PLEX vs Emby vs Jellyfin - What is the Best Media Server?

so it's been about a month since i made my video on how to turn a old laptop into a media server using plex now since i made that video i have gone through a couple different changes on the server a couple different media server services and in this video that is what i'm going to be talking about this is going to be plex versus mb versus jellyfin what i chose between the three and why now i used every single service for about a couple weeks so i was really able to notice various pros and cons between each one so in this video what we're going to be doing is going over all three services what are some of the key differences what do they all do the same advantages disadvantages and then i'm going to finally talk about which one i settled on and specifically why and as i kind of go through this you're going to start noticing which one i'm eventually going to end up going with now first we have plex now plex is by far the most popular media server service that is out there today and that's for good reason one it simply works the transcoding in is awesome and there are a ton of different features not only do you get the basics of hosting a media server but it also integrates a bunch of different on-demand content ad supported movies and tv shows podcasts just there's a whole lot going on in plex and then there's mb mb is a direct competitor against plex it's partially open source both plex and mb do have premium features which we will be getting into in just a second but ambi doesn't have the kind of the blow of all the extra on-demand services it's really just your media that you host on mb now jellyfin is a completely free and open source fork of nb that builds on the portions of nb that are open source and out of the three services we're talking about today jellyfin is the only one that doesn't really have a premium or paid option available now like i said both plex and mb have premium memberships generally they start out about five dollars a month but you can get lifetime memberships for i believe around 120 dollars will unlock all those premium features so with that said i'm going to bring up a little chart i made and go over all these specific features whether if they are included this included or if they come at a cost now as we can see all three services allow you the basic functionality that you would expect out of a home media server including managing all your media and remotely streaming that media to various devices whether that be in your home or really anywhere else in the world in addition all three services offer you basic metadata functionality as well as kind of the uh posters or cover art for movies now both plex and jellyfin have a mobile application whether that be for android or iphone that you can download and use completely free now i was using plex for quite a while but i was turned on to mb by somebody who left a comment on that video going over creating a media server basically telling me to check it out it's partially open source and it's really really good because one of my main complaints with plex was the fact i didn't want any of those on-demand services i just wanted my media and only my media so i was really really happy using mb it worked perfectly fine everything was nice but i went to go download the mobile app and this is when i ran into a little bit of a dilemma the mb app is not free it costs you five dollars to unlock access to it or your premium membership if you're subscribed to that watch for me the use of a mobile application is pretty basic especially if plex is offering it up for free so this was kind of a well was kind of distasteful to me so with that said both plex and mb charge you to use mobile syncing but jellyfin it comes for free next is the ability to have multiple accounts plex charges you for this functionality while both mb and jellyfin allow you to have basically as many accounts as you want for free and now we get to live tv and dvr it's kind of the same following the same pattern here with both plex and mb charging you or requiring the membership for that service while jellyfin being completely free and open source provides this to you for free next for those of you with children parental controls may be important so plex you have to have plex pass their membership to use parental controls while with both mb and jellyfinders features just included next is trailers and extras uh basically this is you're on a screen for a movie it'll will allow you to see trailers for the movies and some extra features basically plex and mb both charge for this but this feature is not currently included in jellyfin next is the ability to connect to your smart home now this is not included in plex or jellyfin but this is a premium feature in mb and you heard me complain about plex and how they kind of make you see all their on-demand online content for some of you may you may look at this as a feature this is free and included with plex while both ambi and jellyfin are kind of limited on this with mb you can listen to podcasts natively and jellyfin requires additional plugins and add-ons to be able to access online content and finally the last feature that i'm going to be mentioning is cloud sync for example if you want to sync your content to dropbox or some other online service like that this feature currently is not included with plex or jellyfin but this is a feature that's offered to you for free through mb so that basically lays out all the features you know that i ended up switching from plex to mb and the thing that finally made me start looking for something else is when i was on my own personally hosted media server using mb i started getting the uh mb paid membership kind of ads within my media server now that is one of the main reasons why i switched away from plex i did not like that and that is when i started looking for more free and open source options and the fact that nba was already so good and somebody or a group a team of people got the code the open source code from mb and made jellyfin it just was a plus now with that said jellyfin is not perfect there were a couple different issues the main one is it's a lot more picky when it comes to getting the metadata for movies and how you name them so you have to name everything perfect in jellyfin for it to show up properly on your media server this isn't too big of an issue but it did take me a little bit of time to go through some seasons of tv shows to get it looking good example of this is i've been watching deadwood and you can see here the season two i have downloaded showed up fine and this is the format i had to use but when i load up season three this is what it looks like and this is what the files looked like so i i'm gonna have to go in and manually rename all those files to get it to show up properly in my server additionally another difference this one's not as big of a deal but when you log in for example i use a roku tv to stream most of my content and the either mb or jellyfin applications natively available through the roku store when you connect to an mb server it's really really nice and fluid because it will scan your home network and it will just show your server there automatically whereas with jellyfin you have to manually put in your ip address your server username and all that stuff it's not that big of a deal but it is a little plus that it makes it really really easy for you to log into so those are my primary cons with jellyfish now the reason why i really like it and i'm gonna end up staying with it probably very long term is a lot of the premium features on nbnplex are just available in jellyfin and the features that aren't available in jellyfin i just don't want anyway so so with all that said if you're interested in a video of me going over how to set up install jellyfin as well as my current media setup within jellyfin let me know i have it set up really really good and there's some tips and tricks that i found it along the way for example pulling youtube thumbnails if you have youtube videos in your jellyfin server and really good content organization i've gotten really into that and i got got it looking pretty good so if you're interested in that video please let me know down below other than that i do hope you enjoyed this video of me going over these three media servers which one i prefer and why just the fact that jellyfin is free and open source anybody who is a part of that community or supports the free and open source community should probably go with it the feature sets there it doesn't have any blow and i really really enjoy it so big thank you to my patreon subscribers you guys are awesome thank you so much if you are interested in supporting my content and becoming a subscriber over on patreon there'll be a link in the description if not that is more than fine simply liking this video going down in the comments below telling me if you would enjoy another video on jellyfin or what media server are you using and why in addition subscribing to this channel to get future content just like this uh yeah have a beautiful day and goodbye

Channel: TechHut

Views: 52,431

Keywords: linux, linux tutorial, desktop enviorment, networking, media server, media hosting, server, free, open source, plex media server, emby media server, jellyfin media server, jellyfin, plex, emby

Id: lgY97D5nCek

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021