So you start ripping your DVDs, Blu-Rays, Music, CDs etc and find yourself with a nice chuck of media on hard drives or a NAS (network attached storage) device.
Pulling up a movie to watch is a simple affair. Built in media players like on a Roku or even a Windows player the built-in Microsoft Media Player or a third party option like the free and versatile VLC Media Player can play virtually any file you throw at it.
This is fine for playing a single file but if you want to kick it up a notch you’ll want something like Kodi which is a free and open-source media players application that acts as a central hub for organizing and playing your digital media, such as movies, TV shows, music and photos.
Once you’ve put in the work to amass, curate and collect a decent sized collection of digital media, it’s only natural that you’ll want to share it with your friends and family.
This where a streaming application like Jellyfin or Plex come in. Not only do they help organize your collection, keep track of what has been played, add search functions, add images, manage subtitles and more, they can stream media to your users like a private streaming service.
Jellyfin is an open source (created and maintained by volunteer programers) free program with two parts, the server which sits on your NAS or dedicated computer where your media files reside and clients which can be on your phone, Smart TV, or in a web browser.
The benefits of Jellyfin is that it is completely free and it’s not in the control of a corporation which may or may not change things whenever they feel like it.
The downside of being open sourced is that you, the user are tasked with figuring out everything yourself. It can get kind of technical.
I started out with Jellyfin and taught myself a whole lot of networking lingo and learned a lot. Just things like updating to HTTPS requires manually installing certificates and going under the hood on your network settings and doing things like opening ports.
Sharing with other users can be done with a free Tailscale account which provides encrytion between users. It was a challenge and I had everything running with a few guinea pig users until there was an upgrade that broke the whole thing. I still don’t know if it was the Jellyfin upgrade or the upgrade to my NAS software or some decision my router made but I suddenly could not longer access my media files.
The good news is that your media files always stay on your hard drive. The streaming software is only serving it up. So even though Jellyfin blew up on me, my media files were intact.
So made it easy to try my next media streaming service – PLEX. Plex is free to joint and just be a user but if you want to stream your digital media content to friends and family, you’ll have to pay for the service which runs about $70 a year.
After working with Jellyfin for over a year and then trying Plex, I’d have to say using Plex is probably the better choice for non-programer, non-IT people.
Before buying my Asustor NAS, I was a total networking newbie. I learned a lot going through the NAS Tutorial – Asustor College. And Jellyfin was a constant learning experience.
With Plex, you are paying for simplifying the entire process. The only technical thing was opening a port on your router’s WAN settings. Plex is a different than Jellyfin in a lot of ways. The interface is more polished and sleek. There are paid developers on staff working on it and there are technical help people on staff.
Unlike Jellyfin’s more DIY self environment which requires a lot of forum reading and searching for answers.
Plex is different in then Jellyfin in the sense that they are business with the intent of making money. So besides the feels to stream content to other users, the site includes ad-supported content (movies and TV shows) which appear along side your own personal digital media.
Basically its a personal media server cobbled together with an ad-supported streaming service along with some social media aspects. They try to promote the idea of giving reviews and gaining friends with other users. I find that aspect a bit weird as I know who I want to give access to my stuff and I’m not really interested in making friends with someone only identified by a capital letter.
Plex will fill in photos, title, graphics etc for all of your media just as Jellyfin does. If anything is missing you can choose “match” and try to select the right graphic. Jellyfin does the same with “identify”. One area where Plex is very much superior to Jellyfin is in identifying music.
It is also much simplier to share your media with others using Plex. With Jellyfin I basically had to connect everyone through my Tailscale account. With Plex you simply send an invite via email or connect to an existing Plex account if they have one.
Plex is also better at backroom activity monitoring. With Plex you can play Streaming Network Tycoon and watch in real time the activity on your media server. You can see who is streaming, what they are streaming, all the techical details, CPU and memory use etc all in a slick interface.
Plex offers the following not available on Jellyfin:
- Movies & Shows On Plex
- Rentals On Plex
- Live TV
If you don’t mind ads (ads don’t show on your own content) and perhaps have a good collection of media, you really could say good bye to a bunch of streaming services you currently have and just use Plex for your music, movies and tv shows.
Jellyfin is a fine choice if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty with Linux commands and getting under the hood of your network/router but after trying Plex, I can’t see recommending Jellyfin to an average non-techie person.