VLC as always saves the day. Most recently for me when you want to watch HDR UHD ripped to 1080p. With plex, this becomes a problem you need to buy a plex pass for and more significantly, must have a '16 Intel CPU or newer to be able to remap it while VLC does so in the fly.
Details: In plex, the colors are so washed out it looks like a black and white movie. In VLC, the colors hit you like
Addition: I tried two remedies while packing with handbrake. BT.709 colorspace and a custom one from reddit. Both lead to the movie being so dark that you cant see most of the details.
Conclusion: VLC being open source, we should be able to see what they are doing and copy this behavior. if plex wont do it without payment, this could be huge for jellyfin for example.
Anyone with actual knowledge who can shed light on this?
When I initially set up my media server I went with Jellyfin over Plex mostly because the idea of having to create an account on an external service to use software I was hosting myself rubbed me the wrong way. Since then the more learn about Plex the more baffled I am that anyone chooses to use it at all.
Plex used to not be that way. Then they enshittified.
I have to say, Plex is a much more polished and more reliable piece of software in my experience.
I’ve used Plex for a couple of years and even got myself a lifetime premium pass when it was 65% reduced or something. But when news started popping up about them potentially leaking what content you watch i burned that bridge (look at the instance i come from, you can guess where my content stems from :D)
I then migrated over to jellyfin. It’s not as polished, it doesn’t run that reliable for me as plex did, hw accell, hdr convertion didn’t setup as easy but after a lot of tinkering it now works very fine for me.
I really enjoy jellyfin and the ecosystem that evolved around it.
You may just be talking about whichever player you’re using. Maybe try a different one.
The server is bulletproof. Plex doesn’t come close.
No i am not talking about the player as hw accell and hdr conversion runs on the server itself
The server is not bulletproof and in my experience plex ran better for me than jellyfin.
The player does have a large effect on both those things. A player that supports the codec will not need server hw accept and hdr conversion as it will direct stream. A big issues is these codecs can cost money. So if the player doesn’t come with it the player needs to pay for it, something plex may be doing for those that purchased their subscription.
Also i find that the speed of scanning, getting metadata, accuracy of linking metadata and files, the whole music section is lacking on jellyfin comparing to Plex
Still I prefer jellyfin as its free and open source and it does what I want it to do. But in my experience Plex did all of this way better, faster, more accurately and reliable… And jellyfin music category is outright unusable compared to plex
Jellyfin didn’t scan my files because they were not organized correctly
Just let me browse the damn folder
I am talking solely about the server side, not the player side.
Obviously a good functioning player will not need hw accellerated transcoding or hdr conversion. But sometimes that’s simply neither possible or feasable. Some hardware simply cannot properly transcode all formats, or don’t allow for installation of a player that can do that. Sometimes i watch a movie on my laptop while being connected to my phone mobile hotspot and using wireguard to phone home, i don’t want to direct stream a full movie in hdr and 1080p 40mbit/s… i want the server to transcode it properly.
So to conclude - i am talking about serverside, not playerside - stop assuming the person you are talking with doesn’t know what they do simply because you think you know better.
Plex is available for a lot of smart devices. Still helpful to have a server running for it in some circumstances. Not hard to spin up a Plex docker that points to the same library files. Just disable the thumbnail generation to keep it from eating drive space.
Jellyfin is awesome (I use it with my shield TV), but the reason I found plex worth paying for is their audio companion plexamp, and its integration with carplay.
I tested a ton of different apps and services, and other then plex the only good carplay experience was from online only services like spotify or similar that come with hefty subscription fees. Internet auth does suck tho.
Finamp is slowly getting there, still miles to go though…
Yes. Jellyfin is mostly awesome, now. I would recommend it to everyone.
Plex has been around a long, long time and the experience from backend to the front is still for the most part unmatched. It was really nice to have proper full featured clients on all devices. Built in skipping intros and ability to download content for offline use was really nice and would be very useful for me at this time.
I have a lifetime pass from the very beginning and was spare change compared to what they charge now. A common misconception is they took away the ability to log in locally on the lan without phoning home. You can still do that. But ultimately I decided to move on.