At this point a Plex subscription is on par with a Netflix subscription in price, but you have to bring your own media. The only value Plex provides beyond the software is a STUN proxy to connect remote devices to your server behind a residential NAT.
But Jellyfin is free and in a lot of cases it's trivial to get your server exposed to the internet. There's countless ways to do it that don't involve paying anyone anything, and more ways that cost far, far less than $750.
Perpetually gobsmacked that people are willing to pay a subscription to access their own media on their own hardware. Why not just use Netflix at that point?
That being said, Plex apps also lack proper support for HW decoding of some 4K codecs and their AppleTV situation is just plain sad (2 years without an update, no proper HW decoding).
With the Pass being $750, I’m expecting Jellyfin to become a more popular alternative than ever. I’d personally never spend this kind of money on Plex.
The Plex client, for all its warts, is much more user-friendly IMHO for the friends/family that might use one’s media server.
[0] I could go on and on about things like how shitty Plex is for downloading content to your phone/iPad to take on a plane/offline.
Jellyfin works well enough, I switched over entirely a few months ago.
Edit: It's native and open source: https://github.com/jellyfin/swiftfin
Although realtime detection of changes on the file system is still a little flaky for me (possibly how I’m running it).
Emby still offers lifetime for $119 with a 30 device limit, but I'm not sure what it offers over Jellyfin.
Are there any advantages to Plex outside of being able to easily share and manage library access to many users? It's been a decade since I've used it.
But I do hear about campaigns focused on members with poor account hygiene and afaik they get their accounts terminated.
Sorry I didn't want the server overhead in my house, eh?
What does hardware decoding get me on an Apple TV? It seems plenty powerful enough to decode anything I’ve ever thrown at it.
Jellyfin official apps are sporadic though, so Infuse is popular for Jellyfin users because it is well maintained and allows you to direct stream content without transcoding as often as possible.
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I'm also the developer of Aviato Media Server (https://aviato.media), which I just released publicly last week and is available only as a beta, and I am an ex-Plex employee.
Guessing you’re not talking about iPhones - fwiw Finamp works pretty well.
Even if your server can support transcoding, all transcoding results in quality loss, so if you want to enjoy your media in the best formats then you want to direct play. Just depends on the media you are playing and how much you care about the quality.
Also, what modern formats for media typically used in Plex servers isn’t supported? Nobody uses AV1 for plex media, no offense. It’s universally h264 or h265. Or perhaps mpeg2 for super old stuff.