Because Jellyfin did not exist back then and does not have feature parity today? But I know you just wanted to show everyone how smart you are for using Jellyfin…
Not at all. At least three or four people have said that PLEX has better features, but no one so far has said what features make it worth using or what makes it better. I found that Jellyfin was one of the easiest things to set up once I started my home server. I don’t have any background in tech or IT, I’m just a hobyist.
I went with Jellyfin when I was setting it up because it seemed easier and had a more active support community, but from looking at the two, they seemed basically interchangeable. I’ve never had a reason to look for something else, since Jellyfin works better than most of the corporate apps on my TV. It loads faster, has less lag, and is easier to navigate than Netflix, Disney, Prime, etc. My zero-tech family find it easy enough to use daily.
When I found out Plex charged, I thought that they were actually managing your remote storage or something. What is the market for people who want to pay to access their own files on their own hardware? I genuinely don’t get it. If you want to share it, out of your home network there is always Tailscale or the like.
Setup for Plex isn’t just easier, its basically non existent. Run the exe, point to folder, done. HW encoding just works, transcoding just works, metadata gathering just works.
remote streaming. No need to setup an elaborate VPN scheme and install a client for it on every device you want to have remote access. It just works and even punches through CGNAT and the like
Clients. Plex has a client for every system under the sun. No need for sideloading or anything like that, they are everywhere
UI. Plex has a sane and good looking ui for the streaming client and the admin interface.
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Jellyfin is not bad, but its just not a replacement for Plex. And the way the devs are acting, I doubt it ever will be
Because Jellyfin did not exist back then and does not have feature parity today? But I know you just wanted to show everyone how smart you are for using Jellyfin…
Not at all. At least three or four people have said that PLEX has better features, but no one so far has said what features make it worth using or what makes it better. I found that Jellyfin was one of the easiest things to set up once I started my home server. I don’t have any background in tech or IT, I’m just a hobyist.
I went with Jellyfin when I was setting it up because it seemed easier and had a more active support community, but from looking at the two, they seemed basically interchangeable. I’ve never had a reason to look for something else, since Jellyfin works better than most of the corporate apps on my TV. It loads faster, has less lag, and is easier to navigate than Netflix, Disney, Prime, etc. My zero-tech family find it easy enough to use daily.
When I found out Plex charged, I thought that they were actually managing your remote storage or something. What is the market for people who want to pay to access their own files on their own hardware? I genuinely don’t get it. If you want to share it, out of your home network there is always Tailscale or the like.
(Assuming you have a Plex pass):
Setup for Plex isn’t just easier, its basically non existent. Run the exe, point to folder, done. HW encoding just works, transcoding just works, metadata gathering just works.
remote streaming. No need to setup an elaborate VPN scheme and install a client for it on every device you want to have remote access. It just works and even punches through CGNAT and the like
Clients. Plex has a client for every system under the sun. No need for sideloading or anything like that, they are everywhere
UI. Plex has a sane and good looking ui for the streaming client and the admin interface.
–
Jellyfin is not bad, but its just not a replacement for Plex. And the way the devs are acting, I doubt it ever will be