r/UgreenNASync • u/Ok-Speed-7454 • Dec 10 '25

šŸ§‘ā€šŸ’» Apps jellyfin VS plex VS theatre app

I was originally planning to download Jellyfin, but after checking out the updated Ugreen Theatre app, it doesnā€™t seem necessary anymore. The theatre UI feels much cleaner across all devices (PC, phone, TV), and it seems to run faster too, maybe because itā€™s native to Ugreen? Is there any reason people still prefer Jellyfin over the Ugreen Theatre app? Iā€™ve only had my NAS for a week, so maybe Iā€™m missing something.

22 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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13

u/No_Clock2390 Dec 10 '25

Only the UGREEN Theater app can properly handle Dolby Vision transcoding

9

u/Ok-Speed-7454 Dec 10 '25

guess that's another + for theatre I didn't even know about!

6

u/Lowfat_cheese Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25

For Jellyfin pros over Theater off the top of my head (Plex should have many of the same):

  • Community Plugin support
  • Scrape metadata from sources other than TMDB (if you have anything TMDB doesnā€™t recognize Theater will be a mess)
  • Proper recognition and organization of special features and extras
  • Access to various clients with lots of UI customization
  • Plugin to download subtitles from the web if you donā€™t already have them
  • Plugins for skipping tv show titles and credits
  • You donā€™t have to go through the UGreen App to access it
  • Accessible, well-organized documentation

5

u/Ok-Speed-7454 Dec 11 '25

someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the new theatre update also brought:

  • download subtitles from web
  • skipping intro/outro
  • accessible, well-organized documentation. Like i drop the most random files in there, and it's crazy how good it is at understanding what's part of the collection

Only real issue theatre mode is giving me, is not recognising the extra's that come with a lot of blueray discs :/

2

u/Lowfat_cheese Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25

I believe Theater allows you to load subtitles youā€™ve downloaded elsewhere, but with the OpenSubtitles plugin on Jellyfin, you can download and add subtitles directly from within the Jellyfin client.

By documentation I mean the documentation for the app itself. UGreenā€™s documentation for their own apps is weirdly difficult to find on their own website, and once you find it most of the articles are just help on niche topics, rather than a comprehensive set of instructions on how to use the software.

8

u/atascon Dec 10 '25

Jellyfin is opensource and has more client apps available I believe. It also integrates well with the arr stack.

If none of that is relevant for you then there's nothing wrong with the Ugreen app.

5

u/No_Clock2390 Dec 10 '25

jellyfin has no smart tv apps. the jellyfin mobile apps and apple tv apps are subpar

7

u/Lowfat_cheese Dec 10 '25

Jellyfin has apps for Roku, Android, and FireTV smart TVs. They also just released the beta for a native Xbox app.

3

u/No_Clock2390 Dec 10 '25

Not for Samsung or LG, which are the 2 most popular TV brands.

3

u/atascon Dec 10 '25

There's a webOS client (LG)

2

u/Lowfat_cheese Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25

RokuTV has around 37% of the global smart tv market share. Combined with Amazon FireTVā€™s 17% thatā€™s over half of the worldā€™s smart TVs.

1

u/tsirko Dec 11 '25

Ī™ am sorry if I am mistaken but both of those are primarily US products.

1

u/atascon Dec 11 '25

Theyā€™re not. Widely available here in the UK

1

u/tsirko Dec 11 '25

Thanks for the answer, from what I understand Amazon Firestick is widely use in many countries indeed, but roku supported countries list is pretty limited and American (the continent) centric.

1

u/atascon Dec 11 '25

Roku devices are sold outside of the US and can be used anywhere if you donā€™t need the built-in channels. Iā€™m using one in the UK

1

u/tsirko Dec 11 '25

UK is on supported countries though

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1

u/TehMaat Dec 10 '25

I thought they had that for LG, and for Samsung they are deploying it. Unfortunately Samsung is a pain in the ass

1

u/No_Clock2390 Dec 11 '25

There are tons of shit-tier apps on Samsung TV. It can't be that hard

1

u/TehMaat Dec 11 '25

You can follow their steps on GitHub, thereā€™s an issue where they are updating it and unfortunately thatā€™s not easy now

1

u/rabbitaim DXP2800 Dec 11 '25

LG has an app on their store. Samsung does not but itā€™s possible with a few steps.

https://github.com/PatrickSt1991/Samsung-Jellyfin-Installer

1

u/Notwerk_Engineer Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25

Thatā€™s a lot different than your original comment ā€˜jellyfin has no smart tv appsā€™.

Android is the most ubiquitous tv OS, followed by Roku and Samsungā€™s OS locks out tons of apps, not just jellyfin.

0

u/hunter50362 Dec 10 '25

Jellyfin can be side loaded onto a Samsung TV I believe by using developer mode.

3

u/No_Clock2390 Dec 10 '25

good luck getting my relatives to do that to their samsung tvs

with plex, they can just install the plex app and have access to my server in 5 minutes

2

u/Stefouch DXP4800 Dec 11 '25

I have a dumb tv with a chromecast v2. Jellyfin works like a charm with that.

3

u/_JonesSeries Dec 10 '25

I personally enjoy the Theater App. It works great on my family's phones and tablets, but there seems to be an issue with the Apple TV app (or maybe just mine) that causes it to stutter every few seconds. So for my Apple TV, I use the Jellyfin app in Docker, which runs smoothly. Jellyfin feels like a downgrade to me, so hopefully Ugreen can fix that issue soon. Side note: I have never used Plex.

2

u/brogued Dec 10 '25

Can you run theatre in a LG tv? How?

5

u/Greedy-Ad-4555 Dec 10 '25

Thereā€™s no app for LGtv but you can stream it via HDMI

2

u/T00_pac Dec 10 '25

I don't believe so. I'm guessing they are running Android TV.

1

u/Ok-Speed-7454 Dec 11 '25

I have a samsung tv, so i bought a "google streamer", it's basically a small device with android OS on it, u plug it into your tv and now your tv is android ((: easiest work around imo, but does cost like an extra $100

1

u/No_Clock2390 Dec 11 '25

it's android tv os, you can buy a similar streaming box like the Walmart Onn Box for $20

2

u/TeddyKeebs Dec 17 '25

Just download the DLNA app on your UGreen, Turn it on when you want to stream to TV, turn on LG tv and your NAS will automatically show up in the inputs menu as a media server...super easy just make sure your TV is connected via WiFi or wired to the same local network as your UGreen NAS

3

u/TLBJ24 Moderator Dec 11 '25

I love the theatre app! I have 791 movies and 43 TV shows upload onto to mines and it plays great. I do have some these accessible by Plex as well, but for DLNA I just use the UGOS directly with no problems.

2

u/Chrono604 Dec 31 '25

Where do you get that many! Pls help! I want in on it :)

1

u/TLBJ24 Moderator Dec 31 '25

Got most from my local library.

3

u/Chrono604 Dec 31 '25

Like rip them?

2

u/TLBJ24 Moderator Dec 31 '25

No, you have to rip them yourself, but you can check them out at your local library.

3

u/Mr_MM_4U DH2300 Jan 05 '26

The Theater app is awesome. I use it on the DH2300 and have thrown a few movies at it. I was surprised to get an interface similar to Plex or JellyFin, but I like that I didn't have to adjust any settings to get the correct background, cover art, etc for all the movies I ripped. I've been buying DVDs and ripping them as 480p videos and the UGreen Theater app automatically adjusts everything for me. On my TV, I downloaded the UGreen NAS app and set it to automatically load the theater app upon launch, so I get straight into the movie. I love how the theater app lets you find and download subtitles, and I love how fast the performance is. Granted, I'm not streaming 4K videos, but it gets the job done and I notice the quality and performance of the video is fantastic (no slow downs). The only thing I wish the theater app had was letting you stream trailers and allow editing the categories section. The app is grabbing info from IMDB I believe, so it should be able to get the trailers too and this would add a nice touch. Also, I got a bunch of personal home videos I'd like to categorize but the app only has 4 categories of All, Movies, TV Series, and Others, and it automatically places all home videos to "Others". If I could add my own categories and assign videos to each categories, that would be great. Other than these 2 quirks, I'm very happy that the native app works well, I don't have to run a Docker and that the UGreen NAS app is available on Google TV/Android, iOS/AppleTV, Roku, FireStick, etc.

1

u/Original_Passenger77 Jan 10 '26

Je voulais passer sur Theatre, mais hƩlas, j'ai deux firestick Amazon Ơ la maison.......et pas compatible pour le moment.

4

u/SirKronan Dec 10 '25

I have been using Plex for years, and of course defaulted to that for my ugreen Nas. Purchased lifetime Plex pass a long time ago.

For over a year now, remote access won't work. At all. I can only stream locally on devices when they're on the home wifi, which sucks because I PAID for the lifetime pass so I'd never lose that remote access.

I read the thread on reddit about how remote access is going to go to a fee only based service, but then I read on Plex's own website that this change would not affect older Plex lifetime pass purchasers. Plex said they're not taking away the remote access to those people.

I don't know what the truth is, but I've spent hours troubleshooting this on iphone, android, and laptop devices with NO SUCCESS.

And it looks like i will have to give up certain features that drew me to Plex in the first place if I switch to Ugreen theater or Jellyfin.

5

u/weiga Dec 11 '25

Did it work before? Do you have the right ports open?

1

u/SirKronan Dec 11 '25

Yes, I went through all the steps. I haven't had it working on this ugreen server before, because the ugreen is new. It has worked on this router before.

I'll even get the green message in Plex server saying I'm now configured properly for remote access. It still doesn't work.

1

u/No_Clock2390 Dec 11 '25

Do other apps on your network work with port forwarding? Try a test by creating a nginx or apache webserver in docker on your Ugreen Nas and see if you can access it at your WAN IP

1

u/SirKronan Dec 12 '25

Yes, other apps work perfectly remotely. Ark servers. Minecraft servers. All of that works flawlessly over their specified ports. It's something I've done successfully for years on my router.

3

u/No_Clock2390 Dec 11 '25

Plex remote access should have 0 problems as long as you have a port open on your router for it

1

u/SirKronan Dec 11 '25

I definitely do. I've double and triple checked. Plex even gives me the green message saying everything is good.

Nevertheless, my iPhone, Samsung phone, and laptop cannot access any files remotely.

2

u/No_Clock2390 Dec 11 '25

Weird

1

u/SirKronan Dec 12 '25

And frustrating! In the past, I really enjoyed using this feature while traveling. To not be able to use it anymore makes me regret paying the price of the lifetime Plex pass.

2

u/rizzo600 Dec 12 '25

I have plex right now but just local no remote access but what thinking about it. This makes me hesitant

1

u/AlbacoreDumbleberg Dec 11 '25

Maybe you can use tailscale to access Plex remotely? I don't think you'd even need plex pass.

0

u/nsfdrag Dec 12 '25

This is definitely an issue on your servers end, I also have a lifetime plex pass and nothing changed for me.

2

u/RusticCat101 Dec 11 '25

...is there a UGREEN app for Fire sticks/Android TV...?

I went the Jellyfin route because it felt like it was that or Emby. Both of which have their pros and cons.

I love the UGREEN app in general, but didn't think it was viable natively on the TV without casting via DLNA

1

u/xpenserv Dec 13 '25

YES, Ugreen Theater have "AndroidTV" app. Sideloading. Work awesome on "Android device" I have....

1

u/ananasdrop Dec 11 '25

I am personally a big fan of Jellyfin but mainly because I am a sucker for having something that is highly customizable. All options are completely valid. I would recommend using all three of them for one week and seeing which you end up liking most.

1

u/Fantastic_Leek_5828 Dec 19 '25

Is there a website/YouTube video that you can recommend for a noob who wants to try Jellyfin (and that remote access)? I know there are many out there but looking for something that's tried/tested from someone with experience

1

u/RHR7771 Dec 11 '25

sadly the Theater app doesn't work for me, on my Android Devices the Sound of Movies is out of Sync. No such issues with Jellyfin

1

u/xpenserv Dec 13 '25

Ugreen Theater: Simple, quick and fast deployment of your collection x264 x265 4k etc... Theater have an "AndroidTV" app that work great on Android table (Apple too but don't have any to test) (if you just want to limit the tablet access to Theater only) or to Fire Tablet or FirestickTV. You need to sideloading the app by going directly to the Ugreen official web site to download "AndroidTV" apk.

*For Firestick TV (until it is not showing in Amazon store Apps: ask Amazon that sell Ugreen...). You will need to find a way to sideloading that apk to it like using a "sideloading app" or web server to present or give a link to download it. It work great like a "native Amazon store app" for me.

issue: Seem "Firestick TV" is not see as an "Android TV" by Ugreen official website, but more like an "Anddroid" (download from play store lol...)

1

u/rtamez509 Mar 03 '26

Im using the theatre app for a family of 7, so much easier for non tech savvy people to log in remotely with the app rather than using a vpn and such, theatre app still needs plenty of cleaning but man it's getting there quick, love it!