7 ms·

I still am not quite sure what value something like Plex offers for my personal HTPC media needs. I have a large collection of disk space that's an SMB file sha

I still am not quite sure what value something like Plex offers for my personal HTPC media needs. I have a large collection of disk space that's an SMB file share on my local LAN, on a server in my garage. My home theatre PC mounts it over the LAN. I have an XFCE4 desktop environment on the HTPC with the font size cranked up a bit and can run nautilus, thunar, or any other file explorer metaphor browser to explore the folders. There's a folder for movies, a folder for TV shows, and then stuff is organized within there by its directory name and filename. I double click on something I want to watch and it opens in VLC. Dead simple and works.

locksleydev 3mo ago
Clients on everything, watch history tracking, meta data collection, nicer player, quick transcode for mobiles and other portable media players you don't want 4k on, automatic subtitle collection, live TV DVR, and an interface so simple my grandmother can use it.
bombcar 3mo ago
Jellyfin is nice for various reasons (main for me is play synching) but Apple TV + Infuse + SMB share made something pretty bulletproof and kid friendly even before.
igorstellar 3mo ago
You’ve described NAS in general. It’s more than just file system. Plex gives you Media Library indexing, web app, mobile and TV apps to play content from your NAS, from anywhere in the world (it even includes Relay, in case you don’t have public IP or accessing NAT traversal).
- judge2020 3mo ago
  Even with public IP, it brokers an HTTPS certificate for you, which many smart TV platforms and OSes require for operation nowadays.
sasaf5 3mo ago
I have almost the same setup. Plus a 3rd party app called "Material Files" to access it on my phone.
judge2020 3mo ago
In particular the main value-add is that they have clients across so many different platforms, including most major bespoke smart TV brands[0], and their solution to streaming on WAN (HTTPS brokering) is pretty darn good for most people. Accessing my media from hotel rooms is pretty darn seamless, other than the wifi connection sometimes requiring downscaling to 720p or or so. 0: not really an issue nowadays with everyone moving to Big Tech-provided smart TV OS, but when you use an old TV with like mid-2010s webOS it's nice to see some old Plex app that still works.
- walrus01 3mo ago
  Admittedly my use case is not the most common. For a number of what I think are well founded reasons I don't use the "smart TV" OSes built into any televisions I own, none of my TVs have the wifi password or access to the Internet. The HTPC screen is just a screen, something else that's smarter is driving it. I also don't have any need for realtime transcoding as my home internet upstream speed is sufficient that I can watch 'full resolution' stuff remotely from my laptop or phone via VPN back to home office, and smbfs or sshfs access to the same file shares, without needing to use any CPU or GPU resources to process the video in realtime in between where it's stored any my client playback device.
  - NamTaf 3mo ago
    If you don't care for any of the modcons of a media streaming system similar to Netflix, etc. then more power to you, stick with a SMB share. It's undeniably less that can go wrong and god knows these systems can become a janitorial hell sometimes. However I hope you can see that there is a plethora of benefits that others may enjoy from it. Otherwise, this kinda feels like the classic HN Dropbox critique.
    - hn_throw2025 3mo ago
      I am definitely in the former category. I’m not dedicating the time to replicate a Netflix client equivalent with all the metadata (although I do make the time for FLAC albums). There’s nothing as straightforward as directories and a SMB conf file. Plus, you name individual files however you want. I have straightforward SMB shares, but two distinct groups for movies. The first is standard bitrate, where everything is 1080p SDR h265. The second is for 4K HDR, higher bitrate. That second group is only for a small number of movies that I like very much, will rewatch, and have cinematography and visuals that justify the storage. If I love a movie but it is mostly an indoor dialogue affair, there is no point in it being in the second group. There is duplication between the two groups so I am covered if I want to watch the high def version at home on my large TV connected to my Pi NAS via Ethernet, or the standard def version around the house (usually working out) on a mobile device (or possibly on the road via my Tailnet).
RajT88 3mo ago
I assume Plex "just works". Jellyfin is some assembly required. You also occasionally run into a "Love Exposure" type bug. https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/10494 https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/10494
- jdc0589 3mo ago
  jellyfin was pretty plug and play for me
  - RajT88 3mo ago
    If you want it accessible outside your house, the two most common options are NGINX + LetsEncrypt or Tailscale. (or you make your peace with sending your login details in cleartext)
    - greycol 3mo ago
      VPN is also common in those discussions, it's more setup on the client side but can win on security. Of course there'd be a lot of people in trouble if you couldn't trust tailscale to be better than a beginner selfhoster on security so it's still a good goto option.
al_borland 3mo ago
It lets the user browser with cover art, descriptions, trailers, sorting by release date, rating, etc. It keeps track of watched and unwatched movies. Shows what’s recently be added, recently released. Keeps track of where you’re at in a TV series, to always play the next episode. It can transcode as needed, to something like a mobile device or TV that might be more picky than VLC. Lots of quality of life improvements over list of files on a smb share.
- physicles 3mo ago
  Jellyfin does all these things too, and it’s free.
- throwup238 3mo ago
  Plex subscription also includes a “Skip Intro” for TV shows. That’s the only value I’ve gotten out of it other than being able to stream to my phone. Not sure if Jellyfin has an equivalent
  - radcod3 3mo ago
    Jellyfin can support intro/outro skipping as well with a plugin. https://github.com/intro-skipper/intro-skipper https://github.com/intro-skipper/intro-skipper
    - 4ggr0 3mo ago
      i've used this plugin a lot, and it is nice, but a bit hit-or-miss. it analyzes all episodes of a show to start seeing a pattern in the beginning of shows, or checks chapters which my files rarely had. works well for most shows, but if a show has unique intros for every episode, it doesn't really work. also had trouble with 100% consistent intros, but i never really figured out why that happened. kind of a 50% solution, works a lot of times but a lot of other times you still end up scrubbing. (also consider that if you install this plugin onto a large existing library, it's going to take a considerable amount of compute and real-world time to do complete it for every show).
wildzzz 3mo ago
Thats what I used to have 15 years ago when I was streaming over SMB to my Xbox running XBMC. It works but having something like Plex or Jellyfin is just so much nicer. It gives you the "Netflix" experience of browsing your media library. My Jellyfin is setup to offer an automatic "skip intro/credits" button. I used to use Plex and was a yearly subscriber mostly for the ability to download media to my phone for offline playback. Obviously I could do that with an SMB share but Plex (and the others) have built-in transcoding which is nice if you don't have the time or space for a bunch of full size 1080p files. Now, I use Jellyfin alongside Seerr (so me and others can quickly pick-out media to automatically download in a preset quality). I've also installed a plugin for Jellyfin called Moonfin that offers a ton of quality of life improvements and also integrates Seerr within one app. I just click on a movie or TV season I want, Seerr tells radarr or sonarr to query my private trackers for the selection, and then radarr/sonarr send the torrent to rtorrent. After a few minutes, Jellyfin picks up the files and adds them to the database.
- lgrebe 3mo ago
  What are these private trackers? Asking for a friend…
NegativeLatency 3mo ago
I can share plex with my friends and family easily. Your solution sounds good but it’s just too hard for most people. There are plex client apps for most tvs and boxes, even the really cheap bad ones, and it all just kinda works.
- doublepg23 3mo ago
  Weird I scrolled this far for “friends”. That’s the killer feature. I haven’t met a person who couldn’t use PLEX.
SmellTheGlove 3mo ago
Its missing the wife/husband/child acceptance factor.
drnick1 3mo ago
One thing that Jellyfin does really well is integrate devices like the HDHomeRun. You can then watch OTA TV from any device on the LAN or elsewhere through the Jellyfin Web portal or dedicated clients for Linux/Android/iOS. If your HTPC is powerful enough, you should also check out Plasma Bigscreen as a substitute for XFCE4.
lexicality 3mo ago
I started using it because me and my flatmate had different media libraries and we wanted to share them. Plex very conveniently merged both into a single deduplicated library that we could pick from when watching something on the TV.
dododge 3mo ago
For me the metadata is a big part of it. I have a large physical media collection so I could just use the discs, but putting it all into plex has made it so much easier to browse and watch. For example I can pause and skim the cast/crew filmographies right in the plex UI, including being able to see what I already have and investigate the stuff I've never heard of for possible future purchases. When watching several movies in a row, after finishing one I can follow the automatically-populated trail of related/similar movies until I find something that fits my mood.
gertrunde 3mo ago
My jellyfin setup is not that different. Jellyfin container instance running on a mini pc, reading media from an NFS share on a NAS, organised in a very similar fashion. The advantage is there is a "native" app on the TV, so everything is very adapted to the TV UX, i.e. remote control driven UI etc. (And the jellyfin side is relatively disposable, the container can be trashed and redone fairly quickly).
HumblyTossed 3mo ago
That’s very detailed. Sounds like you have everything the way you want it. So plex would probably add nothing.
RiverCrochet 3mo ago
Plex/Jellyfin is for those without a home theater. I typically listen/watch media on my phone or old iPad, or sometimes a laptop. Since Jellyfin works through the browser it covers all these scenarios. On the occasion I have some people over and we want to watch it on a TV I can connect the laptop to the TV.
wink 3mo ago
A friend who doesn't live close had one season of a series I wanted to watch and I could stream it from his Plex. I'm not saying this could not have been solved in another easy way, but it worked without friction because he had Plex anyway. I'm kinda over downloading gigabytes of files and then deleting them after watching. And I'm not doing this regularly so I've not investigated. All I'm saying is that it solved a problem nicely.
unixhero 3mo ago
Yes but do you have no friends and family and are you never outside of your house? I think the answer is hopefully yes to all of these.

locksleydev 3mo ago

Clients on everything, watch history tracking, meta data collection, nicer player, quick transcode for mobiles and other portable media players you don't want 4k on, automatic subtitle collection, live TV DVR, and an interface so simple my grandmother can use it.

bombcar 3mo ago

Jellyfin is nice for various reasons (main for me is play synching) but Apple TV + Infuse + SMB share made something pretty bulletproof and kid friendly even before.

igorstellar 3mo ago

You’ve described NAS in general. It’s more than just file system. Plex gives you Media Library indexing, web app, mobile and TV apps to play content from your NAS, from anywhere in the world (it even includes Relay, in case you don’t have public IP or accessing NAT traversal).

judge2020 3mo ago
Even with public IP, it brokers an HTTPS certificate for you, which many smart TV platforms and OSes require for operation nowadays.

sasaf5 3mo ago

I have almost the same setup. Plus a 3rd party app called "Material Files" to access it on my phone.

judge2020 3mo ago

In particular the main value-add is that they have clients across so many different platforms, including most major bespoke smart TV brands[0], and their solution to streaming on WAN (HTTPS brokering) is pretty darn good for most people. Accessing my media from hotel rooms is pretty darn seamless, other than the wifi connection sometimes requiring downscaling to 720p or or so. 0: not really an issue nowadays with everyone moving to Big Tech-provided smart TV OS, but when you use an old TV with like mid-2010s webOS it's nice to see some old Plex app that still works.

walrus01 3mo ago
Admittedly my use case is not the most common. For a number of what I think are well founded reasons I don't use the "smart TV" OSes built into any televisions I own, none of my TVs have the wifi password or access to the Internet. The HTPC screen is just a screen, something else that's smarter is driving it. I also don't have any need for realtime transcoding as my home internet upstream speed is sufficient that I can watch 'full resolution' stuff remotely from my laptop or phone via VPN back to home office, and smbfs or sshfs access to the same file shares, without needing to use any CPU or GPU resources to process the video in realtime in between where it's stored any my client playback device.
- NamTaf 3mo ago
  If you don't care for any of the modcons of a media streaming system similar to Netflix, etc. then more power to you, stick with a SMB share. It's undeniably less that can go wrong and god knows these systems can become a janitorial hell sometimes. However I hope you can see that there is a plethora of benefits that others may enjoy from it. Otherwise, this kinda feels like the classic HN Dropbox critique.
  - hn_throw2025 3mo ago
    I am definitely in the former category. I’m not dedicating the time to replicate a Netflix client equivalent with all the metadata (although I do make the time for FLAC albums). There’s nothing as straightforward as directories and a SMB conf file. Plus, you name individual files however you want. I have straightforward SMB shares, but two distinct groups for movies. The first is standard bitrate, where everything is 1080p SDR h265. The second is for 4K HDR, higher bitrate. That second group is only for a small number of movies that I like very much, will rewatch, and have cinematography and visuals that justify the storage. If I love a movie but it is mostly an indoor dialogue affair, there is no point in it being in the second group. There is duplication between the two groups so I am covered if I want to watch the high def version at home on my large TV connected to my Pi NAS via Ethernet, or the standard def version around the house (usually working out) on a mobile device (or possibly on the road via my Tailnet).

RajT88 3mo ago

I assume Plex "just works". Jellyfin is some assembly required. You also occasionally run into a "Love Exposure" type bug. https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/10494 https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/10494

jdc0589 3mo ago
jellyfin was pretty plug and play for me
- RajT88 3mo ago
  If you want it accessible outside your house, the two most common options are NGINX + LetsEncrypt or Tailscale. (or you make your peace with sending your login details in cleartext)
  - greycol 3mo ago
    VPN is also common in those discussions, it's more setup on the client side but can win on security. Of course there'd be a lot of people in trouble if you couldn't trust tailscale to be better than a beginner selfhoster on security so it's still a good goto option.

al_borland 3mo ago

It lets the user browser with cover art, descriptions, trailers, sorting by release date, rating, etc. It keeps track of watched and unwatched movies. Shows what’s recently be added, recently released. Keeps track of where you’re at in a TV series, to always play the next episode. It can transcode as needed, to something like a mobile device or TV that might be more picky than VLC. Lots of quality of life improvements over list of files on a smb share.

physicles 3mo ago
Jellyfin does all these things too, and it’s free.
throwup238 3mo ago
Plex subscription also includes a “Skip Intro” for TV shows. That’s the only value I’ve gotten out of it other than being able to stream to my phone. Not sure if Jellyfin has an equivalent
- radcod3 3mo ago
  Jellyfin can support intro/outro skipping as well with a plugin. https://github.com/intro-skipper/intro-skipper https://github.com/intro-skipper/intro-skipper
  - 4ggr0 3mo ago
    i've used this plugin a lot, and it is nice, but a bit hit-or-miss. it analyzes all episodes of a show to start seeing a pattern in the beginning of shows, or checks chapters which my files rarely had. works well for most shows, but if a show has unique intros for every episode, it doesn't really work. also had trouble with 100% consistent intros, but i never really figured out why that happened. kind of a 50% solution, works a lot of times but a lot of other times you still end up scrubbing. (also consider that if you install this plugin onto a large existing library, it's going to take a considerable amount of compute and real-world time to do complete it for every show).

wildzzz 3mo ago

Thats what I used to have 15 years ago when I was streaming over SMB to my Xbox running XBMC. It works but having something like Plex or Jellyfin is just so much nicer. It gives you the "Netflix" experience of browsing your media library. My Jellyfin is setup to offer an automatic "skip intro/credits" button. I used to use Plex and was a yearly subscriber mostly for the ability to download media to my phone for offline playback. Obviously I could do that with an SMB share but Plex (and the others) have built-in transcoding which is nice if you don't have the time or space for a bunch of full size 1080p files. Now, I use Jellyfin alongside Seerr (so me and others can quickly pick-out media to automatically download in a preset quality). I've also installed a plugin for Jellyfin called Moonfin that offers a ton of quality of life improvements and also integrates Seerr within one app. I just click on a movie or TV season I want, Seerr tells radarr or sonarr to query my private trackers for the selection, and then radarr/sonarr send the torrent to rtorrent. After a few minutes, Jellyfin picks up the files and adds them to the database.

lgrebe 3mo ago
What are these private trackers? Asking for a friend…

NegativeLatency 3mo ago

I can share plex with my friends and family easily. Your solution sounds good but it’s just too hard for most people. There are plex client apps for most tvs and boxes, even the really cheap bad ones, and it all just kinda works.

doublepg23 3mo ago
Weird I scrolled this far for “friends”. That’s the killer feature. I haven’t met a person who couldn’t use PLEX.

SmellTheGlove 3mo ago

Its missing the wife/husband/child acceptance factor.

drnick1 3mo ago

One thing that Jellyfin does really well is integrate devices like the HDHomeRun. You can then watch OTA TV from any device on the LAN or elsewhere through the Jellyfin Web portal or dedicated clients for Linux/Android/iOS. If your HTPC is powerful enough, you should also check out Plasma Bigscreen as a substitute for XFCE4.

lexicality 3mo ago

I started using it because me and my flatmate had different media libraries and we wanted to share them. Plex very conveniently merged both into a single deduplicated library that we could pick from when watching something on the TV.

dododge 3mo ago

For me the metadata is a big part of it. I have a large physical media collection so I could just use the discs, but putting it all into plex has made it so much easier to browse and watch. For example I can pause and skim the cast/crew filmographies right in the plex UI, including being able to see what I already have and investigate the stuff I've never heard of for possible future purchases. When watching several movies in a row, after finishing one I can follow the automatically-populated trail of related/similar movies until I find something that fits my mood.

gertrunde 3mo ago

My jellyfin setup is not that different. Jellyfin container instance running on a mini pc, reading media from an NFS share on a NAS, organised in a very similar fashion. The advantage is there is a "native" app on the TV, so everything is very adapted to the TV UX, i.e. remote control driven UI etc. (And the jellyfin side is relatively disposable, the container can be trashed and redone fairly quickly).

HumblyTossed 3mo ago

That’s very detailed. Sounds like you have everything the way you want it. So plex would probably add nothing.

RiverCrochet 3mo ago

Plex/Jellyfin is for those without a home theater. I typically listen/watch media on my phone or old iPad, or sometimes a laptop. Since Jellyfin works through the browser it covers all these scenarios. On the occasion I have some people over and we want to watch it on a TV I can connect the laptop to the TV.

wink 3mo ago

A friend who doesn't live close had one season of a series I wanted to watch and I could stream it from his Plex. I'm not saying this could not have been solved in another easy way, but it worked without friction because he had Plex anyway. I'm kinda over downloading gigabytes of files and then deleting them after watching. And I'm not doing this regularly so I've not investigated. All I'm saying is that it solved a problem nicely.

unixhero 3mo ago

Yes but do you have no friends and family and are you never outside of your house? I think the answer is hopefully yes to all of these.