Noticed that Jellyfin had inched out Plex when sorting by popularity on the TrueNAS app catalogue the other day (45,178 installs vs Plex's 42,225). The existance of this project seems to confirm that the dev ecosystem around it is getting stronger!
What more does Plex need? I would consider myself a power user of Plex and it does everything I need it to do. I would think the only thing I can think of is fully self-hosted login instead of their cloud option, but I'm glad we have that option because I don't want to handle the authentication of my friends and family
* IPTV support (xtream codes etc.) yes proxies exist like Dispatcharr but first class support would be better
* Better iOS/tvOS/OSX video playback (just buy Infuse because it can play so many titles the Plex player cannot)
* Add full context menus everywhere. Playlists are virtually useless for anything other than playback in order or randomly. Why can't I multi-select items on a playlist and move them to another playlist?
* Subtitle settings turn off between episodes
* Let me sort by file size so I can watch the disk gobbling files first
Thank God for python-plexapi and a bunch of scripts I use to organize an unwieldy library.
Let me sort by file size so I can watch the disk gobbling files first
you can kinda deduce that if you sort by bitrate.
it sounds like you figured out a solution for yourself, already, but there's a lot of existing utilities like tinyMediaManager, WebTools-NG, Raddarr, Sonarr, etc. for doing media management. Plex is just a media server/player.
Adding to the list: postgres (or any real db) support. I’ve had to repair their SQLite db so many times. It’s so common they have a help guide on it too and folks have made automated scripts to do it for you.
I'm guessing incomplete migrations or similar problems where stuff is just partially written, or out of sync. The Plex db is kinda complex under the hood.
Highly recommend Infuse on Apple TV. Since I was running Plex on my NAS it would often be very buggy and slow with buffering. One day I got fed up and tried infuse, pointed it at the same network share, and bam- instant playback that worked consistently, and way better native controls for subtitles etc.
I’m sure there are good reasons to use Plex, I did so for years, but honestly streaming has been so much easier since moving off it.
> * Let me sort by file size so I can watch the disk gobbling files first
Ackshually file size isn't it, it's the runtime / size ratio. A 3 hour 4k movie being 20GB is fine. A 45 minute tv show episode with 10GB+ file size isn't.
You can pretty much vibe code a tool to create a playlist sorted by that ratio from worst to best in a 30 minutes.
It needs more of the feature that makes it a networked player for the media I already have (which works great -- once a person gets to it), and less of the misfeature that is the sideshow also-ran ad-supported and rental live streaming and on-demand offerings (which I will never, ever use -- and that Jellyfin lacks altogether).
Plex been swinging in the wrong direction for a number of years now.
I don't even consider it an option anymore. I just turn to other software that sends the original file to me. It would be great to have Plex transcode my high res movies on the fly and send me smaller copies tailored for my device. I could save space on my mobile devices while having my progress synced back to Plex.
The poster you're asking this to is probably talking about plug-ins. Plex, very long ago, supported plug-ins, but it no longer does. Plug-ins were usually for adding in support for other media scrapers (porn and anime), or even other media types, like audiobooks.
Additionally, Plex tends to revise their UI and inner workings in a way that favors everything but the core media sharing platform. They add TV stations, they mix in their streaming ad-supported channels with your search results, and push them before the friends and family stuff, making it tough to help other navigate to shared libraries.
I think, overall, Plex is a good shepherd for their product, but everyone knows the enshitificaiton process is inevitable. It's just a question of how long the timeline between "Plex is usable" and "Plex is sold to private equity and is now utter shit." I've been pleasantly surprised with the length, so far. But having an escape hatch is always a good idea, and Jellyfin seems to be nearing a parity.
They removed plugins which severely hamstrung their ecosystem. They quickly lost a ton of useful features and started to lock everything into their preferences.
Having mobile downloads work in any kind of same way. Honestly just offering a download file with quality drop downs would solve the issue for most people
The last time I was involved in a thread like this, I was banned from r/plex.
I pointed out that Plex should do ebooks. It is a natural fit. They keep track of how far in a series or a show you are, they could keep track of where you are in a book. Many of the Plex idioms transfer well. It has a clear visual style that helps you to pick out the shows you might try, or shows like those you've already watched.
BUT IT'S NOT EVEN MEDIA, YOU'RE STUPID
Books were the first media, you must be illiterate.
WHY WOULD I WANT TO READ BOOKS ON MY BIGSCREEN TV!
Plex runs on my iPhone. And on yours too.
[banhammered]
But if you need more than one feature, I'm sure that in 10 or 15 minutes I could come up with a 90 page list of features. Without even trying.
>I would think the only thing I can think of is fully self-hosted login instead of their cloud option
Well shit. Even you can come up with one thing. Plex was awesome, and then Plex wanted to be the shittiest version of whatever CBS is calling their streaming service.
I just want to throw out that you might like Kavita for a comic/book server. It's built to feel like Plex. https://www.kavitareader.com/
I do agree that Plex doesn't seem like a good fit for books and comics. The first major hurdle is the lack of a singular metadata source that Plex can hook into for metadata - although this year has shifted with Hardcover and MangaBaka. Plex also uses a filename parsing mechanism (like Kavita does) which has drawbacks since books and comics have an extremely wide variety of naming conventions and lack of good tooling.
Thanks for this. First I've heard of it. I'd prefer something more general for books (though there are comics too). I have about 22,000 titles, filenames well-constructed, that I don't have anything to serve them up remotely. I was using Nextcloud for awhile, but it's subpar.
>which has drawbacks since books and comics have an extremely wide variety of naming conventions
I actually have that part figured out. For periodicals too, like comics. The real trick with those is that it's often not that easy to find the ISSNs for them, they mostly don't list them on the inside cover.
An even easier fit would be comic books. They already let you steam libraries of photos. I have never used that feature, but I would definitely stream some comics.
Also, they could handle audiobooks since they already stream music.
Instead, they want to sell me on streaming services when I started using Plex because I pirate my media.
I do see one issue with books that other media doesn't have. That is the ability to interact. When I use my e-reader, I like features like highlighting, taking notes, dictionaries, and other features that are more complicated that just streaming rendered images from a book.
Have you checked out Audiobookshelf? Relatively easy to self-host, can do podcasts, audiobooks, ebooks, comics. A few different clients you can use (https://abstoolbox.vito0912.de/clients has some of the more popular ones - Plappa is pretty nice).
I _SPECIFICALLY_ don't want everything apps. They just end up doing everything a bit shitty.
Plex handling anime/tv/movies is fine. I can kinda-sorta accept music too because PlexAmp is pretty good.
Audiobooks and podcasts require a very different experience. Books even more so.
Books specifically are an issue because getting a reliable metadata source for them is a pain in the ass. I know, I've built a tool for myself to grab my book reviews locally and enrich the data. There are SO MANY variants of a single book that the process ends up being manual way too often.
Can anyone comment on the security of Jellyfin? When I had last looked into it, it seemed like Jellyfin had a somewhat weak security model that made me question switching family members to it from Plex.
When I had to decide between Plex and Jellyfin, I noticed that with Plex it was mandatory to have an account even when self-hosting (!) so I'm not sure whether it's better or worse than Jellyfin, I just didn't bother trying it out because of that.
I started out my home server journey with Plex but it just kept getting worse, forcing me to switch to Jellyfin, which imo works just as well and seems to not fall into the whole pay us to stream your media business practice yet. Paywalling such a core feature was pretty harsh
I built a little Jellyfin plugin for KOReader [1] so I can access my books from my Kindle. Jellyfin proved really nice to work with (though there was some poorly documented auth stuff they were in the process of deprecating).
If anyone has been thinking of building something in the Jellyfin ecosystem, I very much recommend it.
You could probably have your Wii computer boot directly into Jellyfin using a startup shortcut with 'dolphin-emu -e WiiFin.dol', then switch out of the app to play Wii games using the better menu app.
Then you can your Wiimote for both media + gaming with out needing a keyboard / mouse.
I love this kind of project. I am pretty sure the developer had a Wii console sitting around somewhere and thought about how to make it useful again. Wait, I have a PS2 sitting around somewhere…
Speak of the devil, I was just looking for something just like this earlier this week. I may have even have ran into this exact project, but it didn't have functioning playback until now. I have a spare CRT in my office that I use for some old consoles, and thought it would be neat to stream some 4:3 media onto it, but didn't want to bother with getting some client box and HDMI to composite converter. If this works well, it would solve that problem nicely.
128 comments
* Better iOS/tvOS/OSX video playback (just buy Infuse because it can play so many titles the Plex player cannot)
* Add full context menus everywhere. Playlists are virtually useless for anything other than playback in order or randomly. Why can't I multi-select items on a playlist and move them to another playlist?
* Subtitle settings turn off between episodes
* Let me sort by file size so I can watch the disk gobbling files first
Thank God for python-plexapi and a bunch of scripts I use to organize an unwieldy library.
you can enable global subtitles in settings.
Let me sort by file size so I can watch the disk gobbling files first
you can kinda deduce that if you sort by bitrate.
it sounds like you figured out a solution for yourself, already, but there's a lot of existing utilities like tinyMediaManager, WebTools-NG, Raddarr, Sonarr, etc. for doing media management. Plex is just a media server/player.
> or any real db
sqlite is literally the state of the art database. I suspect you mean "database server" or something
> Subtitle settings turn off between episodes
There is actually a way to fix this! Log in and navigate to: https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/settings/account
On this page, scroll down past the Security section to Audio & Subtitle Settings under Settings, and edit the account-wide language settings there.
One caveat; any movies or shows you’ve already watched with subtitles not enabled will still have subtitles not enabled.
> * Let me sort by file size so I can watch the disk gobbling files first
Ackshually file size isn't it, it's the runtime / size ratio. A 3 hour 4k movie being 20GB is fine. A 45 minute tv show episode with 10GB+ file size isn't.
You can pretty much vibe code a tool to create a playlist sorted by that ratio from worst to best in a 30 minutes.
Plex been swinging in the wrong direction for a number of years now.
Additionally, Plex tends to revise their UI and inner workings in a way that favors everything but the core media sharing platform. They add TV stations, they mix in their streaming ad-supported channels with your search results, and push them before the friends and family stuff, making it tough to help other navigate to shared libraries.
I think, overall, Plex is a good shepherd for their product, but everyone knows the enshitificaiton process is inevitable. It's just a question of how long the timeline between "Plex is usable" and "Plex is sold to private equity and is now utter shit." I've been pleasantly surprised with the length, so far. But having an escape hatch is always a good idea, and Jellyfin seems to be nearing a parity.
I pointed out that Plex should do ebooks. It is a natural fit. They keep track of how far in a series or a show you are, they could keep track of where you are in a book. Many of the Plex idioms transfer well. It has a clear visual style that helps you to pick out the shows you might try, or shows like those you've already watched.
BUT IT'S NOT EVEN MEDIA, YOU'RE STUPID
Books were the first media, you must be illiterate.
WHY WOULD I WANT TO READ BOOKS ON MY BIGSCREEN TV!
Plex runs on my iPhone. And on yours too.
[banhammered]
But if you need more than one feature, I'm sure that in 10 or 15 minutes I could come up with a 90 page list of features. Without even trying.
>I would think the only thing I can think of is fully self-hosted login instead of their cloud option
Well shit. Even you can come up with one thing. Plex was awesome, and then Plex wanted to be the shittiest version of whatever CBS is calling their streaming service.
I do agree that Plex doesn't seem like a good fit for books and comics. The first major hurdle is the lack of a singular metadata source that Plex can hook into for metadata - although this year has shifted with Hardcover and MangaBaka. Plex also uses a filename parsing mechanism (like Kavita does) which has drawbacks since books and comics have an extremely wide variety of naming conventions and lack of good tooling.
>which has drawbacks since books and comics have an extremely wide variety of naming conventions
I actually have that part figured out. For periodicals too, like comics. The real trick with those is that it's often not that easy to find the ISSNs for them, they mostly don't list them on the inside cover.
Also, they could handle audiobooks since they already stream music.
Instead, they want to sell me on streaming services when I started using Plex because I pirate my media.
I do see one issue with books that other media doesn't have. That is the ability to interact. When I use my e-reader, I like features like highlighting, taking notes, dictionaries, and other features that are more complicated that just streaming rendered images from a book.
Plex handling anime/tv/movies is fine. I can kinda-sorta accept music too because PlexAmp is pretty good.
Audiobooks and podcasts require a very different experience. Books even more so.
Books specifically are an issue because getting a reliable metadata source for them is a pain in the ass. I know, I've built a tool for myself to grab my book reviews locally and enrich the data. There are SO MANY variants of a single book that the process ends up being manual way too often.
I was furious when they removed podcasts as they are a fit for the platform and it seems like they just didn't want to maintain them anymore.
If anyone has been thinking of building something in the Jellyfin ecosystem, I very much recommend it.
[1]: https://github.com/DeclanChidlow/KOReader-Jellyfin-Plugin/
You could probably have your Wii computer boot directly into Jellyfin using a startup shortcut with 'dolphin-emu -e WiiFin.dol', then switch out of the app to play Wii games using the better menu app.
Then you can your Wiimote for both media + gaming with out needing a keyboard / mouse.
I'm wanting to set it up for around 20 households to share, and with transcoding that exceeds a single (cheap) node.
Would be music-only, which is sometimes ideal for older devices.