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I'm still somewhat unclear precisely what problem Jellyfin and Plex are supposed to solve. If you combine Jellyfin with something liks Radarr/Sonarr and Kodi th

I'm still somewhat unclear precisely what problem Jellyfin and Plex are supposed to solve. If you combine Jellyfin with something liks Radarr/Sonarr and Kodi then what do you need Jellyfin for? You could just cut out the middleman and connect Kodi to Radar/Sonarr directly.

Cyph0n 4y ago
Think of Jellyfin as a multi-user, centralized version of Kodi. Thanks to this, you get the ability to access (and give others access to) your Jellyfin instance remotely from virtually any device. Kodi can serve as either a Jellyfin client or as a local replacement. One thing to note is that the Kodi plugin ecosystem is much larger than that of Jellyfin, or any other media server solution for that matter.
BeetleB 4y ago
Ha! I have the same question except for Kodi. Never could figure it out. My use case(s) for Plex: 1. I have media on my HD. Plex organizes it, figures out what show/movie it is, gets relevant metadata, and remembers how much I've watched it. 2. I then watch it on my TV. I don't want to watch it on my PC. 3. It lets me watch said media when I'm away from home (e.g. from a hotel room when I'm traveling). This is critical for me and what got me on to Plex. 4. It lets me share media with other users. 5. DVR: I pick the shows I like, and it records them for me. This is critical for me as well.
- contravariant 4y ago
  I think Kodi covers 1 and 2. Maybe Plex is slightly better at connecting to stuff like Chromecast / Smart TV? Those kind of walled devices aren't to my taste so I haven't tried them, well that and they didn't exist when I set things up. Do you use Plex as a client in all cases? There's a decent chance I just don't get it because I'm excessively particular in how I want things set up. Using a different video player on my PC is a non-starter for me. As is granting a third party access to files on my local network. So I've built my own solutions for pretty much any feature Plex has, except possibly user friendliness (which is the most likely reason I may use jellyfin, but not for personal use).
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    > Do you use Plex as a client in all cases? I use Plex on my Roku so I can watch my media on my TV instead of on a monitor. Occasionally (pretty rarely), I use it on my Android for the same reason. And I take the Roku with me whenever I travel so I can watch things wherever I go. > Using a different video player on my PC is a non-starter for me. I don't use Plex to play videos on my PC. The experience is better on my TV, so I don't consume entertainment media via my monitor. To watch random video files on my PC, I use mplayer. So how do you watch the media on your PC remotely?
    - contravariant 4y ago
      > So how do you watch the media on your PC remotely? For stuff I'm planning to watch on my PC I just let sonarr/radarr import the files directly to my PC. For stuff I want to view elsewhere I have a NAS and a raspberry pi with wireguard configured to make a VPN I can use to access my local network.
- UI_at_80x24 4y ago
  I keep my media organized well organized in a folder structure. I either watch it from my PC, or my TV (with Kodi). I don't want it organized for me. I don't want to "search" for the show/movie that I want to watch. I don't like seeing the movie poster where I might only be able to fit 12 items on the screen at once, I want to be able to see 50+ items in a directory list. I don't like/want all the Database back-end stuff that gets done in plex/jellyfin (IMDB lookups, rotten tomatoes reviews, etc.) I use Jellyfin for my kids shows. I use Kodi for my TV. And the thing I despise the most, I dont' want to rename/restructure/reorganize 100TB of media just so JellyFin can auto-guess incorrectly the movie/tv show/season/episode. All of the kids crap? Dumped into a single folder and Jellyfin guessed most of it. The stuff it got wrong, I don't care about. My stuff, that's been carefully curated over years? Even if I just feed jellyFin the content 1 directory at a time, it can't get seasons/episodes straight. I don't watch my media when I'm away from home. I don't share my media.
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    It sounds like Jellyfin is not for you. However: > I don't like seeing the movie poster where I might only be able to fit 12 items on the screen at once, I want to be able to see 50+ items in a directory list. Been a while since I used Jellyfin, but you can set Plex to show it in list view. I would be surprised if Jellyfin didn't have that capability.
  - Handytinge 4y ago
    I only have to curate maybe 1/200 shows or movies. Radarr/Sonarr do that for me, and very well. Filebot works out that 1/200 for me, I just have a folder I dump to, and a containerised version sees it and fixes it. I spent many hours previously curating, but as a human it's very inefficient when IMDB, TheTVDB, etc all have the info you need and can almost always get it right.
kennend3 4y ago
I moved away from Kodi over to Plex (later Jellyfin) for the following reasons: - Jellyfin lets me keep track of what i watched regardless of where. I can watch half a show in my office, and resume where i left off in my family room. - Jellyfin fully supports multiple users, so my kids can have their own profiles, there own "in progress" management, etc. - There is no need to setup anything like NFS/Samba to share the library, jellyfin connects to the central server which stores the media and runs the jellyfin server. Some of this can be done in Kodi, via a mysql connection but it is baked into jellyfin. If i was starting out building a home media server from scratch, jellyfin would be high on my list. Just my 5 cents.
- JeremyNT 4y ago
  Jellyfin also has much better metadata handling / downloading and the web UI is great for streaming to anything without needing to install a client. It's worth mentioning that, if you love / are invested in Kodi, there's a jellyfin plugin for it that will allow you to access the JF library directly. It supports realtime transcoding for stuff that the browser (or client) doesn't know how to play. A lot of the features that work "out of the box" in JF are technically possible to add to Kodi through existing plugins, but that's a lot more care and feeding than just installing JF and connecting to it.

Cyph0n 4y ago

Think of Jellyfin as a multi-user, centralized version of Kodi. Thanks to this, you get the ability to access (and give others access to) your Jellyfin instance remotely from virtually any device. Kodi can serve as either a Jellyfin client or as a local replacement. One thing to note is that the Kodi plugin ecosystem is much larger than that of Jellyfin, or any other media server solution for that matter.

BeetleB 4y ago

Ha! I have the same question except for Kodi. Never could figure it out. My use case(s) for Plex: 1. I have media on my HD. Plex organizes it, figures out what show/movie it is, gets relevant metadata, and remembers how much I've watched it. 2. I then watch it on my TV. I don't want to watch it on my PC. 3. It lets me watch said media when I'm away from home (e.g. from a hotel room when I'm traveling). This is critical for me and what got me on to Plex. 4. It lets me share media with other users. 5. DVR: I pick the shows I like, and it records them for me. This is critical for me as well.

contravariant 4y ago
I think Kodi covers 1 and 2. Maybe Plex is slightly better at connecting to stuff like Chromecast / Smart TV? Those kind of walled devices aren't to my taste so I haven't tried them, well that and they didn't exist when I set things up. Do you use Plex as a client in all cases? There's a decent chance I just don't get it because I'm excessively particular in how I want things set up. Using a different video player on my PC is a non-starter for me. As is granting a third party access to files on my local network. So I've built my own solutions for pretty much any feature Plex has, except possibly user friendliness (which is the most likely reason I may use jellyfin, but not for personal use).
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > Do you use Plex as a client in all cases? I use Plex on my Roku so I can watch my media on my TV instead of on a monitor. Occasionally (pretty rarely), I use it on my Android for the same reason. And I take the Roku with me whenever I travel so I can watch things wherever I go. > Using a different video player on my PC is a non-starter for me. I don't use Plex to play videos on my PC. The experience is better on my TV, so I don't consume entertainment media via my monitor. To watch random video files on my PC, I use mplayer. So how do you watch the media on your PC remotely?
  - contravariant 4y ago
    > So how do you watch the media on your PC remotely? For stuff I'm planning to watch on my PC I just let sonarr/radarr import the files directly to my PC. For stuff I want to view elsewhere I have a NAS and a raspberry pi with wireguard configured to make a VPN I can use to access my local network.
UI_at_80x24 4y ago
I keep my media organized well organized in a folder structure. I either watch it from my PC, or my TV (with Kodi). I don't want it organized for me. I don't want to "search" for the show/movie that I want to watch. I don't like seeing the movie poster where I might only be able to fit 12 items on the screen at once, I want to be able to see 50+ items in a directory list. I don't like/want all the Database back-end stuff that gets done in plex/jellyfin (IMDB lookups, rotten tomatoes reviews, etc.) I use Jellyfin for my kids shows. I use Kodi for my TV. And the thing I despise the most, I dont' want to rename/restructure/reorganize 100TB of media just so JellyFin can auto-guess incorrectly the movie/tv show/season/episode. All of the kids crap? Dumped into a single folder and Jellyfin guessed most of it. The stuff it got wrong, I don't care about. My stuff, that's been carefully curated over years? Even if I just feed jellyFin the content 1 directory at a time, it can't get seasons/episodes straight. I don't watch my media when I'm away from home. I don't share my media.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  It sounds like Jellyfin is not for you. However: > I don't like seeing the movie poster where I might only be able to fit 12 items on the screen at once, I want to be able to see 50+ items in a directory list. Been a while since I used Jellyfin, but you can set Plex to show it in list view. I would be surprised if Jellyfin didn't have that capability.
- Handytinge 4y ago
  I only have to curate maybe 1/200 shows or movies. Radarr/Sonarr do that for me, and very well. Filebot works out that 1/200 for me, I just have a folder I dump to, and a containerised version sees it and fixes it. I spent many hours previously curating, but as a human it's very inefficient when IMDB, TheTVDB, etc all have the info you need and can almost always get it right.

kennend3 4y ago

I moved away from Kodi over to Plex (later Jellyfin) for the following reasons: - Jellyfin lets me keep track of what i watched regardless of where. I can watch half a show in my office, and resume where i left off in my family room. - Jellyfin fully supports multiple users, so my kids can have their own profiles, there own "in progress" management, etc. - There is no need to setup anything like NFS/Samba to share the library, jellyfin connects to the central server which stores the media and runs the jellyfin server. Some of this can be done in Kodi, via a mysql connection but it is baked into jellyfin. If i was starting out building a home media server from scratch, jellyfin would be high on my list. Just my 5 cents.

JeremyNT 4y ago
Jellyfin also has much better metadata handling / downloading and the web UI is great for streaming to anything without needing to install a client. It's worth mentioning that, if you love / are invested in Kodi, there's a jellyfin plugin for it that will allow you to access the JF library directly. It supports realtime transcoding for stuff that the browser (or client) doesn't know how to play. A lot of the features that work "out of the box" in JF are technically possible to add to Kodi through existing plugins, but that's a lot more care and feeding than just installing JF and connecting to it.