Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 127 posts

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

#61

Post by Arn_Thor »

prepend wrote: post #32
causality0 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like your Synology just isn’t up to it in terms of transcoding. Direct playback to an Apple TV Plex app is virtually flawless in my experience (exceptions were HDR content but that seems to be fine now)

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

#62

Post by Arn_Thor »

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.

Anecdotes is not data, though. For me Plex “just works” but I’m careful not to dismiss the many comments I’m reading here about people that do have problems.

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

#63

Post by indigodaddy »

bilekas wrote: post #57

( 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 the…

So just to clarify, if someone is even half as good as you, they’re still pretty damn good?

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

#64

Post by freedomben »

krisroadruck wrote: post #56
scarface_74 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting, I have a Samsung TV but I'v never even considered running Jellyfin as a native app. I keep the TV off the internet so it can't be a spy box. The Chromecast with Google TV is so affordable and so great, I just use that everywhere. To be clear I'm not telling you you're wrong for wanting to do it on the TV, that's a personal preference, I'm just sharing how I do it in case it helps.

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

#65

Post by starttoaster »

bubblethink wrote: post #39
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.

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.

There have been huge improvements to the transcoder over the past couple of years. I think on-demand subtitles was also a relatively new feature which is huge over having to download them yourself and finding out the subtitle track sucked and having to delete that one and download a different one, and then woops that subtitle track was the same as the first, have to do it a third time.

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

#66

Post by princevegeta89 »

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 guess, if folks Plex keeps bowing their heads to investors, and not really focus on the values which they started the company with, things may end up going south for them in the coming months.

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

#67

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

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

Can jellyfin reverse engineer the server so it works with plex client?

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

#68

Post by samcheng »

bilekas wrote: post #57

( 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 the…

To be honest, it sounds like a contingency recruiter found you, made sure you were interested, and then pitched you to a hiring manager. The hiring manager maybe didn't want to deal with the recruiter for one reason or another. I get cold recruiter spam on a daily basis...

You might blame the recruiter instead of the company, in that case.

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

#69

Post by jmbwell »

bubblethink wrote: post #39
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.

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.

It’s stable and it performs well and it works on all my devices with hardly any fuss. It works better than the HBO app.

I’m not saying you’re wrong or your issues are invalid, but I do think it is stable and capable, and they’ve done a lot of work to make it easy to use. A glance at the logs and you’ll see everything it’s doing to make it go smoothly. And it’s much better at this than it used to be.

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

#70

Post by freedomben »

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.

A lot of "pirates" don't pirate movies and music because they don't want to pay for them, they do it because they want to own them and want an actually good and respectful user experience.

The biggest Plex users I know don't really pirate anyway. They mainly buy DVDs/Blu-Rays and rip them for use on Plex.

Post reply on HN