I don’t want to share my media with anyone and see no reason to stream from outside my house, it’s not like I can take my home cinema with me. Also, why would you want to re-encode and lower the quality?
Well in your case you don’t need the subscription at all, apart from some minor things the subscription won’t do anything for you.
But I do all the things you’re not doing. I share my server with dozens of friends/family so I need remote streaming. I can watch shows on my own server no matter where I am (at work or when visiting relatives, or even on the phone on the train). And if you streaming on the phone or with bad internet in general it might sometimes be a good idea to reduce quality to save bandwidth.
I really would like to use Jellyfin, but the remote access is quite useful to me personally. My immediate family lives far away and they can access my library remotely quite easily. They just want to watch their requested shows and don’t need 4k HDR 7.2 surround sound for their cooking shows.
I guess I could set up tailscale or some other vpn access to my network but I don’t feel like explaining that to parents and siblings. Even my partner, who lives with me, has little patience for all things electronic. They’re an Apple user and I’m aware enough not to constantly pester them with my ideals and preferences. Plex works on our Apple TV and is easy so it’s the best solution right now. Am I in the minority? Probably, but different strokes for different folks.
TLDR: Jellyfin is awesome, but Plex currently makes more sense for my needs.
Jellyfin is quite easy to use remotely (prerequisite: purchased domain (easy), tunnel VPN (complex) or public static IP (not always an option)). I confess I use Emby as I bought premium for it once I learned how much it suits me, and the UI is much nicer and rounded – although I didn’t need to pay in order to do most of what I wanted. I can say that my friends access the library with a one time login and minimal friction, but I’m also not going to preach further - sometimes it’s better not to fuck with a working system, and I respect your choice
So no useful features for me.
I don’t want to share my media with anyone and see no reason to stream from outside my house, it’s not like I can take my home cinema with me. Also, why would you want to re-encode and lower the quality?
Well in your case you don’t need the subscription at all, apart from some minor things the subscription won’t do anything for you.
But I do all the things you’re not doing. I share my server with dozens of friends/family so I need remote streaming. I can watch shows on my own server no matter where I am (at work or when visiting relatives, or even on the phone on the train). And if you streaming on the phone or with bad internet in general it might sometimes be a good idea to reduce quality to save bandwidth.
I really would like to use Jellyfin, but the remote access is quite useful to me personally. My immediate family lives far away and they can access my library remotely quite easily. They just want to watch their requested shows and don’t need 4k HDR 7.2 surround sound for their cooking shows.
I guess I could set up tailscale or some other vpn access to my network but I don’t feel like explaining that to parents and siblings. Even my partner, who lives with me, has little patience for all things electronic. They’re an Apple user and I’m aware enough not to constantly pester them with my ideals and preferences. Plex works on our Apple TV and is easy so it’s the best solution right now. Am I in the minority? Probably, but different strokes for different folks.
TLDR: Jellyfin is awesome, but Plex currently makes more sense for my needs.
Jellyfin is quite easy to use remotely (prerequisite: purchased domain (easy), tunnel VPN (complex) or public static IP (not always an option)). I confess I use Emby as I bought premium for it once I learned how much it suits me, and the UI is much nicer and rounded – although I didn’t need to pay in order to do most of what I wanted. I can say that my friends access the library with a one time login and minimal friction, but I’m also not going to preach further - sometimes it’s better not to fuck with a working system, and I respect your choice