Sodalite vs Aether Player

Your Jellyfin library, live TV, and Seerr, on your iPhone and iPad. Watch what is already on your server, tune into your live channels, and request what is missing. AirPlay it, or send it full screen to a TV over HDMI. WATCH • Direct Play for almost every codec: H.264, HEVC, AV1, VP9, VC-1 and MPEG-2, plus older DivX, XviD and WMV files, so your server rarely has to transcode • HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HLG on the built-in display, over AirPlay and over HDMI • Dolby Atmos via EAC3+JOC as Dolby MAT 2.0 over AirPlay or HDMI, plus 5.1 and 7.1 with correct channel layout • Every subtitle format decoded on the device: SRT, ASS, SSA, WebVTT, PGS, DVB and DVD, so they appear instantly • Forced captions show even with subtitles off, like on a disc player • The audio and subtitle track you pick is remembered, per movie and per series • Two subtitle tracks at once, and a search for missing ones through your server's subtitle plugin • Scrub previews generated on the device, even when your server has none • Chapters, intro, recap and credits skip, next-episode autoplay with a countdown you set, resume, shuffle, trailers, version picker IPHONE & IPAD • AirPlay to any Apple TV or AirPlay 2 receiver • Picture in Picture while you use other apps • Full-screen HDMI out to an external display, subtitles included • Touch transport, swipe to scrub, edge swipes for brightness and volume, rotation lock • A child lock that ignores every touch until you press and hold to unlock LIVE TV & DVR • Full guide with a live now-line, favorite channels first and current-show highlighting • Pause live TV and rewind, with a buffer depth you choose • Record a show or a whole series, manage timers, play back recordings REQUEST WHAT'S MISSING • Browse trending and popular media from Seerr without leaving the app • Request movies, whole series or single seasons, and follow each request's status • Single sign-on, plus an admin view with optional alerts when a request needs you • Film collections with each part's availability, and one action to request what is missing • Search finds people too, with what your library holds first, then the full filmography MORE • Your Jellyfin music, browsable by album with a native Now Playing screen • Multiple servers with home and away addresses, plus end-to-end encrypted iCloud sync of servers, accounts and settings • Servers with a self-signed certificate work once you check its fingerprint and accept it • Parental controls with a Guardian PIN and per-profile locks, plus Watch Stats for your totals and top genres • Sort any library by title, date, rating or runtime, with optional format badges on posters • Spoiler protection blurs episode images and descriptions until you have watched, for everything or just the series you choose • 26 languages, three accent colors and two backgrounds; the optional Supporter Pack adds more palettes and animated backgrounds OPEN SOURCE, END TO END GPL-3.0 with an Apple Store / DRM Exception; the video engine, AetherEngine, is LGPL-3.0. No telemetry, no analytics, no third-party SDKs. REQUIREMENTS • iPhone or iPad on iOS or iPadOS 26.0 or later • Your own Jellyfin server (10.9+ recommended) • Optional: a Seerr instance (2.0+) for in-app requests Source, issues and roadmap: https://github.com/superuser404notfound/Sodalite

Aether is a personal media player for Plex, Jellyfin, Emby and your own files — built natively for every Apple screen. Connect your server and your whole library appears: movies, shows, music, Continue Watching, Recently Added. Add a second server and both merge into one deduplicated view, with a picker that tells you which copy is the better file. Your media, not theirs. PLAY ANYTHING • Direct play or server-transcoded — Aether follows the best path automatically, per title. • MKV, HEVC, HDR, lossless audio: formats other players choke on play through a modern engine, GPU-accelerated for smooth 4K. • Picture in Picture, AirPlay, surround sound, lock-screen controls. • Switch audio and subtitle tracks mid-playback on every platform. • Offline downloads, including whole seasons — and Smart Downloads that keep the next unwatched episodes ready. EVERYONE IN THE HOUSE • Profiles: separate Continue Watching, watchlist, ratings, Home rails and trackers, with a PIN on the way in and per-profile library visibility. • A child's profile can be held to an age rating. • Pair a profile to your Plex Home profile, or to its own Jellyfin or Emby user, so watched state stays separate on the server too. • Two profiles are included; up to five with Supporter. SUBTITLES, DONE PROPERLY • Aether reads subtitle files itself and times them against the picture, so they sit where you put them — in the black bars or over the video, in your own style, with sync and size adjustable in the player. • Search OpenSubtitles from a title's own page in thirty-one languages, ranked against the exact file you're playing. YOUR LIBRARY, YOUR WAY • One library across every connected source, filtered by genre, year, rating, country, audio language, server or the libraries you curated on them. • Continue Watching, Up Next and a Discover tab with trending titles and Where to Watch availability in your region. • Person pages, franchise collections, and ratings from IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDb. • Music as its own tab — artists, albums, playlists, and a player built for it, with the catalog kept on disk so it opens offline. • Live TV from a playlist you already have, with a full guide, categories you make yourself, Xtream Codes accounts and HDHomeRun tuners. Bring-your-own: Aether provides no channels. BEAUTIFUL ON EVERY SCREEN • iPhone and iPad: cinematic hero art, a page that grows out of the poster you tapped. • Apple TV: precision focus design, and your Continue Watching in the top shelf. • Apple Vision Pro: an auditorium around the picture — raked seating, masking walls, house lights down. • Mac: a native app with a menu-bar mode, a series browser, and Apple's own decoder for what it can play. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Aether connects only to the servers you configure. No account of ours, no cloud, no ads, no cross-app tracking. Your ratings, watchlist and resume positions live on your devices and in your own iCloud. Optional anonymous usage statistics can be turned off any time. SOURCES • Plex (multi-server, multi-account) • Jellyfin (multi-server) • Emby (multi-server, Live TV, music) • Silo • SMB / network shares, with Bonjour discovery • WebDAV • Local files Optional, all bring-your-own: connect your own Seerr to request what you don't have, your own Trakt or Simkl account to track what you watch, and your own OpenSubtitles account for subtitle search. Aether requires a Plex, Jellyfin, Emby or Silo media server, an SMB or WebDAV share, or local video files. It is not a streaming service and does not provide any content. Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, Silo, Trakt, Simkl and OpenSubtitles are trademarks of their respective owners. Aether is an independent, third-party client and is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by them. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://aetherplayer.com/privacy