It lets the user browser with cover art, descriptions, trailers, sorting by release date, rating, etc. It keeps track of watched and unwatched movies. Shows what’s recently be added, recently released. Keeps track of where you’re at in a TV series, to always play the next episode. It can transcode as needed, to something like a mobile device or TV that might be more picky than VLC.

Lots of quality of life improvements over list of files on a smb share.

In particular the main value-add is that they have clients across so many different platforms, including most major bespoke smart TV brands[0], and their solution to streaming on WAN (HTTPS brokering) is pretty darn good for most people. Accessing my media from hotel rooms is pretty darn seamless, other than the wifi connection sometimes requiring downscaling to 720p or or so.

0: not really an issue nowadays with everyone moving to Big Tech-provided smart TV OS, but when you use an old TV with like mid-2010s webOS it's nice to see some old Plex app that still works.

I assume Plex "just works". Jellyfin is some assembly required.

You also occasionally run into a "Love Exposure" type bug.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/10494

Clients on everything, watch history tracking, meta data collection, nicer player, quick transcode for mobiles and other portable media players you don't want 4k on, automatic subtitle collection, live TV DVR, and an interface so simple my grandmother can use it.

You’ve described NAS in general. It’s more than just file system. Plex gives you Media Library indexing, web app, mobile and TV apps to play content from your NAS, from anywhere in the world (it even includes Relay, in case you don’t have public IP or accessing NAT traversal).

Thats what I used to have 15 years ago when I was streaming over SMB to my Xbox running XBMC. It works but having something like Plex or Jellyfin is just so much nicer. It gives you the "Netflix" experience of browsing your media library. My Jellyfin is setup to offer an automatic "skip intro/credits" button. I used to use Plex and was a yearly subscriber mostly for the ability to download media to my phone for offline playback. Obviously I could do that with an SMB share but Plex (and the others) have built-in transcoding which is nice if you don't have the time or space for a bunch of full size 1080p files.

Now, I use Jellyfin alongside Seerr (so me and others can quickly pick-out media to automatically download in a preset quality). I've also installed a plugin for Jellyfin called Moonfin that offers a ton of quality of life improvements and also integrates Seerr within one app. I just click on a movie or TV season I want, Seerr tells radarr or sonarr to query my private trackers for the selection, and then radarr/sonarr send the torrent to rtorrent. After a few minutes, Jellyfin picks up the files and adds them to the database.

For me the metadata is a big part of it. I have a large physical media collection so I could just use the discs, but putting it all into plex has made it so much easier to browse and watch. For example I can pause and skim the cast/crew filmographies right in the plex UI, including being able to see what I already have and investigate the stuff I've never heard of for possible future purchases. When watching several movies in a row, after finishing one I can follow the automatically-populated trail of related/similar movies until I find something that fits my mood.

Plex/Jellyfin is for those without a home theater. I typically listen/watch media on my phone or old iPad, or sometimes a laptop. Since Jellyfin works through the browser it covers all these scenarios. On the occasion I have some people over and we want to watch it on a TV I can connect the laptop to the TV.

Its missing the wife/husband/child acceptance factor.

My jellyfin setup is not that different.

Jellyfin container instance running on a mini pc, reading media from an NFS share on a NAS, organised in a very similar fashion.

The advantage is there is a "native" app on the TV, so everything is very adapted to the TV UX, i.e. remote control driven UI etc.

(And the jellyfin side is relatively disposable, the container can be trashed and redone fairly quickly).

That’s very detailed. Sounds like you have everything the way you want it. So plex would probably add nothing.

I started using it because me and my flatmate had different media libraries and we wanted to share them. Plex very conveniently merged both into a single deduplicated library that we could pick from when watching something on the TV.

One thing that Jellyfin does really well is integrate devices like the HDHomeRun. You can then watch OTA TV from any device on the LAN or elsewhere through the Jellyfin Web portal or dedicated clients for Linux/Android/iOS.

If your HTPC is powerful enough, you should also check out Plasma Bigscreen as a substitute for XFCE4.

I can share plex with my friends and family easily. Your solution sounds good but it’s just too hard for most people.

There are plex client apps for most tvs and boxes, even the really cheap bad ones, and it all just kinda works.

Jellyfin is nice for various reasons (main for me is play synching) but Apple TV + Infuse + SMB share made something pretty bulletproof and kid friendly even before.

I have almost the same setup. Plus a 3rd party app called "Material Files" to access it on my phone.