Kicking the Tires, Looking to Move from Emby

[Sean Hull]

I am a LOOOONG time Emby user and I have moved everything from old Windows/Drivepool to a TrueNAS setup.  I am looking at Jellyfin to replace Emby.  Why?  Actually I am not sure since Emby runs on everything already. So...

What does Jellyfin have over Emby?  Playing Devil's advocate here, but Emby is quite mature, has tons of client and server apps, a ridiculous amount of plugins and a high WAF.

Currently we (my Wife and Daughter in the house, son at College, parents across the state, and some friends across the city) access Emby from a variety of devices.  iOS, Android, WebOS (LG TV), Web Browser and Amazon Fire Sticks.  I believe Jellyfin has all of those covered (I was super happy to see WebOS).

I travel quite a bit for work, so I like to load up my phone before I go with movies/tv shows to watch on my flights/layovers.  While I DO see the "Download" option for Movies/TV shows, I don't see any indication that they are downloaded anywhere. Aside from the Android notification there is no way to know if it was successfully downloaded or not.  I like how Netflix has a simple icon to show it's been downloaded.  The big question is, How do I play them?  If I have no internet access then I can't connect anything to even get the app going.  There is no "Downloads" option on the login page where I can just skip to those. etc.  Right now that is kind of a big hangup for me.

Secondly is that inability to specify a lower bitrate/resolution to transcode to.  I don't need a 70GB 4k with 5 diff audio options for my phone when a mid bitrate 1080p is like 6gb and takes WAY less time to download.  I see several feature requests around this and it's sad to see that some have been open for more than 4 years and are still just requests.  Emby has an offline mode for Android that is easy to use and works pretty well.  Now to be fair, they allow you to transcode too, but it has issues with 4k files, and like an 80% fail rate if it's HDR (1080p or 4k).

In the meantime, how can I access my downloaded files so I can watch them on the plane?

[Sean Hull]

Oh yeah, totally forgot the Auto Organize which is a huge part of my process flow.
I haven't checked out all of the plugins for Jellyfin, I did see quite a few metadata plugins which is nice, but Auto Organize and the MediaInfo Plugin are my two big ones. Rest I can live without if I need to.

[TheDreadPirate]

One thing I can address from your post is video downloading. The official Jellyfin app doesn't support playing back downloaded videos. BUT, the 3rd party Findroid app does (video only, Android only). And Finamp for music (Android and iOS).

Secondly is that inability to specify a lower bitrate/resolution to transcode to. I don't need a 70GB 4k with 5 diff audio options for my phone when a mid bitrate 1080p is like 6gb and takes WAY less time to download. I see several feature requests around this and it's sad to see that some have been open for more than 4 years and are still just requests.

I'm assuming you are referring to transcoding the file you are downloading for watching offline. In which case you are correct.

If you have a lifetime Emby license, and you are happy with how it works, I can't really think of a reason that you should switch to Jellyfin. If you have the recurring subscription and want to ditch that, we can help.

[Sean Hull]

If you have a lifetime Emby license, and you are happy with how it works, I can't really think of a reason that you should switch to Jellyfin.  If you have the recurring subscription and want to ditch that, we can help.

I appreciate the candid answer.  Yes I do have the Lifetime license.  I will go back to Emby