It’s a FOSS alternative to Plex, if you’re familiar with that. Less like a tv channel, more like a streaming service you populate yourself.
As a long time Plex uset who loves the ease of use of Plex, is it for me? Also there probably aren’t apps on that many devices? My main concern is Android TV and the Tizen thing by Samsung.
Android is no problem at all, Tizen however is a mistake I will never do again. I have a MU7000 samsung TV (2017 model), it has plex (came free in its store) but no emby (emby is another option that is mostly open source) or jellyfin (Emby fork that is fully open source). I had an Intel NUC5 celeron based that acted as a server, the cpu was pretty efficient (6w) but it was not powerful enough for transcoding (converting the video to something the tv can play)
My experience with my Samsung TV.
Plex: Can direct play almost anything (stream to the tv without converting the video). I’m a non-native english japanese anime fan who needs subtitles all the time. The problem is that plex will turn to transcoding if subtitles are on and my server was not powerful enough to handle fluent transcoded stream.
Emby: it is not in the tizen store (at least for my tv), fortunately the emby team release a tizen binary that can be installed through a USB thumb drive. Now emby works pretty good with and withouth subtitles. It does not have ads (for premium subscription) on android but it does have a once every 24h add in the Tizen version. Not a big deal but just remember you are more likely to be treaded a 2nd class consumer for having a damn Tizen TV.
Jellyfin: Not available on Samsung store, I had to enable devlopper mod on my tv and install Tizen studio with CLI on my pc to compile Jellyfin for my TV, then install it through Tizen CLI only to be surprised by how sluggish it worked, the UI was very unoptimized which is natural as it was not supporting my tv to begin with. Half my remote (samsung one remote black version) did not work so I decided it was not worth it.
That sucks, I only have Android TVs, but my I share the library with someone else who has a Samsung TV. I have a shitty CPU that’s not that great at transcoding, so I’m usually preconverting it (they call it “Optimized versions” in Plex). It works nice even with subtitles, it will hardcode them.
Possibly. You should be fine as far as apps go. The setup is a little more involved but the work is front-loaded. Once it’s set up, it’s very similar, if a bit less visually appealing. It supports some extra media types and such but really the main advantages are it being FOSS, privacy respecting, and having all features completely free.
It lacks some of the functions found in plex, most notably the sync feature. That being said, it’s still a very good free alternative to plex. It does run on android tv
The advantages ofjellyfin are mainly its open source nature, and lack of needing to pay to unlock features such as downloads. It may be a little more effort to set up but still isn’t too difficult. Once set up, it works pretty much flawlessly, except for the occasional hiccup which can be resolved pretty easily.
It has an official app available for android TV, which is in the store, and as for Tizen OS, there is an official app (on their github), however it is somewhat more difficult to install from what i’ve seen.
If you want to check availability, there is a list of clients at https://jellyfin.org/downloads/clients/all/
yeah, i switched over to jellyfin from plex after i hit a paywall on plex. They wanted me to pay to watch my 4k mission impossible (1996) movie. Afterwards, i’m like “fuck nah,” literally the reason why i torrent was to not pay for shizzle
more like a streaming service you populate yourself.
The most concise description of Plex/Jellyfin that I’ve seen
