Plex Keeps Getting Worse. Is Jellyfin a Decent Replacement?
Plex Keeps Getting Worse. Is Jellyfin a Decent Replacement?
Plex 越来越难用了，Jellyfin 是个好的替代品吗？
I use Plex every day. Lately, I’ve been wondering if I should stop. The software, which lets you turn your personal collection of TV shows and movies into a Netflix-style streaming service, is extremely convenient. But Plex is offered by a company that, as of late, seems more focused on adding features than improving the cluttered user interface. Recently, it added a social platform and user reviews, two features I quickly disabled. I want to watch stuff—not talk about it with strangers. (I have friends for that.) The company keeps making design choices that push its ad-supported streaming choices over the personal media collection and DVR functionality I use the service to enjoy.
我每天都在使用 Plex。最近，我一直在考虑是否应该放弃它。这款软件可以将你个人的影视收藏变成类似 Netflix 的流媒体服务，使用起来非常方便。但 Plex 背后的公司最近似乎更热衷于增加功能，而不是改善其杂乱的用户界面。最近，它增加了社交平台和用户评论功能，我很快就禁用了这两个功能。我想看视频，而不是和陌生人讨论它们。（我有朋友可以聊这些。）该公司不断做出各种设计决策，将广告支持的流媒体内容置于我所使用的个人媒体库和 DVR 功能之上。
This might make sense from a business perspective. But it doesn’t make sense for my personal use of Plex, which is watching live TV and the TV shows I’ve recorded and stored on my own computer. I pay an annual subscription fee of $70 for this. I could avoid the annual subscription by buying a lifetime pass, but Plex just raised the price from $250 to $750. That’s more than a decade of annual passes, assuming Plex lasts the next decade. All of which is to say there are reasons to be frustrated with Plex. And that’s enough to look into Jellyfin, a free and open source application that offers many of the features that make Plex so compelling. Is Jellyfin a good alternative? It depends.
从商业角度来看，这或许说得通。但对于我个人使用 Plex 的需求——即观看直播电视以及我录制并存储在电脑上的节目——来说，这毫无意义。为此，我每年支付 70 美元的订阅费。我本可以通过购买终身会员来免除年费，但 Plex 最近将价格从 250 美元涨到了 750 美元。假设 Plex 能再撑十年，这相当于十多年的年费总和。总而言之，对 Plex 感到沮丧是有原因的。这足以让我去了解一下 Jellyfin，这是一个免费且开源的应用程序，提供了许多让 Plex 如此吸引人的核心功能。Jellyfin 是一个好的替代品吗？这取决于你的需求。
Solid Basics, Rocky Remote Access
基础功能扎实，远程访问略显坎坷
If the main thing you want is to watch your digital collection of TV shows and movies in your home, I have good news for you: Jellyfin works great. You can download the server, point it toward your media, and access that media on other devices on your network, all in a couple of minutes. The scanning works well. In my case, a few things were labeled incorrectly, but I dealt with similar issues setting up Plex and know I can fix it without too much bother—it’s a matter of naming the files correctly.
如果你主要的需求是在家中观看你的数字影视收藏，我有一个好消息：Jellyfin 表现非常出色。你只需下载服务器端，指定媒体文件夹，几分钟内就能在网络内的其他设备上访问这些内容。扫描功能运行良好。就我个人而言，虽然有几项内容识别有误，但我之前在设置 Plex 时也遇到过类似问题，我知道只需正确命名文件就能轻松解决，无需大费周章。
You can access your server on the local network by typing the local IP into your address bar, which is handy. And there are Jellyfin clients for every major desktop, mobile, and smart TV platform you can think of. Put simply, you can get local media streaming working very quickly. If that’s your main use and you’re tired of Plex, I can confidently say Jellyfin is ready for you without fuss.
你可以通过在地址栏输入本地 IP 地址来访问局域网内的服务器，这非常方便。此外，Jellyfin 拥有涵盖所有主流桌面、移动端和智能电视平台的客户端。简单来说，你可以非常快速地实现本地媒体流媒体播放。如果这就是你的主要用途，且你已经厌倦了 Plex，我可以肯定地说，Jellyfin 完全可以满足你的需求，且无需折腾。
But sometimes you’re not home. Surprising, I know. One of the nice things about Plex is relatively simple remote access, which allows you to watch your media outside of your home network. With most modern routers, you won’t need to do much—the networking is taken care of. This is possible because Plex, the company, operates infrastructure that points other devices toward your home server.
但有时你并不在家。我知道这很令人惊讶。Plex 的一大优点是其相对简单的远程访问功能，让你可以在家庭网络之外观看媒体内容。对于大多数现代路由器，你几乎不需要做什么配置——网络连接会自动处理好。这是因为 Plex 公司运营着一套基础设施，可以将其他设备引导至你的家庭服务器。
Jellyfin has no such infrastructure. If you want to access your Jellyfin server when you’re away from home, you need to set up the networking infrastructure yourself. This could mean paying for a domain name and redirecting it to your server; it could mean setting up a VPN, or it could mean messing around with port forwarding. There are instructions, but they’re very clearly intended for power users. Basically, you’re going to have to tinker. Now, the kind of person who runs their own Plex server can probably navigate all of this. But if you share access to your Plex server with others, Jellyfin will be harder for them to set up and use.
Jellyfin 没有这样的基础设施。如果你想在离家时访问 Jellyfin 服务器，你需要自己搭建网络基础设施。这可能意味着你需要购买域名并将其重定向到你的服务器；或者设置 VPN，亦或是折腾端口转发。虽然有相关教程，但很明显是为高级用户准备的。基本上，你必须得动手折腾。当然，能运行自己 Plex 服务器的人通常都能搞定这些。但如果你与他人共享你的 Plex 服务器，对他们来说，Jellyfin 的设置和使用难度会更高。
This is particularly true for people who access multiple media servers. Plex makes this easy: one account gives you access to every server. Jellyfin is a little different—every client needs to be set up to connect to each server individually. It’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, but it’s a barrier worth thinking about.
对于那些需要访问多个媒体服务器的用户来说尤其如此。Plex 让这一切变得简单：一个账号即可访问所有服务器。Jellyfin 则略有不同——每个客户端都需要单独配置以连接到各个服务器。这未必是决定性的障碍，但确实是一个值得考虑的门槛。
Your Live TV Setup Might Not Work
你的直播电视设置可能无法直接使用
My favorite Plex feature is Live TV and DVR. I have a tuner card in my PC and a heavy-duty antenna wired to it from across the house. This works perfectly for watching live TV on all my devices, even when I’m away from home. A lot of Airbnbs don’t have live television, only streaming, and I’ve used this feature many times to stream sporting events to TVs that otherwise couldn’t get them. TV shows I record are added to my Plex library, with commercials automatically skipped.
我最喜欢的 Plex 功能是直播电视和 DVR（数字录像）。我的电脑里装了一张电视调谐卡，并连接了一根横跨整个房子的强力天线。这套方案在所有设备上观看直播电视的效果非常完美，即使我不在家也能使用。许多 Airbnb 民宿没有直播电视，只有流媒体，我曾多次利用此功能将体育赛事直播投射到原本无法收看这些节目的电视上。我录制的电视节目会自动添加到 Plex 媒体库中，并能自动跳过广告。
I use this functionality just about every day, but I wasn’t really able to get it working in Jellyfin—and I tried. My TV card is a Hauppauge device that works flawlessly in Plex. Jellyfin officially supports only one hardware device for watching live TV channels: HDHomeRun. This means I can’t natively point Jellyfin at my TV card—I need to buy an HDHomeRun or find a workaround. Thankfully, I did find a workaround. I was able to set up another application called NextPVR, using instructions from the forum, and point Jellyfin to it. With this, I could watch live TV via Jellyfin.
我几乎每天都在使用这个功能，但在 Jellyfin 中我却无法让它正常工作——尽管我尝试过。我的电视卡是 Hauppauge 设备，在 Plex 中运行完美。而 Jellyfin 官方仅支持一种用于观看直播频道的硬件设备：HDHomeRun。这意味着我无法直接将 Jellyfin 指向我的电视卡——我必须购买 HDHomeRun 或寻找替代方案。幸运的是，我确实找到了一个变通方法。我按照论坛上的说明设置了另一个名为 NextPVR 的应用程序，并将 Jellyfin 指向它。通过这种方式，我终于可以在 Jellyfin 上观看直播电视了。
That’s a lot of fiddling for a feature that’s easy to set up in Plex. And I wasn’t done. NextPVR supports pulling in TV listings from the antenna, which, depending on the channel, gives you a few hours of the schedule. It’s a good idea, if you’re trying to use a personal video recorder (PVR), to have more data than that—and that information isn’t free. Plex bundles these listings, which is part of why I pay for Plex Pass.
对于一个在 Plex 中可以轻松设置的功能来说，这实在太折腾了。而且还没完。NextPVR 支持从天线获取电视节目表，根据频道的不同，通常只能提供未来几小时的节目安排。如果你想使用个人录像机 (PVR)，拥有更详细的数据会更好——但这些信息并非免费。Plex 捆绑了这些节目表数据，这也是我愿意支付 Plex Pass 费用的原因之一。
But there are other services. Schedules Direct is the best-known such service, offering electronic program guide data for $35 a year (half the price of an annual Plex pass). The problem? Schedules Direct states that using Jellyfin could get you blocked because of a bug. This is before I set up more complex things, like skipping commercials, which require tweaking in Jellyfin. I am certain that, with enough digging, I could get this working. It might even keep working for a while. But Plex makes it all so easy, making it hard to switch.
当然还有其他服务。Schedules Direct 是此类服务中最知名的，每年收费 35 美元（仅为 Plex 年费的一半）即可提供电子节目指南数据。问题在于，Schedules Direct 指出，由于一个 Bug，使用 Jellyfin 可能会导致你的账号被封禁。这还没算上我之后要设置的更复杂的功能，比如在 Jellyfin 中调整跳过广告的设置。我确信，只要深入研究，我一定能搞定。它甚至可能在一段时间内保持正常运行。但 Plex 让这一切变得如此简单，这使得切换到 Jellyfin 变得非常困难。
A caveat I would add, though, is that Jellyfin’s PVR supports internet protocol television (IPTV), something Plex does not without equally elaborate workarounds. IPTV isn’t broadly offered for legal TV streaming in North America the way it is in other regions.
不过，我需要补充一点：Jellyfin 的 PVR 支持 IPTV（网络协议电视），而 Plex 如果没有同样复杂的变通方法是无法支持的。在北美，IPTV 并不像在其他地区那样被广泛用于合法的电视流媒体播放。