Resources For TV Channel Developers

My son is a big Plex fan. I was on the fence about it. I had some concerns about certain features being paywalled, among other things. I ended up quite liking Jellyfin for some of my media, so I switched over to it. I'm still going to try Emby at some point and see how it integrates into my setup as well, but Jellyfin has been my daily driver for a while now.

Then my son went out and paid for a Plex subscription, since I was “too cheap” to do it (the reality is a bit more complicated).

After using the premium version of Plex alongside my Jellyfin server, I discovered something interesting: apparently, I actually like both of them together. So I ditched the old ‘Plex vs. Jellyfin’ debate and put them to work for my self-hosted media.

Plex is user-friendly

But Jellyfin has a better backend

My journey into premium Plex began as a father-son bonding experience, but I did find Plex to be a bit more user-friendly. Although I honestly love my Jellyfin setup and won't be letting it go anytime soon, Plex has started seeing more use lately on our smart TV. At the premium tier, it's much better than my previous experience with the service.

It's a different story on my computers, where Jellyfin still gets a bit more use. Jellyfin’s open-source nature, ease of use, and killer backend give me a ton of control over my self-hosted media. Since I listen to quite a bit of music, I decided to largely dedicate Jellyfin to audio and explore video options with Plex.

Jellyfin's backend doesn't have a lot of the paywall/telemetry/dependency trap that some other services do and is definitely a bit more dedicated to self-hosting, so I do like it for that. But I don't see why it can't co-exist with Plex, which seems to be moving in a different direction.

My son feels differently. When I asked him why he prefers Plex, he simply said, “I prefer to use Plex because of how simple it was to set up, and for…