If Jellyfin covers all your needs and you’re already familiar with it, there’s not much reason to change to Plex.

Plex pass will let you skip intros and credits. It’s a nice-to-have. It will let you download your media to your phone/laptop so you can view it without an internet connection. Also a nice-to-have, but not a huge selling point.

I like Plex for how easy it is to access my media from outside my network. The apps are great, and it’s easy to add family and friends so they get access too. With Plex pass you can give them filtered access - great with kids in the house.

My Plex server runs from my Synology 920+, and I’ve never had any luck getting transcoding to be a useful feature - lots of freezes and buffering. Better to have the arr’s grab media in a format that will direct play on the client and not bother with the headache.

I use PlexAmp and it’s a very good music player on par with anything else.

Nothing is so good/problem free that I wouldn’t replace it in a heartbeat the moment Plex does some questionable changes to the service. I got my Plex pass many years ago at a third of the cost that it is today, and I didn’t really know what I was getting, other than making the Plex app free for everyone logging in to my server.

Well, It Just Works™. Until recently I haven’t had any reason to change. It’s user friendly, easy to set up and looks great.

Though I’ll be switching to Jellyfin soon, when I have the time, because (for reasons irrelevant to this comment) my NAS where Plex is located doesn’t have access to the internet which somehow means Plex cannot show me my local files which I’m not particularly fond of.

What I’ll be missing when I make the switch is an app for Tizen TVs.

I don’t mind paying for the past and future development of a service I enjoy. Transcoding is an essential feature for me. While it’s a free feature of the processor, developing software support for it took effort. Other services provide that support for free, but Plex bundles it with other features they charge for. I think that’s fine. As I see it my money goes to support the full experience, from wide app support and good UI to Plexamp and other fun and useful side projects. In fact in a way I am subsidizing much of the experience for free users. Again, I don’t mind, as long as it means Plex’s development and maintenance continues.

I don’t get why people get so tribal about this. I think it’s great Jellyfin is a free and open alternative and if that works for you, fantastic!

Jellyfin isn’t even close to the level of polish and ease of use as plex. It’s junk when compared side by side.

Why?

Because I picked up a lifetime pass over 10 years ago, long before Jellyfin/Emby was even heard of.

Back then, it worked perfectly fine, and now it works, perfectly fine.

It has a good app on my Rokus/Shields. It just works.

When, it stops working, or they pull something stupid, I have Jellyfin already ready to go.

Until then though, plex reigns king. (Also, I like its interface more then Jellyfin)

Plex is still on top for sharing your server with others and offers clients on so many more platforms. My TV for example is a Samsung and there is no Jellyfin app for it. I run both side by side because I prefer jellyfin for use on my devices but there’s a time where having plex there is useful

I’ve never used jellyfin so I can’t compare. But plex has always worked well for me and I believe in paying for software that I enjoy using.

Now my question is, why?

jellyfin isn’t nearly as polished as plex. it’s like running windows 98. emby looks better than jellyfin!

I’m a quasi-techy with a userbase of one. I haven’t tried Jellyfin or any of the alternatives, and I’m not a power-user with all the bells and whistles for things like PMM, Tautalli, Sonarr/Radarr etc so take what I say with a pinch of salt.

“It’s really nice.”

I wanted my own Netflix. It’s super easy to add things, to edit the metadata, customise my libraries and display art. I tried it before anything else and because I literally just want something that manages my films and TV stuff, it does everything I need it to.

If you ever had the satisfaction of going through an itunes library and tidying all the metdata from MP3s you pulled from Kazaa, Limewire, Soulseek etc, it’s a bit like that for me. Dopamine-triggering organisation wrapped up in a pretty package that I can add prerolls to when I want that ‘cinema’ vibe.

Is it the best? Yes? No? Maybe? Am I happy I got the plex pass? Absolutely.

“There are many installations like it, but this one is mine.”

Jellyfin does not have a global auth

Plex transcoding quality is better, simply.

See my post here.

I bought the lifetime pass many many many many many years ago when it was cheap… dirt cheap and love it… my family uses Plex daily. We have no paid streaming services and no paid TV services just Plex. Only thing I cannot make work in Plex well is IPTV as xTeve just sucked and was constantly dropping channels because the Channel Guide Feed would have an issue when it was refreshed and Plex would say “sorry no guide no channel” and just mark it not available. It was a weekly fight.

I have over 150,000 FLAC audio files and tons of 4k movies and TV Shows. Kids love to watch their shows and movies as do my wife and I.

I have Jellyfin setup for IPTV and have used it off and on for years. The iOS client has remained “okay but clunky to me.” I mean it works, but really gets no love no real updates and while I dont have a great need for Transcoding with Plex it is nice to have that feature. The Roku client is the same. I have mostly Roku TCL 4K TVs and streamers and that client has looked the same and clunky for years. Again it works (explodes occasionally but really it does work pretty solidly) but Plex just brings so much more to it to the media you are watching.

Would I pay the higher price for PlexPass now if I did not own it or just use and live with JellyFin? I would most likely still pay the price (on sale when they send me the discount code) and get the deal. It is just worth it to me.

Also the home user lock down features like I can share specific libraries or just specific TV shows or movies with my kids I like with Plex. Not sure If I can even do that with JellyFin (never researched it so it might be there).

My Jellfin server has crashed a few times for no ryhme or reason without having touched it for a couple of weeks (no patches, no watchtower for docker, just dead). Plex has been fine.

Plex has proper intro skipping.

I was able to set up parental controls on Plex very quickly without any headache.

The wife/kid factor. Plex was/is easier for them.

The amount of time I have invested into managing Plex over the past decade is still less than I have into managing Jellyfin in the past 3 years.

Lifetime plexpass was gifted to me.

1. No app. Just web required
2. No user management - that’s handled by someone else (Plex)
3. Stupid simple (app for everything) so end users (family) don’t have to… figure it out. Thus fewer IT tickets for me.
4. Just works.

I moved from plex to jellyfin. I was on plex at first because I was a noob at docker, and plex had a simple package install for my Synology.