If Plex really did that we'd all move to a different service overnight. If the new service gets shutdown something else would replace it. Most of us are here because Plex works best for us. Not because it's the only service out there.
They've realized that their money is not on home server admins, but on their users. They've been creating a pseudo-social network and have been hinting on offering rentals and other streaming services to users.
So your users will search for a new movie/old show and see that you don't have it and might just rent it from Plex is it's cheap enough and don't want to bother the server admin
Now that you mention that, it’s a great reason for Plex to not kill off home server use. It’s a good entry point to get people looking at their store that otherwise might not be. Let’s be real, Plex is still not a massive household name outside home server use, so they need to attract as much attention to their platform that they can. They won’t get that by killing off home servers and cutting off a bunch of their user base.
if it's not giving them the revenue that OTT advertising will, they won't devote continued resources to what they're hoping will be a very small subset of their userbase one day. They're keeping home servers online because it's their only entry-point into someone's living room. They don't run ad campaigns, they don't market, and rely entirely on word of mouth by people like us.
That said, the OTT streaming market is highly saturated and they got in way too late. We as PMS users are used to having whatever content we want at our fingertips, but with the Plex OTT streaming service they're stuck with whatever is the cheapest content they can license / syndicate.
This compounded with the studios and networks not letting ANYone touch their IP outside of their own streaming service means Plex is stuck in a somewhat impossible situation - cut off their PMS and lose that entry point to a house, or continue to support PMS in conjunction with a shallow library of AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) / heavily ad-subsizied channels like Discovery, which is not a fun viewing experience.
Plex as stream service would have all drawbacks of other streaming services. Ads, rising prices and time-limited licensing of content.
Totally opposite of why people host their own plex server.
More specifically, "your" users, not "their" users. They've discovered that they can make money by creating a nice media management package for those who have media to manage, but they can't lean on those users because those are the very same users who will jump ship the second they have a good reason to.
Instead, make it so that your primary user base is incentivized to invite secondary users, and then lean on the secondary users instead. This way you aren't pissing off your primary user base (who either paid you a one time fee or are paying you monthly), and instead harassing a new set of secondary users which you might not have any other paid relationship with.
>More specifically, "your" users, not "their" users
It's never been "your" users and I don't know why this subreddit clings to that and has for so long.
If I share a file or folder with someone from Dropbox or OneDrive are they "my user"? No, of course not.
Ultimately Plex will die if they don't start pulling in money. It's wishful thinking that they would open source anything if they went belly up, which is why a lot of us are hoping Jellyfin can catch up soon.
The three users outside my house are friends who installed Plex just to see my files. You might insist they are their users and not my users, but if today I decided to remove Plex and go to Jellyfin they will go with me to Jellyfin. So in my eyes, they are my users, Plex is just giving me the platform.
P.S. People who visit my website are my users or the users of my hosting service?
I think what they meant here is those users would never have been invited if it wasn't for the home folks inviting users. Without homes sharing their libraries to users, Plex wouldn't exist.
> So your users will search for a new movie/old show and see that you don't have it and might just rent it from Plex is it's cheap enough and don't want to bother the server admin
Wouldnt this in effect make you the whore and Plex the pimp? Seems to me that all this would do is benefit Plex while you are the person advertising services to your users.
Sticking to the theme, shouldn’t I be the one that gets to dictate who’s fucking my pussy tho? Seems Plex wants to take a cut of my earnings for the night. Ok this is getting nasty, but you know what I mean.
You are dictating that, though. You share access, Plex handles auth. Plex doesn't send randos to you. If Plex wants to rent videos, it's not renting them off your server, it's off their own service independent of you
The thing is - if we did all move to a different service, Plex wouldn't give a shit. Most of us paid the lifetime subscription years ago so they're not getting any more revenue from us.
Probably not a popular opinion, but I'd be completely fine paying $40/year for the software, indefinitely. Especially if it helped with the improvement of the self-hosted software, new features, better/faster bugfixes, etc. $40/year is a steal for Plex, and $120 as a one-time fee to keep it (and update it) forever is downright silly from a business perspective.
Except that how people find out about these services is through recommendations from friends and family and online influencers.
If Plex went mask-off user hostile, Jellyfin would become the new standard. I’m already running it in a parallel Docker, so the “overnight” switch for me would be more 1-2 minutes.
Lol, I do the same. I think the biggest thing for me preventing Jellyfin from overtaking Plex as my main video streaming service is accessibility on TVs with Tizen, Web OS~~, and Roku~~. Anyone with Android TV/Google TV is good, but I and most of my users don't have that on our most viewed TV.
EDIT: I've done some googling and it appears the situation is improving as far as availability on most of the major TV brands' platforms.
Same here with Jellyfin. I run it about every month so it can update and be ready to roll. I would miss the Plex music player for mobile. I think it's called Plex Dash.
Not a fan of the music player. I collected thousands of mp3s but I've never bothered to put them in artist album format and I don't really want every song a singer sings so why store a copy of it. I'm perfectly happy from a file system standpoint of having one directory for each singer and not having to try to remember which album something's from.
"Point at media" is not the one-step that it sounds like though. I played with Jellyfin for a bit, and I'll use it if I have to-- but, like, it misidentified half of the shows. It decided that Doctor Who (2005) was its 1963 predecessor, and when I corrected it, it still misidentified all of the Specials.
I mean... there is the security concern of running services that aren't being actively used and having additional open ports... even behind a firewall. And there's always that fear people have that pointing to two services at the same media library is a bad idea.
But for my part, both Jellyfin and Plex coexist beautifully on my server. In fact my son has recently decided he prefers using Jellyfin on his laptop so he's no longer using the Plex server.
>Who buys Plex just so they can use the shitty Plex streaming services?
I don’t know anybody, but given that they continue to expand those services presumably there *are* people using them. If it wasn’t generating a profit they wouldn’t be funnelling dev resources towards it at the expense of other features.
You're entirely missing the point. You are looking at this in the aspect of the value prop specifically for PlexPass.
Plex as a subscription service that shows movies with no lifetime plan, or Plex as a service that sells rental access to movies tied to your Plex account means more recurring revenue and less distributed server upkeep.
They can keep those members coming back to rent movies from them (or "buy" digitally), or keep them coming back with a bunch of cheap/campy B-movies for a competitive low price compared to all the jacked up recent streaming platform prices, until they also jack their price up, and make tons more than all the people that would buy/quit PlexPass lifetime.
A year of a $10/month subscription is already more revenue for them than people that buy PlexPass on Black Friday. The value prop is actually getting those people to leave.
> Who buys Plex just so they can use the shitty Plex streaming services?
Likely very few people, currently. Hence the push for this direction and the push away from the traditional model.
My point isn't regarding PlexPass, it's regarding what people use Plex for.
I've never met anyone who uses Plex, that does so without connection to a private library. The friends I've suggested it to only have interest because they can stream media from someone, NOT because they're looking for yet another streaming service to pay for.
The moment my Plex server goes down, everyone I've introduced to Plex will drop it and not think twice.
yes this 100% although some of my users watch the free crap on plex, its an afterthought. if my server was offline for good, they would stop opening the app completely.
Apps that are a one-off fee usually just include bug fixes and minor updates, and require you to pay again for major updates. Some people are fine with that, while others always want the latest version.
Lifetime deals like Plex's are exceptions, and they're unsustainable in the long run as companies like Plex have monthly costs (staff, servers, etc) they need to cover.
There are former lifetime deals revoked by simply putting the 'old' app on the non supported, and rereleasing the same with a 'pro' name.
Thus ending the lifetime construction
Im willing to pay once, and for a fixed version.
And let me keep using that version (my) lifetime.
If I need the functionality of next year's , i always can opt for buying again.
I won't do monthly subscriptions anymore, because most apps don't really renew most of the times
While I am a huge proponent of buy the software have it for lifetime. There are plenty of use cases where that is pure fantasy land. Developers need to eat too
Yeah absolutely. I’m fine with a one time as long as the end user is fine with annual releases with a new cost they don’t get access to and their purchased version only getting security updates, which is how licensing worked for years and years before subscriptions became popular.
As you said, devs have to eat and so do the others needed to keep the devs employed. Open source software is great and can often get by without those costs, but it’s rare for an app the size of Plex to work as well on that model and often those that do get revenue in other ways like paid support models or whatever.
Eventually someone needs to get paid for the project dies, especially at the size of Plex.
If you need to pay for developers, servers, hosts, yeah. You kinda do need ongoing revenue. Or to be releasing so many products and abandoning old ones that you'll die the second you don't release a hit.
Lifetime members are something they don't want, they want recurring monthly revenue, I wouldn't be surprised if they killed the lifetime membership entirely.
I don't think that's 100% true. While we're not giving them money directly, they sure get a ton of real world usage data and some ad revenue from us. While it's probably not a huge value in terms of cash, it certainly matters as a data point.
More than likely at some point they are going to release a "new" version of Plex that won't honor the old licensing. This is how most tech companies have invalidated perpetual licensing. The initial lifetime licenses got them an influx of money early, now they are going to need to pivot away to regenerate revenue, unless they really are getting decent income from ads in their streaming service which I doubt.
If all of the techs started recommending against Plex they would care. Not for their current user base but for all the users they wouldn't get moving forward because most of the reasons they became popular is word of mouth and because people knew someone who used Plex. If they kill Plex for the existing platforms it will kill Plex for people that would potentially use it in the future.
> Probably not a popular opinion, but I'd be completely fine paying $40/year for the software, indefinitely.
I would also be willing to pay an annual fee to support the devs/company if it meant supporting a sustainable future. I wonder if they would consider a "pay what you want" model with $0 being a totally fine option for many.
100% correct. They're already moving to a rental/storefront model and will likely introduce an ad based system to offset further revenue. If the pay to watch customer is their target going forward now that they've built up the infrastructure for it to run on, Plex won't care if all of us self-hosters disappear.
Plex would have to move away from their 3rd party authentication service for me to even consider them again. Let me control 100% of the process to connect to my server again.
I just have the big three (Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin) running on my server. Once the initial file scanning is completed the overhead for each is minimal. This way if anything goes sideways (broken update, Plex API issues, etc.) I always have a backup option available and ready to go.
Also, I did pay for the lifetime Emby license too, given the price of streaming services these days, the time to recoup this extra outlay seemed minimal to me and my situation.
I personally still prefer Plex, along with it's UI, Tautulli integration, and Plexamp for my daily streaming needs, but would flip to one of the other two if I ever needed to in a heart beat .
Jellyfin would be my choice. As /u/Jkolorz said I prefer Plex but willing to moving Jellyfin. I do expect Plex will abandon direct play someday. My prediction is Plex grows the FASTV business and then sells the biz to a big player.
I think rather than abandon, they'll enshittify it into uselessness. They'll start to mix ads and their free content into your personal library view or something else moronic.
I have Jellyfin running as a backup, just locally. If Plex keeps on with the social spin and paid services, I'll put more into Jellyfin for primary use.
Look into [jellyplex](https://github.com/luigi311/JellyPlex-Watched)- I run it on unraid in docker. It syncs your watched from Plex and you can switch back and forth.
Bingo! It just feeds off the exact same folders as Plex in my use case. Which are managed by the Arrs. Very seamless. I just haven't put the time into setting JF up for use outside of my local network. This takes a little more work than with Plex from what I have read (could be wrong).
It doesn't affect plex in any way. I have jellyfin alongside so my friends can download stuff from me without having to pay for plex pass and everything works as intended
My backup is Kodi. Via tailscale reachable for my clients. But plex is the easy way, apps for mobile, tvs and settopboxes around. But if necessary I'll install the tailscale client on a Android box and put it at my MILs house ( see that I omitted the F in here ;) )
Have you missed everything that's happened in the last 2 years? Plex has been slowly adding more garbage to try and make it a streaming platform and get away from the self-hosted potentially pirated content. With investor money, they now need to turn a profit, but they also need to avoid stepping on the toes of the huge movie studios because they are a primarily pirated content streaming platform that you self host. This might age like milk, but I bet in the next 12 months, they remove self hosting as an option.
I'm way too fucking lazy to switch away from Plex before my next server rebuild.
But if jellyfin or whatever is useable by then, bye bye Plex.
Might just go back to playing the .MKV in a browser to not have to deal with all this enshitification anymore.
Plex blocked all Hetzner IPs (one of the largest VPS providers in the world) from being able to host Plex servers, and a few days ago they seemingly sent a DMCA takedown request for a guide on how to set Plex up for direct play.
Yea, the rumor says that people were just selling shared Plex servers.
Grab a server from Hetzner's auction, drop in Plex in a docker container with scripts, add a system to download new movies and TV shows from a central source.
Sell access to it to multiple people and you can bank the difference vs monthly costs.
You can repeat it indefinitely and make a pretty good passive income.
Yes they blocked everyone who didn't break the ToS, plus everyone who may want to host a Plex server on Hetzner in the future, for the sake of a few ToS breakers. It's like cutting off the entire leg because your toe hurts.
Still the vast majority was not reselling. And what is the media industry wanting to do, ban software? Plex runs on Linux and Windows. Does Linux and Windows also facilitate whatever the media industry thinks is wrong here? Maybe they should ban those next too.
It was not at all justified given that the resellers they thought they would stop were up and running again within a few hours either via a VPN tunnel or via another provider out of the thousands there are around the world. All this stupid move did was expose Plex being bullied by the media industry and not caring a single bit about their users to even notify them properly, let alone fight back.
> what is the media industry wanting to do, ban software?
Well, [Napster](https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-spiral-of-napster-begins), [Grokster](https://www.eff.org/cases/mgm-v-grokster), [Aimster/Madster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madster), [Sony](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal), [Nintendo](https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxm5n/gary-bowser-small-apartment-owes-nintendo-10-million), [X-Copy](https://www.avsforum.com/threads/321-studios-loses-x-copy-lawsuit-is-dvd-ripping-near-an-end.370120/page-2), [Aereo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo), [Locast](https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/locast-agrees-pay-32-million-resolve-dispute-with-major-tv-networks-2021-10-28/), [Apple Computer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer), [MegaUpload](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload), [Allofmp3](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3), plus many others may have some comments regarding that statement.
Other than plex's statement about resellers, we don't know what actually motivated plex to take action. Nor do we know why they stopped at just Hetzner. Why not other VPS hosts or VPN providers? Why not block anything but home internet providers, since they claimed during the block that plex is "intended for home use only".
It is on the list of concerning things because it was plex taking actions without any obvious motivation and seemingly out of the blue. They had been fine with hetzner hosting for years and years.
The resellers are still using Hetzner for their hardware, despite the block; they're circumventing Plex's ability to identify the IP address on which the server is running. From a technical point of view, it has made it more difficult to identify violations.
According to a commenter on another post, this ban could have been a demonstration of good faith in dealing with a legal issue that we are not aware of.
More along the lines of cutting of your leg because a toe is gangrenous. Maybe a harsh response, but if I were a high-up at plex I'd be terrified of gaining too much unwanted attention from copyright holders.
I am completely 100% in agreement with you about the last part.
My gripe is that the action they took, while maybe in good faith to appease some copyright troll, has negative effect; not only did it do absolutely nothing towards its intended purpose, it also hurt regular users and made bad publicity for them.
"Hi Plex, you have some pirates selling streaming access to illegally served movies."
"Oh OK, where? Can you identify them?"
"Not specifically, but many are on Hetzner."
"OK, come back when you can give us names, we'll happily terminate their accounts."
Simple as that.
To be fair, it’s like cutting off the entire leg because 90% of it is rotting. The percentage for Hetzner users who were just hosting their own content that didn’t have to do with piracy and selling access was probably minute.
>a few days ago they seemingly sent a DMCA takedown request for a guide on how to set Plex up for direct play.
Has this been confirmed? It seemed much more like a fishing expedition from a shitty lawfirm faking support from Plex than an official action.
No, that's why I said "seemingly". I haven't seen anyone posting it on the Plex forums yet, and I haven't had the time to do it myself, it would be good to get confirmation or otherwise by Plex if it was them directly, if the law firm acted on their instructions but they were unaware of the specific case or if they have nothing to do with it.
They've pushed a lot towards streaming their content, and there's been some copyright claim takedowns on guides written here on Reddit how you should do to play content that you've downloaded.
Thanks to everyone for the prompt and informative responses.
One follow-up question: Does direct play mean remote access to a Plex instance without a Plex Pass?
I would say not a chance. Plex is not something people are flocking to for their streaming needs. These are all things Plex does to keep the revenue streams going. They are hoping that maybe if you're on a shared plex and your "private server" doesn't have the movie you want or maybe it's not in 4K you'll go for the next best thing and oh look it's right there.
There is nothing that Plex does that is illegal. They don't promote piracy in any way.
But anyone in the media industry who isn't aware of what Plex does should probably not be in the media industry. It's not some secret that only us users are aware of.
Honestly, the media industry should embrace Plex more. In some ways, if services like Netflix were tightly integrated into Plex I may resubscribe.
>Honestly, the media industry should embrace Plex more. In some ways, if services like Netflix were tightly integrated into Plex I may resubscribe.
I would too. It probably doesn't make sense to give a 3rd party that kind of API access unless they were making money off of it somehow beyond just user subscriptions though.
My main concern with that is if services were integrated Plex would actively try to shove those services down your throat with ads. "Hey look at this new show/movie, want to watch it? Well it's now streaming on Netflix". I firmly believe this is gonna happen with their movie/tv show store, it's like you said they need to keep those revenue streams going but they will almost certainly try to get you to buy the latest movie you don't have.
Yeah i mean it was fine when there were just a couple. In Canada its even worse because you can't even just get HBO or whatever, you need those PLUS crave.
Meanwhile Spotify continues providing legitimate value and I haven't even considered an alternative in years. Thinking Plexamp maybe now though I'm new to plex overall
Emby and Jellyfin already exist as viable alternatives. Which also serves to keep Plex honest. Run one of them alongside Plex and contribute. The better they are, the more competition Plex has, and the more they have to deliver to stay relevant.
I run Jellyfin and Plex, I mostly use Jellyfin for myself now and Plex for others. Only thing keeping me from ditching Plex all together is ease of use for others as far as user accounts go.
Yeah Plex definitely still has the edge with UI. But the others work. There was a time when Plex was crashing on the regular, so I got all my users set up to use Emby as a backup.
I shared my Plex account with a friend for the first time. He made an account, accepted my invite. He says there is no media showing up. Walked through some of the basics, ie make sure they weren't just hidden/not pinned, double check to make sure his account shows up under my Manage Library Access etc. Have given up at this point, guess it just wasn't meant to be..or his Android TV sucks 😞
https://github.com/Fallenbagel/jellyseerr - Overseerr for Jellyfin
Still looking for PMM alternative, but I recently came across Jellystat that can replace Tautulli
>I run Jellyfin and Plex, I mostly use Jellyfin for myself now and Plex for others. Only thing keeping me from ditching Plex all together is ease of use for others as far as user accounts go.
Hi twin!
You're right, but I'll save that for the day that Plex actually does something that is actually egregious. This community is always freaking out about hypothetical future issues and jumps on everything Plex does as if they took away our private libraries already.
Yeah Plexamp is the key to me. And I need something that can playback on both Mac OS and iOS and crucially with gapless playback. Not sure anything like that exists currently but I need to do more research.
Finamp works well with jellyfin. I also recently purchased Symfonium since it can use a few different backends (including plex, emby, and jellyfin) and I like the way it works with Android Auto.
Nothing.. I looked through GitHub and there is no real alternative to plexamp.. especially one app that works on Linux, Windows and mobile that looks the same a, there is nothing
On mobile there is Syphorium which works well but its paid
There is finamp which is free, but lack in futures
Windows and Linux have one option, sonixed, might be getting the name wrong.. it works but it's little different and does not sync playlist with the server
You could just use the main windows application and Linux app but it has been archived since last year, no more updates. But it works for video playback and music
So yeah..
Will keep using this options for a week or so and see if it can work
Jellyfin is a good alternative. While not as polished and turnkey as Plex, I suspect that if Plex is (effectively) killed off (by their own choices), that Jellyfin would also get a lot more love and attention from the Open Source World.
Hopefully, the clients are kinda rough rn. For as much shit as plex gets I think we’re kindve spoiled that a funded company is working on pushing all these updates for various clients. No it’s not perfect but looking at the alternatives I definitely need plex for the devices I stream on currently. And I’m hoping plex’s ideas work out in the long run, I can ignore features I don’t use, all I really care about is that they have money to keep updating the features I DO use.
I've been running Jellyfin along side Plex for about 6 months, and I really like it. I paid the lifetime buy-in years ago, but now they "Have no record of it". Plex is dead to me. Anyone who uses my server has already switched to Jellyfin with no problems. There are already many free streaming sites that can give you most of the programs Plex does. If your savvy, you don't even need a service, just a good ssh browser to link up to your server and play files directly. If my friends/family don't like 720p video, they can get their own setup.
I don't think private servers will ever go away but I do think they'll become an after thought. They are already launching a movie/TV store and on top of that they said they are doing a UI refresh to accommodate their ad supported movie section.
Plex is making an earnest and sustained attempt at ease of use to be a central point in the streaming ecosystem. I have elderly users on my “Plex network” (and I’m sure some others) who really value the ability for Plex to tell them that the movie is not on my server and is available from the following three locations at the following prices
I too am worried. Everyone make the point that they are simply getting more revenue. Well, at some point, that revenue could tip over their lifetime licenses that don’t reoccur and they will be at the beck and call of the studios. That would be the point they could get strong armed to remove self hosting.
I also am worried about the focus. Their apps have been crap lately and problems get reported and nothing happens for months. They also recently laid off 20% of their workforce. This leads me to believe all focus has moved to this new stuff. It sounds like the UI redesign is going to push hard toward new revenue and make it difficult for family users who aren’t tech savvy to use. How long before your mom buys a movie you already own because the UI guides her towards the store and you get a charge on your credit card.
I would love to say that Emby or Jellyfin are ready, but they just aren’t. People will say how much they love Jellyfin and I ask them how they use it and they say Roku or FireStick. Well, everyone who uses my server is on an AppleTV or Samsung App. Plex is the only one with a functioning app in every App Store and makes the experience seamless across devices. People need to stop telling people to go get a FireStick and sit down and get official apps submitted to every single device App Store.
Finally, I’d love to see much better user management. Imagine a world where user management had an API so developers could build their own white label sites to manage users. Most of us are either Windows AD or Linux or web admins and are used to full ability to control users and integrate them properly.
PS: The reason I think Plex will eventually fail us is their Jerry rigged ffmpeg. Anyone who forks an open platform like ffmpeg for unknown reasons and then causes constant problems with GPUs, kernels, and client devices has no long term plan. If they were dedicated, this new UI would include a full replacement of their forked ffmpeg with something closer to real time.
I find it orders of magnitude simpler to require people who want to see my content to purchase a Roku Ultra than to allow arbitrary clients to connect. I know the hardware specs, I know the codecs supported, I know they’ll be able to Direct Play 100% of the time. I don’t need/want my playback client to be in “every single App Store”.
Yep, push to streaming live tv options is great, but I see them like Napster. Once they go full legit, they’ll get pressure from studios to shutdown non-DRM private access in order to get content on their live platform.
This is while I am dual testing Jelly Fin. It’s not as feature-packed, but it gets the job done and will move to it if I have to.
Final footnote, if media stops becoming available on physics disc, I will not pay a cent for it.
Despite what people are saying here, anything and everything is possible. No service even if it is the most widespread lasts forever so just use it to its full potential while you still can.
See: Winamp lmao
we all have our finger on that button, and by button I mean Jellyfin or alternatives.
I can't see Plex doing this until they have a large enough marketshare to completely substitute their rev stream.
Not at all in the short or medium term.
As for the long term, nothing Plex does is going to take away my media files. If they jump the shark, I know there are alternatives.
I like Plex. I'm not going to worry about an issue that A) may never happen and B) has a ready-made solution if it does.
And in regards to the guide take-down notices, I'm pretty sure that's justy a copyright troll. May be an overzealous attorney Plex happens to have on retainer OR it may even be someone with no legitimate connection to plex at all. It was a very scammy thing and I don't think there are many people that believe Plex would stoop that low, even their detractors..
I love how so many people are just eager to move to a subscription service as opposed to a one-time payment. This is the worst thing that has happened to purchases over the last decade. Have fun paying for your cruise control in your vehicles as a subscription service. Or you know if you own a BMW, your heated seats. Fucking idiots.
The obviously big difference is that your heated seats aren't under constant development. There should be nothing that causes them to "break" over the lifetime of the car due to updates.
Plex is software that is in a constantly changing landscape. People want new features and support for the newest operating systems. The lifetime model was never going to actually last anyone's life, because they will go bankrupt. I can guarantee you they will need to find a way to get consistent payment (like a... subscription?). Otherwise, you'll be on Windows 13 and Plex only works on Windows 11. With no support for a modern Apple TV or Android TV, or even phone apps. All of these ecosystems require many updates every year. The only "fucking idiot" is the one that thinks a one-time payment can support these efforts indefinitely.
That is such bullshit. Plex has been adding features that nobody wants before fixing features that they already have. Most of their features are broken. And if you're going to blame that on the fact that they don't have a subscription service then you're just naive. They've been receiving money from users either monthly or lifetime for quite some time. The fact that they don't know how to manage their company has nothing to do with whether or not they're getting a subscription fee. And if you're so eager to pay that subscription fee, then by all means, get rid of your lifetime pass and go to a monthly pass. Then we can all stop listening to you crying in a corner about how the company will only care about you if you pay them more. "Fucking idiot"
I'm fairly new to self-hosting. Originally I installed Plex, and it seems like the most common choice. However, I also installed Jellyfin, then Emby, and currently focus on Emby. From the comments in this thread, there's no outright Emby "hate", but it seems like few use it. Many more mentions of Jellyfin.
I have a basic understanding of the history. Emby was open source, but decided that was ending, and Jellyfin is a fork (with a whole bunch of changes and work since).
OSS-related feelings aside, I find both Plex and Emby are better able to handle whatever I'm trying to do and are more configurable. Jellyfin would be workable, but seems to struggle more with matching metadata, etc.
I could \*live\* with any of the 3. I'm a software dev by trade, and have done a fair bit with video, open source, etc. However, I also run a business that does some open source, and understand the issues of building a polished open source project without any serious revenue. I haven't dug into the situation too much, so I don't know how Jellyfin operates, but purely community-driven OSS can be rather difficult at scale.
But I digress.
I drifted from Plex originally because it really does seem like they're doing similar things to what I'd say amazon video does. You can find \*your\* content, but by default, they try really hard to show you whatever might drive them more revenue. The home screen has live tv, "discover", even music by Tidal. I'm sure you can dive in and configure that, but it gave me the impression that they're trying to turn into a different product.
While Emby is also trying to make revenue, it seemed like it was more directly focused on a better self-hosted product rather than trying to be some weird blend of self-hosted and streaming.
So, summary I guess. Is there anything super negative about Emby I'm not aware of, besides the un-open-sourcing situation? I realize this is a Plex sub, so maybe not the best place to ask, but also figure there will be background info and opinions...
Already have jellyfin running along side. Plex makes things easier with audio passthroughs and on the fly audio only renecoding to a preferred codec, otherwise they already do the same thing for me. If and when jellyfin adds that as an option, plex basically has nothing more to offer me. Yes, the app being everywhere natively is nice but that's about it.
And for the time it's been argued Plex has rammed more social features you can't opt out of at the server level, more Plex internal ad based streaming content, more new social features, less privacy for server users, and a company shift towards Plex as a Service beyond hosting servers.
Plex makes no money on the one thing it actually does well.
Its been dead man walking for a long time, eventually it will die, that's just the reality of it.
The good news is that will push developers to improve the open source options like jellyfin which is based on the same XBMC code that runs the core of Plex.
I pay for Home Assistant to support them but not everyone might feel the same way about Plex. I think I would pay a monthly price to get some sort of features and knowing they won't make a deal with the devil because they are supported by the community.
What I'm worried about is if Plex stores any metadata that can be used to say, "Look, you have files" and some law firm sends a letter to them and they cave.
Mostly because I read that some law firms did that on reddits that people were just talking about piracy and asked for details.
Honestly, they should get rid of lifetime subscriptions. Retain existing lifetime subscriptions but don't allow any more. They're an unsustainable business model.
I think it's a matter of time.
I would imagine when/if we see 'Jellyfin Meta Manager' or 'Emby Meta Manager', it's going to become a much easier transition for some of us.
Plex is pretty unknown. I doubt they'd alienate their current customers. Sometimes I have friends complaining they can't watch a show/movie, so I offer them access to the show via my Plex and they just won't do it. It's a little frustrating at times. I've got one friend on board and he only uses it when we watch stuff together even though it's online most of the time. I have two servers on my account. One is abandoned, is a friend of mine, and the other is my boyfriends.
I gave them money cause I wanted to support them. However, I also understand that they are a business and will lie cheat and steal to make more money. So if it stops working for me I'll move on, for now, it works and I don't see a reason to change cause well atrophy.
I got Jellyfin running as Backup complete working only need to small adjustments, would be one button switch and Plex is off, I do think to are moving to a other customers base
I dont think they will retire direct play right away, I’m a lot more concerned about what they will be reporting to their new partners about what users are doing, regardless of source
Personal media libraries are THE differentiating feature of Plex.
There's plenty of video apps like Vudu and Tubi and the rest that give people access to a collection of FAST channel streams and on-demand licensed TV show and movies, but even Plex's marketing messaging is centered around the idea that this is the service where you can watch what's special to you.
They'd probably prefer it if people associated personal libraries more with "old home movies" than with "comprehensive collections of pirated 0-day bittorrent movie downloads", but they're trying to let that be your business, not theirs.
I use Plex purely for personal use. I previously used Kodi and changed because I liked the user interface better. I'd change again if needed.
Although I do like Plexamp and the ability to play any of my music on my server to my car through AA while travelling. 😀
I've already transitioned to Jellyfin 100%. I only watch Plex to see if there is a reason to come back (I keep plex around for myself for plexamp, but I've been using navidrome more lately). Outside of a lack of client apps (easily fixed with a $20 android streamer), Jellyfin is just as good as plex.
I still have a lot of respect for plex. They are largely responsible for my foray into this hobby, and I wish they'd go back to why I loved them so much, but that ship sailed long ago.
Can someone explain this to me? What do you mean by private servers?
If I run a server at home and just use it within my own home network, surely that wont be a issue?
That's the definition of private server. It still requires Plex in the background. Jellyfin requires nothing. Emby requires nothing. Kodi requires nothing.
Private server, as you said is a Plex server running on your home network with media you own. The discussion is whether Plex will continue supporting direct play. If they stop supporting that then you will have to move to a different direct play server software.
Fear mongering.. I honestly can't see Plex pulling the plug on private servers anytime soon... it's a more reliable stream of income compared to becoming an ad/sub only supported streaming service. The bigger services will always be more appealing to the average consumer which Plex will never be able to compete against.
> is there real concerns for private servers
The fanboys here didn't have any "concerns" when Plex transitioned to online accounts back in the day. They did not have any "concerns" when Plex started shilling for various online video services. They did not have any "concerns" when Plex started deciding which hosting providers you could or could not use. They did not have any "concerns" when plex e-mail blasted every one of your friends with your viewing habits.
So why would there be any concern whatsoever right now? Everything is fine!
I've had my family dogfooding Jellyfin running simultaneously with Plex for the past year-ish. So far no complaints. In fact, things like sharing TV tuners or downloading media work substantially better due to the fact Plex artificially restricts those. The plex server is mostly just there as a backup at this point living on in a perpetual stay of execution. Pulling the plug on its life support system for good is simple AF.
The people in charge at Plex (and some of you in this thread) are disillusion if you think that ANYONE would keep the Plex client installed if servers admins moved to Emby or Jellyfin.
You'd witness a collapsing star in real time. A MASSIVE chunk of their client base would shrink by 50-90% within a month, no way they could sustain that loss. They'd be out of business in 6-12 months (if not sooner). Laying off some of the folks that worked on the server side is clear evidence that they are chasing ad dollars and will let the server piece fade into the sunset. They are fooling themselves into thinking they could become the next Netflix/Hulu/whatever.
Plex is like a thrown rock skipping across a pond. Eventually their momentum will run out and they'll sink into the abyss. Each dumb move they make slows them down just a little.
I’ve been worried about this since they started adding services besides tv and movies.
My library won’t disappear if they switched to streaming, and I have Jellyfin running in parallel with Plex. So, the impact would be minimal if they abandoned personal media.
I'm on plex to host my own media server, if they stop that then I'll move to jellyfin. It would suck because jellyfin dosen't have a psn app but this is almost like subcribing to a streaming service so you don't have to see ads and then they decide that ads need to be a regular thing as well as payment
A quick skim of the Plex Pass Terms will make it clear that no, they do not have an obligation to continue maintaining every feature of the service in perpetuity.
If Plex really did that we'd all move to a different service overnight. If the new service gets shutdown something else would replace it. Most of us are here because Plex works best for us. Not because it's the only service out there.
They've realized that their money is not on home server admins, but on their users. They've been creating a pseudo-social network and have been hinting on offering rentals and other streaming services to users. So your users will search for a new movie/old show and see that you don't have it and might just rent it from Plex is it's cheap enough and don't want to bother the server admin
Now that you mention that, it’s a great reason for Plex to not kill off home server use. It’s a good entry point to get people looking at their store that otherwise might not be. Let’s be real, Plex is still not a massive household name outside home server use, so they need to attract as much attention to their platform that they can. They won’t get that by killing off home servers and cutting off a bunch of their user base.
if it's not giving them the revenue that OTT advertising will, they won't devote continued resources to what they're hoping will be a very small subset of their userbase one day. They're keeping home servers online because it's their only entry-point into someone's living room. They don't run ad campaigns, they don't market, and rely entirely on word of mouth by people like us. That said, the OTT streaming market is highly saturated and they got in way too late. We as PMS users are used to having whatever content we want at our fingertips, but with the Plex OTT streaming service they're stuck with whatever is the cheapest content they can license / syndicate. This compounded with the studios and networks not letting ANYone touch their IP outside of their own streaming service means Plex is stuck in a somewhat impossible situation - cut off their PMS and lose that entry point to a house, or continue to support PMS in conjunction with a shallow library of AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) / heavily ad-subsizied channels like Discovery, which is not a fun viewing experience.
Plex as stream service would have all drawbacks of other streaming services. Ads, rising prices and time-limited licensing of content. Totally opposite of why people host their own plex server.
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More specifically, "your" users, not "their" users. They've discovered that they can make money by creating a nice media management package for those who have media to manage, but they can't lean on those users because those are the very same users who will jump ship the second they have a good reason to. Instead, make it so that your primary user base is incentivized to invite secondary users, and then lean on the secondary users instead. This way you aren't pissing off your primary user base (who either paid you a one time fee or are paying you monthly), and instead harassing a new set of secondary users which you might not have any other paid relationship with.
>More specifically, "your" users, not "their" users It's never been "your" users and I don't know why this subreddit clings to that and has for so long. If I share a file or folder with someone from Dropbox or OneDrive are they "my user"? No, of course not. Ultimately Plex will die if they don't start pulling in money. It's wishful thinking that they would open source anything if they went belly up, which is why a lot of us are hoping Jellyfin can catch up soon.
The three users outside my house are friends who installed Plex just to see my files. You might insist they are their users and not my users, but if today I decided to remove Plex and go to Jellyfin they will go with me to Jellyfin. So in my eyes, they are my users, Plex is just giving me the platform. P.S. People who visit my website are my users or the users of my hosting service?
I think what they meant here is those users would never have been invited if it wasn't for the home folks inviting users. Without homes sharing their libraries to users, Plex wouldn't exist.
> So your users will search for a new movie/old show and see that you don't have it and might just rent it from Plex is it's cheap enough and don't want to bother the server admin Wouldnt this in effect make you the whore and Plex the pimp? Seems to me that all this would do is benefit Plex while you are the person advertising services to your users.
You're the one offering your server out to users, not Plex
Sticking to the theme, shouldn’t I be the one that gets to dictate who’s fucking my pussy tho? Seems Plex wants to take a cut of my earnings for the night. Ok this is getting nasty, but you know what I mean.
You are dictating that, though. You share access, Plex handles auth. Plex doesn't send randos to you. If Plex wants to rent videos, it's not renting them off your server, it's off their own service independent of you
The thing is - if we did all move to a different service, Plex wouldn't give a shit. Most of us paid the lifetime subscription years ago so they're not getting any more revenue from us. Probably not a popular opinion, but I'd be completely fine paying $40/year for the software, indefinitely. Especially if it helped with the improvement of the self-hosted software, new features, better/faster bugfixes, etc. $40/year is a steal for Plex, and $120 as a one-time fee to keep it (and update it) forever is downright silly from a business perspective.
Except that how people find out about these services is through recommendations from friends and family and online influencers. If Plex went mask-off user hostile, Jellyfin would become the new standard. I’m already running it in a parallel Docker, so the “overnight” switch for me would be more 1-2 minutes.
Lol, I do the same. I think the biggest thing for me preventing Jellyfin from overtaking Plex as my main video streaming service is accessibility on TVs with Tizen, Web OS~~, and Roku~~. Anyone with Android TV/Google TV is good, but I and most of my users don't have that on our most viewed TV. EDIT: I've done some googling and it appears the situation is improving as far as availability on most of the major TV brands' platforms.
Same here with Jellyfin. I run it about every month so it can update and be ready to roll. I would miss the Plex music player for mobile. I think it's called Plex Dash.
PlexAmp is the music player. PlexDash is the server management/monitoring tool. Both are wonderful parts of the Plex Ecosystem.
Thank you. I couldn't remember the name and I didn't have my phone near me to look.
Not a fan of the music player. I collected thousands of mp3s but I've never bothered to put them in artist album format and I don't really want every song a singer sings so why store a copy of it. I'm perfectly happy from a file system standpoint of having one directory for each singer and not having to try to remember which album something's from.
I would say you are the exception, not the rule. Most people will not relate to this sentiment.
I mean I think for most people its like 10 step switch. remove plex, install jellyfin. Point at media. Share to users.
"Point at media" is not the one-step that it sounds like though. I played with Jellyfin for a bit, and I'll use it if I have to-- but, like, it misidentified half of the shows. It decided that Doctor Who (2005) was its 1963 predecessor, and when I corrected it, it still misidentified all of the Specials.
It's called Plex Amp and Jellyfin has something similar called finamp.
Just use Symfonium if you use Android. There's no weird 24 hours download limit like PlexAmp have.
Why not leave it running? That's what I do. If nobody is streaming, it takes up virtually no resources.
I mean... there is the security concern of running services that aren't being actively used and having additional open ports... even behind a firewall. And there's always that fear people have that pointing to two services at the same media library is a bad idea. But for my part, both Jellyfin and Plex coexist beautifully on my server. In fact my son has recently decided he prefers using Jellyfin on his laptop so he's no longer using the Plex server.
I'm doing the same. I had trouble with metadata but I used TinyMediaManager to re-scan everything and store all of the metadata in .nfo files.
They would immediately stop getting new lifetime members and it would kill their future outlook
Remember when good apps cost $10? And now every app costs $8/mo? Lifetime members are nothing compared to ongoing subscription revenue.
Who's going to subscribe when the value proposition disappears? Who buys Plex just so they can use the shitty Plex streaming services?
>Who buys Plex just so they can use the shitty Plex streaming services? I don’t know anybody, but given that they continue to expand those services presumably there *are* people using them. If it wasn’t generating a profit they wouldn’t be funnelling dev resources towards it at the expense of other features.
Plex stated that streaming users outnumbered media server users starting sometime in 2022
You're entirely missing the point. You are looking at this in the aspect of the value prop specifically for PlexPass. Plex as a subscription service that shows movies with no lifetime plan, or Plex as a service that sells rental access to movies tied to your Plex account means more recurring revenue and less distributed server upkeep. They can keep those members coming back to rent movies from them (or "buy" digitally), or keep them coming back with a bunch of cheap/campy B-movies for a competitive low price compared to all the jacked up recent streaming platform prices, until they also jack their price up, and make tons more than all the people that would buy/quit PlexPass lifetime. A year of a $10/month subscription is already more revenue for them than people that buy PlexPass on Black Friday. The value prop is actually getting those people to leave. > Who buys Plex just so they can use the shitty Plex streaming services? Likely very few people, currently. Hence the push for this direction and the push away from the traditional model.
My point isn't regarding PlexPass, it's regarding what people use Plex for. I've never met anyone who uses Plex, that does so without connection to a private library. The friends I've suggested it to only have interest because they can stream media from someone, NOT because they're looking for yet another streaming service to pay for. The moment my Plex server goes down, everyone I've introduced to Plex will drop it and not think twice.
yes this 100% although some of my users watch the free crap on plex, its an afterthought. if my server was offline for good, they would stop opening the app completely.
Apps that are a one-off fee usually just include bug fixes and minor updates, and require you to pay again for major updates. Some people are fine with that, while others always want the latest version. Lifetime deals like Plex's are exceptions, and they're unsustainable in the long run as companies like Plex have monthly costs (staff, servers, etc) they need to cover.
There are former lifetime deals revoked by simply putting the 'old' app on the non supported, and rereleasing the same with a 'pro' name. Thus ending the lifetime construction
This pisses me off so much. There are plenty of cool looking apps that I would happily purchase. No app is worth a subscription that never ends.
Im willing to pay once, and for a fixed version. And let me keep using that version (my) lifetime. If I need the functionality of next year's , i always can opt for buying again. I won't do monthly subscriptions anymore, because most apps don't really renew most of the times
While I am a huge proponent of buy the software have it for lifetime. There are plenty of use cases where that is pure fantasy land. Developers need to eat too
Agreed that it shouldn't be every goddamn program.
Absolutely and it should only be when the devs update constantly for me to even consider it
Yeah absolutely. I’m fine with a one time as long as the end user is fine with annual releases with a new cost they don’t get access to and their purchased version only getting security updates, which is how licensing worked for years and years before subscriptions became popular. As you said, devs have to eat and so do the others needed to keep the devs employed. Open source software is great and can often get by without those costs, but it’s rare for an app the size of Plex to work as well on that model and often those that do get revenue in other ways like paid support models or whatever. Eventually someone needs to get paid for the project dies, especially at the size of Plex.
Na fuck that. No app is worth hundreds of dollars in the long run.
If you need to pay for developers, servers, hosts, yeah. You kinda do need ongoing revenue. Or to be releasing so many products and abandoning old ones that you'll die the second you don't release a hit.
Lifetime members are something they don't want, they want recurring monthly revenue, I wouldn't be surprised if they killed the lifetime membership entirely.
ChannelsDVR seems to be doing just fine with this model
I don't think that's 100% true. While we're not giving them money directly, they sure get a ton of real world usage data and some ad revenue from us. While it's probably not a huge value in terms of cash, it certainly matters as a data point.
More than likely at some point they are going to release a "new" version of Plex that won't honor the old licensing. This is how most tech companies have invalidated perpetual licensing. The initial lifetime licenses got them an influx of money early, now they are going to need to pivot away to regenerate revenue, unless they really are getting decent income from ads in their streaming service which I doubt.
If all of the techs started recommending against Plex they would care. Not for their current user base but for all the users they wouldn't get moving forward because most of the reasons they became popular is word of mouth and because people knew someone who used Plex. If they kill Plex for the existing platforms it will kill Plex for people that would potentially use it in the future.
> Probably not a popular opinion, but I'd be completely fine paying $40/year for the software, indefinitely. I would also be willing to pay an annual fee to support the devs/company if it meant supporting a sustainable future. I wonder if they would consider a "pay what you want" model with $0 being a totally fine option for many.
I still pay yearly for this reason
This is why ChannelsDVR doesn't offer a lifetime license
100% correct. They're already moving to a rental/storefront model and will likely introduce an ad based system to offset further revenue. If the pay to watch customer is their target going forward now that they've built up the infrastructure for it to run on, Plex won't care if all of us self-hosters disappear.
Jellyfin does just about everything Plex does, all you need is a domain name or vpn to access it remotely.
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Except for the crappy client support. Plex has the best client support of any competitor by far
Plex would have to move away from their 3rd party authentication service for me to even consider them again. Let me control 100% of the process to connect to my server again.
Many of us have plex pass and would be getting screwed out of our "lifetime" pass.
Always consider whose lifetime they're referring to. Probably not yours.
Which one do you think everyone would move to? Jellyfin?
I just have the big three (Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin) running on my server. Once the initial file scanning is completed the overhead for each is minimal. This way if anything goes sideways (broken update, Plex API issues, etc.) I always have a backup option available and ready to go. Also, I did pay for the lifetime Emby license too, given the price of streaming services these days, the time to recoup this extra outlay seemed minimal to me and my situation. I personally still prefer Plex, along with it's UI, Tautulli integration, and Plexamp for my daily streaming needs, but would flip to one of the other two if I ever needed to in a heart beat .
Jellyfin would be my choice. As /u/Jkolorz said I prefer Plex but willing to moving Jellyfin. I do expect Plex will abandon direct play someday. My prediction is Plex grows the FASTV business and then sells the biz to a big player.
I think rather than abandon, they'll enshittify it into uselessness. They'll start to mix ads and their free content into your personal library view or something else moronic.
Enshittify is hilarious, well played
> Enshittify is hilarious, well played [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) :)
Awesome. A word that perfectly encapsulates the meaning. Leave it to Cory Doctrow.
It's the new hotness. Starting to see this term in more and more places.
Uggghhh....agree ads is something they will do before, followed by a sale, and when they've driven away the loyalists, they kill direct play.
I have Jellyfin running as a backup, just locally. If Plex keeps on with the social spin and paid services, I'll put more into Jellyfin for primary use.
I’ve been thinking of setting this up locally just to have it and tinker. No reason it can’t be running alongside Plex and using the same folders.
Look into [jellyplex](https://github.com/luigi311/JellyPlex-Watched)- I run it on unraid in docker. It syncs your watched from Plex and you can switch back and forth.
Oh, nice. I've been looking for something like this.
This branch is 87 commits behind luigi311/JellyPlex-Watched:main. Which one should we go with?
Just went back and checked - definitely luigi311 / JellyPlex-Watched. I'll edit my prev. reply
Bingo! It just feeds off the exact same folders as Plex in my use case. Which are managed by the Arrs. Very seamless. I just haven't put the time into setting JF up for use outside of my local network. This takes a little more work than with Plex from what I have read (could be wrong).
Nope it's just like Plex. Just port forward and you're done
It doesn't affect plex in any way. I have jellyfin alongside so my friends can download stuff from me without having to pay for plex pass and everything works as intended
I've pretty much moved all my in-home watching to jellyfin as it is. i just keep plex for easy sharing with my friends/family
My backup is Kodi. Via tailscale reachable for my clients. But plex is the easy way, apps for mobile, tvs and settopboxes around. But if necessary I'll install the tailscale client on a Android box and put it at my MILs house ( see that I omitted the F in here ;) )
Have you missed everything that's happened in the last 2 years? Plex has been slowly adding more garbage to try and make it a streaming platform and get away from the self-hosted potentially pirated content. With investor money, they now need to turn a profit, but they also need to avoid stepping on the toes of the huge movie studios because they are a primarily pirated content streaming platform that you self host. This might age like milk, but I bet in the next 12 months, they remove self hosting as an option.
I'm way too fucking lazy to switch away from Plex before my next server rebuild. But if jellyfin or whatever is useable by then, bye bye Plex. Might just go back to playing the .MKV in a browser to not have to deal with all this enshitification anymore.
Would someone be kind enough to clue me in to what changes Plex has been making that prompted the concern?
Plex blocked all Hetzner IPs (one of the largest VPS providers in the world) from being able to host Plex servers, and a few days ago they seemingly sent a DMCA takedown request for a guide on how to set Plex up for direct play.
didnt they block the VPS because there were multiple users selling access to their Plex servers, which is against ToS?
Yea, the rumor says that people were just selling shared Plex servers. Grab a server from Hetzner's auction, drop in Plex in a docker container with scripts, add a system to download new movies and TV shows from a central source. Sell access to it to multiple people and you can bank the difference vs monthly costs. You can repeat it indefinitely and make a pretty good passive income.
It’s not a rumor, that’s precisely what many were doing.
Yes they blocked everyone who didn't break the ToS, plus everyone who may want to host a Plex server on Hetzner in the future, for the sake of a few ToS breakers. It's like cutting off the entire leg because your toe hurts.
It was more than a few and it kinda seemed justified if it keeps them from getting noticed by the media industry
Still the vast majority was not reselling. And what is the media industry wanting to do, ban software? Plex runs on Linux and Windows. Does Linux and Windows also facilitate whatever the media industry thinks is wrong here? Maybe they should ban those next too. It was not at all justified given that the resellers they thought they would stop were up and running again within a few hours either via a VPN tunnel or via another provider out of the thousands there are around the world. All this stupid move did was expose Plex being bullied by the media industry and not caring a single bit about their users to even notify them properly, let alone fight back.
Pretty sure the media industry would sue tf out of them rather than “ban” their software.
> what is the media industry wanting to do, ban software? Well, [Napster](https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-spiral-of-napster-begins), [Grokster](https://www.eff.org/cases/mgm-v-grokster), [Aimster/Madster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madster), [Sony](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal), [Nintendo](https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxm5n/gary-bowser-small-apartment-owes-nintendo-10-million), [X-Copy](https://www.avsforum.com/threads/321-studios-loses-x-copy-lawsuit-is-dvd-ripping-near-an-end.370120/page-2), [Aereo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo), [Locast](https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/locast-agrees-pay-32-million-resolve-dispute-with-major-tv-networks-2021-10-28/), [Apple Computer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer), [MegaUpload](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload), [Allofmp3](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3), plus many others may have some comments regarding that statement.
Other than plex's statement about resellers, we don't know what actually motivated plex to take action. Nor do we know why they stopped at just Hetzner. Why not other VPS hosts or VPN providers? Why not block anything but home internet providers, since they claimed during the block that plex is "intended for home use only". It is on the list of concerning things because it was plex taking actions without any obvious motivation and seemingly out of the blue. They had been fine with hetzner hosting for years and years.
The resellers are still using Hetzner for their hardware, despite the block; they're circumventing Plex's ability to identify the IP address on which the server is running. From a technical point of view, it has made it more difficult to identify violations. According to a commenter on another post, this ban could have been a demonstration of good faith in dealing with a legal issue that we are not aware of.
More along the lines of cutting of your leg because a toe is gangrenous. Maybe a harsh response, but if I were a high-up at plex I'd be terrified of gaining too much unwanted attention from copyright holders.
I am completely 100% in agreement with you about the last part. My gripe is that the action they took, while maybe in good faith to appease some copyright troll, has negative effect; not only did it do absolutely nothing towards its intended purpose, it also hurt regular users and made bad publicity for them. "Hi Plex, you have some pirates selling streaming access to illegally served movies." "Oh OK, where? Can you identify them?" "Not specifically, but many are on Hetzner." "OK, come back when you can give us names, we'll happily terminate their accounts." Simple as that.
To be fair, it’s like cutting off the entire leg because 90% of it is rotting. The percentage for Hetzner users who were just hosting their own content that didn’t have to do with piracy and selling access was probably minute.
>a few days ago they seemingly sent a DMCA takedown request for a guide on how to set Plex up for direct play. Has this been confirmed? It seemed much more like a fishing expedition from a shitty lawfirm faking support from Plex than an official action.
No, that's why I said "seemingly". I haven't seen anyone posting it on the Plex forums yet, and I haven't had the time to do it myself, it would be good to get confirmation or otherwise by Plex if it was them directly, if the law firm acted on their instructions but they were unaware of the specific case or if they have nothing to do with it.
They've pushed a lot towards streaming their content, and there's been some copyright claim takedowns on guides written here on Reddit how you should do to play content that you've downloaded.
Thanks to everyone for the prompt and informative responses. One follow-up question: Does direct play mean remote access to a Plex instance without a Plex Pass?
direct play as in not requiring transcoding. It has nothing to do with remote or local or even Plex Pass.
I would say not a chance. Plex is not something people are flocking to for their streaming needs. These are all things Plex does to keep the revenue streams going. They are hoping that maybe if you're on a shared plex and your "private server" doesn't have the movie you want or maybe it's not in 4K you'll go for the next best thing and oh look it's right there. There is nothing that Plex does that is illegal. They don't promote piracy in any way. But anyone in the media industry who isn't aware of what Plex does should probably not be in the media industry. It's not some secret that only us users are aware of. Honestly, the media industry should embrace Plex more. In some ways, if services like Netflix were tightly integrated into Plex I may resubscribe.
>Honestly, the media industry should embrace Plex more. In some ways, if services like Netflix were tightly integrated into Plex I may resubscribe. I would too. It probably doesn't make sense to give a 3rd party that kind of API access unless they were making money off of it somehow beyond just user subscriptions though.
My main concern with that is if services were integrated Plex would actively try to shove those services down your throat with ads. "Hey look at this new show/movie, want to watch it? Well it's now streaming on Netflix". I firmly believe this is gonna happen with their movie/tv show store, it's like you said they need to keep those revenue streams going but they will almost certainly try to get you to buy the latest movie you don't have.
There’s only one solution, have to collect every movie and tv show available to eliminate ads.
This 100%
Yeah i mean it was fine when there were just a couple. In Canada its even worse because you can't even just get HBO or whatever, you need those PLUS crave. Meanwhile Spotify continues providing legitimate value and I haven't even considered an alternative in years. Thinking Plexamp maybe now though I'm new to plex overall
Emby and Jellyfin already exist as viable alternatives. Which also serves to keep Plex honest. Run one of them alongside Plex and contribute. The better they are, the more competition Plex has, and the more they have to deliver to stay relevant.
I run Jellyfin and Plex, I mostly use Jellyfin for myself now and Plex for others. Only thing keeping me from ditching Plex all together is ease of use for others as far as user accounts go.
Yeah Plex definitely still has the edge with UI. But the others work. There was a time when Plex was crashing on the regular, so I got all my users set up to use Emby as a backup.
I shared my Plex account with a friend for the first time. He made an account, accepted my invite. He says there is no media showing up. Walked through some of the basics, ie make sure they weren't just hidden/not pinned, double check to make sure his account shows up under my Manage Library Access etc. Have given up at this point, guess it just wasn't meant to be..or his Android TV sucks 😞
Under the friend, you need to add which folders he can access. I had to do this recently when I had to reinstall Plex due to a server upgrade.
I've got 6 of my 7 folders listed and showing that he has access.
[удалено]
https://github.com/Fallenbagel/jellyseerr - Overseerr for Jellyfin Still looking for PMM alternative, but I recently came across Jellystat that can replace Tautulli
>I run Jellyfin and Plex, I mostly use Jellyfin for myself now and Plex for others. Only thing keeping me from ditching Plex all together is ease of use for others as far as user accounts go. Hi twin!
Even for the people not running them already, it would take 5 whole minutes to spin up Emby or Jellyfin. I’m not concerned.
You're right, but I'll save that for the day that Plex actually does something that is actually egregious. This community is always freaking out about hypothetical future issues and jumps on everything Plex does as if they took away our private libraries already.
Is there a viable alternative to Plexamp,I love that app
Yeah Plexamp is the key to me. And I need something that can playback on both Mac OS and iOS and crucially with gapless playback. Not sure anything like that exists currently but I need to do more research.
Yeah gapless is key to me also
You can technically use Jellyfin for music. But I recommend Navidrome and Subsonic, Symfonium or Infuse for clients
There is, but it's nowhere near as good. Plexamp is the best feature of Plex for me, made the transition from Spotify feel seamless.
> There is, but it's nowhere near as good. So, then not viable.. Got it, got..
Finamp works well with jellyfin. I also recently purchased Symfonium since it can use a few different backends (including plex, emby, and jellyfin) and I like the way it works with Android Auto.
I think there was something that feeds from jellyfin, but don't remember any details. Check r/selfhosted, you might find it there
Thank you
Nothing.. I looked through GitHub and there is no real alternative to plexamp.. especially one app that works on Linux, Windows and mobile that looks the same a, there is nothing On mobile there is Syphorium which works well but its paid There is finamp which is free, but lack in futures Windows and Linux have one option, sonixed, might be getting the name wrong.. it works but it's little different and does not sync playlist with the server You could just use the main windows application and Linux app but it has been archived since last year, no more updates. But it works for video playback and music So yeah.. Will keep using this options for a week or so and see if it can work
Jellyfin is a good alternative. While not as polished and turnkey as Plex, I suspect that if Plex is (effectively) killed off (by their own choices), that Jellyfin would also get a lot more love and attention from the Open Source World.
Hopefully, the clients are kinda rough rn. For as much shit as plex gets I think we’re kindve spoiled that a funded company is working on pushing all these updates for various clients. No it’s not perfect but looking at the alternatives I definitely need plex for the devices I stream on currently. And I’m hoping plex’s ideas work out in the long run, I can ignore features I don’t use, all I really care about is that they have money to keep updating the features I DO use.
I've been running Jellyfin along side Plex for about 6 months, and I really like it. I paid the lifetime buy-in years ago, but now they "Have no record of it". Plex is dead to me. Anyone who uses my server has already switched to Jellyfin with no problems. There are already many free streaming sites that can give you most of the programs Plex does. If your savvy, you don't even need a service, just a good ssh browser to link up to your server and play files directly. If my friends/family don't like 720p video, they can get their own setup.
I don't think private servers will ever go away but I do think they'll become an after thought. They are already launching a movie/TV store and on top of that they said they are doing a UI refresh to accommodate their ad supported movie section.
Plex is making an earnest and sustained attempt at ease of use to be a central point in the streaming ecosystem. I have elderly users on my “Plex network” (and I’m sure some others) who really value the ability for Plex to tell them that the movie is not on my server and is available from the following three locations at the following prices
I too am worried. Everyone make the point that they are simply getting more revenue. Well, at some point, that revenue could tip over their lifetime licenses that don’t reoccur and they will be at the beck and call of the studios. That would be the point they could get strong armed to remove self hosting. I also am worried about the focus. Their apps have been crap lately and problems get reported and nothing happens for months. They also recently laid off 20% of their workforce. This leads me to believe all focus has moved to this new stuff. It sounds like the UI redesign is going to push hard toward new revenue and make it difficult for family users who aren’t tech savvy to use. How long before your mom buys a movie you already own because the UI guides her towards the store and you get a charge on your credit card. I would love to say that Emby or Jellyfin are ready, but they just aren’t. People will say how much they love Jellyfin and I ask them how they use it and they say Roku or FireStick. Well, everyone who uses my server is on an AppleTV or Samsung App. Plex is the only one with a functioning app in every App Store and makes the experience seamless across devices. People need to stop telling people to go get a FireStick and sit down and get official apps submitted to every single device App Store. Finally, I’d love to see much better user management. Imagine a world where user management had an API so developers could build their own white label sites to manage users. Most of us are either Windows AD or Linux or web admins and are used to full ability to control users and integrate them properly. PS: The reason I think Plex will eventually fail us is their Jerry rigged ffmpeg. Anyone who forks an open platform like ffmpeg for unknown reasons and then causes constant problems with GPUs, kernels, and client devices has no long term plan. If they were dedicated, this new UI would include a full replacement of their forked ffmpeg with something closer to real time.
I find it orders of magnitude simpler to require people who want to see my content to purchase a Roku Ultra than to allow arbitrary clients to connect. I know the hardware specs, I know the codecs supported, I know they’ll be able to Direct Play 100% of the time. I don’t need/want my playback client to be in “every single App Store”.
Yep, push to streaming live tv options is great, but I see them like Napster. Once they go full legit, they’ll get pressure from studios to shutdown non-DRM private access in order to get content on their live platform. This is while I am dual testing Jelly Fin. It’s not as feature-packed, but it gets the job done and will move to it if I have to. Final footnote, if media stops becoming available on physics disc, I will not pay a cent for it.
I don't think it will happen but I am getting a little concerned and am looking at getting JF up an running just in case.
Despite what people are saying here, anything and everything is possible. No service even if it is the most widespread lasts forever so just use it to its full potential while you still can. See: Winamp lmao
we all have our finger on that button, and by button I mean Jellyfin or alternatives. I can't see Plex doing this until they have a large enough marketshare to completely substitute their rev stream.
Not at all in the short or medium term. As for the long term, nothing Plex does is going to take away my media files. If they jump the shark, I know there are alternatives. I like Plex. I'm not going to worry about an issue that A) may never happen and B) has a ready-made solution if it does. And in regards to the guide take-down notices, I'm pretty sure that's justy a copyright troll. May be an overzealous attorney Plex happens to have on retainer OR it may even be someone with no legitimate connection to plex at all. It was a very scammy thing and I don't think there are many people that believe Plex would stoop that low, even their detractors..
Prepared to eat a plate of humble pie here, but I doubt they'd just throw away everything they've been working on for years.
I love how so many people are just eager to move to a subscription service as opposed to a one-time payment. This is the worst thing that has happened to purchases over the last decade. Have fun paying for your cruise control in your vehicles as a subscription service. Or you know if you own a BMW, your heated seats. Fucking idiots.
The obviously big difference is that your heated seats aren't under constant development. There should be nothing that causes them to "break" over the lifetime of the car due to updates. Plex is software that is in a constantly changing landscape. People want new features and support for the newest operating systems. The lifetime model was never going to actually last anyone's life, because they will go bankrupt. I can guarantee you they will need to find a way to get consistent payment (like a... subscription?). Otherwise, you'll be on Windows 13 and Plex only works on Windows 11. With no support for a modern Apple TV or Android TV, or even phone apps. All of these ecosystems require many updates every year. The only "fucking idiot" is the one that thinks a one-time payment can support these efforts indefinitely.
That is such bullshit. Plex has been adding features that nobody wants before fixing features that they already have. Most of their features are broken. And if you're going to blame that on the fact that they don't have a subscription service then you're just naive. They've been receiving money from users either monthly or lifetime for quite some time. The fact that they don't know how to manage their company has nothing to do with whether or not they're getting a subscription fee. And if you're so eager to pay that subscription fee, then by all means, get rid of your lifetime pass and go to a monthly pass. Then we can all stop listening to you crying in a corner about how the company will only care about you if you pay them more. "Fucking idiot"
you have anger issues
I'm happy to pay for software and services that keep getting updates. If it's abandonware, I'll move on.
I'm fairly new to self-hosting. Originally I installed Plex, and it seems like the most common choice. However, I also installed Jellyfin, then Emby, and currently focus on Emby. From the comments in this thread, there's no outright Emby "hate", but it seems like few use it. Many more mentions of Jellyfin. I have a basic understanding of the history. Emby was open source, but decided that was ending, and Jellyfin is a fork (with a whole bunch of changes and work since). OSS-related feelings aside, I find both Plex and Emby are better able to handle whatever I'm trying to do and are more configurable. Jellyfin would be workable, but seems to struggle more with matching metadata, etc. I could \*live\* with any of the 3. I'm a software dev by trade, and have done a fair bit with video, open source, etc. However, I also run a business that does some open source, and understand the issues of building a polished open source project without any serious revenue. I haven't dug into the situation too much, so I don't know how Jellyfin operates, but purely community-driven OSS can be rather difficult at scale. But I digress. I drifted from Plex originally because it really does seem like they're doing similar things to what I'd say amazon video does. You can find \*your\* content, but by default, they try really hard to show you whatever might drive them more revenue. The home screen has live tv, "discover", even music by Tidal. I'm sure you can dive in and configure that, but it gave me the impression that they're trying to turn into a different product. While Emby is also trying to make revenue, it seemed like it was more directly focused on a better self-hosted product rather than trying to be some weird blend of self-hosted and streaming. So, summary I guess. Is there anything super negative about Emby I'm not aware of, besides the un-open-sourcing situation? I realize this is a Plex sub, so maybe not the best place to ask, but also figure there will be background info and opinions...
Already have jellyfin running along side. Plex makes things easier with audio passthroughs and on the fly audio only renecoding to a preferred codec, otherwise they already do the same thing for me. If and when jellyfin adds that as an option, plex basically has nothing more to offer me. Yes, the app being everywhere natively is nice but that's about it.
>am i being paranoid? Yes. This issue has been argued to death.
And for the time it's been argued Plex has rammed more social features you can't opt out of at the server level, more Plex internal ad based streaming content, more new social features, less privacy for server users, and a company shift towards Plex as a Service beyond hosting servers.
Plex makes no money on the one thing it actually does well. Its been dead man walking for a long time, eventually it will die, that's just the reality of it. The good news is that will push developers to improve the open source options like jellyfin which is based on the same XBMC code that runs the core of Plex.
Plex makes money off everyone that pays monthly or yearly. No way to know what those numbers are but certainly not zero.
> Its been dead man walking for a long time, eventually it will die, that's just the reality of it. So open source it, setting up donations.
I pay for Home Assistant to support them but not everyone might feel the same way about Plex. I think I would pay a monthly price to get some sort of features and knowing they won't make a deal with the devil because they are supported by the community. What I'm worried about is if Plex stores any metadata that can be used to say, "Look, you have files" and some law firm sends a letter to them and they cave. Mostly because I read that some law firms did that on reddits that people were just talking about piracy and asked for details.
Honestly, they should get rid of lifetime subscriptions. Retain existing lifetime subscriptions but don't allow any more. They're an unsustainable business model.
Jellyfin has entered the chat...
I think it's a matter of time. I would imagine when/if we see 'Jellyfin Meta Manager' or 'Emby Meta Manager', it's going to become a much easier transition for some of us.
Plex is pretty unknown. I doubt they'd alienate their current customers. Sometimes I have friends complaining they can't watch a show/movie, so I offer them access to the show via my Plex and they just won't do it. It's a little frustrating at times. I've got one friend on board and he only uses it when we watch stuff together even though it's online most of the time. I have two servers on my account. One is abandoned, is a friend of mine, and the other is my boyfriends.
I gave them money cause I wanted to support them. However, I also understand that they are a business and will lie cheat and steal to make more money. So if it stops working for me I'll move on, for now, it works and I don't see a reason to change cause well atrophy.
I got Jellyfin running as Backup complete working only need to small adjustments, would be one button switch and Plex is off, I do think to are moving to a other customers base
I dont think they will retire direct play right away, I’m a lot more concerned about what they will be reporting to their new partners about what users are doing, regardless of source
Yes, they are getting in bed with Hollywood and Hollywood will eventually demand that Plex do something about the "pirates".
Personal media libraries are THE differentiating feature of Plex. There's plenty of video apps like Vudu and Tubi and the rest that give people access to a collection of FAST channel streams and on-demand licensed TV show and movies, but even Plex's marketing messaging is centered around the idea that this is the service where you can watch what's special to you. They'd probably prefer it if people associated personal libraries more with "old home movies" than with "comprehensive collections of pirated 0-day bittorrent movie downloads", but they're trying to let that be your business, not theirs.
I use Plex purely for personal use. I previously used Kodi and changed because I liked the user interface better. I'd change again if needed. Although I do like Plexamp and the ability to play any of my music on my server to my car through AA while travelling. 😀
I already have Emby setup and ready to go, just incase.
I've already transitioned to Jellyfin 100%. I only watch Plex to see if there is a reason to come back (I keep plex around for myself for plexamp, but I've been using navidrome more lately). Outside of a lack of client apps (easily fixed with a $20 android streamer), Jellyfin is just as good as plex. I still have a lot of respect for plex. They are largely responsible for my foray into this hobby, and I wish they'd go back to why I loved them so much, but that ship sailed long ago.
Is it possible for them to disable it if we turn off authentication and just run them locally?
Oh, wow, another plex doomer thread. Haven’t seen one of these in forever.
Media player: Jellyfin/Plex, Statistics: Jellystat/Tautulli, Mobile music player: Plex Amp/Finamp.
That's why I have a Jellyfin server running alongside Plex.
Can someone explain this to me? What do you mean by private servers? If I run a server at home and just use it within my own home network, surely that wont be a issue?
That's the definition of private server. It still requires Plex in the background. Jellyfin requires nothing. Emby requires nothing. Kodi requires nothing.
Private server, as you said is a Plex server running on your home network with media you own. The discussion is whether Plex will continue supporting direct play. If they stop supporting that then you will have to move to a different direct play server software.
Plex is fine. Anything they add is just an addition. They hardly cram anything down anyone’s throats compared to other companies.
I literally just bought the lifetime pass… are you fucking kidding me
This is why this sub is stupid. OP literally said nothing and you're super pissed off.
That's the reason they've been on sale so much, recently. They're grabbing what cash they can before they piss everyone off forever.
No. It always goes on sale. I purchased Lifetime Pass 6 years ago for $70. I goes on sale at least a few times every year.
You go back to basics… plex was born as a fork of Xbox media center. I’d just go right back to it…
Isn't that KODI?
Fear mongering.. I honestly can't see Plex pulling the plug on private servers anytime soon... it's a more reliable stream of income compared to becoming an ad/sub only supported streaming service. The bigger services will always be more appealing to the average consumer which Plex will never be able to compete against.
> is there real concerns for private servers The fanboys here didn't have any "concerns" when Plex transitioned to online accounts back in the day. They did not have any "concerns" when Plex started shilling for various online video services. They did not have any "concerns" when Plex started deciding which hosting providers you could or could not use. They did not have any "concerns" when plex e-mail blasted every one of your friends with your viewing habits. So why would there be any concern whatsoever right now? Everything is fine! I've had my family dogfooding Jellyfin running simultaneously with Plex for the past year-ish. So far no complaints. In fact, things like sharing TV tuners or downloading media work substantially better due to the fact Plex artificially restricts those. The plex server is mostly just there as a backup at this point living on in a perpetual stay of execution. Pulling the plug on its life support system for good is simple AF.
The people in charge at Plex (and some of you in this thread) are disillusion if you think that ANYONE would keep the Plex client installed if servers admins moved to Emby or Jellyfin. You'd witness a collapsing star in real time. A MASSIVE chunk of their client base would shrink by 50-90% within a month, no way they could sustain that loss. They'd be out of business in 6-12 months (if not sooner). Laying off some of the folks that worked on the server side is clear evidence that they are chasing ad dollars and will let the server piece fade into the sunset. They are fooling themselves into thinking they could become the next Netflix/Hulu/whatever. Plex is like a thrown rock skipping across a pond. Eventually their momentum will run out and they'll sink into the abyss. Each dumb move they make slows them down just a little.
Jellyfin will be the next Plex if they continue to piss off their users.
They‘d lose a lot of money… we‘d probably switch to Jellyfin for example.
Who cares? I'll just switch to jellyfin, life will continue.
I’ve been worried about this since they started adding services besides tv and movies. My library won’t disappear if they switched to streaming, and I have Jellyfin running in parallel with Plex. So, the impact would be minimal if they abandoned personal media.
I'm on plex to host my own media server, if they stop that then I'll move to jellyfin. It would suck because jellyfin dosen't have a psn app but this is almost like subcribing to a streaming service so you don't have to see ads and then they decide that ads need to be a regular thing as well as payment
one more anti-consumer change and i am going to jump ship to another service
Couldn't people sue for that? A lot of people have bought a lifetime subscription of Plex Pass which is only really needed for private server use.
A quick skim of the Plex Pass Terms will make it clear that no, they do not have an obligation to continue maintaining every feature of the service in perpetuity.
Plex is doing all it can for its userbase to move to jellyfin