Everyone talks about Jellyfin, but I just switched to Emby and I couldn’t be happier (no connect cloud stuff). Can someone please let me know why and how I just made the worst decision of my life please.
Jellyfin is a fork of Emby before they closed the code, so most likely everything you have on Emby you would have on Jellyfin but without the worry that tomorrow Emby will pull a Plex onto you. Up until a while ago they were so alike that you could use Emby client on a Jellyfin server, not sure if that’s still possible though.
The main reason is that if you switch from Plex to Emby you’re going from paid licenseware (fully enshittified) to paid licenseware (not fully enshittified yet). It’s like when everyone finally dropped Skype and moved to… Discord. Which hey it’s closed source and owned by venture capital, but it doesn’t suck yet!!! And now in 2026, Discord is what Discord is.
It’s been years, and there’s only now a handful of programs that offer some of Discord’s best features. If we had open source alternatives back then, I certainly would have entertained them.
Well exactly. The VC projects get to accelerate their “right now” factor with money. Money that doesn’t need to make a return on investment for another x years. That means, before those products start their hostile monetization campaigns, they will be unequivocally the best in their field by any metric other than “libre as in freedom”.
Look at Twitter. Did people that jumped ship jump to the relatively mature but “fiddly” federated platforms, or did they jump to “it’s literally Twitter but without ads and grok” in Bluesky?
We’re on Lemmy, so we’re obviously in a group more willing to tolerate “it’s an open protocol with some weirdness but that’s better than being on one corporation’s server beholden to their rules and TOS”.
Anyone switching from Plex to Emby in 2026 instead of to Jellyfin chose Emby for a reason. For them, Emby is a “better” product and “still free” the way Plex was free for all meaningful features (hardware acceleration, remote streaming…) in 2018. Maybe it’ll never happen, maybe it’ll take until 2030, who knows, but Emby is in the exact same state that Plex was before Plex closed the source and started rent-seeking.
I mean…I’m on both of those, but I know I can use Bluesky as a linear feed like Mastodon, and as long as that still works with no algorithm, it solves my Twitter problem. I think the cycle of software innovation is that you have the first proprietary tool that solves a problem, like MS Office or 3DSMax, and then the most important parts of those programs are solved in open source software after a lag, like LibreOffice or Blender. Discord would always be replaced in time.
But I haven’t paid anything to Emby (I don’t need the code behind that key) and without cloud, I could continue using this version forever and they can’t enshitify it
Until they make a code change that forces a key to stream to an app or run at all. Jellyfin is actually a fork of the original Emby code before they closed sourced it and started down the bad path.
IDK why everyone here is in love with Jellyfin when we have Stremio/Nuvio. Jellyfin is a lot of work; with Nuvio all you do is browse like Netflix, and stream. No existing media library required.
I’m stoked on my Jellyfin setup, but I’ll check on Stremio again in case I want to recommend it to anyone. Never heard of Nuvio, but at a glance it seems like you have to connect it to a media library.
Nuvio is the same as Stremio except better, because it has more quality of life features (like a “Who’s watching” feature). I only mentioned Stremio because it’s more well-known than Nuvio, but both work the same way. If anyone remembers Popcorn Time, it’s kinda like that.
Yeah I loved popcorn time. I’m looking into Stremio, and I’m already down a rabbit-hole of add-ons, debrid providers, and reading between the lines. Doesn’t seem like anything I can recommend to nontechnical folks.
Oh god, its the new Arch isn’t it…
I’m waiting to see the elusive Arch, Jellyfin Vegan stack in the wild. We know they exist and they are fucking telling everyone
You will find them in their natural habitat, the crossfit/hyrox gym.
Apparently not using Arch is the only thing keeping me from reaching my peak in life
No nix is the new arch.
Lol
I used to use Arch, now I use Nix, so that checks out
Except it makes sense to use
I think it’s not a widely used phrase yet
It definitely is in this community
So what you’re saying is that you’re using it before it’s cool…
Idk, I think I heard peppe rice cream say it…
Everyone talks about Jellyfin, but I just switched to Emby and I couldn’t be happier (no connect cloud stuff). Can someone please let me know why and how I just made the worst decision of my life please.
Jellyfin is a fork of Emby before they closed the code, so most likely everything you have on Emby you would have on Jellyfin but without the worry that tomorrow Emby will pull a Plex onto you. Up until a while ago they were so alike that you could use Emby client on a Jellyfin server, not sure if that’s still possible though.
The main reason is that if you switch from Plex to Emby you’re going from paid licenseware (fully enshittified) to paid licenseware (not fully enshittified yet). It’s like when everyone finally dropped Skype and moved to… Discord. Which hey it’s closed source and owned by venture capital, but it doesn’t suck yet!!! And now in 2026, Discord is what Discord is.
It’s been years, and there’s only now a handful of programs that offer some of Discord’s best features. If we had open source alternatives back then, I certainly would have entertained them.
Well exactly. The VC projects get to accelerate their “right now” factor with money. Money that doesn’t need to make a return on investment for another x years. That means, before those products start their hostile monetization campaigns, they will be unequivocally the best in their field by any metric other than “libre as in freedom”.
Look at Twitter. Did people that jumped ship jump to the relatively mature but “fiddly” federated platforms, or did they jump to “it’s literally Twitter but without ads and grok” in Bluesky?
We’re on Lemmy, so we’re obviously in a group more willing to tolerate “it’s an open protocol with some weirdness but that’s better than being on one corporation’s server beholden to their rules and TOS”.
Anyone switching from Plex to Emby in 2026 instead of to Jellyfin chose Emby for a reason. For them, Emby is a “better” product and “still free” the way Plex was free for all meaningful features (hardware acceleration, remote streaming…) in 2018. Maybe it’ll never happen, maybe it’ll take until 2030, who knows, but Emby is in the exact same state that Plex was before Plex closed the source and started rent-seeking.
I mean…I’m on both of those, but I know I can use Bluesky as a linear feed like Mastodon, and as long as that still works with no algorithm, it solves my Twitter problem. I think the cycle of software innovation is that you have the first proprietary tool that solves a problem, like MS Office or 3DSMax, and then the most important parts of those programs are solved in open source software after a lag, like LibreOffice or Blender. Discord would always be replaced in time.
But I haven’t paid anything to Emby (I don’t need the code behind that key) and without cloud, I could continue using this version forever and they can’t enshitify it
Until they make a code change that forces a key to stream to an app or run at all. Jellyfin is actually a fork of the original Emby code before they closed sourced it and started down the bad path.
I just stream over SMB, much less fuckery tbh.
I have everything locally and watch on VLC fwiw /s
Now that is the arch of the self hosted streaming community.
If VLC is arch, what is MPV?
BSD
And MPC is Windows?
I can only vouch for old mpc and i think i remember it being clunky but decent. It’s been a very long time though
Nope
IDK why everyone here is in love with Jellyfin when we have Stremio/Nuvio. Jellyfin is a lot of work; with Nuvio all you do is browse like Netflix, and stream. No existing media library required.
Because a lot of us watch things that cant be found easily, or home movies, or prefer to have it readily available at any time.
There are many reasons. Dont assume your use case is the only one.
I’m stoked on my Jellyfin setup, but I’ll check on Stremio again in case I want to recommend it to anyone. Never heard of Nuvio, but at a glance it seems like you have to connect it to a media library.
Nuvio is the same as Stremio except better, because it has more quality of life features (like a “Who’s watching” feature). I only mentioned Stremio because it’s more well-known than Nuvio, but both work the same way. If anyone remembers Popcorn Time, it’s kinda like that.
Yeah I loved popcorn time. I’m looking into Stremio, and I’m already down a rabbit-hole of add-ons, debrid providers, and reading between the lines. Doesn’t seem like anything I can recommend to nontechnical folks.
Well like I said, please look into Nuvio instead. I’m about to ditch Stremio and switch