Plex, Emby, or Jellyfin
Plex, Emby, or Jellyfin
Hi all! I have been using Emby for about a year now, but I was wondering, after the recent botnet debacle with Emby, if I should switch my media provider.
Anyone have experience with all 3? I really only have experience with Emby.
Some things that I'm interested in:
- Automatic file management is a plus
- Multiple users on mobile devices
- Roku apps
Plex is easy and works on everything I use it on. Easy enough that my old parents can use it. I know some people are bothered by their recent pivot to try to have some legitmacy but it's trivial to ignore their commercial-subsidized content
or, ya know, use a downloader and save that content just like any other streamer.
I've used Plex for 10 years+ and Jellyfin for few months. Plex handles media recognition great and has an easy match function for the videos that aren't automatically recognized or need to be fixed. I have a few friends/family that I share my library with and it's easy for them to get connected remotely using their phones and roku/firestick without any issues using their plex accounts. I have the lifetime pass so my mobile devices connect for free but it there may be cost to install the mobile app.
Plex has expanded their free/ad-supported movies/tv shows but I have enough content I haven't explored it much. My server isn't very powerful so I can only have 2 streams going at once for my library which is mostly x265 content with a bunch of x264 content as well but that's enough for my needs.
I use a roku as my main client and besides some flakiness with the wifi from time to time it works fine, responsive and you can use the mobile app or http://remoku.tv/ as remote controls too in addition to the physical remote.
Plex rocks, the lifetime subscription is worth it. If you want Roku Apps get a Roku and use the Roku to access Plex.
I hate Plex. It's gotten too bloated.
I run Emby primarily, but not externally accessible [vpn]. It works really well for me, haven't had any issues.
I use Jellyfin to put some stuff for the toddlers. It works on Amazon Fire Kids, while Emby doesn't. It works ok, but it's definitely less polished than Emby, and I feel like it's not as stable. Could just be me though.
I would like to second the issues with Plex. I understand their desire to try and mainstream themselves and have a non-sketchy reason for people to still install them, but at some point it became too much of a mess and I went back to Kodi, which is great but not applicable for your use case
Plex was my second media server. Serviio was my first, and was just a DLNA service with a few sorting and metadata options. After Plex choked over and over and I kept having to manually fix watch status, I moved fully into Kodi. Never had an issue. If I want to backup the metadata and watch status, it's a simple process as long as kodi has wrote access to my media library. Not that it helps OP, but it's all I am looking for.
I've used all three and here is what I have most recently settled on: Jellyfin as a backend server with Infuse on the frontend. It has been rock solid for the last two years.
Do you know if Jellyfin can do the media management (like metadata editing)?
Yes. Then those edits flow downstream to Infuse.
I've been running Plex for years (maybe a decade or more). Yes, there are a bunch of mainstream-ish features that I don't use. It's still simple for everyone in my family (including older parents) to navigate and use. I use it for movies, TV, and it runs a photo screen saver with family pics.