The *arr stack is what you're looking for + Jellyfin for streaming (Opensource, 100% free, and much better than Plex).
Prowlarr: manage your indexers
Radarr: find/automatically download movies
Sonarr: find/automatically download tv shows
Jellyfin: streaming your media
Look up trashguides for setting up all this stuff, very detailed guides. They are compatible with torrents and Usenet. I like using docker with portainer for easy management and if you use a VPN container you can selectively route these containers through the VPN so your other services that dont require the VPN dont need to route through it.
I use zap2xml or whatever it is. Simple script and crontab job and it's worked without issue for near two years now I guess (since I initially configured it.) All free. I'm in the States so not sure if it's location dependent or not.
Never used Plex, but if being open source is a feature Jellyfin is better than Plex.
Not requiring an external authentication server is the biggest drawback of Plex. I don't want Plex to have my watch history and info about my media library.
With Findroid supporting the intro skip plugin I'm fine since I don't need many platforms.
I have them both running. The only thing Plex does better for me is remote access. Everything else like UI features, collections, series identication, and CPU usage has been simpler and better looking on Jellyfin.
And Android TV, it's gotten better, but generally still sucks.
I use Jellyfin because it's FOSS, private, and it's also written in a tech stack I'm very familiar with.not because it's better than flex, because it really isn't.
That’s a bold opinion given its barebones UI, widespread playback issues, and lack of basic functionality like a proper intro skip. Like even Emby is miles ahead of Jellyfin. Which isn’t surprising given JF is free but let’s be real lol
No I would love to switch to Jellyfin. I ditched Plex after some of their more recent shenanigans but Jellyfin is just so vastly inferior on almost every front that it’s difficult to even compare the two. For now I’m using Emby which is another fork of the same project Jellyfin is and it’s a lot closer to feature parity with Plex. And I’ll gladly pay money for a quality product over settling for a free product that doesn’t really get the job done.
I just hope that one day Jellyfin reaches a maturity that it’s actually worth switching to.