Yet another Hacker News

82 points zzyzxd 1 hour ago 56 comments

PaulHoule 1 hour ago | parent

Well.. I was really excited to experience HDR when I was reading conference proceedings about it in the early 2000s. But when I got to see how it was standardized I could think nothing for "For Christ's Sake, this is going to make sure it never looks right in either SDR or HDR"

Dolby Vision addresses some of the problems of simpler standards but it is such a botch I wouldn't expect it work at all.

bhouston 1 hour ago | parent

How is that related to this story? Are you commenting on the wrong Hacker News post?

PaulHoule 53 minutes ago | parent

Did you read the story?

Plex broke Dolby Vision. Plex is working fine for me because I'm not using this botched format and don't have a TV which is designed to make sure everything is too dark for you to see anything, the same way Chris Nolan poisoned movies by making sure you can never make out what people are saying.

dominotw 48 minutes ago | parent

> Chris Nolan poisoned movies by making sure you can never make out what people are saying.

why did he do that?

CamperBob2 44 minutes ago | parent

Nolan doesn't want you to focus on the dialog, he says. He considers dialog to be just another sound effect. He's an overrated bozo who either needs more cocaine, or less.

See also: idiot directors who shake the camera constantly because it's "realistic," neglecting hundreds of millions of years of evolution geared towards stabilizing vision while moving.

germinalphrase 35 minutes ago | parent

It's mostly that Nolan makes camera and sound decisions based on the theater experience which assumes a certain visual scale, projector dynamic range, surround sound system, and so on. Because the format and equipment utilized in a high end movie theater is significantly more capable than everyday home televisions, these choices often lead to a poor viewing experience at home. All these issues could be resolved technically, but home theater formats are kind of a mess in general.

CamperBob2 33 minutes ago | parent

Unfortunately that's not it at all. He's widely quoted as considering dialogue to be just another sound effect.

germinalphrase 13 minutes ago | parent

It is that, just not only that. You saying dialogue is "just another sound effect" collapses all nuance out of a broader artistic preference on Nolan's part for authentic performance recording and diegetic sound (of which the dialogue is one part of many). You may not care about this-vs-that filmmaking choice, but they are intentional decisions with a rationale. In a movie theater setting, the problems introduced by these choices aren't as acute because there is a physical and spatial separation between speakers dedicated to primary dialogue vs environmental sounds, etc. The same is true for scenes being "too dark" or characters being framed too widely to read their performance because it was framed for IMAX not an iPhone.

sippingabonedry 15 minutes ago | parent

This is relevant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0

wolrah 52 minutes ago | parent

The actual thread the post being referenced is in is about Dolby Vision and HDR10 playback on Apple devices, so I can see where a rant might come out I guess...

edit: Yup just saw GP's reply and they clearly have opinions about HDR.

dudu24 1 hour ago | parent

Bummer. Anyway, the Nautilus Jellyfin client for the Apple TV rules.

cr125rider 43 minutes ago | parent

Swiftfin got a huge update recently too!

dewey 41 minutes ago | parent

Why is it so hard to find screenshots for this app? I've tried many apps the past days as they all are in a half-done state and I would be in the market for a good, Apple TV native client.

PierceJoy 1 hour ago | parent

The new Apple TV app is terrible. It’s completely redesigned, and visually looks good I suppose, but it’s so buggy and has terrible UX. So terrible, in fact, that after a decade of using plex I finally became a cliche and switched to jellyfin. The player isn’t quite as polished as plex, but it isn’t as buggy, and I’ll probably just take an open source player and have Claude customize it to my liking. Honestly plex deserves to fail at this point. They’ve been doing stupid user hostile shit for years. They finally cross the line though and made the core experience of watching something on their app significantly worse.

fetus8 47 minutes ago | parent

I was watching a movie last night with the updated Apple TV app last night and said to myself, it's time, this UX update has pushed me over the edge. Jellyfish migration is happening this weekend.

joshstrange 46 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, I can't believe how bad the UI/UX is for the new Apple TV Plex app. I switched to Plezy as a client (still Plex server) but don't love it either. I really did like the old Plex UI on ATV.

I don't know what I'll do going forward. Jellyfin is rough (I've tried!) and especially for external users (family).

platevoltage 1 hour ago | parent

There are several good alternatives to Plex. Time to give them your support.

iugtmkbdfil834 58 minutes ago | parent

Sadly, the signs were all there, but it sucks that we need to start thinking of upending existing setups. That said, currently running jellyfin as a test to replace plex ( different reasons ). So far the experience was good. What seems to be missing is the ease with which you can share your library.

toomuchtodo 55 minutes ago | parent

It's a great opportunity to use an open ecosystem that cannot be captured and enshittified. Better to build on a shared, open platform versus paying someone who is trying to squeeze the enterprise for all its worth over time.

Where Jellyfin lacks, I would encourage contributions so that it lacks less, over time. Hopefully, it will eventually surpass Plex, making Plex redundant while Jellyfin remains open.

(i run Plex and Jellyfin side by side on top of a multi PB library)

flumpcakes 48 minutes ago | parent

> multi PB library

Of? Ripped Blu-rays?

toomuchtodo 35 minutes ago | parent

Library contents are out of scope and irrelevant imho. "You do you." I'm supporting end to end open media storage and playback in this context, regardless of underlying content or media. Legal content, pirated content, adult content, does not matter to me what folks want to store and serve up.

Over time, it'll all be served out of archive.org eventually anyway as copyright slowly expires over centuries [1]. We can find more valuable topics to argue about, imho.

[1] HN Search: public domain day - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=public%20domain%20day

fishtoaster 45 minutes ago | parent

Sounds about right. What have you (and/or fellow commenters) had good experiences with?

vorpalhex 57 minutes ago | parent

It's a shame Plex has failed to be functional. The moment a product has a bunch of UI refreshes but no core fixes is when you know the wrong work is being done.

I'd still be happy if Plex could turn things around, but until then Jellyfin seems to be king.

zzyzxd 57 minutes ago | parent

A better link to point to the comment from the former employee:

https://forums.plex.tv/t/2026-20-0-beta-ios-and-tvos-4k-dovi...

Plex stopped working on any DoVi/HDR10 videos I have, and today I found this thread.

supermanav 51 minutes ago | parent

I have a player with wide compatibility, including P7 DoVi, for Apple TV (and iOS) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hanaplay/id6782382601 works with Plex and Silo - an up an coming media server that could be a replacement. Android/Roku are in beta. It's free and will be open sourced.

arprocter 43 minutes ago | parent

Seems like the comment was edited to remove "Move over to Jellyfin and/or Infuse"

From /r/plex:

https://i.imgur.com/87huC1b.jpeg

techjamie 29 minutes ago | parent

I just looked at the thread and I think that comment might be gone entirely. Though some script on that page is breaking find in page on my phone so maybe I simply didn't scroll enough.

arprocter 6 minutes ago | parent

Dev seems to have deleted his Reddit account too

https://arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com/search?fun=comments_s...

fwiw I noticed a while ago their PS4 app refused to play a file, but it was playable in the PlayStation web browser

jmuguy 28 minutes ago | parent

I think the comment has been completely deleted now.

Bluescreenbuddy 24 minutes ago | parent

Definitely got nuked

zzzeek 54 minutes ago | parent

ive got plex and jellyfin running but jellyfin hasn't won me over yet for movies / tv shows. guess it's going to have to

VCFundedGenYer 48 minutes ago | parent

I don't understand why anyone continues to give Plex the time of day. Jellyfin has far and away eclipsed them.

dewey 40 minutes ago | parent

Because I bought a lifetime pass a very long time ago, and their apps across all platforms look and work consistently. I only recently switched to Jellyfin because Hetzner blocks Plex, but otherwise I wouldn't have had a big reason to switch.

joshstrange 35 minutes ago | parent

Do you have external users (outside your network)? My understanding (and the last time I tried) is that Jellyfin lacks in this department quite a bit. That and ubiquitous clients.

Plex client is available almost everywhere and overall, Plex mostly "just works". The latest Apple TV client changes have me hot and there are things I don't love but that's what's kept me in the Plex ecosystem. I am looking around now though since I'm so disappointed with the new clients/UI.

SpecialistK 16 minutes ago | parent

I went with Plex AV few years ago for two major reasons:

* a native Xbox app (I believe Jellyfin may now have one)

* non-techie acceptance (Plex seemed more polished at the time, will need to reassess now)

Either way, I'll be warning my spouse that things may be changing soon.

joshstrange 44 minutes ago | parent

I don't want to be a jerk and I know engineers writing the code don't always make the decisions but the new Apple TV Player was dog shit. Just horrible. 10 steps back in UI/UX and frustrating to use. I've been using Plex for well over a decade and to throw that all away on that new player... Just damn.

Not sure why Plex laid off the team, was it the response to the new updates (doubt it), was it "AI", are they planning on going in a new direction?

hs86 41 minutes ago | parent

I often run the server and the media player app on the same system. When the server analyzes a new movie, the spinning circle animation in the corner of the player app uses more CPU than the server’s transcoding and analysis processes.

maxprimes 40 minutes ago | parent

Mad thread to drop that bomb in.

cdrnsf 37 minutes ago | parent

I've got nothing but good things to say about Jellyfin, Infuse in Apple's ecosystem and Wholphin in Android's.

AdmiralAsshat 36 minutes ago | parent

Once upon a time, Plex started as a fork of XBMC/Kodi.

I'm still using Kodi. It still does everything I need it to do, user complaints about "dated UI" be damned.

About the only thing I wish it shipped was a built-in renamer utility to help organize the media to the naming scheme that Kodi expects in order to scrape metadata properly. Most of the leading third-party utilities for this are proprietary subscription apps, which is a huge shame when the core product is FLOSS.

znkynz 29 minutes ago | parent

Kodi front end - emby back end. Best of both.

joshuat 31 minutes ago | parent

Looks like the comment was deleted, insane to think dropping that in a community forum discussion was a good idea.

joshuat 29 minutes ago | parent

Mismanagement and disastrous redesigns aside, the "lifetime" funding model was flawed from the beginning and imo played a serious part in leading Plex down this path.

bigbuppo 29 minutes ago | parent

That reminds me... need to cancel plex pass.

jmuguy 24 minutes ago | parent

Question for Jellyfin users - how's the support for non-tech people that were using your library? Like my parents use my Plex, and getting them switched to something else is going to be a hell ride.

asdfqwertzxcv 19 minutes ago | parent

Even easier to use, from what I've experienced. Feels like a middle ground between Roku and Plex's interface.

PorciiVorbesc 14 minutes ago | parent

>Question for Jellyfin users - how's the support for non-tech people that were using your library?

As much as I hate what Plex has been doing in the last period, here Jellyfin is not as good as Plex. Most shows I download, Jellyfin can't detect which show it is, and instead just lists them as raw video files in a folder since it expects a strict naming convention which most torrents don't follow. Plex probably has a much better content detection engine based on fingerprinting, since it rarely misses regardless of how fucked the naming convention is.

Also, Plex tablet and TV UX feels simpler and easier than OOTB Jellyfin, unless you tinker with it or use alternative clients. My parents far prefer Plex's UX.

Also 2, I noticed transcoding on Plex is somehow more power efficient than Jellyfin. When I monitor intel_gpu_top on my 12th gen NUC, Plex hammers the iGPU with far less interrupts than Jellyfin, resulting in noticeably lower power consumption.

0x1ch 11 minutes ago | parent

Are the shows foreign or rare media? I almost exclusively use Jellyfin for TV and generally the only media that breaks from weird metadata tagging is asian stuff like Animes. Naming convention of the episode titles usually has very little to do with how Jellyfin shows them, unless that's the only data it can see.

PorciiVorbesc 9 minutes ago | parent

>Are the shows foreign or rare media?

No, mostly US productions. Stargate SG-1 for example.

0x1ch 13 minutes ago | parent

It's pretty easy and straight forward, the login UI is similar to netflix where you can have profiles per user and have them shown on the login screen, etc. They get placed straight into the view of your library, from there they can simply click play.

I'm not up to speed on transcoding, but I do notice my web users always have to transcode, assuming due to their native browser playback support for codecs. Local installs of the Jellyfin player seem to avoid this on most systems.

rfkjrjr 10 minutes ago | parent

Its pretty simple to use and manage. I actually ended up creating an android tv (and phone) app that mimicks windows media center for live TV, and an on demand section that serves the jellyfin library. This has given the family I give access a more familiar interface. https://imgur.com/a/oUDr1Gu

If anyone is interested I may do a post about this app, but I figure in the AI age you'd probably rather I keep it to myself!

inhumantsar 10 minutes ago | parent

this is my main blocker to Jellyfin too. if it were just me, no problem. but my (divorced, over 60y/o) parents and my sister's family use my plex too. each of them has some mix of LG, Samsung, Roku, Android, and Apple devices. they all live half way across the country.

every time i've checked in with Jellyfin, the ecosystem has been way too fragmented to consider migrating.

BoxwoodSeed 4 minutes ago | parent

It's usable, but there's plenty of room for improvement. Never got started with Plex since it's not free software. No matter how much better Plex was it would never have been worth it down the line. I learned that lesson by using Opera circa 2012.

kraquepype 16 minutes ago | parent

I switched over to Emby a while back for video, but kept plex in a limited capacity for music since I really like Plexamp.

The thing I really like about plex was that 99% of the time, it would scan and match up my media, even if file formats were inconsistent. That was a growing pain for Emby, so it was another reason I kept plex for music.

Is there a good alternative to plex for music?