phoenixz

So I've been trying to use Jellyfin for a long, LONG time now, and I've never really been able to use it remotely reliable.

I can go on for a long time about all the problems I've faced, lets just say that after years I can still not use it to watch something with the family because there is always something not working, I could start about hardware decoding having worked for a while and then suddenly without explanation no longer working, but lets start with subtitles...

I just want to have subtitles actually load without having to sacrifice a goat to whatever god is out there to have subtitles work. What is the problem that subtitles just 99% of the time don't work?

Worse, sometimes they work while watching a show, and a jellyfin update comes by and, you guessed it, subtitles no longer work for that show, even though they work for some other movies, sometimes...

I am a software engineer, I do loads of devops, I can find my way around, but jellyfin is just... I dunno what to do anymore. Is there a reliable alternative, perhaps, that actually just works?

I've long given up on the dream that I could have something similar to netflix for all my movies and shows that aren't on netflix, where I can scrub with images, for example, I just want to be able to watch a show with the family with subtitles without fiddling for 30 minutes to try and get it to work.

Current setup is google-tv with 0.17.9 client, and the latest docker server. Shows seem to have okay subtitles on web client, but on google-tv, every time I select a subtitle, I get a "subtitles loading" message, and then 10-20 seconds later a "failed to load subtitles" message.

Anyone?

This is super annoying, as I try to pinch gesture zoom in on an image, and I'll go out of the media back to the list again instead.

I'd like to click to already zoom in somewhat, making punch zoom even easier

If I want to get out, I'll press the back button on my phone, or the back button of connect

So I'm back with Netflix and Amazon. I'm kind of done with jellyfin at this point. I've been recommending it to everyone and honestly I'm not sure that I still would.

Jellyfin as a product simply doesn't work. There, I said it.

For a media system I'd hope for the basics to be able to play a movie or show with subtitles, selecting audio channels, and scrubbing and it to remember where I was left. I wouldn't even need posters and all that, I'd get my own subtitles, etc.

I have multiple TVs, but let's go with the old one with a chrome cast. I use my Android phone to cast a show episode. Scrubbing sometimes works. it works better than before because before it would just break everything to the point of the app requiring a reinstall. At least that's fixed now but scrubbing still is SLOW, 10 seconds ahead takes 20-30 seconds to do. Worse though, it borks up subtitles by leaving the subtitles that were there when you started scrubbing, and places the new ones on top of that. The only way out is to exit casting completely, kill the app, restart all from scratch. Obviously JF doesn't continue where I stopped (seriously, requests on that timeframe were made, it can't be that hard to register that, can it?) and so I need to scrub again which, you know, borks up subtitles. So I'll start just from the beginning, I can rewatch the same 5 minutes twice but it annoys the hell out of my wife.

Then, subtitles is a mess. The above, but also switching subtitles will cause similar issues. Don't touch anything when having subtitles!

Then: it's slow. It's godunholy slow. I have a 16 core and Rhyzen 5 cpu, 64gb men @3200mhz, 1tb M2 Samsung Evo 989 pro, and ~60tb over 3 exos drives. An AMD rx7800 XT finishes up the config. It's not the best of the best, but my system, u believe, ranks in the higher ranks of jellyfin installations

Jellyfin cannot play a movie or show without stuttering at least a few times, flat out freezing for minutes during shows, especially in the second episode for that day... If I run transmission in parallel, it just freezes up so much that it's undoable.

Logs don't indicate any major issue, I saw a freeze and had all logs on tail and literally saw no messages whatsoever during that freeze. System utilization was near zero.

Wife isnt tolerating jellyfin anymore and now I have Netflix and Amazon accounts again.

I understand it's open source software, you do what you can, but right now it simply isn't a system that is for the general public. It can be used by nerds like me who have the patience to deal with all the issues.

Edit: Really? 17 downvotes? I'm trying to tell you that the thing doesn't work and that I've spent plenty of time trying to fix it, reading docs, posting questions, nothing has fixed anything so far but can't have people talk about that, or what's wrong?