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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

#41

Post by scktt »

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

hardware en/decoding for sure. im not sure if it is still the case, but prior to pruchasing the liftime account playing back media remotely from a phone/tablet was limited to 10 minutes. i have 3 kids, and we regularly take long drives. 10 mins would not cut it. i also share my content with family, which again i think is harder without a subscription.

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

#44

Post by waselighis »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #20

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.

Exactly. Even if the software is never updated with any new features or changes, it still requires constant maintenance to fix bugs, patch security vulnerabilities, support new hardware, and OS updates. It costs money to maintain software, and a lifetime license isn't going to pay for a lifetime of updates.

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

#45

Post by koolba »

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.

It’s easy if you’re selling them hardware. Even pirates are fine with paying for something you can actually touch.

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

#46

Post by nickstinemates »

pojzon wrote: post #18
cassianoleal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do both - have it on my NAS exposed as SMB shares but also Jellyfin both on the internet without vpn/tailscale and of course with.

Sometimes I want to use a local media player, sometimes, when I am unsure what to watch I browse the media gallery and just watch from the browser.

I don't trust Plex. I don't like its media server, all of the dark patterns, the subscription, unknown telemetry (although firewalled.) I liked that it was available as an app on my TV but I solved that a different way.

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

#47

Post by packetlost »

IMO they should have focused on building paid addons. Their life-time license thing is well worth it, but it's bad for building a sustainable business around. Hell, I'd pay extra for a nice mobile music client. I'd pay extra for a better Python API. I'd pay extra for access to high-quality metadata, etc.

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

#48

Post by stock_toaster »

codeslave13 wrote: post #42

Apps are the main driver. If there isnt a very strong client ecosystem it will always be niche. I run jellyfin side by side just waiting for a good tvos client

I've been really happy with Infuse as a jellyfin client (ios, tvos, macos).

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

#50

Post by aarontees »

nerdjon wrote: post #34
iLoveOncall wrote: post #27

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.

That’s why I choose to use Infuse as my Apple TV client. Plus it does local transcoding, taking that load off your server.
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