I'm in the same boat as you. I'd love to switch but the user experience of Jellyfin is still pretty bad outside the most basic cases. If you have a media center PC, it's fine, but if you want to be able to switch between several devices the way you can with Netflix, it's quite poor.

Plex is slowly trending down and Jellyfin is slowly trending up. I hope Jellyfin outpaces Plex before the enshittification is complete, but it's a steep hill to climb.

Not asking this to be combative, but as Jellyfin convert I'm curious what quality/features you are missing? Also what platform are you using mainly?

I watch mostly using the Android app or Nvidia Shield, and the client does everything Plex did (in terms of just media watching - no DVR or other features ) without all the bloat the current Plex client brings.

What about Emby tho?

Quality is fine, sounds like user error. Features sure, but that's to be expected with a paid app.

Roku TV app store

Yes, and it works pretty well.

But not so much with the consoles, though there is a UWP xbox app, but it's uh, not very good.

No, No, and Yes -- Consoles are notoriously difficult to work with. Not for actual programming, no - Consoles are difficult to navigate POLITICALLY. Xbox, understandably doesn't like F/OSS software, and PS5 has tons of rules and regulations you must meet.

Roku, yes. Xbox as well. PS5 no, but not for lack of trying. That's apparently on Sony.

You could install kodi and connect with jellyfin from there

Idk, but there's one on my LG TV.

The UI for the Xbox app is rudimentary and a bit janky, but the performance is undeniably better than Plex. I have Plex and Jellyfin on the same machine, serving the same content, and Plex stutters often. It is especially bad when using subtitles. Jellyfin has no such issues.

What type of device is the Xbox or PS5 hooked up to? If a TV ("smart TV") then there is a client for both Roku and Android TV. If they are using a monitor, could they use the web client? Or could they use the web client on either console (I never had an Xbox, and only PS was PS1 so I honestly have no idea)?

I've only used the Android/Android TV/web client versions from the Jellyfin team, but all seemed solid these days. On Linux I've also used a number of 3rd party clients, and there are plenty of 3rd party clients for most non-console platforms.

crashing on start

My main issue is that my TV occasionally decides to kill the network, which causes Jellyfin to crash on startup, clearing the server. It's annoying, but I think the bigger problem is the TV, not Jellyfin.

I think the navigation is fine. I like the scroll by letter thing for movies on the right, and I don't have so many TV shows that it's an issue (maybe like 5-10 series? We don't watch a ton of serials), and my kids seem to navigate it just fine. I did spend some time naming everything properly, so maybe that's the difference? We rarely navigate though. My kids watch one show start to finish (however much time we give them), we generally watch one movie as a family and are done, and my SO uses it for exercise videos.

Guy who runs Plex on a Ubuntu container on Proxmox.

Are you using the LSIO docker image, or did you install it manually via the official website instructions?

That's too bad, but it sounds more like you bit off too much rather than Jellyfin being bad. Once it's set up, it's fairly smooth, we just drop movies in a folder on the NAS, name them somewhat appropriately, and Jellyfin frequently recognizes it, though sometimes I'll need to help it out a bit. Setup wasn't much more complicated than other self-hosted stuff I run, but I'm also a full-time Linux user for some 15 years and a SW dev by trade, so I guess I'm blind to issues I take for granted.

It's a FOSS alternative, and that's a pretty important feature for me. It has worked well so far for me.

Can't go cheaper than free. They don't even sell your data

Hauppage TV tuner DVR capability, apps for more TVs and i could kill off Plex, personally

What is feature poor about it?

Even my mother can use it.
The only issues I encountered so far is playback on my chromecast dongle with the embedded player refusing to play nicely with some files/subtitles.

This was my exact experience as well.

I'll keep an eye on it for sure and will most likely try to set it up again in another year or so. But right now, I have no time to fiddle to make things work.

How long ago was that and do you remember the codec?

Jellyfin didn't have an app for my then 3-year old LG WebOS TV so, unfortunately, I couldn't use it.

I know people are going to say I should just use a smart box connected to my TV instead of my TV's smart features, but there's a difference in usability that they're not acknowledging.

Yes

Not for xbox

How about iOS downloads for offline viewing? Server transcoding?

I’m a lifetime plex user but this enshitification has been increasing a lot lately.

Hard disagree.Plex inserts itself I to everything, and dear god is it slow by comparison.

Well, it's free, and it's private. Everything else about it is serviceable

I grabbed Plex lifetime for peanuts a few years ago and pretty happy with it. They do Cyber Monday discounts as far as I remember.

Thank you for installing and reporting back.

Thanks, that's not too bad. I am used to spending 5-10 minutes at this point debloating/disabling junk on a new Plex install, I just hope it doesn't keep getting much worse.

You made me do it, ive ordered one. Having spent money I guess that means we're all in on Jellyfin now ...but if its no good I'll be sending the boys round for a full refund lol.

Will keep you posted, might save you some money if you can hold out, cheers

Thanks for the info, I'll look a little deeper into the live TV side of Jellyfin. Ive not heard of FLIRC USB before. Very interesting, I'd love to know how that goes, thank you

I paid for a lifetime subscription 6 years ago... would definitely say I got my $80 worth.

Only complaint is that the streaming my own media files doesnt work great with my VPN, but I so rarely need that, so I havent spent much effort trying to figure it out. It's on my list of things to do though.

Because it's continuing the trend of focusing on live free channel streaming, finding things to watch on other streaming services, social media-esque interactions with other users, and other shit I don't care about.

I just want something that will stream my media from my NAS to whatever I'm trying to watch it on, and do it well.

Dang, removed by mod. I got here too late to see it :(

In terms of what?