Assuming the devices are all from Apple, I’m curious to understand what Plex provides when it’s serving Infuse on the frontend. In other words, what does Infuse lack when it’s connected to a plain file share or file server as compared to having Plex in the backend? Infuse is already able to transcode various formats as necessary. It’s also able to index media, fetch cover images, etc. Other than offloading the power usage for transcoding (which may be important in battery powered devices), what benefits does Plex or Jellyfin (or anything else) provide here?

I tried infuse maybe a year ago? maybe more, idk... it was around that time that Plex had that big outage that stopped you from even viewing your own local content.

I didn't hate it, but it had some quirks that annoyed me coming from Plex. But maybe I will give it another shot. Pretty sure my Jellyfin server is still just sitting there running alongside Plex.