The vision of Silo appears to be much more clear, and has quite a few great devs behind it. It also has features to run side by side and has full JF api support. I have no involvement in the project, just excited for a new player in the space.
Something to keep an eye on!
> and has full Postgres support from the get-go
Then I went on siloserver's website and I was even more confused.
What made the success of Plex is how easy it is to setup, how nice it looks and how easy it is to use.
Siloserver's marketing miss all those points because they focus on the tech stack, don't show a single picture of the UI and don't demonstrate the UX.
Even as someone who understands the tech written on the website, I don't see the point. So I can easily imagine how someone without the technical knowledge would feel about this...
I'm thinking of trying it out though to see if there's any noticeable differences in performance etc.
This will reduce the switching workload, and you can run both services at the same time whilst trying out Jellyfin.
For foolproof matching, adding Plex metadata in the style of "{tmdb-12345}" to the directory name would cause problems for Jellyfin, as they used to demand different formatting, for instance square brackets.
It has taken a years to convince the maintainers that this change is a good idea and not "letting Plex determine the future course of Jellyfin."
The only thing keeping me on plex is my lifetime plex pass, and family inertia.
https://demo.jellyfin.org/stable/web/#/home
Username is demo, PW is blank
Also, I've been running jellyfin for many years, I've had no issues
* general Tv support - no Jellyfin app on Samsung TVs (at least older ones)
* General challenges to get things to start - it never worked for me out-of-the-box
* slightly weird sign in flows because it’s all self-hosted (have to first install a mobile app to make signing in on TV app smoother unless you happen to have your computer and TV side by side)
* weird issues with things suddenly stopping to work: DLNA was working but without any changes I can think of on my end it no longer works
* weird dlna support - at least with iOS VLC it didn’t work smoothly - like VLC sometimes wouldn’t see the announcement or something and I’d have to reset. Could be a VLC issue but don’t recall similar problems with Plex
So basically Plex is a smoother, easier to use experience that typically “just works” without issues.
- Jellyfin forced me to organize my files into Show/Season folders, whereas Plex just handled my original flat mess of scattered files.
- When playing video on Plex, I generally have to wait some time before subtitles show up, whereas the subtitles in Plex just show up immediately
- Plex has built in search for openly available subtitles matching your video that you can use if your video lacks subtitles (not sure if Jellyfin has it too)
That said, I still prefer Jellyfin for numerous other reasons, and I don't regret my migration.
It has more polish and refinement than Jellyfin but doesn't have the obtrusive ads and whatnot that Plex offers. Client support is also great. Jellyfin is still quickly gaining ground but Emby is still my media server of choice for now.
I'm a Plex user who's been thinking about trying Jellyfin out, largely in response to some recent UI changes I dislike but... what Plex ads? I don't have any on my android apps, on Roku installs, or on my parent's SmartTV, and none of my other users have ever mentioned any ads to me. (If I was seeing ads, Jellyfin would become "take some time off work and get it working now".)
I know I've disabled everything except my own libraries, so it's possible there's a setting somewhere that allows them, but if so, I disabled it so long ago I honestly don't remember ever seeing any. Are other Plex users seeing ads? Was it after a recent update that I may have skipped, maybe?
I say that without judgement, it’s just a reality. Open source was always going to be the path.
I paid for Plex for a long time but I no longer use it because I got fed up of fighting it. (I now use Jellyfin + Tailscale instead.) I think the problem with Plex is they aren't happy with what they are: a service for people viewing their own (yes, pirated) media library. They always wanted to be something more. Netflix envy.
But all anyone I know ever wanted Plex to do was handle their media library, perhaps offer a paid tunnelling system but otherwise get out of the way.
Maybe I'm old, but it feels like everyone has a little too much "business-brain."
Jellyfin-mpv-shim is great.
Not having that is an absolute deal breaker.
Plex was the jellyfin of the 2010’s. Pirate-centric (or at least agnostic), hobbyist focused, a bit hard to use and ugly but super valuable.
Then they went corporate and yeah it’s weird and in decline.
b) I would never use an app that used VLC for playback.