How does Kodi compare to Plex? Are there any features it has similar or different?
Kodi doesn’t have a server feature like plex does where you can serve media to other devices. A more direct alternative would be jellyfin, which even works well with kodi as the media player.
It basically does the same thing that VLC does, but with a controller optimized interface.
Media can be loaded from a ton of places. Samba share, dvb card, streaming services, …
It’s a media center, you can play your local files or you can use add-ons like the official jellyfin addon and connect to any jellyfin server.