Selfhosted

I agree, streaming on local network should be free, what is.

I had other reasons too, so a while back I tried other self hosted solutions and I got back to Plex, it is more polished and a cleaner user experience. I'm happy to pay for a well written software as long as it is reasonable and not too greedy.

This is why I use emby.

I tried hitting the X thinking it was an ad XD

You can stream from a jellyfin server to Kodi

Something that's getting glossed over in these comments is the ability to easily watch or listen to friends' media.

I have my own library with about 1k movies, a bunch of anime and TV, and 10k albums. But I have like 6 or 7 friends with libraries even larger. My one friend has 37k albums, they all have thousands of movies I never even heard of, etc. It really makes it like my own mini streaming service, and I love throwing on a huge music library on shuffle via plexamp while driving to/from work.

I paid like $70 for a lifetime pass years ago, so I'm along for the ride I guess. I really rely on the music aspect of it, I haven't had a spotify subscription in like 7 years.

I know they changed a lot lately, and particularly what pisses me off is how vague and how they intentionally obfuscate how their model works now. I have friends that for years used my library, and recently have been like "I saw Plex started charging now so I stopped using it" and I have to be like "no it's still free because I have a lifetime pass". It's definitely just to trick people into getting monthly subscriptions.

I got the Plex lifetime pass over 10 years ago for pretty cheap and Plex has served me well over the years. But it's just so damn bloated now and the biggest recent change to their android app is atrocious. The app is so laggy and slow now. And downloading movies to watch locally on a tablet is just painful.

So I decided to start experimenting with Jellyfin this month and I am blown away at how fast and snappy everything is. It still isn't as refined as Plex but there's something to be said about privacy and using FOSS apps.

I'll be using Jellyfin going forward now.

Just as an FYI, Jellyfin doesn't charge money for.... well, anything.

I jumped ship early on. They didn't include skipping intros (or removed the plugin or the capability to use plugins, I don't remember).

Went to Jellyfin, took like 2 hours to figure out what's different. I don't even remember, are there any features worth it staying on Plex? At least I'm not missing anything.

Also for watch together you start a watch group and can watch a show episode for episode. Instead of having to open each episode separately and having everyone join again (but maybe Plex fixed this already, I wouldn't know).

Be prepared for a barrage of "Jellyfin" in your comments.

But yea seriously, use Jellyfin.

Longtime lifetime Plex Pass holder here.

FOSS is important. Having control over how you use your own hardware and files is important.

But even if none of that mattered, once I actually used Jellyfin for a few days the snappy bloat-free feel of it won me over. Switching between Plex and Jellyfin felt like switching between windows and linux.

Remember when Plex tried to sell you a subscription to use outdated versions of open source game console emulators?

Plex wants to be a profit-driven company, but their business model is piracy. They'll squeeze you for subscriptions, while making your experience worse to try and broker a peace deal with content owners.

So glad I installed jellyfin years ago and never bothered to set up Plex.