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Door staff@engadget.com (Max Miller) - 22 Sep 2026
Once you've got your clean and shiny operating system ready to go, it's time to load the computer up with media and start streaming it to your household. Depending on the size of your media collection, you'll need quite a bit of storage. While you can serve media from the PC's boot drive, you risk losing all of your files if anything goes wrong. Many home server enthusiasts prefer to use multiple storage drives and redundant solutions like RAID. This takes a bit of setup and gives you less usable storage space overall, but gives you peace of mind in the event of a drive failure or other emergency.
All that's left to do is choose your media server software, with the two most popular choices being Plex and Jellyfin. Plex is the easiest to set up, and you'll rarely have to touch it again after an initial configuration. However, its advanced features are locked behind a steep subscription. Jellyfin is a free and open-source alternative, meaning you'll never pay to use it and you'll have more control over how everything works. On the other hand, you'll need to be a bit more comfortable tinkering with your server and network. Both options offer clients (the app you'll need to stream media from your server) for most major TV platforms, as well as iOS and Android mobile apps.
Media transcoding is the best example of the differences between the two. When a media file is incompatible with one of your devices, both Plex and Jellyfin can use a GPU to transcode it for universal playback. (Although pretty much any PC can run a media server, you will need a dedicated GPU for the best results with transcoding, as CPU-bound transcoding can be slow or glitchy.) Plex makes this process automatic but keeps transcoding CPU-bound, with no hardware acceleration able to take place on your GPU unless you pay for the Plex Pass subscription. Jellyfin gives you both types of transcoding for free, but you'll need to spend a couple of minutes setting it up. But don't worry, Jellyfin doesn't get particularly complex unless you plan to stream media remotely, in which case you'll need to use other software to create a secure tunnel so that you can point it to the internet without getting blasted by malware.
Emby is another popular Plex alternative worth looking into. It sits somewhere between Plex and Jellyfin in terms of ease of use (Jellyfin is actually based on an older open-source version of the software), but has a similar pricing structure to Plex that puts features like hardware transcoding behind a paywall. There's no "right" choice to make, and all of the options will offer you a taste of what they can do for free.
All that's left to do is choose your media server software, with the two most popular choices being Plex and Jellyfin. Plex is the easiest to set up, and you'll rarely have to touch it again after an initial configuration. However, its advanced features are locked behind a steep subscription. Jellyfin is a free and open-source alternative, meaning you'll never pay to use it and you'll have more control over how everything works. On the other hand, you'll need to be a bit more comfortable tinkering with your server and network. Both options offer clients (the app you'll need to stream media from your server) for most major TV platforms, as well as iOS and Android mobile apps.
Media transcoding is the best example of the differences between the two. When a media file is incompatible with one of your devices, both Plex and Jellyfin can use a GPU to transcode it for universal playback. (Although pretty much any PC can run a media server, you will need a dedicated GPU for the best results with transcoding, as CPU-bound transcoding can be slow or glitchy.) Plex makes this process automatic but keeps transcoding CPU-bound, with no hardware acceleration able to take place on your GPU unless you pay for the Plex Pass subscription. Jellyfin gives you both types of transcoding for free, but you'll need to spend a couple of minutes setting it up. But don't worry, Jellyfin doesn't get particularly complex unless you plan to stream media remotely, in which case you'll need to use other software to create a secure tunnel so that you can point it to the internet without getting blasted by malware.
Emby is another popular Plex alternative worth looking into. It sits somewhere between Plex and Jellyfin in terms of ease of use (Jellyfin is actually based on an older open-source version of the software), but has a similar pricing structure to Plex that puts features like hardware transcoding behind a paywall. There's no "right" choice to make, and all of the options will offer you a taste of what they can do for free.