Plex, Kodi, Media Portal, Windows Media Center or what?

What media content application do you use?

  • Kodi

    Votes: 43 29.9%

  • Plex

    Votes: 68 47.2%

  • Media Portal

    Votes: 1 0.7%

  • Windows Media Center

    Votes: 24 16.7%

  • Apple TV

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 8 5.6%
  • Total voters
    144
I've got a Synology NAS for media storage and 4 Nexus Players with Kodi throughout the house that I stream content to. I'm definitely partial to Kodi for myself, but setup more novice family members with Plex.
 
Another benefit to Kodi on the Nexus Player is that it updates automatically since it's located on the Google Play store now... Of course, Plex does this as well.
 
I have gone from Mediaportal to WMC to XBMC (and Kodi) and I most recently jumped to Plex. I delayed going to Plex because, as noted by OP, the skins were limited and Kodi looks amazing (I liked the Transparency skin).

...unfortunately, XBMC/Kodi has also always felt like a work-in-progress, and I have had a steady rise in stability issues. Plus, Kodi's handling of music is pretty awful.

I just switched to Plex and it definitely feels like a paid product. The app is great and it was far easier to get my wife to understand how to use it. It's far easier to handle a household of various accumulated devices (e.g., Roku, Chromecast, Fire stick).

And Plex's handling of music is WAY better. Custom mixes based on single songs or moods, playlist management, etc. I have a large music collection and spend a lot of time listening at home, and this blows Kodi completely out of the water.

Kodi will still win if you want to tweak, use lots of add-ons, etc... but, for me, that time has passed and I got tired of feeling like I was always fixing something. I guess that's not very [H], but oh well :p
 
i just moved to W10 and plex it works well, nice with a remote. feels a lot like MovieBrowser addon for WMC

nice UI, powerful and the plex media server is great. we used it this weekend when driving 3+ hrs to disneyland. My son was listen to music and watching recorded TV shows over LTE to our home PMS and my wife was watching synced movies from our plex media server to her ipad during the drive.

I was using it to listen to music playlists via LTE on my phone with a single headphone in.


It really is a nice product and managed user accounts with specific libraries and restrictions is great for kids.


My son gets cartoons, kid music and such when he logs in while my wife gets her own playlists, TV shows and movies customized to her.....

we just made the move and I need to beef up our PMS with a higher end CPU, I am working with a AMD x4 820 that is like 6 years old and 4gb of RAM, which was fine for a HTPC but not HTPC and transcoding server
 
Just tried Plex... It didn't last 5 whole minutes before I deleted that crap...

Here is what I want in a "Media Streaming Program"

1. Must have a folder structure interface!!!! I don't want to have to drag a single row of movies left and right, I have way to many movies and TV shows for that lame ass interface.

I won't even list anything I want after that. If I can't change to view by folders in any software it isn't worth it for free, let alone something like Plex that you have to pay to use. I would rather just remote into my machine and watch movies like that
 
Koncrete said:
Just tried Plex... It didn't last 5 whole minutes before I deleted that crap...

Here is what I want in a "Media Streaming Program"

1. Must have a folder structure interface!!!! I don't want to have to drag a single row of movies left and right, I have way to many movies and TV shows for that lame ass interface.

I won't even list anything I want after that. If I can't change to view by folders in any software it isn't worth it for free, let alone something like Plex that you have to pay to use. I would rather just remote into my machine and watch movies like that
Click to expand...


It's a free application with advanced features that you would have to pay for to use.

But, your "folder view" desire is not there.
 
Folder view? What is this? 1995? Use the Search feature if you have that many..

I have over 2500 movies and over 4k individual episodes. I don't have an issue finding what I want to watch, ever.

Additionally, you don't have to view them "one movie row" at a time. You can view them as a whole page and skip entire pages if you'd learn to use it.
 
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Koncrete said:
Just tried Plex... It didn't last 5 whole minutes before I deleted that crap...

Here is what I want in a "Media Streaming Program"

1. Must have a folder structure interface!!!! I don't want to have to drag a single row of movies left and right, I have way to many movies and TV shows for that lame ass interface.

I won't even list anything I want after that. If I can't change to view by folders in any software it isn't worth it for free, let alone something like Plex that you have to pay to use. I would rather just remote into my machine and watch movies like that
Click to expand...

RTFM :p

Screen_Shot_2016_01_24_at_10_50_15_PM.png
 
I use software called JRiver because it has some very powerful configuration abilities for audiophile setups. I have considered moving to Plex, because then I could access stuff from my friend's place, but last I checked, Plex does not offer everything I need.
 
i tried sageTV back in the vista days..... it was great for OTA TV

I bet i still have a license for it
 
yeah just saw that, cool


i remember it being good for TV but useless for other media, still the case?
 
There are addons that allegedly make it ok for media files, last time I tried them years ago they blew massive chunks (just didn't work), not that that is any indication of how they are today.

I used to rock a full Sage setup all over my old house back in the day.
 
Still have a SageTV setup running. It works fine for other media. In fact, for those that like "folder" views, that is what my my imported video screens were set to (movies, tv shows, kids shows, etc.). There were some things I really liked about it over Plex/Emby/etc. For example, DVD and Blu-Ray folder structure playback. Just rip the disk to a folder structure, run an import scan and the movies are available in full quality. No need to mess with MakeMKV, Handbrake, etc. All the extras were there also if you wanted them (menus with navigation, director's commentaries, etc.).

There were two areas that were lacking, IMO. The music part always felt "kludgy" to me. Just no where near as polished. The other part was online content. As more and more online options started showing up (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.), there was no way to integrate them into the environment on the extenders. If you had a HTPC, you could drop out of Sage and use those services and then switch back, but that was never a clean process from my experience. Even their integrated online stuff, which consisted of Youtube, some podcasts, and a few other things seemed to break more often than it worked.

Don't get me wrong, as a PVR they have always been the leader in my mind (much better than WMC, Snapstream, and others). Cablecard and the transition of cable TV to digital formats really put a damper on them though due to DRM and broadcast flags. Which is why our house started moving away from it about a year ago and I only use it to record shows on local channels and the occasional BluRay/DVD rental when I just want to rip/watch/delete right then vs our usual rip/watch later/delete standard. All the TV recordings are indexed by Plex as a separate "recorded tv" section and transcoded to watch via our Roku's... so we use the actual extenders maybe once a month anymore.
 
I mainly used SageTV for my own media (dvd/bluray rips) and thought it was excellent. I switched to Kodi after google bought SageTV (went several years with no updates) but now that its open source and back in active development, it's probably worth checking out again. Hopefully some of the shortfalls with netflix and amazon/hulu can be addressed now that its open source.
 
I run FreeNAS with the Plex plug in .. Roku, XBONE, 3 Computers in my house and then I share my library with 8 or so friends. My daughter calls it "black netflix"

| Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31230 | 1155 Intel S1200BTL Motherboard | 24GB ECC DDR3 UDIMM's | 5 x 2TB HDD Raidz | 750wtt 80Plus PSU | Generic Full Tower Case | FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE | Installed on 64GB PNY USB Flash Drive (Thanks SEF!) | PLEX Media Server | 700wtt Battery Back-up |
 
Kodi is perfect for HTPC enthusiasts, super customizable and tons of beautiful skins. Also a huge third party add-on community which adds features/functionality for most everything you can think of.

Haven't used Plex but not sure it can do all that. Seems like a more simple interface with nice WAF.
 
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systemvipers said:
I love Kodi, don't even have cable except for the internet connection, but now i am thinking of how to get stuff to play everywhere.
I will have to look into Plex, sounds like its evevybodies fav.o
Click to expand...

It's nice being able to use the WiFi in a plane to watch a movie on my Plex server at home. I can crank the quality down to account for the shitty internet, but it's still watchable on a 10" tablet. Plex is the only way to roll if you want easy access to your media from anywhere.
 
A little gem i discovered. Anyone who has OTA HD Homerun dual tuners and use an Amazon Fire TV stick, you can side load the HD Homerun Android app to watch live TV. I download all my TV shows via usenet and thus only need this for live TV stuff and sports etc.. It gives you guide information. Only thing you can't do is pause. So for those of you looking cut out WMC this is an easy way for live TV. So now I have the following content all on my AFTV stick all for a pretty cheap price. If I can't find anything to watch from this list something is wrong with me:)

Plex
Amazon Prime
Sling TV(free trial but will probably keep it)
Live OTA TV Channels
 
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