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Confession from a Former Jellyfin User


dannymichel

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Gilgamesh_48
1 hour ago, Chyron said:

@Luke I want to take this opportunity to say that I apologize if my continual bothering about this comes off as entitled. I don't mean to convey an expectation of certain features being implemented. I really do appreciate all the work you do and am very happy with the software.

...but at the same time, please don't stop working on this.

 

I have just about given up on any general media manager like Emby or Plex or Jellyfin properly supporting audiobooks. I am not even talking about metadata or anything fancy but nobody correctly rewinds/fast forwards/resumes and does not simply exit when an audiobook is paused for a period of time. The later is necessary because, for audiobooks, once playback is started a visual interface should not be needed if you have paused the book for an hour or two.

But this thread is really not about audiobooks so I will not, unless asked, go into more detail here but I have been forced to use Mediamonkey and have a separate audio system for my audiobook playback. It is not the best but it works, once configured, and works well which none of Emby or Plex or Jellyfin do. I am not, any longer, expecting any proper support for audiobooks. Apparently it is just too tough for anybody that deals with video to write.

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Chyron

 

22 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

I have just about given up on any general media manager like Emby or Plex or Jellyfin properly supporting audiobooks. [...] this thread is really not about audiobooks so I will not, unless asked, go into more detail here

I brought up audiobooks because I recall, at one point, the literature on Jellyfin's website mentioning something about audiobook support, which intrigued me. But when I looked into it at the time there was just a plugin to some Python app called Mopidy that professed to handle audiobook files.

I listen to audiobooks on my (Android) mobile device, and I seem to switch between sometimes downloading a book in Emby and playing it in Voice Audiobook Player; or using Chronicle Audiobook Player, which is a third-party app that connects to Plex. I like Chronicle (and Prologue for iOS), but I'd rather use Emby as a backend. There aren't any third-party audiobook apps that use Emby as a backend, but there are approaching three for Plex (Chronicle, Prologue, and Bookcamp). It makes me sad that third-party support of Emby is sparse-to-nonexistent.

But I digress. To me it doesn't matter if Emby is open-source so long as it has the functionality that I want. Sure, I might have once favored the free option (Yes, I know the word  "free" in "free and open-source software" doesn't mean "without financial cost"), but my college days are long past and I can afford paid software now.

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  • 1 month later...

I was googling for something just now and came across 'Jellyfin', clicked on try now and it's the same as Emby, I mean WTF?!

I was using MediaBrowser back in the day and used the beta of Emby, I then left for while as I didn't have the need to stream media but a couple of years ago I thought it would be great to be able to stream it all etc.... ever since I've been using Emby, reading this thread has just made me think, I really should pay, so I have, life time for me, I mean I've been using it for 8 years on and off and now it's part of my everyday life, I use it when I washup in the mornings (phone on the stand by the sink), I use it when I'm in my workshop (Tablet on the wall), I use it in the lounge (the TV), I use it in my van (Andriod Head unit), I use it when I'm at my holiday home (remote connection), I use it when I go to bed (Andriod Projector), I mean I use it a lot, I should pay for all the hard work the guys and gals have put in.

When I have an issue, @Luke is normally 'on it straight away' and thats just with a Forum post. If it's not Luke it's ebr or cayens or Happy2Play, its one of the Dev's at least, then there are the amazing knowledgable users themselves that offer help and advice.

Yes there a few extra things I would like adding etc... and I am sure they will come in time.

Keep up the good work guys and gals, I'm sure Jellyfin will die a death.

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Gilgamesh_48
3 hours ago, GiGo said:

Keep up the good work guys and gals, I'm sure Jellyfin will die a death.

I kind of doubt Jellyfin will die unless it self destructs. There are a rather large number of people that really seem to believe that bad open source software is somehow superior to pretty good or even great closed source software and there are even more that do not believe developers deserve to earn money.

Emby and even Plex are very good pieces of software and there is no reason for them to share their code with others. 

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10 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

Emby and even Plex are very good pieces of software and there is no reason for them to share their code with others. 

But Jellyfin is built on Emby 3.x.

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CBers

Having recently installed the JF server, the Android mobile app and the Android TV app, I have to say, they are not a patch on the current official Emby versions.

They are functional, but Emby has so much more finesse and class.

 

Edited by CBers
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PenkethBoy

loading JF is like going back in time

the interface is still Emby 3.x

they may have changed a few things but usability is not one of them

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Gilgamesh_48
2 hours ago, cayars said:

But Jellyfin is built on Emby 3.x.

Yes but they took what was OK and made it unstable and glitchy. They took Emby from when it was almost good (and Emby was still mistakenly operating open source)) and then took it backwards toward mediocrity.

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  • 2 months later...

As another recent convert from Jellyfin to Emby, i am sorry to say i spent too much time trying to get Jellyfin to work. Emby is just so much more polished and a much better experience. I tried out plex, which was ok but i didn't like it's interface and how it worked, to Jellyfin which was more of what i wanted. I didn't realise at the time that what i actually wanted was Emby.

Great work guys. Excellent software. I would recommend anyone on the fence to give emby a chance. I'm glad i did. It's all i wanted a media system to be and gladly purchased.

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1 minute ago, Boburto said:

As another recent convert from Jellyfin to Emby, i am sorry to say i spent too much time trying to get Jellyfin to work. Emby is just so much more polished and a much better experience. I tried out plex, which was ok but i didn't like it's interface and how it worked, to Jellyfin which was more of what i wanted. I didn't realise at the time that what i actually wanted was Emby.

Great work guys. Excellent software. I would recommend anyone on the fence to give emby a chance. I'm glad i did. It's all i wanted a media system to be and gladly purchased.

You've tried the rest, then found the best.
Welcome to the Green side.

PS Maybe best 1st post ever. :)

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3 minutes ago, cayars said:

You've tried the rest, then found the best.
Welcome to the Green side.

PS Maybe best 1st post ever. :)

Best 10722nd post ever :D

Thanks, couldn't say it better myself.

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You'll find it's just not the software itself but the community as well that make Emby such a great system to use.

We've got some great mods who are also very, very active in the forums and devs who probably spend to much time in the forums helping users and tracking down issues.
Of course what mostly makes our forums really great is our user base which is some of the most helpful bunch you'll find on a forum anywhere which is a reflection of the software itself.

Anyway, welcome aboard!

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sansoo22

I don't think I've ever ran anything but Emby.  Then again I had Media Browser back on Windows Media Center.  I've converted several Jellyfin and especially Plex users to Emby.  I tell them ahead of time to just use Emby but they inevitably have to take a different path.  Most the time they come back to me asking how well Emby works or how much I enjoy it.  My advice is always the same. "Install Emby, pay for the premiere subscription, shut up and enjoy".  And it never fails that they want to talk my ear off about how awesome Emby is after they try it.  Duh...I told you to use it on the first go.

@dannymichel I definitely like where you are going with the lighter weight fonts.  I never really paid attention until I got a much larger TV.  The bold is a bit too bold on 75" or larger screens.  My personal preference is for a tad wider fonts for the titles.  I'm thinking Futura but that's a bit dated.  Maybe Poppins from the Google font library...altho it doesn't have a condensed version so might be a tad wide for smaller text.  Either way I look forward to the mocks.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
PuffyToesToo
On 10/23/2020 at 5:56 PM, cayars said:

Some people also feel like purchasing an Emby Premiere License is a worthwhile investment and they feel it's worth compensating developers for the work they do.  

This, right here. We were happy to go Premiere! Worth every penny.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Nosepull

I used Emby (Premiere) for a long time, then - favoring open source solutions - I switched to Jellyfin about a year ago.

I have to strongly disagree with the posters in this thread claiming that Jellyfin is ugly, unfinished, unstable and so on. Jellyfin works good enough as a media server. Live with that, competition is good for business.

However, I recently began again trying out Emby. The reason for me is that I don't have the impression that Jellyfin is making great progress, as I had once hoped. The number of plugins is low and not increasing. The recent new release of the server (which took a loooooong time to come) didn't show me any user-facing progress, despite the enthusiastic blog posts. With time you realize that there are a few things don't work (no suitable support of internet radio, picky about m3u files, strm-files don't really work, etc.). That are details, but they are bad for user experience. 

So I reinstalled Emby. Using docker container and LDAP users, the switch was a matter of minutes. And it seems as at the moment the Jellyfin-based companions (Android app, Mopidy plugin) I use somehow simply kept on working with Emby instead of Jellyfin. Suddenly m3u and strm files Jellyfin did not process worked flawlessly. More plugins are available. The web interface of Emby somehow seems snappier than Jellyfin.

So I'll use Emby again for the time being, knowing that Jellyfin is an alternative which I can easily switch back too once it provides the features I need. Or not, if it doesn't ;-)

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That's a nice fair balanced review.  JF is based on an older version of Emby so we'd all expect it to work.  It's just not as polished on the server and doesn't have the same level of client support. In a way it's like jumping into a time machine and going back 2 or 3 years, more like 4 to 5 years when the next major version of Emby is released.

But yea, it works as it's "old Emby". :)

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Nosepull

Just if anyone comes here (like me) trying to work out whether to chose JF vs. Emby. I just noticed that Emby found much more UPnP / DLNA targets in my home network than JF ever did. I don't know why. 

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WilhelmStroker

My main issue with JF is the client side. The roku app doesn't support playlists and doesn't look great, there's only a very basic xbox client and the shield app seems to like filling up the continue watching row on the shield home page even though there's no setting for it. Plus it transcodes whereas emby happily direct plays.

 

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fizzyade
On 18/06/2020 at 02:53, ebr said:

A logo is not something a company just changes on a whim.  Ours is trademarked.  It isn't changing any time soon 🙂.  The rest of the UI we are open to suggestions. That doesn't necessarily mean we'll change to exactly what one person wants but we'll definitely listen to ideas.

I asked maybe a year or so ago about the ability to add branding to the server.  Heck, make it premiere users only - or lifetime users only.  Stick a powered by emby somewhere on the page.

[MYSERVERLOGO]
powered by Emby

 

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brunovon

Installed Jellyfin and now am trying to remove it  in 1 hour. GARBAGE is my first thought. I had Emby installed, so stopped the emby server and installed Jellyfin. Well after it pretended to be like Emby and it took forever to scan and came up with 300 files out of 4K.  BAD. Then I tried to change the port 8096 to something else as I wanted to use Emby as well and compare. But not possible. The Jellyfin programmers did not even bother changing everything from Emby to Jellyfin (Lazy). So uninstalled it, but my emby server starts and shows Jellyfin UI. UGH.

Emby may not have the best UI, but works. So now spending more time uninstalling this than actually trying it. Maybe the Jellyfin programmers would spend some time polishing the code to remove references to emby and maybe use a different port? This project is a mess and still in a baby stage. Again why not have a complete separate install and a port...How lazy is that?

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Gilgamesh_48
36 minutes ago, brunovon said:

Emby may not have the best UI, but works. So now spending more time uninstalling this than actually trying it. Maybe the Jellyfin programmers would spend some time polishing the code to remove references to emby and maybe use a different port? This project is a mess and still in a baby stage. Again why not have a complete separate install and a port...How lazy is that?

You expect polish from people that effective steal the intellectual work of others? Shareware is sometimes good and innovative but, mostly, it is just the result of laziness from people unwilling or unable to do the work themselves. In this case they took a product that was still being developed and was mostly unpolished and perpetuated that unfinishedness and lack of polish.

There are parts of Emby that I do not particularly like but the lack of any real improvement over where Emby was when they effectively stole the code says a lot about the people involved.

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brunovon
25 minutes ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

You expect polish from people that effective steal the intellectual work of others? Shareware is sometimes good and innovative but, mostly, it is just the result of laziness from people unwilling or unable to do the work themselves. In this case they took a product that was still being developed and was mostly unpolished and perpetuated that unfinishedness and lack of polish.

There are parts of Emby that I do not particularly like but the lack of any real improvement over where Emby was when they effectively stole the code says a lot about the people involved.

Agree...Its unfortunate. Jellyfin should still be alpha or maybe beta. Big fan of open source and shareware, but the idea is to get folks involved in contributing and improving the product. Have been using Plex and Emby for a while now. Paid for Plex but it has become too much bloatware. Still a nice product but too much content and marketing stuff. Thinking about buying a lifetime license for emby. Although happy with all the features. Wishlist? . Newer UI better support for newer format and roku apps (sometimes transcoding has issues).

 

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TeamB
2 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

Shareware is sometimes good and innovative but

Its not shareware : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware

1 hour ago, brunovon said:

when they effectively stole the code

They did not steal it, it was freely given under the terms of the active license at the time of the fork.

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"Freely" isn't the word I would use. When you start circumventing things like license or premium features for more than your own use and forking with a name change and ONLY license changes that's pretty blatant. It's one thing to remove "donationware" messages/badges for your own use or to open up features intended for those that did donate by bypassing flags but when you essentially put out a donationware version by "hacking" it and making it available to everyone else even though you didn't have any time invested other than the simple hack, well you have the start of JF.

While technically legal, it's highly immoral to do that for sure. Like a good cook making an apple pie (or crumble) you get a few bad spots in your fruit, you cut that out so it doesn't ruin the whole pie. Emby adapted it's recipe moving forward and made a better pie. :)

Bad analogy I'm sure but now I went and made myself hungry for a good piece of pie. :(

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