In my opinion, it doesn't get much better than Jellyfin.
The streaming platform blows Plex out of the water by a country mile, and Emby, while interesting, just doesn't stack up. Despite my love for Jellyfin, though, some parts of it felt a little half-baked, like a potato that was pulled from the oven too soon. There were certain features I found myself longing for.
And then I found Intro Skipper, and the last piece fell into place. At this point, I've canceled all of my anime-centric streaming services, and I get a better experience with my own media server than Crunchyroll could ever dream of. If you haven't added the Intro Skipper plugin to your repertoire, you're missing out.
Intro Skipper closes the gap with mainstream services
I like intros, but not that much
Let's face it: no matter how great the intro to a show is, I'm going to get tired of it, especially if I'm binging a long-running series. Even the subtle shifts in the Scrubs opening aren't enough to hold my interest. Over the years, Netflix and other services have conditioned me to look for a way to skip the intro and get straight into the meat of the episode.
In most cases, I'm not losing out on anything. By adding the ability to skip the intro on demand, Jellyfin closes the gap even more with premium services, offering an experience much more in line with what the average user has come to expect.
It respects my time
My time is precious, so make it quick
Yes, I'm quoting an SCV from Starcraft. That aside, I don't have nearly as much time to watch TV these days. A newborn kind of eats away at my downtime, and there are certain shows I just won't watch around him (Fallout and Stranger Things, to name a couple).
I'm a big anime fan, and the shorter length of anime series means I won't see the openings as often. If the music is good enough, I'm okay with watching it for the twelve or so times it appears. On the other hand, a show like The Mentalist (whose opening is the same throughout) is just wasting viewing time, and those seconds add up.
The plugin is just one example of Jellyfin's ecosystem
The community is Jellyfin's strength
While the default Jellyfin might not feel fully complete, the vast array of plugins helps close that gap. There are so many community additions that enhance the user experience far beyond what any streaming service can match, offering the ability to style your own subtitles, automatically download movies and TV shows, and so much more.
There's no convoluted corporate timeline to wait on, either; a developer can throw the code together, upload it to GitHub, and make it available to others for nearly instant check-out. It helps that adding a plugin to your setup is incredibly easy. While some have slightly more complex setup methods, the majority of Jellyfin options are accessible even to a layperson.
The plugin isn't perfect, though
It sometimes skips content
The downside to Intro Skipper is that it's designed to detect and skip any intro and credit sequences in your content. While it's pretty accurate most of the time, I have encountered several instances where it clearly jumps a few seconds too far and opens the episode in the middle of the action, forcing me to scrub back to find the actual ending of the intro.
This is especially troublesome in shows where there isn't a clear divide between the start of the action and the intro. While it's generally a minor inconvenience, a rough intro skip can pull me right out of the viewing experience.
It might have a few blind spots, but so does everything else
Streaming services aren't perfect, either
An automatic intro skipper is a major boon to anyone who watches a ton of content. Right now, my wife and I are waiting (impatiently, I might add) to watch the latest season of Bridgerton when it releases in full. We like to binge, but we don't like to watch intros more than once or twice. While Intro Skipper might not bat a thousand, neither do mainstream platforms. I've experienced the same annoyances from services like Netflix and Hulu. And Crunchyroll? I considered myself lucky if its skip intro button didn't jump straight to the next episode.
Jellyfin is nearly perfect, and Intro Skipper pushes it even closer
A day may come when Jellyfin fails, when its community forsakes its plugins, and all the GitHub repos break, but it's not this day. And that's not something I see happening anytime soon. It has long become the primary source of entertainment in my household, and other streaming services are going to have to seriously step up their game if they want me to resubscribe.
