Jellyfin
Jellyfin is the volunteer-built media solution that puts you in control of your media. Stream to any device from your own server, with no strings attached. Your media, your server, your way.
Jellyfin enables you to collect, manage, and stream your media. Run the Jellyfin server on your system and gain access to the leading free-software entertainment system, bells and whistles included.
Jellyfin is the "new kid on the block" as it is the newest in a long line of free and open source media servers.
Jellyfin's predecessors have either become defunct, lost popular support or upon becoming successful switched to a "pay" platform (I'm specifically thinking of Emby for that last one).
I am hoping Jellyfin becomes the Ubuntu of the media server world.
While it still has a way to go for me to cut the Plex cord, it has made great strides in the past couple of years. Thanks to a growing skilled community of supporters who believe you can have a great self hosted and self controlled free and open source media server at home.
There are a number of features and issues Jellyfin needs to implement and correct to become the best competition to the likes of Plex and Emby.
In no particular order; here are my thoughts on the most important features (to me) of Jellyfin:
- Client ubiquity 👍
- Jellyfin already has clients for Android & IOS smartphones and tablets, as well as, Amazon fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, LG WebOS, and Roku. These clients vary on their polish and utility. I expect these will improve over time.
- Server statistics 👎
- Jellyfin, thus far, is lacking in any sort of server statistics which are useful to server operators. Something like Tautulli integrated into the server itself would be a positive differentiating factor versus other media servers.
- Hardware Transcoding 👌
- While Jellyfin does OK hardware transcoding, it is very difficult to find a stable configuration. I would like to see a better default config that is stable "out of the box" without much tweaking. For the most frequently used hardware, like Nvidia for example. Similar to activating hardware transcoding in Plex.
- While Jellyfin does OK hardware transcoding, it is very difficult to find a stable configuration. I would like to see a better default config that is stable "out of the box" without much tweaking. For the most frequently used hardware, like Nvidia for example. Similar to activating hardware transcoding in Plex.
- Metadata 👍
- Jellyfin's handling of metadata and images is excellent. I quite like being able to store the images with my media. Unlike Plex, who stores the images as random string filenames seperately from the media.
- I particularly like the metadata storage as NFO files with the media, for ease of access and so the server doesn't have to scrape the data from the Internet every time unless I tell it to.
- Live TV & EPG 👎
- So far I haven't been impressed with Jellyfin's Live TV implementation. I have experienced multiple issues with playback from a HD Homerun. Playback from the same device on Plex is flawless and "just works".
- I'm torn as to how I feel about Jellyfin's EPG handling. I understand that guide data can be a pain and to get it free you need to overcome some obstacles, but there has got to be a better, less complicated solution to get free guide data into Jellyfin. Rather than 3rd party zap2it and cron, how about a plug-in that does it for you? Since I'm not a programmer I really don't know what would have to be done to make that happen, I'm just saying 😉