Most of that stuff isn't necessary just to replace Plex, the OP's saying them Jellyfin started them on a journey they're presumably enjoying, not that they needed everything there to replace it.
I think you're right the bar is still too high for most folks, although I will note that I think it's dramatically lower than it used to be. A lot of the tools are all-around way easier to deal with, tailscale makes a lot of "personal cloud" use-cases much more feasible, and then coding agents (I'm using claude code) dramatically reduce the labor costs of getting this stuff all working and fixing it when something goes wrong.
Yep you nailed it. That’s all I was saying. None of those things were critical to Jellyfin working.
But I will say for the size of my music library, Jellyfin was not quite as good as plex and was the impetus behind my switch to navidrome for audio.
And navidrome isn’t the best for audiobooks so I’m in the process of testing good audiobook hosting platforms.
So the reply wasn’t wrong either. Plex is just easier for a lot of folks, and that is why I don’t have any ill will towards their changes. They just aren’t for me.
I think you're right the bar is still too high for most folks, although I will note that I think it's dramatically lower than it used to be. A lot of the tools are all-around way easier to deal with, tailscale makes a lot of "personal cloud" use-cases much more feasible, and then coding agents (I'm using claude code) dramatically reduce the labor costs of getting this stuff all working and fixing it when something goes wrong.