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+--- Forum: General Questions (https://forum.jellyfin.org/f-general-questions)
+--- Thread: Is jellyfin really so much better than Plex? (/t-is-jellyfin-really-so-much-better-than-plex)
Is jellyfin really so much better than Plex? - AlfredaWeimann - 2025-02-28
Hey. I'm rather experienced in selfhosting, but very new on this sub.
For what I can see, Jellyfin is praised here, directly opposite to Plex. I'm using Plex for almost 10 years, I have lifetime Pass subscription, but maybe it's time to move on?
What will Jellyfin give me, what Plex doesn't? Why is it considered better here? The main advantage, of course, would be the fact it is FOSS, but I'm asking more for the technical aspects for end-user.
Bonus question: is the webos app any good? My main device used for Plex is LG TV and I want a native app, not the built in browser.
I know, there are tons of articles out there comparing these too, but I'm looking more for real life experience, not raw data, specs and numbers. Thanks in advance!
Edit: just to be clear, I use my Plex only for movies and tv shows. I don't care about music, DVR, 'live tv' etc.
RE: Is jellyfin really so much better than Plex? - Efficient_Good_5784 - 2025-02-28
(Today, 03:14 AM)AlfredaWeimann Wrote: Bonus question: is the webos app any good? My main device used for Plex is LG TV and I want a native app, not the built in browser.You'll be a bit disappointed then as the webOS app will just use the webUI in most ways.
If you want a Jellyfin app built with a GUI for TVs, the best one will be the Android TV app.
If your TV doesn't support ATV, you can always buy something like an Nvidia Shield to be able to use the ATV app.
To move onto your main question, you will probably have an easier time seeing for yourself.
You can run both Plex and Jellyfin at the same time to see which you like better (or if you like Jellyfin at all).
Jellyfin can store metadata (optional) next to the media locations. So if you want to test that out without interfering with Plex, you can always test on a small set of video files in a new folder just for Jellyfin.
In my opinion, the biggest change for you will probably be how your media are sorted and stored on your drives.
Jellyfin requires that you separate your episodic shows from your movies in order to accurately get metadata from providers online.
You can see how Jellyfin expects you to store and sort the files here:
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows/
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/movies/
Another big change would be that you need to setup your own external access (if you want that).
Jellyfin doesn't have anything for remote access. It's up to you to setup a VPN or reverse proxy for your server so you can access it outside of your network.
You can simply open a port on your router to the outside world to access Jellyfin that way, but we don't recommend that as you're exposing it directly to bots that will attempt to break in.
As for clients, you'll probably want to use Jellyfin Media Player on a PC.
JMP uses the webUI, but replaces the player with MPV. It can direct play a lot of things.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-media-player
You can also check out MPV Shim, which is a casting client for PCs (that also uses MPV): https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-mpv-shim
In terms of mobile support, the official Jellyfin Android and iOS apps will also use the webUI.
You can check out 3rd party apps to see if you like those better for phones.
RE: Is jellyfin really so much better than Plex? - LinuxGeek28 - 2025-02-28
IMO, the biggest benefit of Jellyfin is not having to pay Plex for HW transcoding, but you've already paid for that. I've been an an avid user since the early days of the split from Emby. It does all that I want it to, and none of the things I don't (e.g. sending me adds, relying on a central administration server, and changing the interface randomly on me. ymmv.
RE: Is jellyfin really so much better than Plex? - thornbill - 2025-02-28
For what it’s worth web apps are the “native” app technology for webOS (hence the web part of the name 😉).
RE: Is jellyfin really so much better than Plex? - Host-in-the-Shell - 2025-02-28
I use Jellyfin and have an LG TV as my main client, and it works fine for shows and movies, although DV support is terrible (as a result of LG's poor implementation of it on most of their TVs) and I just strip it out completely in favor of HDR10. As mentioned, the official app for WebOS is just a web wrapper since it's simply the intended way in general for running apps on that OS, hence the name.
That said, I prefer it because native clients are often missing some features that are present on the web client, and you do benefit directly from the web development of Jellyfin; the tradeoff, however, is that performance is going to be more dependent on network stuff instead of the hardware side of things. It can be rather slow even if you have an efficient setup for things like DNS (such as pihole + unbound correctly configured) and there can be issues with a reverse proxy setup of Jellyfin for some LG TVs.
Alternatively, if you're deadset on a native client, you could try the WebOS homebrew route (you don't even need to root the TV, just get dev mode in it) and install Kodi from the homebrew repositories, and use that to setup Jellyfin.