it.
Same! been using it for years with 0 issues!
How does it compare to Jellyfin? I know it has more features but if you've used both, how much better do you think it is exactly?
@@iamvinku I started on Plex, switched to Emby around 2018 when Jellyfin was forked. Since then it feels like the Jellyfin team spent most of the time trying to figure out the Emby code, whereas the Emby team just kept updating and making changes. As a long term Emby user, installing Jellyfin feels like going back in time to an old version. That and the client apps are very very very basic (and not in a good way) compared to the Emby client apps, but that may be a personal preference.
@@knoctum7863 100% agree with you, yes I do pay £5/mo for emby premiere but i find it worth it for the features it gives me. Used to use plex and then when i switched to emby i didnt feel like i lost anything but looking at jellyfin, feel like an older version of emby as you said. The only issue iver ever had is with downloading, not that they dont downlaod, just that the UI doesnt update with the download % but once its done it will be there
Yep switched to JF in the summer, never going back. Also, Infuse on iOS kicks ass (even though it costs $10/year). The downloading for offline watching has been flawless for me across multiple devices, an absolute gamechanger if you travel a lot
The audio not working on the original copy thing is likely caused by the locally allowed audio formats on the player. Some films seem to work with it on, others work with it off and transcode just the audio. I believe it's the bottom DTS option, but I could be wrong.
Emby lifetime license holder here. It is more mature then jellyfin, but is very similar. The apps work on all the platforms/devices, but sometimes require a little finagling to get connected - like leaving the port empty or having to specify http in the connection url. The transcode and download does mostly work, but has its issues. I don't have hardware transcoding, and its run in a BSD jail on TrueNAS. The fans in my dual proc (older) poweredge xeon server do get whirring pretty good when transcoding a 4k movie. All in all, totally worth the money for having my media everywhere I go.
Been running jellyfin for over 2.5 years and I have loved it, it's just that a dedicated home media library. Love it!!! App support is even getting better, findroid and swiftfin are really great. It's also easy to run in k8s. :) There is another one in the works called dim, written in rust, it's very very new! It's pretty cool though as well.