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by AdmiralAsshat 3109 days ago
I don't see the need for another Plex rival. XBMC/Kodi is perfectly fine. It can play local content swimmingly. It can set itself up as a UPnP server so that Roku's, consoles, and Prime sticks can grab its content. It can even setup a web client so that you can access the library in a browser tab on the local network. It's also FOSS.

Really, the only use-case I see where Plex beats Kodi is if you have all of your media stored in the cloud. But I feel like for real media die-hards, that very quickly becomes impractical (e.g. I have about 3 TB of pictures / music / video and storing that all on Amazon S3 servers would run me hundreds of dollars a year).
2 comments
untog 3109 days ago
Plex beats Kodi in two areas for me: DVR service, which Kodi doesn't provide, and remote playback. Plex will transcode videos on demand to smaller storage sizes, and store them in its iOS and Android apps for offline viewing (and their Roku app is far superior to Kodi UPnP). When it works, it works great: like having my own version of YouTube TV/Sling TV, only without any of the DRM/non skippable ad nonsense. But it doesn't always work great.

The reason I pointed out Emby is that it has all the features Plex does that Kodi does not. Kodi has some stuff available by plugin but matching the features I require from Plex has never been possible.

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sysbell 3108 days ago
http://kodi.wiki/view/PVR
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untog 3108 days ago
Yeah, I tried that, but couldn't find a backend that would work seamlessly. And besides, it still can't do the transcoding/mobile app stuff Plex can.

I love the customisability of Kodi but there's something to be said for a front-to-back, opinionated solution. It works a lot better (...even though my original complaint is that Plex can be flaky...)

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agentdrtran 3109 days ago
I use plex locally 99% of the time and the UX beats Kodi hands down. It has so many more nice features and works so much better.
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