I have only used Plex very briefly before I moved to try Emby then Jellyfin. Granted I am not a heavy user of a media server - basically no one else in my household uses it, and I don’t have a lot of content, but I do use sonarr / radarr with it.
The moment Plex put me off was when I realized a Plex Pass was needed to add transcoding capability. What are some of the reasons people like Plex better than Jellyfin, other than those who have been using Plex forever and are just too lazy to explore other options?
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I use both in my home but I have friends and family that use only Plex. Plex currently is much more user friendly as it has apps everywhere and is simpler to use. Having to enter an URL is already a non-starter for many non-techies.
I personally love Jellyfin even with its drawbacks and quirks. But usability and ease are what’s more important to me.
I use Jellyfin on different platforms (Sony TV, Set top box with Kodi, phone, PC) - basically all I need are the Jellyfin clients for these different platforms namely
- Jellyfin media player for Windows
- Jellyfin for Android
- Jellycon for Kodi
For me there is no need to enter any URL on these clients (except the initial setup that is). Is Plex much simpler even for the initial setup? Sorry like I said I haven’t really used Plex.
For normal daily usage I haven’t really run into any problem with Jellyfin… just click and watch.
IIRC, once you install the plex server software, it sends you to the server’s login page to complete the setup where you link the server to your account, so you actually never have to enter an ip anywhere. Following that, you can log in to the plex.tv website from anywhere and get access to your media (as long as your router allows upnp), no need to set up reverse proxies or get your ip or anything. Then if you want to share your library with friends, all they need to do is make a plex account and you can give them access via invite links.
Same here. If anything I found Jellyfin far simpler to set up than Plex (used to use Plex, transitioned to Jellyfin).
With Plex, there’s zero URL input even on initial setup. You just login with your username/password and off you go.
It’s the initial setup that scares people in my life. They hardly know what a username/password is.
Daily usage of Jellyfin, 100% agree. I use it daily as well, even have Jellystat installed even though I’m the only one who uses it.
Hey quit reading my mind. This is exactly what I was gonna say
External access is much easier to get with Plex. Not everyone can setup a reverse proxy and the process gets even harder when your ISP assigns you a new public IP address every 24 hours (like mine does)
Yeah I think this would be one of the areas where Plex has an advantage over Jellyfin. Thanks for letting me know.
I managed to set my Jellyfin server up behind a reverse proxy, but yes that took a while to do.
I would suggest using a Tunnel; I personally use a TailScale funnel to reverse proxy my Jellyfin setup. No need to worry about IP address changes then. If you already reverse proxy things, use one of the other ports TS Funnel allows.
From TailScales docs: “Traffic over Funnel is subject to bandwidth limits. They are not currently configurable.”. This is the same problem the CloudFlare proxy has, have you ran into any performance issues or throttling using funnel?
I haven’t, no. But not many are using it currently. I would assume that bandwidth limits are more for large, terabytes of data, rather than a few hundred gigs. Could be mistaken though.
Plex has a client app on just about every single media player out there and they have a simple single sign on solution.
So I personally run both Plex and Jellyfin, Jellyfin for myself as I’m willing to put up with some of the hoops I have to jump through and Plex for everyone else who just gets an invite email, creates an account and suddenly has access to all of my content on every single device they own.
Once jellyfin has reliable apps on every App Store and a simple way of getting non-tech savvy users onboarded I’ll move everyone over to jellyfin. Until then, it’s just for me.
I personally haveb’t used Plex, but one feature they have that I’ve heard is hard to give up is automatic intro and credit skipping.
This is why I won’t switch, also syncing to phones/laptops
It is a very nice QOL feature to have but I rarely miss it. Hopefully JF will get it officially soon.
We started with Plex because the Jellyfin desktop client did not play nice with the remote that I have. I switched to Jellyfin when I set up an Android TV client, and I chose Jellyfin because of the immediate access to hardware transcoding and use on mobile devices.
But honestly, I prefer Plex’s UI (though sometimes it stutters), on the spot downloading of subtitles, and subtitle offset features. But as I start to update our library with more 4k titles, hardware transcoding is clutch.
There doesn’t seem to be a straight forward way to set up a tv tuner.
I use plex pretty much exclusively for Plex HTPC. Neither of the Jellyfin alternatives to it meet my needs from a usability and customizability perspective. Jellyfin MPV Shim comes close, but for some reason it constantly resets the subtitle and audio tracks I have selected for future episodes.
Plex seemed easier to get into but I’d rather run open source where possible so it was an easy choice for me. Like yours mine is also for the *arrs but we’ve fully migrated to using those with jellyfin as the primary source of media since Comcast seems incapable of not downing the internet for whole days lately
