[Arainach]

I ran Kodi for years, but "always"?

* Kodi only works on my local network. It requires exposing my file shares on whatever VLAN my Kodi devices are on.

* Kodi is a pain to configure. To point it at the aforementioned file shares, I need to copy an XML configuration file, and getting this onto every device is a chicken and egg problem.

* Kodi requires each client to scan and sync the entire library at its CPU and bandwidth limits. My Plex server automatically scans and indexes my media.

* Plex allows me to access my content at the office, while travelling, and to share with friends

* Kodi doesn't transcode, requiring all of my client devices to have enough power and bandwidth to do so locally. Plex makes it much simpler to (for instance) stream a 4k video to a low power device

I know enough to have ran Kodi for years and intentionally switched to Plex full time

[jaimex2]

I don't think you fall into the remotely technical category group.

Kodi can do all those things but you wouldn't as it has much better options to achieve the same result.

[moffkalast]

> Plex allows me to access my content at the office, while travelling, and to share with friends

Bold of you to trust an opaque corporation with access to your network and the data they can log through that. I wouldn't even trust Synology with their account quick access thing, as seamless as they claim it to be.

I don't really see remote access being secure without it being a self hosted VPN.

[Arainach]

My employer can see the data patterns, and I'm struggling to understand why I should care. My media library is entirely legit (I have a crate of 100-disc spindles in the closet) and if they really want to know what movies and music I have, so what? They could see anything I do on Spotify or YouTube as easily, and seeing me stream a bunch of incoming data will throw off far fewer red flags than plugging in an external drive with media files.

If they asked, I'd show them exactly what's up. They haven't, so they don't seem to mind.

It's not full access to my network, it's access to a carefully curated set of media files transcoded through a service. There are no tax returns, no resumes, no porn. Just FLAC, MP3, and MKV.