Former Plex user and current Jellyfin user. Never tried Kodi however happy to see more options in this space.
Kodi evolved from XBMC, which is the OG of this genre.
Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
11–20 of 34 posts
Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
#12What's the home media server landscape look like these days? I used Kodi about 10 years ago I think, but I hardly ever hear about it on HN, just Plex and I think Jellyfin? Why would someone choose one over the others?
Kodi + an older television without "smarts" make for an actual "smart" television, one which does not try to sell you as a product to advertisers but which uses its "smarts" for your benefit. This is how the part of my family which likes to watch television (which is everyone but me...) access their network-provided pablum (my bias might show through a bit here and there) using a "dumb" TV with a Raspberry Pi on the back. It can even be controlled through the TV's own remote which makes this not just useable to those who like to tinker but also those who just want to donate some brain cells to the gods of "entertainment".
I use Kodi for this purpose - direct view on a local device - and Jellyfin for 'remote' applications, e.g. for making our extensive photo and video collection available to family members. Jellyfin is a media server while Kodi is an extensible media player which happens to have some limited support for remote access/streaming. In other words they are complementary, not in competition. I have never used Plex nor felt the desire to do so.
Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
#13What's the home media server landscape look like these days? I used Kodi about 10 years ago I think, but I hardly ever hear about it on HN, just Plex and I think Jellyfin? Why would someone choose one over the others?
They're all different things.
Kodi, as you may recall from a decade ago, has its roots in the old Xbox Media Center. It grew beyond that OG Xbox a long time ago and runs on just about anything these days, although things like Raspberry Pi 4s are a common (and performant) choice for dedicated hardware. It is open source. Kodi is primarily a media player (load files from local or regular-ass SMB NAS, and play them), and it is very good at doing that correctly (correct screen resolution and refresh rate, correct audio format selection and output -- that sort of thing). It generally operates in a largely standalone configuration.
Plex also has its roots in XBMC, but it went in a different direction: It is split into two parts: The Plex client, and the Plex server. It's a very different beast: While Kodi can play whatever you throw at it on your own LAN, Plex can let someone three continents away play that same thing over your WAN -- with official Plex client apps from the usual official app stores [from Apple or Google or Roku or whoever], so it's very approachable. But the server can be heavy (it does video transcoding), and that server also has features that want to be paid for, and it is not exactly cheap.
Jellyfin, meanwhile, is a fork of Emby. Both Jellyfin and Emby exist because Plex is neither free nor open. They do many of the same things that Plex does, and also have a client and a server component.
---
I use Kodi in my living room because it is the thing that works most-correctly with my particular home theater gear.
At my parents' place, they use Plex, because it is easy for them to use (the interface is easy, and I maintain the Plex server) and they aren't as picky as I am: They're happy if there are moving pictures on the screen and sound coming out of speakers. (I have the bandwidth to support remote Plex usage, because it does transcoding, but I do not have enough bandwidth for them to run Kodi with my video library.)
I don't use Jellyfin (or Emby) because by the time I learned of either those, I'd already paid for Plex.
Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
#14Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
#15What's the home media server landscape look like these days? I used Kodi about 10 years ago I think, but I hardly ever hear about it on HN, just Plex and I think Jellyfin? Why would someone choose one over the others?
I've found Kodi still occasionally useful as yet-another-media-box attached to the TV. Kodi stands out by having a consumer-friendly software package - capable of supporting older video game emulation and having the most jitter-tolerant IPTV streaming client.
I still switch over to Kodi-running-on-a-Raspberry-Pi-3 when a guest comes over and starts reminiscing about video games from their childhood or just wants to kill some time, or when the family wants to watch sports on TV -- we've watched the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and Thanksgiving-day games, year after year, on this little Raspberry Pi. Roku's app will just give up when the HDHomerun IPTV signal hiccups, but Kodi will keep going and give you the classic screen-tear / dropped i-frame mess for a sec and then catch back up. Admittedly, the video / audio will get out of sync after an hour or two, sometimes requiring us to drop and re-open the stream. But for me, Kodi is Ol' Reliable, as opposed to whatever the Roku decided to do this year.
Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
#16What's the home media server landscape look like these days? I used Kodi about 10 years ago I think, but I hardly ever hear about it on HN, just Plex and I think Jellyfin? Why would someone choose one over the others?
The main difference is the how/where the media is consumed.
With Kodi, the primary consumption is at the place where Kodi runs and typically there is no server. kodi can support lots of plugins and act as a interface for different media sources/apps. This makes kodi feel a bit clunky.
With Jellyfin & plex the primary place of consumption is a client running on your favourite device while the heavy lifting of downloading and transcoding is done on the server. This abstracts the different media sources from the clients and clients are just focused on consuming media.
Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kodi is still an excellent option if you have it directly serve media from connected storage or a NFS/SMB share. Some people just don’t have the need to “share” their collection, which makes running a media server unnecessary. I believe some use Kodi as a direct play frontend for a media server. But the native apps are pretty good these days and can direct play ~everything. The other strong point is the plugin ecosys…
I use Kodi on a Shield to play any local files I want to watch, which reside on a USB-attached SSD. Results have been pretty good, although it suffers from some non-intuitive UI design... the sort of which also plagues other media applications I've tried. Let me try it on my computer... OK, specifically, Kodi says, "your library is currently empty. To populate it... enter "Files" section, add a media source, and conf…
lookup the keyboard shortcuts!
Tab and backspace are useful x to stop playback
Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kodi is still an excellent option if you have it directly serve media from connected storage or a NFS/SMB share. Some people just don’t have the need to “share” their collection, which makes running a media server unnecessary. I believe some use Kodi as a direct play frontend for a media server. But the native apps are pretty good these days and can direct play ~everything. The other strong point is the plugin ecosys…
I use Kodi on a Shield to play any local files I want to watch, which reside on a USB-attached SSD. Results have been pretty good, although it suffers from some non-intuitive UI design... the sort of which also plagues other media applications I've tried. Let me try it on my computer... OK, specifically, Kodi says, "your library is currently empty. To populate it... enter "Files" section, add a media source, and conf…
ESC goes back to home
Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
#19What's the home media server landscape look like these days? I used Kodi about 10 years ago I think, but I hardly ever hear about it on HN, just Plex and I think Jellyfin? Why would someone choose one over the others?
They're all different things. Kodi, as you may recall from a decade ago, has its roots in the old Xbox Media Center. It grew beyond that OG Xbox a long time ago and runs on just about anything these days, although things like Raspberry Pi 4s are a common (and performant) choice for dedicated hardware. It is open source. Kodi is primarily a media player (load files from local or regular-ass SMB NAS, and play them), an…
Kodi runs well on a pi4, but the lack of hdmi-cec support was enough to make me change to an nvidia shield pro (not the tube shaped one one, unless you like stuttering 4k playback)
Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're all different things. Kodi, as you may recall from a decade ago, has its roots in the old Xbox Media Center. It grew beyond that OG Xbox a long time ago and runs on just about anything these days, although things like Raspberry Pi 4s are a common (and performant) choice for dedicated hardware. It is open source. Kodi is primarily a media player (load files from local or regular-ass SMB NAS, and play them), an…
Kodi runs well on a pi4, but the lack of hdmi-cec support was enough to make me change to an nvidia shield pro (not the tube shaped one one, unless you like stuttering 4k playback)
What do you mean? I have Kodi running on a Pi4 with HDMI-CEC. It works perfectly. Remember, only one of the ports supports HDMI-CEC by default and you need the correct cable.