Pyrosis did a great job answering a lot of your questions, I will focus again on why I cannot recommend plex:

Opt-In is not acceptable. You need to opt-out of: data sharing, data sharing with partners (unless you are in the UK or specific States), sharing playback data, stopping discovery together and activity feed, and turning off all of their live tv and streaming services.

Sharing streaming habits with others is not something that ever should have been opt-out. They keep pushing the line.

By the way, several of the “features” you mention are not included by default. Hardware decoding, downloads, DVR, etc.

I run both concurrently. I have a plex pass from way back when, maybe a decade or more.

What plex is now is not what it once was. Trying to socialize viewing habits, opting in by default to analysis, ads, reviews, and sharing that info has gone too far. Plex also works on these features such as discovery which benefits them, instead of open bugs.

That us why I can’t recommend it.

As for a feature comparison. Jellyfin is snappier, and faster. Plex is more detailed in their interface, and has better Metadata. Jellyfin sometimes doesn’t restart where I left off. Jellyfin is much, much better on mobile devices, but has less clients for tv’s. Jellyfin doesn’t rely on any server but my own, where plex wants to authenticate with thier own servers and ask for accounts (and money) to have full functionality. Jellyfin always downloads to a client. Plex…might. Plex has better handling of multiple streams in one file.

Because they are doing things in their best interest and not the end user.

As so many like to say here the enshitification is happening.

If you want to self host, plex isn’t it.

I have a roku, and I gotta ask… what ads? I think they run one on the side at the menu screen but I never even notice it. Because the only time i am on that screen is to get to a channelm

Then when something isn’t playing it just goes to the aquarium screen saver.

What are you doing that had so many ads?

If you want to talk about how chatty the damn things are with their servers, yes that is an issue.

Uh, my server is an x86, is fanless and the cpu idles at 9 and maxes at 12. Is much faster then my pi and has quicksync.

I run plex, jellyfin, smb shares, mealie, tailscale and rerouting, notes, and books.

I like my pi but performance per watt isn’t as drastic with x86 if you build for it. Did I mention it’s also fanless? Passive heating that just works on the cpu.

I had plex for a decade or more, but I added Jellyfin last year. They both are running on the same server and point to the same media stack. No problem.

In general, I prefer Jellyfin. Now I prefer it even more.

What is using the ram? The arrs? My media server uses hardly any ram with plex, jellyfin, and a lot more…

Your requirements are confusing.

I get the sata ports, but why the 2 m.2 SSD’s?

Why the 16 GB ram minimum? My server has multiple containers/services and barely uses 3 gb ram.

I say this because this is the crux of the issue:

2. Enough performance for various docker containers

What you do here effects everything else right?

So a little clarification about what services might help make design a little easier.

What are you DNS settings? Is the gateway configured? Can openmediavault check for updates itself?

Yeah, I was just joking around, surprised people took it that seriously. I mean if there are ads, I am getting paid either way…

I noticed that the best of the educational and instructional videos, particularly from the companies using it for training and demonstration have turned off ads anyways. Youtube is not quite yet forcing ads on everyone are they?

Uh, if it’s work:

A. Shouldn’t you be working?

Or

B. Ads while I get paid, doesn’t seem too bad.

C. Principle of the matter dammit!

What does he edit the video with? My video editing software does speech to text subtitles. Which is nice because I can edit where and how the subs are displayed.