Same. I started out early in 2003/2004 with XBMC, and used all sorts over the years - probably Plex for 4/5 years or so in there… the writing was on the wall 4(?) years or so back when the nag emails and data capture all started ratcheting up. I dumped it for Jellyfin and never looked back once. I pay for Infuse to make it work on Apple stuff, but it’s < £10 year (mainly to cover codec licence nonsense?), which seems a small price to pay compared to any other alternatives I could find.
One thing Plex does better is media detection. Like you can plop all your shows in a folder and it still will make sense of it. Jellyfin insists on a very specific directory structure and file naming. It’s very frustrating if you only want to watch a show and not interested in maintaining a perfect library.
It's astounding how much every single system out there fights and fights and fights against showing you your directories, as they are.
I started but didn't finish a Rygel + local-search (nee Tracker) plugin to try to finally get that. I wish the upnp media services were better. I keep telling myself I'll build a nice client/controller... Some day.
Is there anything around that does _not_ force a management system? I really just want a thing that primarily just tracks if I've seen a particular file, secondarily maybe let me control playback from a different device. Actually figuring out what media those files map to is a distant third.
DLNA usually doesn’t force any system and more or less exposes fs. Some TVs natively have a client. Otherwise Kody or some other client app can be used to browse and play files.
As far as I can tell plex only wants separate folders for different kinds of media and file names that give at least some clue to what it is. Plex is much more lax.
The problem with Plex is that is has a very opinionated system that ignores how things are in real life.
One example I can point to is Stargate SG-1. Episode 1 is a two parter and depending on who you ask it's either Episode 1 and 2 or Episode 1 which causes all subsequent episode numbers to be thrown off by 1 depending on how you count.
This confusion is further complicated by the release order on DVD/Bluray, the order of airing, and the fact that all of these things can be different in different regions of the world.
That has more to do with TheTVDB than with Plex itself, and it's really nothing compared to what Jellyfin demands. Plex at least supports several different alternative directory structures and file naming schemes. In order to transition to Jellyfin I would have to rename thousands of files to comply to its specific requirements, whereas Plex was mostly okay with the way I had organized my files offline.
I actually discovered the advanced item ordering menu where can you change the series episode order source, it solved this exact problem for me yesterday
It's a big deal because there's no rhyme or reason why it's one way or another way in different series so when you ask your TV through voice command to "Play Season 3 Episode 2 of [Show] through Plex] and then your TV plays the wrong episode it becomes a big deal.
For a time and I have no idea if this is still true Plex had a serious advantage in the sheer range of client platforms it supported (iOS, Android, smart TVs, Roku, etc.)
Ouch. I wonder if this is related to when Plex tried to unify development of their mobile app in late 2025 so they’d have a single shared codebase for both Android and iOS?
I’ve heard from a lot of people who accidentally upgraded to the latest version of Plex on their iPads that it’s a shadow of its former self: tons of features are missing, SRT are unreliable, picture-in-picture flakes out, etc etc.
It's possible, because I used the Plex app on that same hardware for years. It certainly wasn't Google's software gettng heavier (it was already RAM and battery-hungry enough I'd dropped it), but trying to use Plex became an exercise in frustration around that time