Confession from a Former Jellyfin User

[darkside40 91]

I dont talk about Emby Connect here, because i simply dont use it. I dont want to have my Server behind some cloud service i cant control. And because i dont know the source i also cannot judge it that would be easy to implement there.

But for people which setup their own server and users it would be easy as ticking "Use 2FA" and than the Server generates a Token (and maybe even a QR Code Version of it) which can be imported into an App like the Google Authenticator.

TOTP is an RFC Standard and extremely easy to implement because it only need the Token (aka The Secret) and the Unix Time.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6238

You even dont need to use it for every user, but it would be useful for Server Admin  Accounts.

Edit:

Just caught my eye. 2FA is an open feature Request since January 2018. 4 years now!

Needless to say more.

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by darkside40

[Painkiller8818 203]

9 minutes ago, darkside40 said:

I dont talk about Emby Connect here, because i simply dont use it. I dont want to have my Server behind some cloud service i cant control. And because i dont know the source i also cannot judge it that would be easy to implement there.

But for people which setup their own server and users it would be easy as ticking "Use 2FA" and than the Server generates a Token (and maybe even a QR Code Version of it) which can be imported into an App like the Google Authenticator.

TOTP is an RFC Standard and extremely easy to implement because it only need the Token (aka The Secret) and the Unix Time.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6238

You even dont need to use it for every user, but it would be useful for Server Admin  Accounts.

Edit:

Just caught my eye. 2FA is an open feature Request since January 2018. 4 years now!

Needless to say more.

 

I also don't talk about emby connect. I just talk about having a own domain and an open port so you are right in the internet and most people don't have a own real firewall to take care of any security so they are just using their routers and nothing more

Yes the 2FA is open for years this is just one point i am talking about.  

[darkside40 91]

Feeling with you!

[Chyron 221]

All I can say is, neither of y'all have proper audiobook support yet, so the rest of the argument is moot to me. Closed or open source, it doesn't matter.

What matters is having a good dev team. A team that is responsive and cares about the community. Open Source has the potential for people to help code, but that doesn't matter if nobody does it or if the resulting code is trash.

Yes, I know Emby announced Audiobooks are coming with 4.7. But that was last November and I've been asking for it since 2017. It is now almost March 2022. If Open Source is so great because anyone can submit code if they want (which I do not have time to do myself), then someone somewhere could have added that feature to JF. But nope. Didn't happen. So it's irrelevant to me whether open or closed source are supposedly better.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Chyron

[darkside40 91]

The Emby Code is hard to extend. Its done im C# which is not the most popular language for coding. 
 

If i recall correct the code is bad or mostly not commented, also there was no proper documentation. 
Thats what makes it difficult formpeople to contribute. An because Jellyfin is based of the old 3.5 source of Emby the Jellyfin Team has to deal with it. 
 

Proper Audiobook support would be a bummer. I know an community developer wanted to implement it but never finished it. 

[lloooooll 2]

On 2/22/2022 at 5:43 PM, Gilgamesh_48 said:

I tested the latest Jellyfin and found it to be quite lacking. I really did not even think about actually using Jellyfin but I like to know my options.

I also would not use JellyFin because I consider them as thieves. Yes I know what they did was not at all illegal but they took a piece of software developed by others and changed it. They created nothing and therefore deserve no support.

I do not see any advantage to Jellyfin except they are open source and in many cases that is much worse that closed source because there is no real control and no accountability.

i... don't even know how to address this one.

you realize emby themselves are "thieves" too then, right? you think emby is 100% original source code using no open source libraries? haha.

i guess using other open source software to build your software you then charge subscription fees for is cool, right? i doubt you even really know what open vs closed source is, but when emby has people like you championing it makes their job very easy.

emby went closed source to try and make more money, simple as that. jellyfin works just fine and i'm in control of my data. emby is salivating at the thought of selling out like plex, trust me. it's all business, baby.

what's even more sick is that this guy now claims he "works on 95% of emby..." and other such nonsense when he wouldn't have a product without the open source libraries he used or the original contributors help. now he changes his license and tells them to get bent. so glad i don't use this anymore.

[ebr 14913]

2 hours ago, lloooooll said:

what's even more sick is that this guy now claims he "works on 95% of emby..." and other such nonsense when he wouldn't have a product without the open source libraries he used or the original contributors help.

Hi.  if you are talking about Luke or me, I'm sorry but, as we've pointed out many times, this is simply incorrect.  WE are the original contributors.  We were just giving away all our work for a fairly long period of time.  It is the other guys that wouldn't have anything if we hadn't created it and given it to them (which we did so nothing wrong with what they are doing other than removing attribution from the code).

[Chyron 221]

On 3/4/2022 at 5:15 AM, lloooooll said:

emby went closed source to try and make more money, simple as that. jellyfin works just fine and i'm in control of my data. emby is salivating at the thought of selling out like plex, trust me. it's all business, baby.

First--are you saying people shouldn't benefit monetarily from the effort they put into something?

Also, Plex has gone the route of marketing streaming services these days---many of them subscription-based---instead of focusing on the personal home media server. Plex News. Plex Music with a TIDAL subscription. Plex Arcade with a Parsec subscription. Ad-supported streaming movies.

All Emby is doing is protecting their investment. They're not sellouts. What, do you think they should just give everything they do away for free, even if they themselves paid money to acquire part of it?

Also, I recognize that the reason why Emby hasn't implemented proper audiobook support yet is because it's buried under a mountain of other things they're working on, and there's really just the two primary devs doing most if not all of the work on it. I may not like it, but there it is. That's a separate thing from the reason why Plex hasn't implemented proper audiobook support--because in the Plex execs' minds it won't make them enough money to invest any time in it compared to whatever else their investors are telling them to do.

If it's all business, there is no reason why the actual devs who code the actual software for this project need to reply directly to us in this thread.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Chyron

[Spaceboy 2493]

On 04/03/2022 at 11:15, lloooooll said:

i... don't even know how to address this one.

you realize emby themselves are "thieves" too then, right? you think emby is 100% original source code using no open source libraries? haha.

i guess using other open source software to build your software you then charge subscription fees for is cool, right? i doubt you even really know what open vs closed source is, but when emby has people like you championing it makes their job very easy.

emby went closed source to try and make more money, simple as that. jellyfin works just fine and i'm in control of my data. emby is salivating at the thought of selling out like plex, trust me. it's all business, baby.

what's even more sick is that this guy now claims he "works on 95% of emby..." and other such nonsense when he wouldn't have a product without the open source libraries he used or the original contributors help. now he changes his license and tells them to get bent. so glad i don't use this anymore.

glad you registered to share this insight

[Abobader 2945]

15 hours ago, Spaceboy said:

glad you registered to share this insight

It's hard to not laugh after reading this

[GurtLushSalmon 1]

Gotta say I have never used Jellyfin but I still think that emby has always been reliable and im glad i payed for the lifetime subscription. As long as it gets updated and keeps getting decent support im good. I belive that if you are going to make a fork of something its fine if the software is not actively being developed and people need to be accreddited at least. 

[Cheesegeezer 3086]

This is a very interesting topic.

A lot of new comers here need to understand how Emby has come about and the history behind where we are today.  

I would like to defend Eric and Luke here.  I have known @ebrEric since about 2008 when i stumbled across the MCE plugin and started using it,  i started to learn code and wanted to do some stuff with VideoBrowser (yes that what it was called).  He helped me out quite a bit with Themes at the start. He was the original admin with the other guy (can't remember his name) It then changedto MediaBrowser, still only a complete MCE plugin which was coded purely in C# and mcml.

@Luke came on the scene a very long time ago can't remember when exactly, 10yrs or so, and was writing amazing plugins for the MCE app. He evolved and off his own back, and Eric's, They then started to create a server where apps would access it! MediaBrowser 3.0 was born!!  Bearing in mind all this was still very free and actually it was the plugin and theme creators that could charge for their work, MediaBrowser 3.0 was still very free.  

Hours and hours of work went into MB3.0 to which i used to donate $10-$15 a month to them to thank them for their amazing work.  The project was moving in the right direction. Then the project moved to Emby and new era a new structure.  

So what if they want to charge you for all of their hard work over at least the last 15yrs and make the project closed source.  The whole reason for this, was because having open source, people would fork the repo, remove the premium validation and distribute it for free and use the server and apps for free.  The whole reason it has been closed source now, is because of the UNMORAL & DISHONEST people in the world.  

They do this full time now so give them respect, pay your subscription and enjoy the app.  

Jellyfin do what they do and the interfaces are still from way back when, nothing has changed other than a few cosmetic enhancements.  They snoop the forums for ideas and hoping to "acquire" code from plugin developers... to keep up with the Jones'.

There are 2 guys here... that work their asses off to bring this amazing media experience, give em credit and support them as you should.

And yes... Jellyfin should credit the devs.  What makes me laugh is there are still so many components in their source code which have an emby prefix... so i guess that is some accreditation.

 

(I'm just donning my Bomb Disposal Suit now...... for all the trollers out there!!)

Edited March 24, 2022 by Cheesegeezer

[Chyron 221]

30 minutes ago, Cheesegeezer said:

The whole reason for this, was because having open source, people would fork the repo, remove the premium validation and distribute it for free and use the server and apps for free.  The whole reason it has been closed source now, is because of the UNMORAL & DISHONEST people in the world.  

Luke said there are two reasons why they went closed source: 1) They paid actual money for Live TV stuff (I think it was the guide data?) to be included in Emby, and they wanted to guard that expense against theft; and 2) closing all of it is much less of a hassle than closing part of it.

I can appreciate both of those things.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Chyron

[ebr 14913]

Reason 3 was that being open source was gaining us nothing as we got no significant contributions from anyone outside our team.  All it was doing was giving away all of our hard work for free and we simply couldn't continue to do that and also be able to continue to build and support the system the way we want to.

[Cheesegeezer 3086]

10 minutes ago, ebr said:

Reason 3 was that being open source was gaining us nothing as we got no significant contributions from anyone outside our team.  All it was doing was giving away all of our hard work for free and we simply couldn't continue to do that and also be able to continue to build and support the system the way we want to.

You keep washing those bottles LOL!!

I'll stand up for you guys.  From my perspective i wish it not so much closed source.  I would like to contribute more. And i should really change that signature of mine now that WMC support is going

Edited March 24, 2022 by Cheesegeezer

[Chyron 221]

17 minutes ago, ebr said:

Reason 3 was that being open source was gaining us nothing as we got no significant contributions from anyone outside our team.  All it was doing was giving away all of our hard work for free and we simply couldn't continue to do that and also be able to continue to build and support the system the way we want to.

Yeah, just because the code allows people to contribute, that doesn't mean that any of them do, especially to any degree of significance toward benefiting the project.

And you know, it baffles me that some people are so bothered by Emby being closed source, as though they never would want to use anything else that is closed source ever. Like, "I don't want to use Emby anymore because they're closed source now... but also I prefer iOS devices even though it's a highly restrictive ecosystem that intentionally prevents me from using it any other way than how Apple intended me to."

EDIT: I'm not saying iOS sucks (that is irrelevant anyway); I'm saying such people are talking out of both sides of their mouths. If Emby never was open source, many of those people probably wouldn't complain that it wasn't.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Chyron

[Sammy 735]

4 hours ago, Cheesegeezer said:

This is a very interesting topic.

A lot of new comers here need to understand how Emby has come about and the history behind where we are today.  

I would like to defend Eric and Luke here.  I have known @ebrEric since about 2008 when i stumbled across the MCE plugin and started using it,  i started to learn code and wanted to do some stuff with VideoBrowser (yes that what it was called).  He helped me out quite a bit with Themes at the start. He was the original admin with the other guy (can't remember his name) It then changedto MediaBrowser, still only a complete MCE plugin which was coded purely in C# and mcml.

@Luke came on the scene a very long time ago can't remember when exactly, 10yrs or so, and was writing amazing plugins for the MCE app. He evolved and off his own back, and Eric's, They then started to create a server where apps would access it! MediaBrowser 3.0 was born!!  Bearing in mind all this was still very free and actually it was the plugin and theme creators that could charge for their work, MediaBrowser 3.0 was still very free.  

Hours and hours of work went into MB3.0 to which i used to donate $10-$15 a month to them to thank them for their amazing work.  The project was moving in the right direction. Then the project moved to Emby and new era a new structure.  

So what if they want to charge you for all of their hard work over at least the last 15yrs and make the project closed source.  The whole reason for this, was because having open source, people would fork the repo, remove the premium validation and distribute it for free and use the server and apps for free.  The whole reason it has been closed source now, is because of the UNMORAL & DISHONEST people in the world.  

They do this full time now so give them respect, pay your subscription and enjoy the app.  

Jellyfin do what they do and the interfaces are still from way back when, nothing has changed other than a few cosmetic enhancements.  They snoop the forums for ideas and hoping to "acquire" code from plugin developers... to keep up with the Jones'.

There are 2 guys here... that work their asses off to bring this amazing media experience, give em credit and support them as you should.

And yes... Jellyfin should credit the devs.  What makes me laugh is there are still so many components in their source code which have an emby prefix... so i guess that is some accreditation.

 

(I'm just donning my Bomb Disposal Suit now...... for all the trollers out there!!)

Just adding on this. I got a lifetime MB3 / Emby subscription directly from Eric @ebr some 8 to 10 years ago for a $10 donation which has a grandfathered unlimited devices.. That's right $10! At any rate, I rode on that for a few years but seeing how this has significant value to my and my family's lives I now subscribe for $4.99 a month to support their efforts. even though I don't have to.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Sammy

[artstar 12]

9 hours ago, Cheesegeezer said:

This is a very interesting topic.

A lot of new comers here need to understand how Emby has come about and the history behind where we are today.  

I would like to defend Eric and Luke here.  I have known @ebrEric since about 2008 when i stumbled across the MCE plugin and started using it,  i started to learn code and wanted to do some stuff with VideoBrowser (yes that what it was called).  He helped me out quite a bit with Themes at the start. He was the original admin with the other guy (can't remember his name) It then changedto MediaBrowser, still only a complete MCE plugin which was coded purely in C# and mcml.

Some, in the (unofficial) Emby Community server on Discord, argue that the programming has not been refined over the years into something more efficient and still relying on old compilers, with the only recent change being going from C# to .net in the current beta.

Personally, it works for me and doesn't consume a ton of resources on my VM. I acknowledge that audiobooks are a problem for many out there but that's not my use case, so I'm all good and glad I paid my perpetual license for it. I don't purchase something on the basis of likeability of the people involved. The product just needs to be decent and its support needs to also be decent. If those two boxes are ticked, then I'm sold.

[chef 3745]

13 hours ago, artstar said:

Some, in the (unofficial) Emby Community server on Discord, argue that the programming has not been refined over the years into something more efficient and still relying on old compilers, with the only recent change being going from C# to .net in the current beta.

Personally, it works for me and doesn't consume a ton of resources on my VM. I acknowledge that audiobooks are a problem for many out there but that's not my use case, so I'm all good and glad I paid my perpetual license for it. I don't purchase something on the basis of likeability of the people involved. The product just needs to be decent and its support needs to also be decent. If those two boxes are ticked, then I'm sold.

Well... that is debatable. 

Emby's core streaming is using ffmpeg. That custom build of ffmpeg has been updated several times in the last year alone. Adding feature for intro detection, better transcoding, etc.

With regards to any c# backend code... Well, the API is constantly being updated with changes to routes, interfaces, and the methods used to control,sort and utilize media.

Is it absolutely nesessary for emby to jump to the lastest version of .net?... I would argue it is not. 

.Net5/6 changes how you write c#.

But the compiler will always break that code syntax down into the same intermediate conditionals, while loops, reference type, value types, etc

Emby users would most likely not ever notice a change like that. 

 

The dashboard interface has changed a lot too. If you look at the layouts in the beta server, there has be obvious enhancements.

The libraries we define to bring into dashboard pages have gotten a lot better. 

it has entire element libraries specific to it's layouts (emby-buttons, emby-inputs, emby-toggles).

 

 

Edited March 25, 2022 by chef

[Luke 37066]

I think we do a pretty good job of keeping our technology stack up to date. We're running pretty much the latest of everything that we use.

We're on .NET 6.0, ffmpeg 5.0. On android we use the best available embeddable media player and when there's a limitation with it we go into it ourselves without waiting for the developers to do it for us. We have a new Windows app coming soon that does this as well.

The JavaScript that runs in the browser is developed using modern techniques and is converted ahead of time to a format that will run on a broad range of devices, both new and old. However the gap between new and old has gotten large enough that soon after the 4.7 release we're going to start shipping multiple versions of JavaScript so that newer browsers can run the modern JavaScript directly, and older browsers can run one of the converted versions.

[chef 3745]

5 minutes ago, Luke said:

  shipping multiple versions of JavaScript so that newer browsers can run the modern JavaScript directly, and older browsers can run one of the converted versions.

Cool. 

[Cheesegeezer 3086]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

I think we do a pretty good job of keeping our technology stack up to date. We're running pretty much the latest of everything that we use.

We're on .NET 6.0, ffmpeg 5.0. On android we use the best available embeddable media player and when there's a limitation with it we go into it ourselves without waiting for the developers to do it for us. We have a new Windows app coming soon that does this as well.

The JavaScript that runs in the browser is developed using modern techniques and is converted ahead of time to a format that will run on a broad range of devices, both new and old. However the gap between new and old has gotten large enough that soon after the 4.7 release we're going to start shipping multiple versions of JavaScript so that newer browsers can run the modern JavaScript directly, and older browsers can run one of the converted versions.

This is so cool … Will dolby digital code be incorporated into JS?
 

https://developer.dolby.com/platforms/html5/code/

Edited March 25, 2022 by Cheesegeezer

[Luke 37066]

4 minutes ago, Cheesegeezer said:

Will dolby code be incorporated into web browsers? 
 

https://developer.dolby.com/platforms/html5/code/

All that does is give you a method to detect browser support for dolby formats, and that can be done without their code. That's not going to add support for browsers that don't already have it.

[Carlo 4330]

That's something Dolby needs to address and I think is coming to that realization. Not providing support for browsers which is still the #1 method used to playback online media was a huge oversight. They are totally missing out on revenue opportunities from this market and left the door open for others to fill the void.

[Cheesegeezer 3086]

8 hours ago, Luke said:

All that does is give you a method to detect browser support for dolby formats, and that can be done without their code. That's not going to add support for browsers that don't already have it.

Interesting and thanks, i haven't played with it yet, was going to use it for Iridium, but sounds like i need to dig deeper LOL!!!

I actually thought it added dolby decoded output for browsers.  When i check stuff on Emby web and play a movie out of the web browser and thru my AVR, i still only receive PCM and not Dolby Digital, E-AC3 or Dolby TrueHD.

However this isn't the thread to discuss this.