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Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

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Re: Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

#71

Post by skydhash »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #45
sgt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A setup that I can now heartily recommend (after using it for 6 months) is Apple TV 4k and the Infuse media app[0] It's able to find your movies and series on Samba shares (and probably other types of locations, too) and categorize, find subtitles, adjust audio and so on. This assumes you've already got your media somewhere of course (like a file server on your LAN), but I bet 99% of the HN crowd has a home server an…

If you're pirating content, you should retain complete control and security over your setup. How does Infuse enforce its yearly license cost? There must be some telemetry at the very least, which is exactly the issue that got Plex into this situation and why people would do well to avoid it (unless of course you're just watching your own legal copies of media).

It's apple only (tvos, ios, and macos). The yearly subscription is for enabling formats and resolutions, I believe. They don't have a server part. They just scan your sources (smb shares, cloud drives, plex, jellyfin, emby,...) and present a library. My setup is Jellyfin (old Mac Mini with ubuntu server) + Infuse on Apple TV as the player.

Re: Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

#72

Post by Someone1234 »

cacois wrote: post #28
dmitrygr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean let's be honest. Piracy is the raison d'etre for Plex just like porn is for OnlyFans. Strange, I have been using it for years to stream my own movie collection (ripped by me from my own DVDs) to my chromecasts and phones.

Technically that's still illegal in the US. Breaking DVD encryption is not legal, so ripping them is not legal.

It is more complicated than that. It is both legal AND illegal in the US:

> Under United States federal law, making a backup copy of a DVD-Video or an audio CD by a consumer is legal under fair use protection. However, this provision of United States law conflicts with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibition of so-called "circumvention measures" of copy protections.

.

> In the 2004 "321" case, Federal District Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California, ruled that the backup copies made with software such as DVD Decrypter are legal but that distribution of the software used to make them is illegal.

Further problem though:

> In 2010, the Librarian of Congress instituted a DMCA exemption which protects circumvention of CSS protection under certain circumstances. This exemption expired in 2013.

Therefore, it seems to be a "case by case" basis type situation currently.

Re: Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

#73

Post by simplyinfinity »

tombert wrote: post #46
mizzack wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that during direct play or transcoding? Are you running a reverse proxy in front of it? I'd check those things first.

> Is that during direct play or transcoding? During transcoding, but I'm having a hell of a time disabling that. I've looked around for a configuration to just broadly disable transcoding, since pretty much everything I use to play JellyFin is libavcodec or ffmpeg based anyway and can happily decode stuff client side. > Are you running a reverse proxy in front of it? Not within my home network.

Use the Desktop app or mobile app. Chrome/edge don't support the codecs needed, and jellyfin transcodes. The desktop app is chromium, but with the right video codecs enabled, on it. It's pretty nice.

Re: Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

#74

Post by simplyinfinity »

OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #60
tombert wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that during direct play or transcoding? During transcoding, but I'm having a hell of a time disabling that. I've looked around for a configuration to just broadly disable transcoding, since pretty much everything I use to play JellyFin is libavcodec or ffmpeg based anyway and can happily decode stuff client side. > Are you running a reverse proxy in front of it? Not within my home network.

If disabling transcoding ever becomes a thing in jellyfin I'd probably switch from plex immediately.

Use the mobile/desktop app. Chromium Doesn't have the proper codecs enabled to stream transcode-free most of the time. the apps have them enabled.

Re: Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

#75

Post by tacticalturtle »

dijit wrote: post #25
wkat4242 wrote: post #3

A service that exists to enable piracy is banning piracy? Good luck :P This is like when OnlyFans tried to ban porn. Just close up shop then. I mean let's be honest. Piracy is the raison d'etre for Plex just like porn is for OnlyFans.

eh, I am not using it for piracy; I just like the convenience of streaming services. So my plex library is all blurays, DVDs and a handful of VHS’s that have been digitally encoded. However, availability of bluray for new titles seems to be waning. so I can imagine many who use plex like I do will turn to piracy soon. I’m weird though and prefer to own my stuff, I hate renting and especially I hate services which ren…

If we’re being pedantic though - in the US, streaming blu-rays and DVDs is also violating the DMCA, because presumably there was a step involved by the operator to bypass the encryption on the disk.

Other than family home videos, it’s pretty hard to find a 100% “legal” source of content for Plex.

Re: Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

#78

Post by UtopiaPunk »

Someone1234 wrote: post #23
whalesalad wrote: post #12

https://jellyfin.org/

I've given this a legitimate shot two times, both self-hosting and via a professional host and both times on I have massive streaming problems on a 1 gig connection. It, on paper, has competitive features to Plex but Plex streams almost as reliably as Netflix does.

I self-host Jellyfin on an old HP ProDesk PC that came from an office selling unneeded equipment. It's connected to my consumer wifi router/switch switch via Ethernet, and I stream videos on my TV via the Jellyfin client on a Roku Stick (which itself is connected to my network via wifi). Jellyfin streams great on my setup.

I know that's not very helpful in improving performance in your specific situation, but I just wanted to add my anecdata that Jellyfin doesn't require beefy hardware or above-average networking to run well. Sorry that I don't have much insight as to what was causing the performance issues in your setup.

Re: Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

#79

Post by skydhash »

tombert wrote: post #64
TechBro8615 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not certain, but I think it will avoid transcoding for certain "Web-native" formats that your client device can already play. For example, if you download an mp4 then you should be able to watch it on your iPhone without Jellyfin needing to transcode it.

Every file on my server is a raw blu-ray rip using an MKV container. I don't compress or transcode anything myself, everything is a raw rip from MakeMKV. I suppose I could write an ffmpeg batch job to convert them to MP4 if I wanted, but MKV is really convenient since it'll keep all the subtitle and multiple audio tracks within the file instead of a bunch of SRT files floating around. Also, while a majority of blu-ra…

Apple TV 4K (129 USD) + Infuse (10 USD/yr) is the perfect player for me. The only con is that it does not support anything atmos other than Dolby Digital Plus, but my setup is 5.1 only, so I don't mind.

Re: Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

#80

Post by dustedcodes »

What is Plex, can someone explain what it is and how it works? I tried to figure it out from their website but didn't find much information on those topics. I don't have an account there, didn't have to sign in, just clicked on free movies and was able to stream a great movie in my browser entirely for free. Like, what?
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