Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff • Hacker News Board

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#11

Post by katbyte » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

alexalx666 wrote: post #6

onychomys wrote: post #2

It's going to be extremely annoying if Plex goes out of business.

Do you use paid features of Plex and if yes, which ones? Im using Plex daily to stream shows stored on a SSD connected to Windows laptop. I think I would not miss on any paid features they provide. Initially when I decided to try to watch less mindless tv stuff, I thought there will be a plethora of solutions for home streaming but it turned out that the only one that actually works is Plex

emby and jellyfin work just great

and jellyfin is free & OSS

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#12

Post by bberenberg » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

DANmode wrote: post #5

bberenberg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jellyfin is a good alternative

Does it perchance have a plugin for replacing Plex's "search various streaming services at once" feature?

Not sure, I don't have this use case.

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#13

Post by josteink » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

While that sounds bad, I must admit Plex has been chasing “the wrong things” compared to what I want a Plex instance for.

I have streaming services for content I want to rent. I don’t need Plex for that.

I use Plex because it’s currently the best way to stream and organise content I own and have curated. But they’ve completed ignored that use-case for 5+ years now. It’s frustrating.

Jellyfin is still not quite there in the “it just works” department, but if it does, I have no doubt what’s going to replace my Plex instance.

Being open-source it will hopefully not pushed to weird commercial ventures and use-cases not actually wanted by its users.

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#14

Post by JohnFen » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

fluxem wrote: post #9

onychomys wrote: post #2

It's going to be extremely annoying if Plex goes out of business.

Plex has a tough business model. It’s hard to make money from the pirates.

I don't know the percentage, but an enormous number of Plex users aren't pirates.

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#15

Post by cassianoleal » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

katbyte wrote: post #11

alexalx666 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use paid features of Plex and if yes, which ones? Im using Plex daily to stream shows stored on a SSD connected to Windows laptop. I think I would not miss on any paid features they provide. Initially when I decided to try to watch less mindless tv stuff, I thought there will be a plethora of solutions for home streaming but it turned out that the only one that actually works is Plex

emby and jellyfin work just great and jellyfin is free & OSS

Jellyfin is nice. It doesn't work great though. I've had and have way too many issues with it.

I run it next to Plex to keep an eye on how it develops. I still have issues with pretty much all clients, from losing server connection information, to jankiness on changing users, or subtitles just not rendering properly, crazy high CPU usage for certain transcodes, etc.

Plex just works most of the time. Clients are better (even though the thing about them pushing crappy streaming and live tv stuff bothers me a little), subtitles mostly just work, rendering is ok and most video formats work well on most clients, and so on.

I want to like Jellyfin. I have high hopes that one day it will be great and I won't want Plex anymore. That day is not here yet.

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#16

Post by thfuran » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:50 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #14

fluxem wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plex has a tough business model. It’s hard to make money from the pirates.

I don't know the percentage, but an enormous number of Plex users aren't pirates.

What else do people even use Plex for?

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#17

Post by LASR » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:53 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #16

JohnFen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the percentage, but an enormous number of Plex users aren't pirates.

What else do people even use Plex for?

Maybe Linux ISOs encoded as lossy video.

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#18

Post by pojzon » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

cassianoleal wrote: post #15

katbyte wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

emby and jellyfin work just great and jellyfin is free & OSS

Jellyfin is nice. It doesn't work great though. I've had and have way too many issues with it. I run it next to Plex to keep an eye on how it develops. I still have issues with pretty much all clients, from losing server connection information, to jankiness on changing users, or subtitles just not rendering properly, crazy high CPU usage for certain transcodes, etc. Plex just works most of the time. Clients are bette…

> crazy high CPU usage for certain transcodes

The reason I stopped using it for hosting my collection on a PI.

Overall decided its just easier to have a public NAS accessible from anywhere.

No point to open stuff in a browser when you can simply open a video from another side of the world like a regular local video on my laptop.

So much better an easier.

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#19

Post by thfuran » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 10:01 PM UTC

LASR wrote: post #17

thfuran wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else do people even use Plex for?

Maybe Linux ISOs encoded as lossy video.

I heard there's a hidden message from Linus if you play Jaunty Jackalope backwards.

Re: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

#20

Post by Brajeshwar » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

From my nieve point of view, I think, they made a mistake with the $100 lifetime fee (was that about a decade ago!). I paid that and have been using it since, and have never made another payment since.