The Verdict
The objective of these Roundups is to put the subject candidates through a series of tests to determine a winner. On rare occasions, the winner stands tall above all of the rest. But more often than not, it’s a close contest between the podium finishers, with the other two not far behind.
Before explaining our verdict, we’d like to recommend that you install all the projects and test them for yourselves – your choice of media server could well start the next round of flame wars. You should also spend some time evaluating the different configuration options. This is because even though the default settings for all projects would suffice for most users, you just might find one that’s best suited for your needs, such as enabling parental controls, allowing limited access to certain users or using hardware acceleration.
Since the different streaming servers are quite evenly matched in their default offerings and can each play videos and music files and display pictures, we’ve placed extra emphasis on the documentation, configurability and the availability of plug-ins to decide the winner of this Roundup.
Even though Gerbera works as expected, its lack of quality documentation is unforgivable. Coupled with forcing users to manually edit config files, the project essentially guaranteed the last spot for itself.
Plex doesn’t put a foot wrong, and is one of the best media servers on offer. But its business model, where many features require payments, is unpalatable – especially when other media servers are able to provide similar functionality out of the box.
Our biggest concern with Gerbera, Jellyfin and Universal Media Server is the lack of focus on documentation. But this can be easily fixed with some community participation, so we’re happy to have both these projects on the podium. Considering that Jellyfin is not yet a year old, the project can easily unseat the winners by the time we do a follow-up Roundup. Unlike the other media servers, Gerbera’s web interface is little more than a file browser, which is another drawback.
Universal Media Server does several things right, but its web interface, which is limited to providing access to content, needs a serious facelift.
When it comes to documentation, configuration, the availability of add-ons and its intuitive interface, Kodi is consistently head and shoulders above the rest.