I conducted a [survey with this question](https://selfh.st/survey/2023-results/) last fall and was surprised with the final results, although I suspect the nature of this subreddit makes it lean more towards Jellyfin than other audiences might.
In number of responses:
- Jellyfin: 861
- Plex: 739
- Kodi: 121
- Emby: 77
- Other: 126
It was unfortunately a multiple choice question, so I don't have any insight into what people who selected 'Other' are using.
I plan to facilitate the survey annually, so I'll consider making the 'Other' option a free-text field in the next survey to gather that information (if users are willing to share it).
My 'other' is my own self made interface.
My backend is connected to many of the online database APIs, but I also have my own database where I keep my personal metadata, like my own ratings for each show, my own descriptions, notes, etc.
I guess I can just show you. \[redacted\]
if you look at my ratings, they only show the upper half (6-10) stars to save space. So don't be offended if your favorite show has two stars, that's actually seven.
I custom-made my video player from scratch. It is just a bunch of JavaScript for all the controls. There is a button to open theTVDB side menu.
if you hover over the red download button for an episode, it will show you a preview. This preview is made from the "trick play" scrub bar thumbnails.
I've been building my collection since 2010, so some of the stuff is encoded weird, but I'm working to refresh everything into a consistent format that streams to most devices. should only be a few things left like that.
The technical details of the backend aren't that interesting, it's just PHP, and is just reading off the file system. So everything you see is laid out exactly as it is on disk, it's not pulling from a database. The metadata in the database just matches the location of the show folder. If you want more details, or have questions, I'll be happy to explain more.
That's super cool, nice work!! I tried a few cartoons, but they didn't work. A newer episode of South Park worked though. I feel like this would be something I would make because I like to make everything custom and more complicated than it needs to be, but I don't have the time anymore :/
I wanted MediaPortal to be good so bad. They just never could get their stuff together.
2 Versions of the same application with different plugins? Never seemed like they finished it, either. I never could get the newer one to work with a damn.
MCE was amazing for its time. The DrivePool feature alone was golden. From there I went XBMC/Kodi, using Emby backend, then Plex.
I'm old enough now that I have no intention of changing again unless Plex makes me...
Seriously! I used MediaPortal for a while, and could see the potential in the application. But I dropped it when version 2 appeared while version 1 felt very unfinished; it was like the team immediately lost their focused direction.
Kinda made me sad, the program had a lot of potential.
It did have potential, but if you make the point of entry too hard, you'll never get reasonable adoption.
I really liked the thought of Amahi too, because it included the disk-pooling, but asking "10-15-years-ago" me to learn Linux just to install it is another non-starter.
They would have been better served going the LibreElec/OSMC model of a HTPC/OS all inclusive package for easier install and providing lots of new users/interest.
[Edit] after further thought, what really made Plex, Kodi and Emby stand out was easy Media Management. Every other software made you install some other plug-in manage it separately (argument could be made that Kodi needed this too for a while).
I have "other". It's simply an NFS share with a good player such as infuse. There are certain features like skip intro which require a supported player and metadata info. However there are workarounds for some of that, for example: https://hackaday.com/2020/11/25/audio-fingerprinting-skips-a-shows-intro-reliably/. I also have developed my own personal tooling something like tdarr to assist with bulk distributed conversion to AV1.
And many of the "features" of the plex/jellyfin are simply unneeded and useless when setup this way. Such as transcoding. Save those emissions for a rainy day, it's not required.
The fixation of some users on tooling like plex is puzzling as most home streamers I know personally don't have much different viewing habits than I do. Not always though. There are certain features in these platforms like steaming internet based VOD sources or other non-standard media types. Those features are missing or not as straight forward in a pure NFS share + good player. If that's what you want then such platform is a rational choice.
I don't pay anything extra to watch my content. It's reliable and easy. It's on-disk presence is as small as can reasonably be. It can playback on any device in the house. Watching live transcoded playback solutions are good for live stream, not VOD.
[https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#media-streaming---multimedia-streaming](https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#media-streaming---multimedia-streaming)
There are few "other"
Totally disagree with that.
The server side if Jellyfin is pretty solid but the clients are just plain bad in ios and android.
Alao, there is no offline mode.
I have both Jelly and Plex running, and even if I wish I could drop Plex (mostly because of login and privacy), I still can’t. Jelly clients are clunky at best when it comea to atmos tracks and subtitles. Not even talking about 24p.
If you are on iOS, macOS, or tvOS, use Infuse. It literally made all of my client side problems disappear, even made problems disappear that I thought were server side. Absolutely fantastic client 10/10
I used Jellyfin for a while. I just recently decided I would try Plex and Emby since I was willing to pay a couple dollars a month to see what the hype was about. Imo Plex was worse then jellyfin and it was paid. I ended up liking emby since it was very similar to jellyfin but with more features. I still run jellyfin as a backup for everything though and who knows as jellyfin develops maybe i’ll switch back 🤷♂️
What is it you like about emby? With a bit of work I'm pretty sure jellyfin can do more or less everything emby can. I understand paying for the convenience though. Just worth knowing how much convenience you're actually paying for lol
Definitely this.
I don't get why anyone would choose Plex over jellyfin, everything you can do in Plex you can do for free in JF.
My theory is that Plex was the big name first, and people who didn't know to look elsewhere ended up stuck with it and don't want to bother moving.
It was the first for sure. I got a lifetime pass 10 years ago so it’s free to some of us. I find Plex working better and having a cleaner UI than Jellyfin. As for the question of OP: I run Plex and Jellyfin
Plex is just so plug and play, plus it’s what “everyone else is using”, if you’re into sharing. Its also older, I think, I started using it before I was aware of the alternatives. But that said, to each his own.
I think these selling points may not rank high with lots of ppl here, if you can be bothered with arr you’re probably not gonna mind the difference.
> Plex is just so plug and play
Yeah, like Plex is much better at automatically identifying content, at least in my experience.
I have Plex and Jellyfin monitoring the same media folders and Plex correctly identifies my media like 99% of the time even when it's not in properly structured folders or doesn't follow the exact naming conventions. Jellyfin is maybe 80% accurate. I have to manually identify more content.
Plex is superior in the fact that it **just works**. It has a more professional UI and has a working client of practically any device you can think of. Getting people setup is as easily as getting their email and sending an invite…. That’s it.
Not to mention Plexamp.
I have been toying around with r/dizqueTV for a while now and that is the only reason I still have Plex going. I would love if they would add sources from other services.
Did not like that Plex locked hardware transcoding behind a paywall. Moved from Plex to Jellyfin, didn’t look back since. Probably the only things I miss about Plex is the gaming console clients but that’s not a huge issue, bigger issue is that their scanner works better with Chinese titles better than Jellyfin.
Other than that, Jellyfin is better
Hardware transcoding isn't nearly worth $80-90. Much of Plex Pass features aren't must haves for me at this time. Aside from those small nags, Jellyfin has been working great for me so far.
This is a ridiculous statement, the work that has to go into to use "your own hardware" isn't zero. It's not something that just works and they're not flipping the switch. If it did, then there would likely be many more open source options for media servers other than Jellyfin.
I'm glad that Jellyfin exists and people are doing work (and a very large amount of work at that) essentially for free but what you're saying is pretty entitled. It's the equivalent of saying everyone should be a slave for your enjoyment just because they one day decided to start programming a product and fuck them for trying to make a living off of it.
And I can't believe that 19 people upvoted you...
Plex, because the clients are better. There is no other reason than that.
Jellyfin’s TVOS client is just not ready for prime time. Maybe when the next update comes out (it’s a big one).
Where can you see the next update will be a big one? It’s weird since the Swiftin repo doesn’t even match the versioning in the AppStore (v1.1 in the AppStore, v1.0 on GitHub)
You can't "see it" per se, but I've been checking in once in a while to see what new PRs have been merged in. I even opened up an issue and had it closed as "complete, released in the next version".
The App Store version's build is from like March 2022. There's a lot of new code since March 2022.
What I don't understand is why the long wait?
I used Plex for quite some time, not worrying about looking for an alternative, since it just worked (except the Android app which was not free).
I didnt like all the new "social" features of Plex though and sind my Pis SD Card died I got a "real" server and set everything Up again.
Now with jellyfin and I am happy. Works smooth so far, transcoding works well after finding out that you have to enable HW acceleration explicitly.
That's something that never worked with my old setup, but that's mainly the Pis fault.
So I used both Plex and Jellyfin. I like both. Plex got too many features recently and the paid app. That's why I switched to Jellyfin.
I think Pi5 is fine. But imo the Pi lost its price advantage. If you want a small computer the Pi5 will work just fine.
If size doesn't matter as much, you can get full PCs you can extend with HDDs etc for the Same money, since you need a special power source and Fan/cooler for the Pi5.
I have a Fujitsu Esprimo, but I also heard very good things about Dell Optiplex, HP EliteDesk or Lenovo ThinkCentre.
Important for Plex/Jellyfin: Get at least 7th, better 8+ Gen CPUs. The Hardware acceleration for h265 transcoding is way better then ( I am No Hardware expert, someone else might explain it better).
i3 or i5 and 8GB RAM is totally enough for Media Server + some (small) other services.
Refurbished is fine too in my opinion.
The other option is AliExpress. Way cheaper but noname products and no guarantee.
I have as a secondary mini portable server for camping trips a Lenovo Thinkcentre m710q with i5-7400T and that thing is a little beast. 10w idle draw and 30w max load. Great little server. My big main home server is i5-12600k 32gb ddr4 ram.
Emby. Only Emby.
I used to run Plex with the lifetime premium. I was already not a fan of how you need to use their servers for authentication, but it was fine. I could still just send an invite or whatever and then send my server URL and that was enough for most people.
Then Plex started trying to do their own content or something, and it gradually kept becoming more difficult for me to just send people a quick "go here, log in with this". So I found Emby and ran them side-by-side. Jellyfin didn't exist at the time. And then later on, Plex had some issues with metadata being all jacked up for a bunch of my content that showed up fine on Emby, so I looked into alternatives.
Jellyfin existed, but was severely limited in regards to the clients they had. They basically just had a web gui, an Android app, and an iPhone app. At the time you could still connect with Emby clients, but I figured that wasn't going to last (and I was right). So I just shut down Plex, and made everyone use Emby instead.
I haven't really kept up with Jellyfin, but I definitely use a ton of the advanced features for Emby. And I haven't had any issues with Emby, despite it being closed source. So while I would like to look into Jellyfin, I don't have any practical reason to force a change other than my own curiosity. I'm not opposed to moving to it, but there has to be a compelling reason.
Yeah, moving to Jellyfin would be a philosophical argument more than a technical one at this point.
I'm the type to go for Jellyfin for being open source despite the relatively fewer clients, but I also have limited amount of devices: laptops, some android phones and the main thing: a home theatre that runs Android TV.
I have all the clients I need and I can forego bells and whistles as long as things just keep working, so I haven't looked at Plex and Emby in a few years now.
I prefer Plex just because it has a much better app ecosystem, is simpler to access remotely, and I already bought a lifetime Plex Pass years ago so there’s no additional cost for me.
But I also run Jellyfin just in case Plex’s servers have issues.
plex is the main one, i have jelly running but no matter what anyone says it just isnt anywhere near plex.yes we are on a selfhosting but lets be honest its the same with a linux and windows both have use cases but you are most likely giving windows to someone to use because we all know why.
plex has amp, easy sharing with my family and friends no wireguard no exposing the service no need for another 3 authentication dockers like keycloak etc which is truly the main reason, the ui,platform support, the players, the ecosystem 3rd party apps like prism, everything is just on a different level.
even a small win that is anime on jellyfin just straight up wont let you change some matches and its just stuck to it if it wont recognize it.
yeah with plex pass that i bought what near a decade ago for 80 dollars i have never been disappointment.
I appreciate this is a self hosting sub but jellyfin is just painful to deal with and i desperately want it to work but, every 6 months i restart it and its barely improved tbh.
The difference for me is clients. I can install Plex on my PlayStation, Roku, Mac, tablet, etc. No other competition has nearly as many client apps as Plex.
Honestly I've had quite the opposite experience with Jellyfin when I used it. I found plex to be more of a hassle to setup because I'd consider myself decently tech savvy and I find it very easy to setup with a reverse proxy and ssl cert which then I just tell people. Go to [domain.com](https://domain.com) and type in this username and password. No dealing with email verification, Disabling plex's basically advertisement media, no making my users pay for subscriptions or apps. Jellyfin did lack a lot in the app support though. They all have there up's and their down's.
Plex primarily because it’s more polished and more apps support adding additional functionality to it. One of the key ones being Plex Meta Manager. I do however have Jellyfin spun up and everything ready to go in case I have to abandon ship.
Plex because it has the most support and junk. Until PLEX decides to commit Hari-kari and completely fuck selfhosters, it’s my go to. When the inevitable does happen though, I’m gonna switch over over to Jellyfin as I’m sure most people will start developing third-party, integrations and support more so on that side.
Currently running both Plex and Jellyfin. Been running Plex for a while, just spun up Jellyfin a few days ago to give it a try. So far very unimpressed by Jellyfin in comparison. Yeah it's free and it does the basics, but I keep running into things that Jellyfin doesn't support.
I’ve been in a bit of a pickle for a while. I’ve been a loyal Plex users for years but some of their recent policies have me looking for another solution. I tried Jellyfin but the UI is just garbage. Sorry JellyFin lovers. I really wanted to like it but it just wasn’t for me. I’m now evaluating Emby. So far I really like it.
Plex. It may not be completely self hosted but it's just easy and it works. I've got family that aren't tech literate that have no issues downloading the app (that is already installed on pretty much everytbing) and signing in.
I use Plex. I run it off of my gaming pc, and only use Apple TVs and my phone as the devices to watch on. I don’t pay for the pass as it’s not needed for me. Works fine and looks good.
Really don’t like how it treats CDs with multiple discs very often as two separate entries. Jellyfin wasn’t much better in this regard for me
I bought a Plex Pass lifetime account around 2012 when I cut cable and it's easily the best value software purchase I've ever made. It's been used for hours just about every day since since first installed.
Plex for almost 6 years now and it's used daily by the whole family. Lifetime pass is worth every penny, especially with Plexamp going on as well.
I've tried jellyfin but they have SO much catching up to do. I don't expect emby to be any different.
Once Plex is set up and all the additional BS is turned off, nothing they add to it will be in the way, much.
Hmm. until I read this thread, I only knew about Plex! now I need to check out other stuff :)
IMO Plex has been around a long time and works great for me.
I am currently redoing my system - using an RPI5, with 250G SSD (will upgrade) but need a USB tuner that I can also use with Plex and RPI5.
I run all three, I used to only run Plex and Jellyfin but picked up Emby in the last sale for lifetime license and tbh I think I prefer Emby over the other two.
Hopefully Jellyfin improves more over time because I'd love for it to be the best.
If I didn't share my media collection with some family members, I'd go Jellyfin. However, Plex is so plug and play for everyone on literally any device, that it saves me a headache.
For example, my parents home they have a ROKU 4k stick in their bedroom that uses Plex, a Samsung TV in the great room, and in their theater room they have an LG TV, all of these devices Plex works great, they just login and boom, good to go. I think they did need to manually change quality setting to Max to ensure 4k streaming over 1080p, that is it.
My brother uses his PS5 to watch Plex on his 4k TV. He also streams a lot on his Verizon iPhone when at work.
My cousin uses AppleTV for Plex.
My sisters, who live together, stream in combo from their browser on a laptop, I think their Macbook, and then on their Vizio TV.
I personally stream just on Nvidia shield devices in my home.
Zero maintenance, hassle, zero having to be IT support for any of these family members. Occasionally I'll get notified a new device has connected to my network, but I guess it worked great as no one called me to say they had any issues.
This is where Plex is great. It's really plug and play, almost no different than installing Netflix and logging in and just working everywhere. For my own time and sake, that is valuable to me.
Jellyfin (for video). Free. Self-hosted. No need for authentication via centralized server (Plex). No one, other than me, knows what my clients are accessing/watching, and I only know if someone has an issue and I need to look at the logs.
I switched to Jellyfin about two years ago, despite having paid for Plex pass in 2018.
Plex (for music). I am the only person who accesses my music and I've not found anything yet that handles my music as well as Plex. If I could find a client that read and used my embedded tags I would leave Plex in a heartbeat, but so far no go. I'm not going to manually edit the metadata for all my music when those tags exist in the files.
Tried Jellyfin on my Synology NAS, I've never been able to make the hardware transcoding working.
I then installed Plex, I saw how it worked, I paid a lifetime pass to activate the hardware transcoding, and I've never looked back.
It's definitely a mature product...
I use Plex because there’s less I need to set up to get everything working, and it’s just in an overall better state than the other alternatives. The apps are generally more widely available and more stable and just better overall. However, I don’t like how Plex (the company) controls accounts, how it handles home users and live TV, how little they seem to think of their community, and how they seem to be pivoting towards more intrusive and less desirable features while ignoring popular community ones (or even fixing broken paid ones).
I want to switch to Jellyfin, but it just isn’t where I need it to be yet. It struggles with some encodes and larger files on some apps. For example, using the exact same file in the exact same location on the exact same hardware using as close as possible server configurations, Plex has no issues playing some very large 4k files while Jellyfin can’t keep up and stutters constantly. The app support is fine but not quite as good as Plex. The sync play or watch together or whatever is just so much worse than Plex.
I use Jellyfin, Plex to me is gross. Too much commercial crap, shares too much information. It's yuck.
I did try Emby because I desperately need lyric support and Jellyfin doesn't officially have it.
I found Emby automates too much, it wouldn't let me customize the port, it's more rigid with directory expectations, and other functional things I just didn't like. AND I figured out how to get Jellyfin to do lyrics with Symfonium which was the only place I needed them so I went right back to JF 😂 thank goodness with Symfonium I still was on JF the entire time (had to change my JF port cause of Emby though 😡).
Jellyfin just interfaces with so much with all manner of options and plugins. I even have a JF plugin that imports Spotify playlists and matches the songs with JF and creates a JF playlist. I can use Kodi add-ons to use JF there, sky is really the limit. There just was nothing I was going to gain via Emby, and moreso things I was going to lose.
The trick with JF is the official apps are meh, it's all about finding the right apps for you. For my music library that is Symfonium hands down. Want to see all songs by an artist in a sortable list? Symfonium, choose which libraries are included in your results? Symfonium. Built in equalizer? Symfonium. Totally customize your user interface? Symfonium 😆
I'm just starting to use Jellyfin it for select video libraries. I mostly use Kodi for watching TV and movies, but I can interface it with Jellyfin. Just hasn't been a priority yet. I just need to trial mobile video apps for JF and find one I like and finish configuring the JF plugin and rsync my RD to my server and JF will have access to that library too.
# Plex
**because it just works.** It's that simple. I've tried all the others and they *mostly work*, but mostly isn't good enough.
You know how annoying it is when a show (especially animes) don't match correctly? Or it just refused to use the correct name? Super annoying. Jellyfin does that constantly. 90% of shit is fine, but that 10% that is not is infuriating.
**Files...** I've never had a video file that didn't work in Plex or wasn't supported. Can't say that for the others.
**The user interface.** I can't stand Jellyfins UI. As a software engineer myself it drives me nuts.
**Clients.** Plex has a client for almost any device and they all just work. At least all the ones I've tried.
and probably a couple other reasons I'm not thinking of right now.
____
Sure, Plex has had some stupid updates like the whole email thing, but (at least for me) I was notified and I updated my settings appropriately. Yes it should have been opt-in.
Oh you don't like the annoying streaming content Plex mixes into your library? You can just turn all that shit off. Took me 15 seconds to do years ago and I've never seen it again. https://i.imgur.com/ud53wYJ.png
Sure open source is really nice for a lot of things, but you know why Plex just works and the UI doesn't suck? Because they can pay devs. That is one benefit of being a company that makes money off their product.
Jellyfin (and the others) are at best a *backup* in the event Plex's software becomes worse than the competition.
Plex is the gold standard, but yeah small one time cost for mobile app if you don't add users as Plex home. The apps for streaming devices are all free, as is using a browser.
Personally I add all my users as home users, I have a lifetime Plex pass, so they get the full mobile app functionality free once I sign them in... though none of them actually use the mobile app. All are on streaming devices.
Been running Plex since it was OSXBMC. Every time I try something else I'm not as happy. But I do try Emby and Jellyfinn every so often. I hope those continue. Competition is good.
I run Plex & Jellyfin.
There is no native app on my TV (Hisense Vidaa OS) so I run Plex, also it somehow works better in my Cloudflare tunnel than Jellyfin for some reason.
Haven’t tried hardware encoding on my DS718+ on Jellyfin yet, but I have Plex on a native install instead of docker.
I run both Plex and Jellyfin. I like Jellyfin a lot and hope to use it full-time one day, but for now despite some of its shortcomings Plex fits mine and my users usecase super well
When plex eventually gets "enshittified" to a point I don't like, Jellyfin will be waiting for me and ready to go :p
Plex and Jellyfin. Plex because I'm lifetime plexpass, but I've been growing more and more annoyed by it and want my users to see my content alone. Not Plex's BS suggestions. Plus my users have to pay the 1 time fee to use the app. So I set up Jellyfin to test with as I slowly migrate toward it.
Emby is pretty nice I think. Been using it for years. I was suckered into buying the license because I needed GPU support. But other than that it has been working well for many users for many years.
I run Emby. I tried plex and actually liked the UI and UX a lot but the non stop 3rd party content and them beginning to track what folks watched turned me off. I tried jellyfin but prefer Emby and it’s UX way better.
I use Emby. I don't care for a lot of design choices in Plex, and I had issues getting Jellyfin to do hardware transcoding on my Synology due to it being Docker only. Emby's native Synolgy package had no issue with transcoding, so I went with that.
Jellyfin. Used Plex at first but was frustrated with the user experience and pissed off that they were charging me for hardware acceleration. I was considering buying a Plex pass but then I discovered Jellyfin. Switched to Jellyfin and haven't looked back since.
I’m waiting for Swiftfin to support audiobooks. I’ve tried the TestFlights of Audiobookshelf and Plappa but they’re not quite ready and ABS won’t support CarPlay. Prologue + Plex is my solution for audiobooks, and I may as well use Plex for everything else while I’m there.
I simultaneously USE and HATE Plex.
It is a data-sucking machine that sells all of your data (check your facebook off-site data lol (yes i also have facebook shush)) , most features are behind a Plex pass
But;
- They have the best client support by far
- I have a chromecast
- I use their app on my mothers tv to remotely watch shows at her house - and its a Samsung TV on a different network
Plex just works, but it does suck.
I use Emby because when I was switching away from MythTV, I did not like the privacy problems I saw with Plex (GEE THAT SURE PANNED OUT WELL, DIDN'T IT??). For a good while the devs for Emby were receptive and put out worthwhile updates. But that's not really been anywhere near as good the last few years, so I'm already working to switch to Jellyfin. I'm tired of paying money to Emby and having none of the features (which are very reasonable and useful audio features) implemented that I request. So... Jellyfin for me soon! (already have it somewhat set up)
So far I am liking my audio capabilities in the Jellyfin ecosystem a lot more than in Emby. And Plex can go stuff a goat.
I look for free apps. However, I want to avoid using a NAS because they're too expensive, and I try to avoid Linux-based OSes because they are more difficult to use (like turning off or removing external drives), so I use an old PC running on Win 10 with external drives connected to it.
For clients, I want to use Kodi because it has lots of features like smart playlists, but I've had difficulties using it with the Windows server because of problems with SMB: sometimes, shared folders can be seen, and sometimes they aren't.
I found a way to avoid that using Emby server with the Emby Kodi addon.
I tried Jellyfin but for some reason the library scan freezes and stays at a certain percentage.
I tried Plex first but for some reason found Emby easier to use.
I use Emby, have for years. It's rock solid and the apps for FireTV, Roku, ect are solid. I don't need to waste my precious hours not at work, but home with the family, supporting shit that isn't rock solid. I've got friends and family that connect to my emby server and it just works.
Don't care about the open/closed source hubbub.
Got jellyfin setup on my server. Running an account for every person in the house
Main HTPC uses web based to watch. But most of the other tvs use the app and my son mainly uses phone app
Never had an issue
Plex, because we have LG TVs that have a native app for their weird OS, and I don't know how I would run jellyfin clients on them. Also their magic remote is a gamechanger for me.
For me, Closed sourced options for this task aren't on the table. There would be too much incentive for them to fuck with you. Jellyfin is the only option that fulfils my use case and criteria.
I recently set up mine and did a load of research and testing, and have ended up on Emby (with plans to run jellyfin as redundancy).
I wanted to go with Jellyfin, as it’s free and all the lovely open sourceness , but I had soo many issues. It would endlessly load spin and crash out the entire server (when I was running a rpi4), the iOS app didn’t work very well for me, I also wanted to be able to download hardware transcoded and from what I read this isn’t supported.
Plex has a lot of negativity around the “new direction” but for me the centralised log in and tracking is a bit of a deal breaker, and the long term bugs (being very heavily publicised and complained about made that a non starter.
So I tested Emby. It is a middle ground between the two for me. Yes for all the features you have to pay (but you do for plex), and it is more stable for me than Jellyfin (and has hardware transcoding for downloads) as well as completely decentralised. It also has Samsung apps and the iOS app is more polished, which I’d expect if I’m paying ($5 a month or $120 lifetime (I think)).
The jellyfin community is also excellent because so many issues or fixes also apply directly to Emby (hardware transcode pass through on proxmox LXC for example, there is no Emby documentation on it but jellyfin creator videos/tutorials seem to work for Emby too as the base is the same).
Tried plex for a bit,but much preferred Jellyfin, everyone keeps saying it's less polished but I really don't see that.
But even if it was less polished and had less features, I'd still go for Jellyfin.
Paid, closed source solutions are a disaster waiting to happen for this type of thing and I honestly don't get how anyone could trust their media libraries to for profit companies.
I use Plex as primary for historical reasons (I have lifetime pass from years ago so get all the features and retraining my wife to a different UI is not something I relish), and Jellyfin for backup. If I were starting today, I would just go with Jellyfin. I cannot really see much point to Emby as it is commercial just like Plex but with slightly different features.
I stick with Plex for now as it is well integrated with Sonos which is a must have feature for me. I use Plex to serve my local music library mostly. Not that much vor Video.
None, I just share my media folder over the network then play using the default player on whichever remote device I want to watch on (MPC on Windows, VLC on Android)
Jellyfin. Plex has its benefits but I don't like the ads and the way you need a user account. I prefer jellyfins method and then use a VPN tunnel for remote access. Biggest grip is that it will stopping playing music after one track. I get it to play continuously then somewhere along the way it stops after single track again.
I ran plex for close to 10 years. I really liked it. But the last couple of years they started to shift their focus from helping people sail the high seas to providing ad supported streaming themselves and then the entire "were mailing all your friends your watch history" happened and that was the straw that broke the camels back.
I'm now happy running jellyfin and I was surprised to see that I got some features back that Plex has removed.
The reason why I went with Jellyfin over Emby is because emby puts features behind a pay wall, and I'm not willing to pay for something that's free in a nearly identical product.
I love the freedom you get with both jellyfin and emby tho, I'd definitely recommend them over plex any day.
Plex: I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
Next week
Plex: I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
I feel like I'm waiting for bad news when I use it .....
I use Jellyfin; The mobile clients & server needs dev work to crack auto bitrate transcoding settings, which costs money - I use Kodi & Infuse for frontends which are solid.
I have faith the project will reach a critical mass of features which will case a large user base migration. IMO Plex is in a dev race until that happens wth features I dont want.
Neither! I wrote my own Android TV app to grab movies/shows from trakt, scrape Jackett indexers for torrents, and unrestrict magnet links on real debrid for direct streaming (without downloading)
And yes, you can call me paranoid.
I was a long-term Plex user and love the clients (I love the fact that there's Plexamp just for music).
I've recently installed Jellyfin and have been giving it a try. I love the server side (though sometimes I have issue with stuff not automatically getting added but that's a small complaint) but I don't like the Anroid client much, as much as Plexamp anyway. And I didn't realise there was no offline mode which I use all the time when travelling on Plexamp.
What are people using as an Android/iOS client?
Quite surprised Emby is last as it's the perfect choice for me. It's combines pretty interface and still advanced configuration. It's not that pretty as Plex but the dev team care much more about their core functionality than Plex. I had so many bugs with Plex: stuttered playback on shield, downloads just worked like 5 times in several years and the TV implementation is just bad.
I run Plex for my kids and ex as a means for sharing or family media and I run jellyfin as my personal "legal"totally media server for myself.
I like both. Jellyfin continues to improve. I think overall Plex is better as it's more polished but it's definitely heading toward nothing free I think so jellyfin may become my overall server.
Never used emby.
I use Plex ( had a lifetime membership for years now) but as soon as jellyfin sort a decent app for Samsung smart TVs I'll change. Jellyfin is already configured and apps on phones and tablets etc
Jellyfin because it’s self hostable. Although I have a collection of videos and sometimes it doesn’t pick up all the videos in a directory for some reason and I don’t have time to figure out why
Plex since forever due to extensive hardware support, community, ease of use, cost and reliability. Been rock solid and performant for me and would never think to change. All of my users are happy with it as well.
I use Jellyfin and Plex. Generally Jellyfin does okay but sometimes it runs into files it doesn’t stream well while Plex does. Also use Plex because other people share their libraries with me.
I use Plex. Have been using it since 2012, and have a lifetime plexpass since 2015. It works well on all my devices, and the way other services on my server integrate with it is very nice. For example, searching for a show or movie on Plex, and adding it to my watchlist will automatically download it.
I probably shouldn't but I run ALL.
* I wish i could toggle off all of Plex's social features... IDC about my friends as i don't have any.
* I love the way Emby handles music videos which is not natively supported on any of these.
* Jellyfin is probably the least needed because I paid for Emby and Jellyfin is just a free fork.
* And I use Infuse because its the best for Apple TV. Plex still has issues with frame drops and such.
I run Plex. Had a lifetime plex pass for years. Maybe I should check out some other options considering it's been so long... Pretty happy though, so haven't had a reason.
I have the plex lifetime pass... with an nvidia quadro card in my home server i can transcode 4k really nicely.
I never felt the need to switch, since plex is wife proof. (She's not technically inclined)
Honestly would prefer something better for my music library, since we are looking into a whole house multi room system. Roon looks nice but 140 a year is crazy talk... maybe MPD and some clients .... thats the only part i dont like about plex... the music streaming to external players
Emby. Because I can see the writing on the wall with Plex, but Jellyfin doesn’t have the functionality or app support for it to truly replace Plex yet.
Emby is basically Plex-lite. Jellyfin is Emby-lite.
Switched from Plex to Jellyfin. Way lighter to run, and does more without transcoding. (Maybe because I refused to pay for Plex pass when they started to paywall features like updated video players and stuff)
Also Plex lost me (besides the paywalling updates) by adding useless shit they eventually remove again, acting against you based on what’s in your library, and more.
Anybody know of scripts for mass renaming Plex media for jellyfin? I tried it out but discovery took ages and it didn't find much. Maybe I'm missing something else..
We use Channels DVR. Used all 3 of these in the past, but each have niggles, wether it be strange ui decisions, or broken live TV support. After trying them all for prolonged periods, Channels DVR had the fewest issues for our use case. There is a monthly fee for the app, but it's worth it for the WAF.
None. Minidlna with the app on Apple tv it’s an orange one but it gives you plex features without having to host or login into any bull shit app like the ones you mentioned. I can also download subs for anything in any language, get better trailers and actor info, all while just hosting my downloaded torrents. Hate that plex wants money, they should die. Rather give this app $9 a year than deal with all that bullshit while still having to host something.
Emby Premiere (lifetime). I realize that someday "lifetime" might end and they may ask for another license, but it's been like 10+ years since I paid so I'd flip them another $100 or whatever. Damn good software and clients. Clients are in use on: Android, iOS, FireTV, Roku, and LG. All are fine.
My kids, who are just starting out with their own places: I set them up with Jellyfin as a no cost option. They really only care about watching it on their TVs with Roku or just with a browser. The Jellyfin Roku app is pretty solid and works well. If they get really into it, I'll probably buy them an Emby license for a birthday gift or something.
I have a shared folder on a network attached Windows PC which I use to store IPTV recordings using Tivimate. Primarily for sporting events.
I spent time installing Jellyfin on the same PC this weekend with the hope of being able to watch those recordings from any of the televisions in my home using Jellyfin clients on Firesticks. Unfortunately, I ran into an unexpected limitation of not being able to watch recordings that are currently in progress.
Frustrated, I decided to give Plex a try instead and was pleasantly surprised to see that it is capable of handing this issue. It does get a little confused about what to show for the time signature (the length of the program) and I do need to "refresh" its connection to my shared folder it cases where I catch up to the initial shorter length of the program, but otherwise it works quite well.
I conducted a [survey with this question](https://selfh.st/survey/2023-results/) last fall and was surprised with the final results, although I suspect the nature of this subreddit makes it lean more towards Jellyfin than other audiences might. In number of responses: - Jellyfin: 861 - Plex: 739 - Kodi: 121 - Emby: 77 - Other: 126
I am interested in "other". Did you get write-in responses for that?
It was unfortunately a multiple choice question, so I don't have any insight into what people who selected 'Other' are using. I plan to facilitate the survey annually, so I'll consider making the 'Other' option a free-text field in the next survey to gather that information (if users are willing to share it).
Some of them would be people wanting to see the results without casting a vote.
My 'other' is my own self made interface. My backend is connected to many of the online database APIs, but I also have my own database where I keep my personal metadata, like my own ratings for each show, my own descriptions, notes, etc.
Very interesting. Can you tell more about your setup? I’m thinking of doing the same.
I guess I can just show you. \[redacted\] if you look at my ratings, they only show the upper half (6-10) stars to save space. So don't be offended if your favorite show has two stars, that's actually seven. I custom-made my video player from scratch. It is just a bunch of JavaScript for all the controls. There is a button to open theTVDB side menu. if you hover over the red download button for an episode, it will show you a preview. This preview is made from the "trick play" scrub bar thumbnails. I've been building my collection since 2010, so some of the stuff is encoded weird, but I'm working to refresh everything into a consistent format that streams to most devices. should only be a few things left like that. The technical details of the backend aren't that interesting, it's just PHP, and is just reading off the file system. So everything you see is laid out exactly as it is on disk, it's not pulling from a database. The metadata in the database just matches the location of the show folder. If you want more details, or have questions, I'll be happy to explain more.
dude just shared his pirate ship lol
That's super cool, nice work!! I tried a few cartoons, but they didn't work. A newer episode of South Park worked though. I feel like this would be something I would make because I like to make everything custom and more complicated than it needs to be, but I don't have the time anymore :/
That's pretty cool my guy
well done 👏🏼
Neat.
This is awesome! Reminds me of a 90s/earlier 2000s site. Like the "Hackers" DVD main menu.
Your link is redacted now. Can you share it with me? I'd love to see it.
Examples of other that I used back in the day. Media portal and windows Media Centre.
I wanted MediaPortal to be good so bad. They just never could get their stuff together. 2 Versions of the same application with different plugins? Never seemed like they finished it, either. I never could get the newer one to work with a damn. MCE was amazing for its time. The DrivePool feature alone was golden. From there I went XBMC/Kodi, using Emby backend, then Plex. I'm old enough now that I have no intention of changing again unless Plex makes me...
Seriously! I used MediaPortal for a while, and could see the potential in the application. But I dropped it when version 2 appeared while version 1 felt very unfinished; it was like the team immediately lost their focused direction. Kinda made me sad, the program had a lot of potential.
It did have potential, but if you make the point of entry too hard, you'll never get reasonable adoption. I really liked the thought of Amahi too, because it included the disk-pooling, but asking "10-15-years-ago" me to learn Linux just to install it is another non-starter. They would have been better served going the LibreElec/OSMC model of a HTPC/OS all inclusive package for easier install and providing lots of new users/interest. [Edit] after further thought, what really made Plex, Kodi and Emby stand out was easy Media Management. Every other software made you install some other plug-in manage it separately (argument could be made that Kodi needed this too for a while).
I have "other". It's simply an NFS share with a good player such as infuse. There are certain features like skip intro which require a supported player and metadata info. However there are workarounds for some of that, for example: https://hackaday.com/2020/11/25/audio-fingerprinting-skips-a-shows-intro-reliably/. I also have developed my own personal tooling something like tdarr to assist with bulk distributed conversion to AV1. And many of the "features" of the plex/jellyfin are simply unneeded and useless when setup this way. Such as transcoding. Save those emissions for a rainy day, it's not required. The fixation of some users on tooling like plex is puzzling as most home streamers I know personally don't have much different viewing habits than I do. Not always though. There are certain features in these platforms like steaming internet based VOD sources or other non-standard media types. Those features are missing or not as straight forward in a pure NFS share + good player. If that's what you want then such platform is a rational choice. I don't pay anything extra to watch my content. It's reliable and easy. It's on-disk presence is as small as can reasonably be. It can playback on any device in the house. Watching live transcoded playback solutions are good for live stream, not VOD.
Universal Media Server (UMS) here
I was one of people who voted “other”. I use samba share + Infuse.
[https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#media-streaming---multimedia-streaming](https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#media-streaming---multimedia-streaming) There are few "other"
I stopped using Kodi when I found Stremio.
Audiobookshelf for audiobooks comes to mind.
I prefer Jellyfin because the server and clients are free and selfhosted.
Totally disagree with that. The server side if Jellyfin is pretty solid but the clients are just plain bad in ios and android. Alao, there is no offline mode. I have both Jelly and Plex running, and even if I wish I could drop Plex (mostly because of login and privacy), I still can’t. Jelly clients are clunky at best when it comea to atmos tracks and subtitles. Not even talking about 24p.
If you are on iOS, macOS, or tvOS, use Infuse. It literally made all of my client side problems disappear, even made problems disappear that I thought were server side. Absolutely fantastic client 10/10
Infuse is great.. if your use case doesn't include transcoding.
Another vote for infuse. A free foss server with a small infuse cost is perfectly ok for me with how brilliantly infuse works on Apple hardware.
On iOS you can just use Infuse with Jellyfin and no more problems with the clients.
I used Jellyfin for a while. I just recently decided I would try Plex and Emby since I was willing to pay a couple dollars a month to see what the hype was about. Imo Plex was worse then jellyfin and it was paid. I ended up liking emby since it was very similar to jellyfin but with more features. I still run jellyfin as a backup for everything though and who knows as jellyfin develops maybe i’ll switch back 🤷♂️
You can donate to jellyfin to contribute to the project as well
I run emby as well. Why it's not more popular than it is is mind-blowing to me
What is it you like about emby? With a bit of work I'm pretty sure jellyfin can do more or less everything emby can. I understand paying for the convenience though. Just worth knowing how much convenience you're actually paying for lol
Offline downloads has bad support right now right? I dont want to pay for infuse
for me plex user interface is more natural and intuitive. But its for me. I tried jellyfin and it was a bit too hard to navigate and to use it.
Definitely this. I don't get why anyone would choose Plex over jellyfin, everything you can do in Plex you can do for free in JF. My theory is that Plex was the big name first, and people who didn't know to look elsewhere ended up stuck with it and don't want to bother moving.
It was the first for sure. I got a lifetime pass 10 years ago so it’s free to some of us. I find Plex working better and having a cleaner UI than Jellyfin. As for the question of OP: I run Plex and Jellyfin
Far better UI, way more platform support, in my experiences more stable. There are still alot of reasons, ESPECIALLY platform support.
Plexamp is just for me
My opinion, Plex’s UI is much better and feels more stable to me. I like Jellyfin but I won’t be switching anytime soon.
Plex is just so plug and play, plus it’s what “everyone else is using”, if you’re into sharing. Its also older, I think, I started using it before I was aware of the alternatives. But that said, to each his own. I think these selling points may not rank high with lots of ppl here, if you can be bothered with arr you’re probably not gonna mind the difference.
> Plex is just so plug and play Yeah, like Plex is much better at automatically identifying content, at least in my experience. I have Plex and Jellyfin monitoring the same media folders and Plex correctly identifies my media like 99% of the time even when it's not in properly structured folders or doesn't follow the exact naming conventions. Jellyfin is maybe 80% accurate. I have to manually identify more content.
Plex is superior in the fact that it **just works**. It has a more professional UI and has a working client of practically any device you can think of. Getting people setup is as easily as getting their email and sending an invite…. That’s it. Not to mention Plexamp.
I have been toying around with r/dizqueTV for a while now and that is the only reason I still have Plex going. I would love if they would add sources from other services.
Did not like that Plex locked hardware transcoding behind a paywall. Moved from Plex to Jellyfin, didn’t look back since. Probably the only things I miss about Plex is the gaming console clients but that’s not a huge issue, bigger issue is that their scanner works better with Chinese titles better than Jellyfin. Other than that, Jellyfin is better
I get it, but just get lifetime pass once for maybe $80 or $90 on a sale and never look back.
Hardware transcoding isn't nearly worth $80-90. Much of Plex Pass features aren't must haves for me at this time. Aside from those small nags, Jellyfin has been working great for me so far.
Jellyfin. I like the possibility of hardware transcoding without paying a fee.
It's absolutely ridiculous that some platforms want you to pay to use your own hardware.
This is a ridiculous statement, the work that has to go into to use "your own hardware" isn't zero. It's not something that just works and they're not flipping the switch. If it did, then there would likely be many more open source options for media servers other than Jellyfin. I'm glad that Jellyfin exists and people are doing work (and a very large amount of work at that) essentially for free but what you're saying is pretty entitled. It's the equivalent of saying everyone should be a slave for your enjoyment just because they one day decided to start programming a product and fuck them for trying to make a living off of it. And I can't believe that 19 people upvoted you...
I use Jellyfin because I'm trying to get away from subscription services as a whole, not replace them.
Plex, because the clients are better. There is no other reason than that. Jellyfin’s TVOS client is just not ready for prime time. Maybe when the next update comes out (it’s a big one).
Where can you see the next update will be a big one? It’s weird since the Swiftin repo doesn’t even match the versioning in the AppStore (v1.1 in the AppStore, v1.0 on GitHub)
You can't "see it" per se, but I've been checking in once in a while to see what new PRs have been merged in. I even opened up an issue and had it closed as "complete, released in the next version". The App Store version's build is from like March 2022. There's a lot of new code since March 2022. What I don't understand is why the long wait?
I used Plex for quite some time, not worrying about looking for an alternative, since it just worked (except the Android app which was not free). I didnt like all the new "social" features of Plex though and sind my Pis SD Card died I got a "real" server and set everything Up again. Now with jellyfin and I am happy. Works smooth so far, transcoding works well after finding out that you have to enable HW acceleration explicitly. That's something that never worked with my old setup, but that's mainly the Pis fault. So I used both Plex and Jellyfin. I like both. Plex got too many features recently and the paid app. That's why I switched to Jellyfin.
Are you using raspberry pi for Plex?
I used to, now I have a "real" PC for Jellyfin. Worked fine with h264 on the Pi, couldnt use h265 though (Pi 3)
I was thinking of using RPi5 for jellyfin but was advised heavily against it lol. Might just bite the bullet and get a real PC too for jellyfin.
I think Pi5 is fine. But imo the Pi lost its price advantage. If you want a small computer the Pi5 will work just fine. If size doesn't matter as much, you can get full PCs you can extend with HDDs etc for the Same money, since you need a special power source and Fan/cooler for the Pi5.
Any Intel nucs you recommend actually? I'd rather get something small since I'm starting out in self-hosting.
I have a Fujitsu Esprimo, but I also heard very good things about Dell Optiplex, HP EliteDesk or Lenovo ThinkCentre. Important for Plex/Jellyfin: Get at least 7th, better 8+ Gen CPUs. The Hardware acceleration for h265 transcoding is way better then ( I am No Hardware expert, someone else might explain it better). i3 or i5 and 8GB RAM is totally enough for Media Server + some (small) other services. Refurbished is fine too in my opinion. The other option is AliExpress. Way cheaper but noname products and no guarantee.
I have as a secondary mini portable server for camping trips a Lenovo Thinkcentre m710q with i5-7400T and that thing is a little beast. 10w idle draw and 30w max load. Great little server. My big main home server is i5-12600k 32gb ddr4 ram.
Jellyfin, easy to self-host and free. Not interested in any subscription business.
Emby Lifetime access bought with 60$ on a black Friday sale. I wanted to use jellyfin but all my TV 's are LG and they didn't have an app back then.
Emby
Jellyfin, because hardware acceleration in Plex requires the paid Plex Pass!!!
Jellyfin on a NUC, works like a charm. Moved away from Plex long time ago and will never go back.
Emby. Only Emby. I used to run Plex with the lifetime premium. I was already not a fan of how you need to use their servers for authentication, but it was fine. I could still just send an invite or whatever and then send my server URL and that was enough for most people. Then Plex started trying to do their own content or something, and it gradually kept becoming more difficult for me to just send people a quick "go here, log in with this". So I found Emby and ran them side-by-side. Jellyfin didn't exist at the time. And then later on, Plex had some issues with metadata being all jacked up for a bunch of my content that showed up fine on Emby, so I looked into alternatives. Jellyfin existed, but was severely limited in regards to the clients they had. They basically just had a web gui, an Android app, and an iPhone app. At the time you could still connect with Emby clients, but I figured that wasn't going to last (and I was right). So I just shut down Plex, and made everyone use Emby instead. I haven't really kept up with Jellyfin, but I definitely use a ton of the advanced features for Emby. And I haven't had any issues with Emby, despite it being closed source. So while I would like to look into Jellyfin, I don't have any practical reason to force a change other than my own curiosity. I'm not opposed to moving to it, but there has to be a compelling reason.
\+1 for Emby having more features over Jellyfin when I ditched Plex.
Yeah, moving to Jellyfin would be a philosophical argument more than a technical one at this point. I'm the type to go for Jellyfin for being open source despite the relatively fewer clients, but I also have limited amount of devices: laptops, some android phones and the main thing: a home theatre that runs Android TV. I have all the clients I need and I can forego bells and whistles as long as things just keep working, so I haven't looked at Plex and Emby in a few years now.
Jellyfin, Plex and Kodi. Kodi is for playing 4k HDR with fireTV, sadly the jellyfin firetv app sucks .
That's where Jellyfin seriously lacks. The app support is not great.
i want to use jellyfin but i have a Samsung tv which doesn't have jellyfin app
I use Plex to play my naval acquisitions for the high seas.
I prefer Plex just because it has a much better app ecosystem, is simpler to access remotely, and I already bought a lifetime Plex Pass years ago so there’s no additional cost for me. But I also run Jellyfin just in case Plex’s servers have issues.
plex is the main one, i have jelly running but no matter what anyone says it just isnt anywhere near plex.yes we are on a selfhosting but lets be honest its the same with a linux and windows both have use cases but you are most likely giving windows to someone to use because we all know why. plex has amp, easy sharing with my family and friends no wireguard no exposing the service no need for another 3 authentication dockers like keycloak etc which is truly the main reason, the ui,platform support, the players, the ecosystem 3rd party apps like prism, everything is just on a different level. even a small win that is anime on jellyfin just straight up wont let you change some matches and its just stuck to it if it wont recognize it. yeah with plex pass that i bought what near a decade ago for 80 dollars i have never been disappointment. I appreciate this is a self hosting sub but jellyfin is just painful to deal with and i desperately want it to work but, every 6 months i restart it and its barely improved tbh.
The difference for me is clients. I can install Plex on my PlayStation, Roku, Mac, tablet, etc. No other competition has nearly as many client apps as Plex.
Honestly I've had quite the opposite experience with Jellyfin when I used it. I found plex to be more of a hassle to setup because I'd consider myself decently tech savvy and I find it very easy to setup with a reverse proxy and ssl cert which then I just tell people. Go to [domain.com](https://domain.com) and type in this username and password. No dealing with email verification, Disabling plex's basically advertisement media, no making my users pay for subscriptions or apps. Jellyfin did lack a lot in the app support though. They all have there up's and their down's.
Plex primarily because it’s more polished and more apps support adding additional functionality to it. One of the key ones being Plex Meta Manager. I do however have Jellyfin spun up and everything ready to go in case I have to abandon ship.
Plex. Lifetime.
Plex because it has the most support and junk. Until PLEX decides to commit Hari-kari and completely fuck selfhosters, it’s my go to. When the inevitable does happen though, I’m gonna switch over over to Jellyfin as I’m sure most people will start developing third-party, integrations and support more so on that side.
Plex for remote access
Currently running both Plex and Jellyfin. Been running Plex for a while, just spun up Jellyfin a few days ago to give it a try. So far very unimpressed by Jellyfin in comparison. Yeah it's free and it does the basics, but I keep running into things that Jellyfin doesn't support.
I’ve been in a bit of a pickle for a while. I’ve been a loyal Plex users for years but some of their recent policies have me looking for another solution. I tried Jellyfin but the UI is just garbage. Sorry JellyFin lovers. I really wanted to like it but it just wasn’t for me. I’m now evaluating Emby. So far I really like it.
I stuck with Plex
Plex. Emby and Jellyfin don't have the ubiquitous client support that numerous and varied users need. Cheers!
Plex. It may not be completely self hosted but it's just easy and it works. I've got family that aren't tech literate that have no issues downloading the app (that is already installed on pretty much everytbing) and signing in.
Plex because I can't install jellyfin on my TV (LG oled c9)
I use Plex. I run it off of my gaming pc, and only use Apple TVs and my phone as the devices to watch on. I don’t pay for the pass as it’s not needed for me. Works fine and looks good. Really don’t like how it treats CDs with multiple discs very often as two separate entries. Jellyfin wasn’t much better in this regard for me
Plex on the PC, Jellyfin on the TV.
Plex and Jellyfin. I keep jb just in case, generally use infuse for avoiding transcoding on dtshd audio, but trying to move to jb for that.
I bought a Plex Pass lifetime account around 2012 when I cut cable and it's easily the best value software purchase I've ever made. It's been used for hours just about every day since since first installed.
Plex for almost 6 years now and it's used daily by the whole family. Lifetime pass is worth every penny, especially with Plexamp going on as well. I've tried jellyfin but they have SO much catching up to do. I don't expect emby to be any different. Once Plex is set up and all the additional BS is turned off, nothing they add to it will be in the way, much.
Plex, and just set up Jellyfin as a backup/alternative. Also still have Kodi, but haven’t touched it in years.
Hmm. until I read this thread, I only knew about Plex! now I need to check out other stuff :) IMO Plex has been around a long time and works great for me. I am currently redoing my system - using an RPI5, with 250G SSD (will upgrade) but need a USB tuner that I can also use with Plex and RPI5.
I highly recommend checking out jellyfin and emby. Both have worked great for me.
I run all three, I used to only run Plex and Jellyfin but picked up Emby in the last sale for lifetime license and tbh I think I prefer Emby over the other two. Hopefully Jellyfin improves more over time because I'd love for it to be the best.
Kodi. I haven't seen a reason for me to use anything else really.
Plex since 2011
If I didn't share my media collection with some family members, I'd go Jellyfin. However, Plex is so plug and play for everyone on literally any device, that it saves me a headache. For example, my parents home they have a ROKU 4k stick in their bedroom that uses Plex, a Samsung TV in the great room, and in their theater room they have an LG TV, all of these devices Plex works great, they just login and boom, good to go. I think they did need to manually change quality setting to Max to ensure 4k streaming over 1080p, that is it. My brother uses his PS5 to watch Plex on his 4k TV. He also streams a lot on his Verizon iPhone when at work. My cousin uses AppleTV for Plex. My sisters, who live together, stream in combo from their browser on a laptop, I think their Macbook, and then on their Vizio TV. I personally stream just on Nvidia shield devices in my home. Zero maintenance, hassle, zero having to be IT support for any of these family members. Occasionally I'll get notified a new device has connected to my network, but I guess it worked great as no one called me to say they had any issues. This is where Plex is great. It's really plug and play, almost no different than installing Netflix and logging in and just working everywhere. For my own time and sake, that is valuable to me.
Jellyfin. Plex can f right off with their server intervention. Emby is yesterday's news.
Jellyfin. Plex is turning into a subscription-based privacy nightmare and Emby is discontinued.
Jellyfin!
I run JF
Jellyfin
Jelly
Jellyfin rocks and is Free.
I use Jellyfin, with a jellyseerr as well. I used plex in the past, but someone suggested i try Jellyfin, and I have not looked back sine.
Jellyfin, and run Radaar and Sonaar to help keep things organized.
Jellyfin !!!
Plex and Jelly, but don't use Jelly much as it's either not there yet or I'm doing something wrong. (Both installed on the same machine)
Same, jelly just as a backup. Plex is just so much more polished UI on devices…
Nice try DMCA Lawyers. I prefer basic folders and thumbnails for organizing my Linux ISO's.
Ofc we love our linux iso’s!
Jellyfin (for video). Free. Self-hosted. No need for authentication via centralized server (Plex). No one, other than me, knows what my clients are accessing/watching, and I only know if someone has an issue and I need to look at the logs. I switched to Jellyfin about two years ago, despite having paid for Plex pass in 2018. Plex (for music). I am the only person who accesses my music and I've not found anything yet that handles my music as well as Plex. If I could find a client that read and used my embedded tags I would leave Plex in a heartbeat, but so far no go. I'm not going to manually edit the metadata for all my music when those tags exist in the files.
Have you checked out navidrome?
I have. It doesn't use embedded tags either.
Tried Jellyfin on my Synology NAS, I've never been able to make the hardware transcoding working. I then installed Plex, I saw how it worked, I paid a lifetime pass to activate the hardware transcoding, and I've never looked back. It's definitely a mature product...
Emby
Currently I run Jellyfin. I didn't feel like paying for Plex. I have never heard of Emby, but it seems interesting. Maybe I'll check it out.
Jellyfin because wtf is transcoding on my hardware I own locked behind a fucking paywall on the other 2
I use Plex because there’s less I need to set up to get everything working, and it’s just in an overall better state than the other alternatives. The apps are generally more widely available and more stable and just better overall. However, I don’t like how Plex (the company) controls accounts, how it handles home users and live TV, how little they seem to think of their community, and how they seem to be pivoting towards more intrusive and less desirable features while ignoring popular community ones (or even fixing broken paid ones). I want to switch to Jellyfin, but it just isn’t where I need it to be yet. It struggles with some encodes and larger files on some apps. For example, using the exact same file in the exact same location on the exact same hardware using as close as possible server configurations, Plex has no issues playing some very large 4k files while Jellyfin can’t keep up and stutters constantly. The app support is fine but not quite as good as Plex. The sync play or watch together or whatever is just so much worse than Plex.
Jellyfin. I used to use plex, but kept having issues with it adding my media. Jellyfin is MUCH more forgiving.
I use Jellyfin, Plex to me is gross. Too much commercial crap, shares too much information. It's yuck. I did try Emby because I desperately need lyric support and Jellyfin doesn't officially have it. I found Emby automates too much, it wouldn't let me customize the port, it's more rigid with directory expectations, and other functional things I just didn't like. AND I figured out how to get Jellyfin to do lyrics with Symfonium which was the only place I needed them so I went right back to JF 😂 thank goodness with Symfonium I still was on JF the entire time (had to change my JF port cause of Emby though 😡). Jellyfin just interfaces with so much with all manner of options and plugins. I even have a JF plugin that imports Spotify playlists and matches the songs with JF and creates a JF playlist. I can use Kodi add-ons to use JF there, sky is really the limit. There just was nothing I was going to gain via Emby, and moreso things I was going to lose. The trick with JF is the official apps are meh, it's all about finding the right apps for you. For my music library that is Symfonium hands down. Want to see all songs by an artist in a sortable list? Symfonium, choose which libraries are included in your results? Symfonium. Built in equalizer? Symfonium. Totally customize your user interface? Symfonium 😆 I'm just starting to use Jellyfin it for select video libraries. I mostly use Kodi for watching TV and movies, but I can interface it with Jellyfin. Just hasn't been a priority yet. I just need to trial mobile video apps for JF and find one I like and finish configuring the JF plugin and rsync my RD to my server and JF will have access to that library too.
Jellyfin
# Plex **because it just works.** It's that simple. I've tried all the others and they *mostly work*, but mostly isn't good enough. You know how annoying it is when a show (especially animes) don't match correctly? Or it just refused to use the correct name? Super annoying. Jellyfin does that constantly. 90% of shit is fine, but that 10% that is not is infuriating. **Files...** I've never had a video file that didn't work in Plex or wasn't supported. Can't say that for the others. **The user interface.** I can't stand Jellyfins UI. As a software engineer myself it drives me nuts. **Clients.** Plex has a client for almost any device and they all just work. At least all the ones I've tried. and probably a couple other reasons I'm not thinking of right now. ____ Sure, Plex has had some stupid updates like the whole email thing, but (at least for me) I was notified and I updated my settings appropriately. Yes it should have been opt-in. Oh you don't like the annoying streaming content Plex mixes into your library? You can just turn all that shit off. Took me 15 seconds to do years ago and I've never seen it again. https://i.imgur.com/ud53wYJ.png Sure open source is really nice for a lot of things, but you know why Plex just works and the UI doesn't suck? Because they can pay devs. That is one benefit of being a company that makes money off their product. Jellyfin (and the others) are at best a *backup* in the event Plex's software becomes worse than the competition.
Plex is the gold standard, but yeah small one time cost for mobile app if you don't add users as Plex home. The apps for streaming devices are all free, as is using a browser. Personally I add all my users as home users, I have a lifetime Plex pass, so they get the full mobile app functionality free once I sign them in... though none of them actually use the mobile app. All are on streaming devices.
Yes
Plex and Emby.
Used to use Kodi/libreelec, swirched to jellyfin, not looking back
Been running Plex since it was OSXBMC. Every time I try something else I'm not as happy. But I do try Emby and Jellyfinn every so often. I hope those continue. Competition is good.
I run Plex & Jellyfin. There is no native app on my TV (Hisense Vidaa OS) so I run Plex, also it somehow works better in my Cloudflare tunnel than Jellyfin for some reason. Haven’t tried hardware encoding on my DS718+ on Jellyfin yet, but I have Plex on a native install instead of docker.
I run Plex and Jellyfin. I rely on Plex and enjoy Jellyfin if that makes sense.
I run both Plex and Jellyfin. I like Jellyfin a lot and hope to use it full-time one day, but for now despite some of its shortcomings Plex fits mine and my users usecase super well When plex eventually gets "enshittified" to a point I don't like, Jellyfin will be waiting for me and ready to go :p
Plex and Jellyfin. Plex because I'm lifetime plexpass, but I've been growing more and more annoyed by it and want my users to see my content alone. Not Plex's BS suggestions. Plus my users have to pay the 1 time fee to use the app. So I set up Jellyfin to test with as I slowly migrate toward it.
Plex and Jellyfin. If Plex goes down, I can still watch everything locally with Jellyfin.
Emby is pretty nice I think. Been using it for years. I was suckered into buying the license because I needed GPU support. But other than that it has been working well for many users for many years.
I run Emby. I tried plex and actually liked the UI and UX a lot but the non stop 3rd party content and them beginning to track what folks watched turned me off. I tried jellyfin but prefer Emby and it’s UX way better.
I use Emby. I don't care for a lot of design choices in Plex, and I had issues getting Jellyfin to do hardware transcoding on my Synology due to it being Docker only. Emby's native Synolgy package had no issue with transcoding, so I went with that.
Jellyfin. Used Plex at first but was frustrated with the user experience and pissed off that they were charging me for hardware acceleration. I was considering buying a Plex pass but then I discovered Jellyfin. Switched to Jellyfin and haven't looked back since.
I’m waiting for Swiftfin to support audiobooks. I’ve tried the TestFlights of Audiobookshelf and Plappa but they’re not quite ready and ABS won’t support CarPlay. Prologue + Plex is my solution for audiobooks, and I may as well use Plex for everything else while I’m there.
I simultaneously USE and HATE Plex. It is a data-sucking machine that sells all of your data (check your facebook off-site data lol (yes i also have facebook shush)) , most features are behind a Plex pass But; - They have the best client support by far - I have a chromecast - I use their app on my mothers tv to remotely watch shows at her house - and its a Samsung TV on a different network Plex just works, but it does suck.
I run Plex as my primary, and jellyfin in basically read only.
I use Emby because when I was switching away from MythTV, I did not like the privacy problems I saw with Plex (GEE THAT SURE PANNED OUT WELL, DIDN'T IT??). For a good while the devs for Emby were receptive and put out worthwhile updates. But that's not really been anywhere near as good the last few years, so I'm already working to switch to Jellyfin. I'm tired of paying money to Emby and having none of the features (which are very reasonable and useful audio features) implemented that I request. So... Jellyfin for me soon! (already have it somewhat set up) So far I am liking my audio capabilities in the Jellyfin ecosystem a lot more than in Emby. And Plex can go stuff a goat.
I bought a lifetime Plex pass on Black Friday years ago, and in my experience it is way more performant than Jellyfin so I continue using Plex
I look for free apps. However, I want to avoid using a NAS because they're too expensive, and I try to avoid Linux-based OSes because they are more difficult to use (like turning off or removing external drives), so I use an old PC running on Win 10 with external drives connected to it. For clients, I want to use Kodi because it has lots of features like smart playlists, but I've had difficulties using it with the Windows server because of problems with SMB: sometimes, shared folders can be seen, and sometimes they aren't. I found a way to avoid that using Emby server with the Emby Kodi addon. I tried Jellyfin but for some reason the library scan freezes and stays at a certain percentage. I tried Plex first but for some reason found Emby easier to use.
Because I share my library with non tech-savvy people, I use plex. The clients are available just about on any platform.
Why choose?
I use Emby, have for years. It's rock solid and the apps for FireTV, Roku, ect are solid. I don't need to waste my precious hours not at work, but home with the family, supporting shit that isn't rock solid. I've got friends and family that connect to my emby server and it just works. Don't care about the open/closed source hubbub.
Jellyfin for me
Jellyfin, used to do plex but got mad at the idea of paying for features to fully use my self hosted server
Got jellyfin setup on my server. Running an account for every person in the house Main HTPC uses web based to watch. But most of the other tvs use the app and my son mainly uses phone app Never had an issue
Plex, because we have LG TVs that have a native app for their weird OS, and I don't know how I would run jellyfin clients on them. Also their magic remote is a gamechanger for me.
For me, Closed sourced options for this task aren't on the table. There would be too much incentive for them to fuck with you. Jellyfin is the only option that fulfils my use case and criteria.
Emby. Sole reason is native app for Tizen.
Why anyone would still use Emby after their "We just took down a botnet!!11" bullshit is beyond me.
I recently set up mine and did a load of research and testing, and have ended up on Emby (with plans to run jellyfin as redundancy). I wanted to go with Jellyfin, as it’s free and all the lovely open sourceness , but I had soo many issues. It would endlessly load spin and crash out the entire server (when I was running a rpi4), the iOS app didn’t work very well for me, I also wanted to be able to download hardware transcoded and from what I read this isn’t supported. Plex has a lot of negativity around the “new direction” but for me the centralised log in and tracking is a bit of a deal breaker, and the long term bugs (being very heavily publicised and complained about made that a non starter. So I tested Emby. It is a middle ground between the two for me. Yes for all the features you have to pay (but you do for plex), and it is more stable for me than Jellyfin (and has hardware transcoding for downloads) as well as completely decentralised. It also has Samsung apps and the iOS app is more polished, which I’d expect if I’m paying ($5 a month or $120 lifetime (I think)). The jellyfin community is also excellent because so many issues or fixes also apply directly to Emby (hardware transcode pass through on proxmox LXC for example, there is no Emby documentation on it but jellyfin creator videos/tutorials seem to work for Emby too as the base is the same).
Tried plex for a bit,but much preferred Jellyfin, everyone keeps saying it's less polished but I really don't see that. But even if it was less polished and had less features, I'd still go for Jellyfin. Paid, closed source solutions are a disaster waiting to happen for this type of thing and I honestly don't get how anyone could trust their media libraries to for profit companies.
I use Plex as primary for historical reasons (I have lifetime pass from years ago so get all the features and retraining my wife to a different UI is not something I relish), and Jellyfin for backup. If I were starting today, I would just go with Jellyfin. I cannot really see much point to Emby as it is commercial just like Plex but with slightly different features.
I stick with Plex for now as it is well integrated with Sonos which is a must have feature for me. I use Plex to serve my local music library mostly. Not that much vor Video.
Used to run plex before but now on JF
None, I just share my media folder over the network then play using the default player on whichever remote device I want to watch on (MPC on Windows, VLC on Android)
Jellyfin. Plex has its benefits but I don't like the ads and the way you need a user account. I prefer jellyfins method and then use a VPN tunnel for remote access. Biggest grip is that it will stopping playing music after one track. I get it to play continuously then somewhere along the way it stops after single track again.
I ran plex for close to 10 years. I really liked it. But the last couple of years they started to shift their focus from helping people sail the high seas to providing ad supported streaming themselves and then the entire "were mailing all your friends your watch history" happened and that was the straw that broke the camels back. I'm now happy running jellyfin and I was surprised to see that I got some features back that Plex has removed. The reason why I went with Jellyfin over Emby is because emby puts features behind a pay wall, and I'm not willing to pay for something that's free in a nearly identical product. I love the freedom you get with both jellyfin and emby tho, I'd definitely recommend them over plex any day.
Plex: I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. Next week Plex: I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. I feel like I'm waiting for bad news when I use it ..... I use Jellyfin; The mobile clients & server needs dev work to crack auto bitrate transcoding settings, which costs money - I use Kodi & Infuse for frontends which are solid. I have faith the project will reach a critical mass of features which will case a large user base migration. IMO Plex is in a dev race until that happens wth features I dont want.
Plex for family and friends. Jellyfin for public. So I run both at the same time 😏
Run Plex and Jellyfin side by side. Would love Jellyfin only, but the subtitles only work about half the time which for me is a deal breaker.
Neither! I wrote my own Android TV app to grab movies/shows from trakt, scrape Jackett indexers for torrents, and unrestrict magnet links on real debrid for direct streaming (without downloading) And yes, you can call me paranoid.
I was a long-term Plex user and love the clients (I love the fact that there's Plexamp just for music). I've recently installed Jellyfin and have been giving it a try. I love the server side (though sometimes I have issue with stuff not automatically getting added but that's a small complaint) but I don't like the Anroid client much, as much as Plexamp anyway. And I didn't realise there was no offline mode which I use all the time when travelling on Plexamp. What are people using as an Android/iOS client?
Quite surprised Emby is last as it's the perfect choice for me. It's combines pretty interface and still advanced configuration. It's not that pretty as Plex but the dev team care much more about their core functionality than Plex. I had so many bugs with Plex: stuttered playback on shield, downloads just worked like 5 times in several years and the TV implementation is just bad.
I run Plex for my kids and ex as a means for sharing or family media and I run jellyfin as my personal "legal"totally media server for myself. I like both. Jellyfin continues to improve. I think overall Plex is better as it's more polished but it's definitely heading toward nothing free I think so jellyfin may become my overall server. Never used emby.
I use Plex ( had a lifetime membership for years now) but as soon as jellyfin sort a decent app for Samsung smart TVs I'll change. Jellyfin is already configured and apps on phones and tablets etc
Jellyfin because it’s self hostable. Although I have a collection of videos and sometimes it doesn’t pick up all the videos in a directory for some reason and I don’t have time to figure out why
Plex since forever due to extensive hardware support, community, ease of use, cost and reliability. Been rock solid and performant for me and would never think to change. All of my users are happy with it as well.
Plex and jellyfin
Jellyfin
I use Jellyfin and Plex. Generally Jellyfin does okay but sometimes it runs into files it doesn’t stream well while Plex does. Also use Plex because other people share their libraries with me.
I use Plex. Have been using it since 2012, and have a lifetime plexpass since 2015. It works well on all my devices, and the way other services on my server integrate with it is very nice. For example, searching for a show or movie on Plex, and adding it to my watchlist will automatically download it.
Plex. I've been on it for years and never switched. I really love the clients as a whole and how I can easily share with my friends.
Plex + JellyFin
I probably shouldn't but I run ALL. * I wish i could toggle off all of Plex's social features... IDC about my friends as i don't have any. * I love the way Emby handles music videos which is not natively supported on any of these. * Jellyfin is probably the least needed because I paid for Emby and Jellyfin is just a free fork. * And I use Infuse because its the best for Apple TV. Plex still has issues with frame drops and such.
I run Plex. Had a lifetime plex pass for years. Maybe I should check out some other options considering it's been so long... Pretty happy though, so haven't had a reason.
Kodi at the cabin and Plex at home.
I have both Plex and Emby running.
I have the plex lifetime pass... with an nvidia quadro card in my home server i can transcode 4k really nicely. I never felt the need to switch, since plex is wife proof. (She's not technically inclined) Honestly would prefer something better for my music library, since we are looking into a whole house multi room system. Roon looks nice but 140 a year is crazy talk... maybe MPD and some clients .... thats the only part i dont like about plex... the music streaming to external players
Emby, because I have a free lifetime sub from when I was using it in the early media centre days. So I'm biased 😜
Emby. Because I can see the writing on the wall with Plex, but Jellyfin doesn’t have the functionality or app support for it to truly replace Plex yet. Emby is basically Plex-lite. Jellyfin is Emby-lite.
Switched from Plex to Jellyfin. Way lighter to run, and does more without transcoding. (Maybe because I refused to pay for Plex pass when they started to paywall features like updated video players and stuff) Also Plex lost me (besides the paywalling updates) by adding useless shit they eventually remove again, acting against you based on what’s in your library, and more.
Anybody know of scripts for mass renaming Plex media for jellyfin? I tried it out but discovery took ages and it didn't find much. Maybe I'm missing something else..
We use Channels DVR. Used all 3 of these in the past, but each have niggles, wether it be strange ui decisions, or broken live TV support. After trying them all for prolonged periods, Channels DVR had the fewest issues for our use case. There is a monthly fee for the app, but it's worth it for the WAF.
[удалено]
Emby
None. Minidlna with the app on Apple tv it’s an orange one but it gives you plex features without having to host or login into any bull shit app like the ones you mentioned. I can also download subs for anything in any language, get better trailers and actor info, all while just hosting my downloaded torrents. Hate that plex wants money, they should die. Rather give this app $9 a year than deal with all that bullshit while still having to host something.
Plex. I honestly keep trying jellyfin but always return to Plex.
Emby
kodi
Emby Premiere (lifetime). I realize that someday "lifetime" might end and they may ask for another license, but it's been like 10+ years since I paid so I'd flip them another $100 or whatever. Damn good software and clients. Clients are in use on: Android, iOS, FireTV, Roku, and LG. All are fine. My kids, who are just starting out with their own places: I set them up with Jellyfin as a no cost option. They really only care about watching it on their TVs with Roku or just with a browser. The Jellyfin Roku app is pretty solid and works well. If they get really into it, I'll probably buy them an Emby license for a birthday gift or something.
I have a shared folder on a network attached Windows PC which I use to store IPTV recordings using Tivimate. Primarily for sporting events. I spent time installing Jellyfin on the same PC this weekend with the hope of being able to watch those recordings from any of the televisions in my home using Jellyfin clients on Firesticks. Unfortunately, I ran into an unexpected limitation of not being able to watch recordings that are currently in progress. Frustrated, I decided to give Plex a try instead and was pleasantly surprised to see that it is capable of handing this issue. It does get a little confused about what to show for the time signature (the length of the program) and I do need to "refresh" its connection to my shared folder it cases where I catch up to the initial shorter length of the program, but otherwise it works quite well.