BEST Synology Media Servers? Plex vs. Emby vs. Jellyfin

running a media server on your Nas is one of the most common use cases that most people have however there are three main media servers that you can use Plex MB and jellyfit which one should you use that's what we're going to take a look at in this video but before we get there let's look at how they work their setup process and an overall comparison of all three before we get started I just want to mention that we'll be looking at this in terms of Synology devices but there are tons of installation steps that I have on my website that you can follow if you have any other operating systems that you want to run any of these servers on all right so first of all they are all media servers so what I mean by that is you'll go through and configure the media server on your Nas itself and the actual server will function on your Nas only from there you'll connect to it with client devices so you can use your mobile phone you can use a fire TV or an Apple TV or any Smart TV really and what you'll do is you'll actually stream media from that server to your local clients now when you set up the actual server what you'll do is you'll link it to a media folder that media folder will contain all of your movies TV shows music whatever you have and what it will do is it will crawl that data into whatever media server you're using and it will display it through its user interface on all of the client devices and then you can stream the media from there if multiple people will be accessing the server what you can do is create different user profiles for all of your users so it ensures that each of your users will use a different user account and they can all access the same media from a similarity perspective that's the core of what all of these media servers are however there are some pretty significant differences and those differences are what it's going to determine which option you should use so first from an installation perspective you install Plex and MB by installing the package in synology's package Center all you have to do is search for it install it and then the final step is actually to go into each and configure the actual permissions so that the user your account can access your media so for Plex what you have to do is give the Plex Media Server user access to your media file so that I could read the data and for MB you have to give the MB user account access I've written instructions for both of them I'll leave in the description but the point is that you have to ensure that the user account can access your media so that it can actually read it as soon as you launch the application this is where jellyfin is different there is not an official jellyfin package as of the recording of this video so the easiest way to set it up is by using Docker now your comfort level and Docker doesn't really matter because for the most part you're just going to go in copy and paste a Docker compose file that I'll leave in the description of the video connect to your media files by potentially changing that Docker compose file to ensure that it can access the media but then you'll run the container log into it set up jellyfin and go from there now from a setup perspective they're all for the most part the same you go in create a user account you have to connect the media that you want to so you you'll have a different folder for each meeting that your movies TV shows music whatever it is you'll create different uh content types for each of them and then what happens is as soon as the setup process is over you'll be brought to the dashboard and all those media files will start to crawl in now depending on how much media you have the process to actually display that content might take longer if you have a large library for the most part all three of them will function around the same period of time but it really is reliant on how much data you have in those media files so in summary installation perspective Plex and MB is a little easier to set up than jellyfin is jellyfin uses Docker Plex and MB use a package there are unofficial jellyfin packages but I don't really want to push you to an unofficial source so you can find those online if you want to install it that way now let's look a little deeper into Plex versus MB versus jellyfin so that we can look at some of their other differences so first up is Plex Plex is the king in this space so for the most part over the past 10 or 15 years if you've wanted to set up a media server Plex is the name that you'll most of the time hear it has longevity it works well and it has a lot of compatibility with different client devices and different servers now that doesn't necessarily make Plex better than any of the others and from a media server perspective Plex functions just as well as the others do but there's a few downsides the first is if you want full functionality you have to download the Plex pass the second is that over the years Plex has gotten more and more and more bloated what I mean by that is as soon as you launch the user interface you're brought to a ton of different media files you might view this as an advantage you can literally just start to watch live TV directly from the Plex interface without having to do any other configurations so if something like that appeals to you you might just want to go right ahead and install Plex if you're somebody that just wants to get to your media files you're going to be navigating a ton of other things that you won't necessarily have to if you use MB or jellyfin so that naturally leads us into Mb now MB is extremely similar to Plex honestly jollyfin is extremely similar to Plex too but MBA is similar in the sense that it's a free to use media server but if you want the enhanced functionality you have to purchase MB Premiere where MB is different is it doesn't have that bloated user interface that Plex has so it has similar functionality but it doesn't have that bloated user interface so navigation wise it's really a little bit easier to use unlike Plex MB is a lesser known name so if you run into any problems not that I think you will getting support might be a little harder than it is for Plex Plex has a huge Community the biggest community in all three of these the third media server we're going to take a look at is jellyfin now jellyfin is a fork of MB so what I mean by that is in the past what ended up happening is that the code base was forked and MB went in One Direction and jelly Finn one in the other for that reason jellyfish is extremely similar from a user interface perspective to MB however it is a Community Driven application so what I mean by that is the updates for it is volunteer based where Plex and MB have dedicated teams that work on these products jellyfin is an open source alternative that is Community Driven from a Simplicity perspective jellyfin is by far and away the most simple what I mean by that is through the actual user interface the navigation aspects if you just want to get to your media and you want nothing more jellyfin is the answer it's also entirely free all the features that are generally behind pay walls for Plex or MB is completely free if you use jellyfin with that said on Synology devices it is a little harder to set up than Plex and MB is so now that we looked at some of their differences let's take a look at which is best for you I've broken this down into three categories the first is that if you want Simplicity meaning from an installation perspective you should go with Plex or MB based on the user interface check out the user interface see what you like better and then install that one next if you want Simplicity from a user interface perspective I would go with jellyfin or MB the deciding factor should be if you want to use any of the MB Premiere features that are free on jellyfin or if you're intimidated by the docker setup process that you have to do with jellyfit the user interface for both is very similar because they are a fork of one another so the deciding factor should be some of those Advanced features that MB Premiere has that are free for jellyfin as well as the setup process finally if you want to avoid all of this and you just want to go with the most trusted name in the space I would go with Plex Plex is as I said earlier the king so my personal pick which do I like best personally and these are really just my personal thoughts I think that if you're going to use or want to use Envy for the most part you should try jellyfin first it's free it's very very similar and while the setup process is a little more advanced the new container Manager application makes the setup process very easy because you can just paste in a Docker compose file so for that reason I think jellyfin is better than Envy at least from the perspective of which you should try first next I personally think Plex has gotten to be way too bloated over the years there's just way too much as soon as I log into my dashboard I'm just blasted with tons of different media honestly media that I'm not really looking for so I prefer jelly fin overplex from a UI perspective and since I prefer jelly fin over MB at least from an initial setup perspective my pick is jellyfin now that doesn't mean it's best but for my specific use cases what I'm looking for in a media server jellyfin checks all those boxes it's also free which you know never hurts now the reality is that they're all similar and your experience is really not going to be drastically different depending on whichever option you use so you could even try out all three of them if you want and pick for yourself the user interface is really the biggest difference between all three of these because that's what you're going to be interacting with to get to your media from there they're just streaming the media they're not drastically different with that said if you have a Nas that supports hardware transcoding and you want to set up Hardware transcoding it's free on jellyfin and it's not free on Plex or MB you have to have MB Premiere or the Plex pass so let me know in the comments which option you think is best which you prefer any similarities or differences that you think I missed and if not thank you for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: WunderTech

Views: 9,004

Keywords: Synology Plex, Synology Jellyfin, Synology Emby

Id: SBgWFASdLJQ

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2023