JELLYFIN  

Nick Peers reveals how to install and set up a completely open source – but brilliant – alternative to Plex, the streaming media platform.

Credit: https://jellyfin.org

OUR EXPERT

Nick Peers is shifting his allegiance from Plex to Jellyfin, and not just because it’s free!

W ant the best features of Plex and Emby without the cost (or closed-source components)? Then take a look at Jellyfin (https://jellyfin.org), which has come on leaps and bounds from a simple fork of the last open-source Emby release (3.5). While Jellyfin still has a similar feel to Emby, it’s carving out its own unique niche in the media server marketplace.

It may be free, but that doesn’t mean you’ll miss out on features. On the contrary, Jellyfin includes features found only behind Plex and Emby’s respective paywalls: hardware GPU transcoding for one, full support for live TV (including DVR facilities) for another.

It’s even keeping up with some of the newer features added to its rivals. Early in lockdown, Plex and Emby introduced features for watching the same server content in real-time with far-flung friends and family. Jellyfin quickly followed suit with SyncPlay, available to anyone who’s logged into your server.

NAVIGATION JELLYFIN’S MEDIA LIBRARIES

1 Slide-out menu Click here to quickly jump between libraries – including Jellyfin’s Collections, which can be manually curated or created automatically via a plugin.

2  Admin tools The Dashboard is where you go to monitor and administer the Jellyfin server.

3  Sharing options Click here to set up SyncPlay to watch with friends and family, cast to another device or search your library.

4  Playback controls Click here to play the movie, watch the trailer, plus other tasks – for example, adding it to a playlist or editing its metadata.

5  Access multiple versions Rip different versions – say extended versus theatrical release – of the same film and choose which one to watch.

6  Choose audio and subtitle tracks If your movie contains multiple audio tracks – as well as subtitles – you can select which ones you want from these menus.

While it’s true that Jellyfin isn’t quite as slick and well-supported in terms of clients as its better-known siblings, it still covers most bases (see https://jellyfin. org/clients for a full list). What it lacks in polish is more than made up by its customisability, and unlike Plex and Emby doesn’t require cloud-based authentication to unlock all its features, making it perfect for those wanting a server exclusively for use over their own network. (You can still open up Jellyfin for remote access though – see the box for details, below right.)

Getting started

You can install Jellyfin natively or through Docker – visit https://jellyfin.org/downloadsfor a complete set of instructions. We recommend a native install if you plan to make use of Jellyfin’s hardware-transcoding features. Click the Stable link to reveal the full commands, or save time if you’re running Ubuntu LTS (16.04 or later) by issuing the following commands: