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Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

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

#51

Post by malermeister »

ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #33
samschooler wrote: post #10

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've been using Jellyfin on Android TV and it works just as well as Plex did!

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

#52

Post by malermeister »

scarface_74 wrote: post #43
bberenberg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jellyfin is a good alternative

Does Jellyfin have user friendly clients for iOS, Android, Roku, AppleTV and various SmartTVs?

iOS

Yes: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jellyfin-mobile/id1480192618

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swiftfin/id1604098728

Android

Yes: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jellyfin.m...

Roku

Yes: https://channelstore.roku.com/en-gb/details/cc5e559d08d9ec87...

AppleTV

Yes: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swiftfin/id1604098728

various SmartTVs

Depends. The Android ones, yes. There's one for Samsung but it isn't officially packaged yet - works quite well from what I've seen tho.

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

#53

Post by sp332 »

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.

Pirates spend tons of money on legit content. Movies https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/06/piracy-fi... music https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-spend-much-more-money-on-mu... and books https://bookriot.com/book-pirates/

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

#54

Post by blactuary »

packetlost wrote: post #47

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.

They have a nice mobile music client

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

#55

Post by mayneack »

packetlost wrote: post #47

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.

Plexamp is my default music app. It's great!

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

#56

Post by krisroadruck »

scarface_74 wrote: post #43
bberenberg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jellyfin is a good alternative

Does Jellyfin have user friendly clients for iOS, Android, Roku, AppleTV and various SmartTVs?

Every time I've asked them about an app for Samsung or LG tvs - the two most popular brands they've pushed back "we're volunteers, we don't use those TVs, it's not on our to-do list but feel free to code it yourself". They aren't open to being paid to develop it either.

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

#57

Post by bilekas »

(This happened 2017~2018)

It's so interesting to hear this one, I interviewed with them because I had some random linked in notification, I use their product, I wanted to be a part of it and I worked on a similar proprietary platform with live tv. Loved that work.

From the job spec, I was maybe over qualified but it was Plex, it's sitting in my NAS, remote servers phone and tablets, purchased multiple time from their odd monetary system with iOS.

It's a great product I was happy to get behind. The interview process was non-existent. One person spoke to me high level, maybe 20 mins, I imagined an intro to the interview process, I was happy in my job to not worry, I wasn't looking, it was plex in a random linkedin email, after a week I get a call.

"Everything great, we are excited etc etc, when would be good to talk to some of our 'engineers' ?"

Organised for 15 days ahead as I knew there was a release coming (a release for who I worked for) earlier so wanted to be fresh.

12 days passed with no feedback. I email the whole CC of email to confirm.

No response. To this day. :)

Flaky. Amazing product but bad business choices. I really do feel bad for the employees in this case because if they're even half of me, they wanted to do some good work.

Edit: Clarity context - And grammar.

I would like to point out too, within those 5 years they could have changed. Hired better (seems not)

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

#58

Post by packetlost »

blactuary wrote: post #54
packetlost wrote: post #47

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.

They have a nice mobile music client

yeah, they should've charged money for it lol

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

#59

Post by jmbwell »

Banked on free, ad-supported content, then the ad market stumbled.

I don’t know the solution for Plex. I haven’t agreed with all its decisions, but I use the product every day and get enormous value from my lifetime subscription. What would induce me to pay monthly? I am not sure, but it wouldn’t take much. Pitch me, plex.

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

#60

Post by jhot »

samschooler wrote: post #10

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.

I run both Plex and Jellyfin on my server. Plex is a little more polished but I don't see how they can sustain a business. Mainly use Plex but Jellyfin is not far behind and good enough if Plex goes belly up.
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