Do you use paid features of Plex and if yes, which ones? Im using Plex daily to stream shows stored on a SSD connected to Windows laptop. I think I would not miss on any paid features they provide. Initially when I decided to try to watch less mindless tv stuff, I thought there will be a plethora of solutions for home streaming but it turned out that the only one that actually works is Plex
Jellyfin is nice. It doesn't work great though. I've had and have way too many issues with it.
I run it next to Plex to keep an eye on how it develops. I still have issues with pretty much all clients, from losing server connection information, to jankiness on changing users, or subtitles just not rendering properly, crazy high CPU usage for certain transcodes, etc.
Plex just works most of the time. Clients are better (even though the thing about them pushing crappy streaming and live tv stuff bothers me a little), subtitles mostly just work, rendering is ok and most video formats work well on most clients, and so on.
I want to like Jellyfin. I have high hopes that one day it will be great and I won't want Plex anymore. That day is not here yet.
I do both - have it on my NAS exposed as SMB shares but also Jellyfin both on the internet without vpn/tailscale and of course with.
Sometimes I want to use a local media player, sometimes, when I am unsure what to watch I browse the media gallery and just watch from the browser.
I don't trust Plex. I don't like its media server, all of the dark patterns, the subscription, unknown telemetry (although firewalled.) I liked that it was available as an app on my TV but I solved that a different way.
hardware en/decoding for sure. im not sure if it is still the case, but prior to pruchasing the liftime account playing back media remotely from a phone/tablet was limited to 10 minutes. i have 3 kids, and we regularly take long drives. 10 mins would not cut it. i also share my content with family, which again i think is harder without a subscription.
