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Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

theverge.com

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

#32

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…

Plex "just works" until it doesn't. The further away from the desktop you get the less reliable Plex becomes. In the browser it's flawless. On smartphone and tablet native apps I get maybe a one to five percent rate of not being able to see the server despite the fact I'm logged into it on the same device's browser. On embedded devices like smart TVs and streaming sticks Plex is a stinking pile of shit of an app. It'…

I run Plex on an appletv with the server running on a synology. It’s ok. The subtitles don’t work unless I switch off and on for each show.

Anything over 1080p gets too laggy and it doesn’t buffer.

But I like enough to just download stuff in 720 and watch at that resolution.

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

#33

I love open source. Jellyfin looks great, and Embey as well. But Plex "just works". I happily paid for a lifetime and would love to see more development. One of my most used services to watch home videos, listen to audiobooks, and stream my dvd collection.

The others all lack the apps, Plex is a native app on my TV, Playstation, Phone etc, and it just works. I always found the other solutions to have pretty clunky client options outside of PC browser

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

#34

I don't get all the comments of people saying that JellyFin doesn't "just work". I replaced Plex with it a year or so ago and it has just worked since then, without any issue or any particular setup required.

For me Jellyfin server just works and is great.

But the Apple TV experience is not really great with the official (still work in progress) or the one that is often recommended but I can't remember the name for at the moment.

As great as the server is, I feel like the apps are where Plex has Jellyfin beat.

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

#36

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

The only premium feature I'm using is hardware encoding personally.

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

#37

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…

Plex "just works" until it doesn't. The further away from the desktop you get the less reliable Plex becomes. In the browser it's flawless. On smartphone and tablet native apps I get maybe a one to five percent rate of not being able to see the server despite the fact I'm logged into it on the same device's browser. On embedded devices like smart TVs and streaming sticks Plex is a stinking pile of shit of an app. It'…

Plex has the annoying habit of stalling indefinitely for me. I don't know what it's doing. I believe it's transcoding so that it can "burn" in the subtitles, but I have no clue.

I've mostly given up on it. I use sshfs and mpv when sitting at a desktop, which actually does work flawlessly.

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

#38
post #16
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?

My Plex server hosts rips of my (quite large) DVD/Blu-ray/UHD Blu-ray movie and digital/CD music collections.

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

#39

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.

It's commodity software. It's hard to justify a recurring subscription for something like this. It targets advanced users. If they can set up plex, they can set up alternatives too. And plex does not invest much in improving the core product. I don't remember it as being any better than it was 5-10 years ago. It still has rough edges. Skipping title/end credits is a nice feature though.

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

#40

I love open source. Jellyfin looks great, and Embey as well. But Plex "just works". I happily paid for a lifetime and would love to see more development. One of my most used services to watch home videos, listen to audiobooks, and stream my dvd collection.

The others all lack the apps, Plex is a native app on my TV, Playstation, Phone etc, and it just works. I always found the other solutions to have pretty clunky client options outside of PC browser

I primarily use Jellyfin through the app on my Roku stick. Works pretty great for me and my family.

I also have an old Android phone hooked up to old stereo system, and use the "Gelli" app for music playback. Also solid.

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