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.
Because I paid for a lifetime sub like a decade ago and my parents and a few friends connect to my instance. I can’t be arsed to move myself and everybody else to a new system when this shit just works.
Totally different software solutions aimed at different users, and many people use both.
Plex is a Server software that handles media management, libraries, users, etc etc… and a range of player apps that have a somewhat beginner friendly layout requiring little to no setup
Personally, I run a large Plex server that provides content for my family across dozens of mixed devices in home and out of home, different users have access to different libraries and have different preferences. If needed it will automatically transcode content for remote users out of the home to fit my upload bandwidth and their available speed if they are on mobile. it keeps track of watched content and position for all users so they can move between devices seamlessly.
Kodi is an extensible media player frontend, it can play files from a remote server or NAS but there is no server management, it is just doing basic file access. there are addons for many common services and media sources but there is no user management, no transcoding, no sharing content with other clients etc etc. Having multiple kodi installs on multiple players requires each client to be configured more or less from scratch and no easy way to have multiple setups for different users with their own preferences, libraries and/or content restrictions. It is extremely powerful and configurable and has strong format support.
I have Kodi installed on one of my Nvidia Shield Pros but only use it for playback of surround music files (support for 5.1 flac on plex seems to be limited to audio within video containers for some reason) I find the interface (and all the skins I tried) extremely clunky for use as a music player, the way the remote works within the player itself is unintuitive and makes for an annoying experience restarting the track when you just want to move the playback a few seconds, a bit unfair of course as that isn’t what it was made for but that’s just my experience.
Jellyfin is great and I follow its development and test it every now an then but it is nowhere near fully featured or well supported enough or me to transfer my family over to.
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.
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.
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.
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