8 ms·

How does this compare to Plex?

by thesausageking 5y ago

colordrops 5y ago
Jellyfin is more like Plex. Kodi is more like Roku.
- DrewRWx 5y ago
  - Plex is a closed source fork-and-re-write of an MacOS XBMC port that was codenamed OSXBMC. - Jellyfin is a fork of Emby at the version before it went closed source. - Emby was an open-source re-implementation of Plex. - Genealogy is weird.
eco 5y ago
Plex is actually a (significantly diverged) fork of Kodi (then called XBMC). They might not share any code at this point.
- DrewRWx 5y ago
  There was at least one complete rewrite since the OSXBMC devs days.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure Plex is a complete rewrite that only shares the name of Plex with that fork, and well the inspiration of it as well .
  - razze 5y ago
    Actually had some people that worked on XBMC go and start Plex, bad blood included.
Quick2822 5y ago
I used XBMC (and then Kodi) for many years, had it installed on AppleTV, FireTV, etc, etc but I eventually migrated fully to Plex. I found that I prefer Plex over Kodi when dealing with local media. Eventually Kodi only felt useful if you wanted to dive into the world of streaming movies and shows from various shady sources.
hellisothers 5y ago
Plex is significantly more polished and pleasant to actually use, especially for normals. Kodi has more customizability if you like but it still feels rough around the edges.
callmeal 5y ago
> How does this compare to Plex? Quite similar, but without all the invasive monitoring and telemetry. For example: you need an "account" to run plex on your local network.
BeetleB 5y ago
Kind of sad none of the responses really answered the question in detail. What I would like to know: 1. What features does Plex have that Kodi doesn't? 2. What features does Kodi have that Plex doesn't? I get that at this point it is somewhat an apples/oranges comparison, but still: As a Plex/Kodi user, what am I not getting that the other provides? I know Kodi has a lot of plugins, but I'd like to hear of specific examples of plugins and how people use them in a way that you can't with Plex. Edit: One somewhat useful Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/mciv5l/kodi_vs_plex/gs3vpy9/ https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/mciv5l/kodi_vs_...
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  I really wanted to move to Kodi to be able to run everything locally (Plex requires a login etc) but it was way too much friction for my use case (and I don't think it is such a unique use case). I keep my media in separate folders for each genre and wanted to do a one-to-one mapping of folder to "library" so that I can just click on, say, "sci-fi" and see all the movies for that in a grid and so on. Plex makes this very easy and for Kodi, I had to do investigate all sorts of workarounds like creating "dynamic views" (or something similar I think) and even then it wasn't as smooth and easy as Plex. Also, some of the features require specific themes which is not a great design IMHO. Basically gave up and have continued with Plex - it seems to be the gold standard in the balance between polish and features (always happy to explore other options though).
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    Your experience echoes mine to a certain extent. When searching for a media platform, I tried various ones including Kodi (and the various forks/environments like LibreElec et. al), Plex and others. I also have a folder hierarchy which Kodi doesn't respect (very annoying) and played around with Plex as well. However, I am unwilling to log in and share telemetry about my own personal library with Plex. As such, I went with MythTV, which isn't as slick as Plex or Kodi, but does most of the job (that is, manage my local media library). It lacks in streaming options, including podcasts and the devs seem much more focused on the DVR than anything else. That said, for what it does, MythTV is pretty good, but there's a lot it doesn't do.
jaimex2 5y ago
Kodi is for power users, Plex is for anyone who just wants a place to host their media collection.
- DrewRWx 5y ago
  You can mix-and-match too! Plex puts out an official Kodi plugin: https://github.com/plexinc/plex-for-kodi https://github.com/plexinc/plex-for-kodi .
  - keithah 5y ago
    Unfortunately Plex stopped caring it years ago..
majidmir 5y ago
Does anyone know if Kodi offers streaming media over local network or internet similar to Plex?
mackrevinack 5y ago
don't quote me on this but i think kodi/xbmc started back before smartphones weren't really a thing. people mostly had 1 desktop computer and they would watch movies on their monitor or with the computer plugged into the TV. plex was made later on when having multiple devices (desktop, laptop, phone, tablet etc) was a bit more common, so now instead of having all your media stuck on one device you instead run it on a server and connect to that server using an app on each device. so that's the fundamental difference between them anyway. one is mainly design to be used on 1 devices while the other is design to be used on many
magoon 5y ago
Plex focuses on having a server component that transcodes and their “Plex Pass” service for better connectivity, enabling lightweight native players for all of your devices. This way you can watch any of your content on anything even over cellular, even if it’s a weird format that the device wouldn’t easily support. This is a departure from the traditional XBMC-on-device that also acts as the client trying to play any format of content. Kodi is amazing and I’d use it if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t want a new interface, I simply want my “owned” content to show up as Yet Another App on my stream boxes and phones. Plex fits that bill.

How does this compare to Plex?

colordrops 5y ago

Jellyfin is more like Plex. Kodi is more like Roku.

DrewRWx 5y ago
- Plex is a closed source fork-and-re-write of an MacOS XBMC port that was codenamed OSXBMC. - Jellyfin is a fork of Emby at the version before it went closed source. - Emby was an open-source re-implementation of Plex. - Genealogy is weird.

eco 5y ago

Plex is actually a (significantly diverged) fork of Kodi (then called XBMC). They might not share any code at this point.

DrewRWx 5y ago
There was at least one complete rewrite since the OSXBMC devs days.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I'm pretty sure Plex is a complete rewrite that only shares the name of Plex with that fork, and well the inspiration of it as well .
- razze 5y ago
  Actually had some people that worked on XBMC go and start Plex, bad blood included.

Quick2822 5y ago

I used XBMC (and then Kodi) for many years, had it installed on AppleTV, FireTV, etc, etc but I eventually migrated fully to Plex. I found that I prefer Plex over Kodi when dealing with local media. Eventually Kodi only felt useful if you wanted to dive into the world of streaming movies and shows from various shady sources.

hellisothers 5y ago

Plex is significantly more polished and pleasant to actually use, especially for normals. Kodi has more customizability if you like but it still feels rough around the edges.

callmeal 5y ago

> How does this compare to Plex? Quite similar, but without all the invasive monitoring and telemetry. For example: you need an "account" to run plex on your local network.

BeetleB 5y ago

Kind of sad none of the responses really answered the question in detail. What I would like to know: 1. What features does Plex have that Kodi doesn't? 2. What features does Kodi have that Plex doesn't? I get that at this point it is somewhat an apples/oranges comparison, but still: As a Plex/Kodi user, what am I not getting that the other provides? I know Kodi has a lot of plugins, but I'd like to hear of specific examples of plugins and how people use them in a way that you can't with Plex. Edit: One somewhat useful Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/mciv5l/kodi_vs_plex/gs3vpy9/ https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/mciv5l/kodi_vs_...

noisy_boy 5y ago
I really wanted to move to Kodi to be able to run everything locally (Plex requires a login etc) but it was way too much friction for my use case (and I don't think it is such a unique use case). I keep my media in separate folders for each genre and wanted to do a one-to-one mapping of folder to "library" so that I can just click on, say, "sci-fi" and see all the movies for that in a grid and so on. Plex makes this very easy and for Kodi, I had to do investigate all sorts of workarounds like creating "dynamic views" (or something similar I think) and even then it wasn't as smooth and easy as Plex. Also, some of the features require specific themes which is not a great design IMHO. Basically gave up and have continued with Plex - it seems to be the gold standard in the balance between polish and features (always happy to explore other options though).
- nobody9999 5y ago
  Your experience echoes mine to a certain extent. When searching for a media platform, I tried various ones including Kodi (and the various forks/environments like LibreElec et. al), Plex and others. I also have a folder hierarchy which Kodi doesn't respect (very annoying) and played around with Plex as well. However, I am unwilling to log in and share telemetry about my own personal library with Plex. As such, I went with MythTV, which isn't as slick as Plex or Kodi, but does most of the job (that is, manage my local media library). It lacks in streaming options, including podcasts and the devs seem much more focused on the DVR than anything else. That said, for what it does, MythTV is pretty good, but there's a lot it doesn't do.

jaimex2 5y ago

Kodi is for power users, Plex is for anyone who just wants a place to host their media collection.

DrewRWx 5y ago
You can mix-and-match too! Plex puts out an official Kodi plugin: https://github.com/plexinc/plex-for-kodi https://github.com/plexinc/plex-for-kodi .
- keithah 5y ago
  Unfortunately Plex stopped caring it years ago..

majidmir 5y ago

Does anyone know if Kodi offers streaming media over local network or internet similar to Plex?

mackrevinack 5y ago

don't quote me on this but i think kodi/xbmc started back before smartphones weren't really a thing. people mostly had 1 desktop computer and they would watch movies on their monitor or with the computer plugged into the TV. plex was made later on when having multiple devices (desktop, laptop, phone, tablet etc) was a bit more common, so now instead of having all your media stuck on one device you instead run it on a server and connect to that server using an app on each device. so that's the fundamental difference between them anyway. one is mainly design to be used on 1 devices while the other is design to be used on many

magoon 5y ago

Plex focuses on having a server component that transcodes and their “Plex Pass” service for better connectivity, enabling lightweight native players for all of your devices. This way you can watch any of your content on anything even over cellular, even if it’s a weird format that the device wouldn’t easily support. This is a departure from the traditional XBMC-on-device that also acts as the client trying to play any format of content. Kodi is amazing and I’d use it if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t want a new interface, I simply want my “owned” content to show up as Yet Another App on my stream boxes and phones. Plex fits that bill.