I've considered moving from Plex to Jellyfin (or some other offering in the space), but I don't think anything can really compete with Plex.
Plex, for me, required quite a bit of fiddling, but once you get it working it works _very_ well. There are decent-quality apps on every platform you want to use. There's a whole lot of software that integrates with Plex from things like requesting/adding new media to monitoring/analyzing Plex server usage.
Some of the things I appreciate about Plex:
- It does a very good job at matching media
- It's very easy to share access with others
- It supports many types of media -- TV, movies, music, live TV, and just plain ol' video. I store class lectures on Plex!
- I'm able to stream very high bitrate movies (upwards 40mbps) without issue
Plex doesn't have the smoothest UX. You have to understand some technical concepts to use it effectively, e.g. sometimes I have to force a transcode when streaming an incompatible format. I have been very frustrated with Plex because of this.
I do wish that Plex would stop working on features that few use. I suppose this is a hard thing to do when they're working on a product that is so heavily associated with piracy.
I dunno, the things you say about Plex I would also say about jellyfin: requires a bit of fiddling, works very well, not always perfect. Jellyfin has bugs, but it's free and works for my use cases, and improves quickly. I like that I can, and have, compiled jellyfin from source when there was a bugfix for one of the features I use that hadn't made it into a point release yet.
I think all software comes with trade-offs and frustrations. It sounds like, for my uses, Plex would trade in a different set of frustrations plus cost money and be closed source.
So I guess it depends what you mean by "compete with" Plex, because for me, it's more like I haven't found anything that competes with jellyfin.
- It does a very good job at matching media - It's very easy to share access with others - It supports many types of media -- TV, movies, music, live TV, and just plain ol' video. I store class lectures on Plex! - I'm able to stream very high bitrate movies (upwards 40mbps) without issue
Jellyfin does this for free. I wanted to be able to create multiple accounts in Plex - but this needs a subscription or lifetime pass.
Jellyfin also does Movies, Music, and i have loaded a few training video's on it as well.
At the end of the day you can see where Plex is heading - Sell lifetime subs and then try to further monetize the customers to pay for monthly expenses Plex faces running the service... So i went to Jellyfin.
Plex, for me, required quite a bit of fiddling, but once you get it working it works _very_ well. There are decent-quality apps on every platform you want to use. There's a whole lot of software that integrates with Plex from things like requesting/adding new media to monitoring/analyzing Plex server usage.
Some of the things I appreciate about Plex:
- It does a very good job at matching media - It's very easy to share access with others - It supports many types of media -- TV, movies, music, live TV, and just plain ol' video. I store class lectures on Plex! - I'm able to stream very high bitrate movies (upwards 40mbps) without issue
Plex doesn't have the smoothest UX. You have to understand some technical concepts to use it effectively, e.g. sometimes I have to force a transcode when streaming an incompatible format. I have been very frustrated with Plex because of this.
I do wish that Plex would stop working on features that few use. I suppose this is a hard thing to do when they're working on a product that is so heavily associated with piracy.