ive been using kodi (xbmc was better moniker) since google killed sagetv. i recall attempting plex, but it seemed to lack some open/extensibility (its been awhile).
i have a side project i want to make as a modular plugin generating a cable layout with original air orders and networks/channels… kodi seems most optimal, but ill admit its been a long while since i looked at plex.
so why plex over kodi?
For me, Plex or Jellyfin is great if I want to share my library with some friends or family, especially non-technical people. Kodi really needs tinkering and you need debrid subscriptions and requires more local maintenance. It’s great for me but I wouldn’t want to teach my family how to use Kodi and me having to fix it when it breaks.
oh definitely. i use emby for remote access, but the tvs in the house all run a local (to the nas) instance of kodi
For local use it’s handy that those Kodi instances share their database so watched state and crucially how far into the episode/movie you are. You can do a shared database with just Kodi but I don’t think that’s optimal. Jellyfin integrates so well and handles the database stuff much better imo so I just use that.
Kodi is horrible on touch devices. I also don’t want to have terabytes of files on every device I want to watch something on. Sure, there are workarounds, but I could also just use Jellyfin. Yeah I don’t use Plex, I use Jellyfin.
But it’s really just mainly because I dislike the UX of Kodi.
You don’t need to have local copies of all your media with kodi. A NAS works just fine.
Streaming a full 4k movie rip takes more bandwidth than most people would have available on the go. Plex/Jellyfin can offer transcoding on the server for such usecases.
Are you talking about on mobile? I don’t think people are hosting kodi and their content on their phones.
Because streaming on mobile is a huge usecase for many people
The real question is why people pay for Plex when Jellyfin is free and open source
