ive been using kodi (xbmc was better moniker) since google killed sagetv. i recall attempting plex, but it seemed to lack some open/extensibility (its been awhile).
i have a side project i want to make as a modular plugin generating a cable layout with original air orders and networks/channels… kodi seems most optimal, but ill admit its been a long while since i looked at plex.
so why plex over kodi?
Totally different software solutions aimed at different users, and many people use both.
Plex is a Server software that handles media management, libraries, users, etc etc… and a range of player apps that have a somewhat beginner friendly layout requiring little to no setup
Personally, I run a large Plex server that provides content for my family across dozens of mixed devices in home and out of home, different users have access to different libraries and have different preferences. If needed it will automatically transcode content for remote users out of the home to fit my upload bandwidth and their available speed if they are on mobile. it keeps track of watched content and position for all users so they can move between devices seamlessly.
Kodi is an extensible media player frontend, it can play files from a remote server or NAS but there is no server management, it is just doing basic file access. there are addons for many common services and media sources but there is no user management, no transcoding, no sharing content with other clients etc etc. Having multiple kodi installs on multiple players requires each client to be configured more or less from scratch and no easy way to have multiple setups for different users with their own preferences, libraries and/or content restrictions. It is extremely powerful and configurable and has strong format support.
I have Kodi installed on one of my Nvidia Shield Pros but only use it for playback of surround music files (support for 5.1 flac on plex seems to be limited to audio within video containers for some reason) I find the interface (and all the skins I tried) extremely clunky for use as a music player, the way the remote works within the player itself is unintuitive and makes for an annoying experience restarting the track when you just want to move the playback a few seconds, a bit unfair of course as that isn’t what it was made for but that’s just my experience.
For me, Plex or Jellyfin is great if I want to share my library with some friends or family, especially non-technical people. Kodi really needs tinkering and you need debrid subscriptions and requires more local maintenance. It’s great for me but I wouldn’t want to teach my family how to use Kodi and me having to fix it when it breaks.
oh definitely, im still on Emby, but it definitely required for remote access/viewing.
oh definitely. i use emby for remote access, but the tvs in the house all run a local (to the nas) instance of kodi
For local use it’s handy that those Kodi instances share their database so watched state and crucially how far into the episode/movie you are. You can do a shared database with just Kodi but I don’t think that’s optimal. Jellyfin integrates so well and handles the database stuff much better imo so I just use that.
I prefer jellyfin myself
Kodi is horrible on touch devices. I also don’t want to have terabytes of files on every device I want to watch something on. Sure, there are workarounds, but I could also just use Jellyfin. Yeah I don’t use Plex, I use Jellyfin.
But it’s really just mainly because I dislike the UX of Kodi.
You don’t need to have local copies of all your media with kodi. A NAS works just fine.
Streaming a full 4k movie rip takes more bandwidth than most people would have available on the go. Plex/Jellyfin can offer transcoding on the server for such usecases.
Are you talking about on mobile? I don’t think people are hosting kodi and their content on their phones.
Because streaming on mobile is a huge usecase for many people
Isn’t Kodi a streaming host? Why terabytes of files?
It isn’t. It’s a media center originally developed for the Xbox
Imma be a weirdo here: I use Emby.
I can use Plex on my PS5 and share it with my friends without having to do DevOps work.
I’ll cast my vote: Kodi is far superior to Plex. People are just too lazy to learn something. I have a library larger than Netflix and Kodi makes browsing it very simple.
For multi device jellyfin or Plex(which is terrible now compared to before) is way better, sure you can make Kodi do it but it’s never been good at that
I have a multimedia server with jellyfin and even the dumbest clients can play off it some way.
To each their own. I run a NAS as the main source of data in my network and the files are encoded as h.265 2160p 10bit. I don’t need another transcode step because my systems are all capable of decoding h.265 10bit in real time. To force my NAS to do another transcode would be stupid, IMO.
To force my NAS to do another transcode would be stupid, IMO.
yeah, i dont understand the attempt to get the nas to do more than being a nas. its busy bein nas.
Laughs in stremio
Fr fr.
The real question is why anyone would use Kodi/Plex/XBMC over Jellyfin
Because Plex makes it so much easier for me to share my stuff with my brother who doesn’t live in the same house.
kodi is more ‘media center’…audio/video/static imaging…hell, plugins to gaming… jellyfin/emby is an excellent transcoding/end-user-streaming platform. i see them as complimentary to eachother
The real question is why people pay for Plex when Jellyfin is free and open source
i should have mentioned, i used emby (switching to jellyfin) for remote devices… i just use kodi for local tv instances in the house.
