Pretty quickly moved to Emby and have been happy since (7 years). It's not FOSS but it's not locked down nearly as much as Plex, and they have a focus on keeping your info within your own systems. No telemetry.

I don't mind paying a bit to support development, especially when they offer lifetime options instead of being stuck with a monthly subscription.

Jellyfin has branched out more into niche features like watch parties, leaaving some stability to be desired. Especially with apps like smart TVs. Emby has focused more on its core reliability across all platforms, comming up with a product that's nice and stable pretty much everywhere.

Jellyfin was a fork of Emby when Emby went closed source as users kept removing the paywalls for premium features. Development time isn't free; that's not sustainable for a fulltime dev. Since, Jellyfin has barely kept up, lacking the resources/funding to really flesh out their code. (hell, ~75% is still embys code AFAIK)

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Regarding free dev time: Donations can be made as a means to thabk and compensate the project.

[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yeah, but relying on peoples generosity is less than ideal unfortunately...

On the other hand; when you've got to pay to use a product, you're a bit more entitled to its use and support than a free project that gets worked on at the devs leisure. Especially when the developers maintain that same view.

It's a fine line between securing stable income for your efforts while not limiting the usage of your products. I think Embys developers have done a pretty good job keeping that balance. I've certainly never had an issue with the activation and use of premium features, and the licence I bought 7 years ago has held excellent value. I've just been waiting on some funds to donate ontop as I feel I've gotten more than I've paid for.

[–] HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

It would be great if the Jellyfin Devs could have some sort of paid service that just does all the DNS/reverse proxy stuff required for remote access, and charge like £5 a month for it.

They would just have to make it clear that the money is going towards further development, not just for the actual service. And obviously continue to allow others to set things up themselves if desired.

I'd pay for that so quick, it would just be so convenient