PLEX or Jellyfin? MY PICK using both for Years! 

Don't miss out! We have an awesome newseltter: techhut.tv/ Also here is a great video from NASCompares if you want the inside scoop of Plex as a company: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-C7APJCqBADE.html

I started to dislike Plex when they started to get pushy with their own content years ago. I currently use Emby, but Jellyfin would be my second best choice.

For Apple TV, I use infuse as my Jellyfin client. Can also be use for Plex too.

I have both pulling from the same library. Prefer Jellyfin and use it at home, but run Plex for remote access after several failed sessions of trying to get Jellyfin working via caddy or similar

Jellyfin with Tailscale works perfectly if you want to share your library with friends/family. It's very secure too.

I use Jellyfin with Kodi. Jellyfin as central progress and metadata library and Kodi as a player on my devices. Kodi has support for all the media standards and a very powerful interface, addons and general player. This has been the perfect setup for me at home and on the go. Kodi can also download videos and sync progress back once you have internet/connection to Jellyfin again.

The feature i really want for jellyfin on androidTV is to be able to browse through your library by the year/decade. You can browse by genres and letters, but not by the years. That sucks.

Thank you for the video. The one thing this video, as well as others, seem to neglect is comparing the recording and playing of over-the-air and cable TV shows. Plex often misses a recording of mine and I would be interested to hear how people have found Jellyfin in that regard. It's been hard getting info on Jellyfin's capability and reliability in that department.

Run both I have all of the kid friendly libraries on Jellyfin because of the access issues when service provider is down. I scale down the videos to helps with traffic. Plex is great for traveling with a few gsm unlocked tablets. Most countries have prepaid services. 😂😂I travel a lot and always get a sim if I’m staying more than a few weeks

Do you have port forwarding enabled on your router? When you’re internet goes out I think that not having port forwarding on your router might be causing the inability to use Plex during an internet outage.

Do you have a guide on how to setup plex/jellyfin and hardware transcoding for docker plex/jellyfin container on proxmox? I already have it setup to GPU passthrough from your guide for that and Windows 11.

What is an optimal app to use on a Firestick for using Jellyfin? When I search Jellyfin everyone says it's just a media server. Not like Plex that has the Server and the App/media player to use?

Personally, I prefer Plex due to the fact that they have apps for literally any platform without any weird hacks or third-party ones but recently plex has been going downhill so I might run both and see how they stack up. TLDW powered by the youtube transcript and chatgpt: The person prefers Jellyfin. They mention in the transcript that they have multiple years of experience with both platforms, but they personally prefer and love Jellyfin. However, they also mention that they are currently using Plex on a daily basis, possibly for some specific reasons like client-side applications and external sharing convenience. But overall, their preference and love seem to be for Jellyfin, which is a free and open-source media server platform.

Good video all around. When my Plex server crashed and had to rebuild it form scratch, I first tried out Emby and Jellyfin. I was like 90% there on both of them, but couldn't figure out remote watching on both. It's just WAY easier on Plex. Gave up on both and went back to Plex. Bought the lifetime pass on one of those sales for that price, well worth it.

I really liked your solution. Could you please tell me what hosting system you use? Proxmox, or CasaOS or etc?

One of the things we do with Plex. We're fans of an NFL team in another state. To get around the high cost of NFL Sunday Ticket, I set up a small NAS, HDHomerun and TV Antenna at a location in that state. It's worked great for years.

What affordable cloud storage works as a plex media server for streaming? I'm always on the road and setting up a stationary server isn't a option for my lifestyle. I'm always on the road due to work. Please any feedback would be appreciated

Are you running this on a Raspberry Pi? If so which pi and how much memory on the pi? Any settings for the pi? Thanks.

Can you cover the differences between Jellyfin and Emby?

I used Plex a while back between 2017-2019; then just started using streaming services more. Now with prices I'm back up and running with jellyfin for a solid few months now. 12 users total. Friends and family. Maxed out about 7 streams on my upstream with no issues. Compliments well with Jellyseer too. My biggest gripe is lack of support for other clients. On Jellyfin media player or web it works great. All the neat features I got working load fine. But for majority of clients its bare minimum. No good skins, layout is buggy if I change anything with CSS. Background trailers, intro music etc.. Its fine for the most part. But I do want have something as close to Netflix but self hosted. A man can dream. Still way better than plex in my opinion. I have a lot more control.

I have a 4.3" waveshare touchscreen, Pi4 and DAC. I hate music streaming because sooner or later you lose signal when you need it. Can you recommend something free that functions as a player for a small touchscreen?

From a 10 foot interface Plex doesn't let you browse your own media without clicking 6-7 times on the remote to get to it, which never used to be the case.. now with them trying to push their own stuff it's really gone down hill. Wish Jellyfin had better clients. Plex interface and controls on tablets is a lot better.

I use plex on my NAS and TV because my Samsung TV has the Plex app built in. But it doesn't have Jellyfin. So, how do you use Jellyfin to watch movies ? For most viewing, I find that with a well organized library, just using DLNA works fine. Thanks for the video though. I know a lot more now than before.

I tried adding an m3u to iptv service on jellyfin and the guide loads very slow. Got any recommendations?

I still run both, since Jellyfin tends to be buggy here and there. But Plex, is just rock solid, zero issues, even in the free version.

Hello! I'm new to this and would like to use my PC a server and my xbox series S to watch the media, jellyfin is ok for this?

A plus about jellyfin is that if you're a switch owner, there's a homebrew app.

I’ve never had any issues with Plex if the internet goes down… obviously the online features grey out, but local works fine. Weird.

are your films side loaded ? or did you have to actually copy them in from your personal dads. is this what is needed to host my media. and game ? I also want to host my websites and client websites on my own server can this all be one ?

HW transcoding is random on plex and seems sluggish as it freezes at times or doesn't use HW at all. Wondering if Jelly is a better solution for overall performance.

anyone out there where this can be used to stream audio: thinking of using old computer and use Unraid and place plex and or jellyfin to broadcast music. can this be interfaced with azuracast (an open source audio streaming)

How do you actually get the shows and movies on there thought?

I have a server, running UNRAID, Intel 14900 14th gen, z790 AORUS Master X, 2 sticks 94gb DDR5 5600mhz ram, 2tb NVME cache. I have Plex Pass, I have audio going off and on that I would forward and rewind a bit for the audio to come back, also towards the end of the video, the video would stop playing, this only happens towards the end of the show. I've encoded the videos in h265 with ACC audio, and it still happens. I've also messed with Plex settings. the issue still persists. I've even encoded the video to AV1 with ACC audio and still persist. Looked online, and a lot of people are having these issues with Plex.

I love my plex setup. But I have a server with a lot of ram and and processors, I'll run another VM w/ jellyfin, this looks cool. I just found an app on my smart tv for jellyfin so my friends and family can use it too. To them they'll probably wonder why the hell I'm making them use another app for the same library, but I just want to see it work.

New Plex app won’t work with older Plex server, which I can not upgrade

Jellyfin has so much potential but the clients still need improvement. Currently using Emby but I still keep up with the development of Jellyfin, specifically their iOS and tvOS clients.

Tried both Plex and Jellyfin. I preferred Jellyfin but missed certain features that Plex had. I moved to Emby, which I wished I had done a long time ago, so much better than both Plex and Jellyfin and has clients that work flawlessly on virtually any device.

Anybody have any experience with Wiim and Jellyfin? I cannot seem to get the Wiim Pro I have to see Jellyfin. I can get it to see my Windows 10 Jellyfin server. Jellyfin can see it and play to it using DLNA. I am just trying to host my ripped FLAC music library.

The machine you showed at the end. How many people can watch same video at a time?

My internet goes out at times, you can fix Plex to still work without internet Authentication for local network access by adding the local IP's or range

I have both installed on my Asustor NAS. I prefer Jellyfin purely because Plex seems to be accessing the NAS drives almost continuously, as if it is always scanning the folders for new content, and there is no settings to stop this. As soon as I disable Plex on the NAS the drive activity drops by 90% over the course of a day. I don't know if this is a bug in the version of PLex that Asustor uses (android .apk). I have tried updating it, uninstalling and reinstalling but this always happens.

Does any one have a discord or any group anywhere discussing all these topics?

Thanks for the video. Do you use Plex or Jellyfin for recording live TV? I do like Plex but if I could get that feature for free with Jellyfin, that might be worth it for me to switch. I'd like to record local sports and let my family watch from a different area.

Plexamp is the only reason i would stay with Plex, bc I use my server heavily for music. Is there anything on Android with similar functionally for Jellyfin?

Could I use Linux mint set up jellyfin on that

You can exempt your LAN devices from requiring Plex external authentication to access your server (Internet down, no worries Plex still works for you, and your kids are happy!). It's right there in Network settings, at the bottom! Always amazed that Toobers that talk about/review Plex don't know about it! Right up there with tnot knowing about the NAS installer packages and that plugins don't exist anymore (probably because they never updated their server!).

how to get rid of plex saying unauthorize access. I cannot log in on my server using plex.

For plex and having users stream your content, do you need multiple plex passes? Like one per device doing the streaming?

Why use docker? Is it important? Thanks for telling about the Internet down problem. I don't understand why offline content needs internet when it's transferring over wifi.

Plex got overly complicated and bloated. I went Jellyfin. Done with Plex.

I done with plex, using 2 shields and they have so many problems, with no support fix them

Plex amp is honestly to good for me to ever thonk about switching to anything else. Otherwise i would have switched to jellyfin permanently

Anyone know which is easier for including Closed Captions or is that kinda automatic? I have a deaf spouse so need CC. Thanks

I find jellyfin more resource heavy on CPU and RAM when using it on raspberry pi 4. Thanks to that prefer plex.

“An unformal review”. Yep. Got it. And did I catch a few “li-berries” in there? I wonder if you could do this with a raspbrary pie.

Can either PLEX or Jellyfin stream via Interet. Lets say I'm an another country where my server is can I stream my personal photos and videos on my home server?

I want to like Jellyfin, but firstly I have to manually install on my QNAP NAS whilst Plex is in the App store. Now that is not enough for me not use it but the other two issues are the dealbreaker.I use it solely for my large music collection and this is where it loses out. Firstly, it doesn't catalogue my collection properly whilst Plex does everything from the music tags on the files. But the biggest difference is speed in use...Jellyfin takes ages switching between directories or between categories whilst Plex is instant.

I've tried jellyfin and for some reason my GPU goes to 100% all the time while I'm streaming and changing subtitles takes forever. On Plex I don't have neither of those problems. ps: I have a RTX 3060.

Where do you recommend to download gd quality movie content

Great video. When my home server is back up, I plan on trying out both. I've been using Plex for a long time and apps are available for everything. I am not sure if my other TVs have an app. My cousin has shared his collection with me and my network is double NATed and plex really hates it (as far as I can tell). I share my collection with my parents and sister and they don't have plexpass. My parents just got internet at their house so setting up Jellyfin locally might still be better. I've been looking to replace my plexamp as I listen to a lot of audiobooks and want to share them with above family members. Does jellyfin allow for things like downloading subtitles? 4 or 5 years ago, when I was shifting my collection from DVD/BR, I didn't always rip the sibtitles. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon without subtitles is fun. Plexpass let me download subtitles.

so far i will stick with plex because of 3 main features: a client for every device without having to side load an app, transcoded downloading and Truenas support. But if they can get AV1 encoding, transcoded downloading and a client for Tizen i would jump to it.

Do either of these have a random play feature? I want to rip the movies and shows and have them queue up at random. Too many short nights cut shorter by picking something interesting to watch 🤦‍♂️

i use Jellyfin to index the conference videos i download, it's not great but it get's it done

What is the point of both of them?

Is your bias more based off the fact you have paid for Plex? I Do understand Jellyfin is a little less "refined" but it seems to be pretty good for free

My internet would go down so often before they fixed it, Jellyfin is the perfect fit for me, no internet? No problem.

Im running plex on a pi4 8gb and runs perfectly.

Does Jellyfin have the ability to detect intros yet? That feature alone made Jellyfin unusable for me when I looked into it a few years ago.

I wish you would have talked about this but I hear that jellyfin handles live TV a lot better than Plex because you're able to share it to all users that you give the ability to have access into your home server. Plex only allows you to share live TV to your home accounts.

Unfortunately my LG tv does not have the jellyfin app in its store

Just wondering why don’t people just use Stremio, you just click a title and it loads sources.

DLNA one love! I have MiniDLNA on my old netbook (1 gig ram, atom cpu). Even Raspberry Pi can handle it! Can it run PLEX or Jellyfin? NO!

Good video.

I love looking at my meatah data in my liberries while watching my shows on rooku

had plex for a few years now hopped on over to jellyfin for about a year or 2. my previous NAS had only 2 HDD's and with plex i noticed even if the NAS has nothing to do plex keeps doing stuff preventing the drives from ever going to sleep. with jellyfin once it's done the nas actually starts to idle and even sleep if it's got nothing to do. (yea NAS HDD's don't need to sleep...might even be better if it doesn't but spending 24 hours a day doing something or spending 18 hours sleeping i feel better about it actually gooing to sleep when it has nothing to do, now i have the OS and docker containers running of a volume on a SSD and have only my media/backup's on the HDD's so those are off/sleeping unless i'm actually watching a show. also the plex app for my TV's OS was junk, the plex app on android TV at the time kept having issue's, and i bought a new tv (cheap one but with the intent to run app's natively) and later a google chromecast with android tv so i didn't have to use my damn phone to cast plex to my tv as that app did work well >.> jellyfin might have less app's but so far...it has worked better :P

September 2023 - first issues, Jellyfin didn't display many shows present in the TV folder displayed by Plex, it also showed 2-3 versions of the same show (usually seasons merged in Plex). Also, can't install Jellyfin on the Samsung TV downstairs, it's just not in the store... So yes, Jellyfin looks promising but it's still way behind Plex.

Jellyfin have one bad thing, if you stop movie/tvshow when left few mins, and turn it on later, that episode/movie is marked as watched.

Lieberry?

Its only going to be a matter of time with Plex's content provider relationships before they start reporting or banning people for sharing media outside their household which is why they want you to authenticate on their cloud platform and not locally like Jellyfin. I've always been very suspicious of my data being stored in the PLEX cloud and what they can see like my media library, who is watching it etc... and I believe it will only take a major studio to lean on them before they starting sending out cease and desist letters and start pulling back on their core offering of a local media streaming platform.

I have both. same media. I like Plex for the DVR funtions. I already paid the Plex Pass for the life time guide data. I'm not paying again or a monthly fee for Jellyfin. I like Jellyfin for the Transcoding (AV1).

How did Emby get left out?

Plex not playing local media when it's raining is the most frustrating thing for me.

sadly only plex work on my old tv with netcast os

I jumped into Plex almost 5 years ago now and I loved it but they are getting pushy with their stuff and constantly wanting me to review movies that we have watched on our own server which is super annoying. I may give something else a look now and see how it works compared to Plex but we do like Plex and I have the lifelong subscription which gives us the ability to watch our own stuff when we are away which is great.

Really should have compared Plex to Emby since Jellyfin is just a less capable split from Emby.

I am staying with Plex. Jellyfish is to complicated. Have to install to many extra things to get it work on my nas. While Plex isn't perfect it working well for me.

Samsung smart tv has no app for Jellyfin.

Jellyfin android app for tv is not very good user friendly, i prefer Plex or Emby have a user friendly client.

@4:21 ups, torrent download my friend - very bad ;-)

The only reason I use Plex is Roku. If I had AndroidTVs I would use JellyFin, but I can't stand AndroidTV ads and interface.

Stremio with torrentio and real debrid :)

!! Exclaimer for people using Samsung TV with its Tizen OS - It does NOT support Jellyfin or Emby clients, and you are basically forced to use PLEX as your only option. Sure, you could use some dongle instead, like Chromecast or whatever else, but come on... This was the deciding factor that made me choose PLEX over other servers. Otherwise, I'd go with Jellyfin that has one option in particular that other media servers do not - ability to change position of the subtitles on the screen, which is a huge bummer for me while using PLEX where you're limited to three basic settings - top, middle and bottom, and bottom means the very bottom of the screen instead of the bottom of the video frame, which I'd prefer.

why no love for Emby ? i have used all three (am using both Emby and Plex for many years now) and personally I prefer Emby sufficiently over Plex to have pulled the trigger on the lifetime licence. Visually, Emby is way ahead of Plex. One might argue that the main purpose of any Media Browser worth its salt is to be unobtrusive when i am actually consuming my media. In the same way that any good OS should be competent, but not intrusive (Linux Yes, Windows absolutely NOT). But the presentation of the media for my perusal and the enjoyment of the metadata whilst browsing my media, is simply way way prettier with Emby (IMO). And Jellyfin in comparison (being a fork of Emby) just feels less refined, less complete and less featured than Emby. Emby wins out for me, Jellyfin second and i would run it if i was not already running Emby, and Plex in third place

What is mata data?

I also have both installed, but Jellyfin is missing lots of features. In the browser HDR doesn't work properly, and I don't think it tone maps either. The majority of my movies are UHD Blu-ray and are all in HDR. Plex is definitely more convenient, but I'd prefer Jellyfin if it had all the features and functionality I needed. Jellyfin also crashes for me sometimes especially with very high bitrate content on my SHIELD. On the other hand, Jellyfin does 2x natively and it works with auto-transcoding. Plex can do 2x in the browser with a plugin, but it's not setup for transcoding that fast. Both of mine are using the same transcoding settings too. As far as I've seen, it's impossible to properly setup anime on Plex. Jellyfin let's you set "this special plays after episode X". Plex doesn't do that. It's required for anime with all their movies and OVAs and weird half-seasons.

If you portforward udp 1900 that should fix your offline in house streaming.

I.use the free plex

I left plex because I had to use their service to access my media.

Plex is my legacy system, my Samsung TV doesn't support Jellyfin and is also EOL-ing support for a few apps. Bye bye Samsung, never again. Plex on Android costs ££, Jellyfin works just fine. I run a VPN on my router, so no firewall setup either. Fortunately installing both servers on my NAS was easy, and I have no problem having both sharing the same library. As for my tv, when Samsung undermine the software too far then I'll just get an HDMI dongle. I'm not replacing perfectly working hardware just because a company has decided I've owned it too long.

Plex now has ads on the home screen.