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The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

reprodev.com

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Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#81

Post by reprodev »

wiether wrote: post #76
reprodev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. Thank you for reading and it was something that's been brewing in my mind for a while. I agree with you and didn't really know how to approach it becuase I've got a lot of really good things to say about Plex and sure as hell have benefitted from the lifetime license. Recently, I've been asked more and more by friends and family to set up Plex for them as it's "free" and "easy". I do the basic setup or walk…

Thank you for your reply I can see how scary the price increase on the Lifetime pass looks, and I see it as a deterrent to push people to something like the 5 years plan which looks like a good deal to me The pricing around Remote Watch Pass is a bit weird to me because I haven't got any complaint from people access my server, and I know they don't have any kind of pass, so I'm not sure why it should be needed? But h…

No problem at all and thanks for giving me your point of view on it. The 5 year plan seems a bit strange, again I understand that Plex and it's not too bad of a deal but I think the changes being so quick have really taken a lot of folks by surprise me included.

The Remote Watch Pass explanation was just a bit confusing when it first got announced. I was helping someone build their first one and they are now having trouble with accessing from off their network to do some automation with their Watchlist. I ended up just telling them to buy it for the month and see how it went as it seemed like it was just a paywall issue. Turns out it was something to do with their Windows setup in the end but something that just worked now being so obfuscated takes away the ease of setup and really confuses more than informs.

If you have the Plex Pass then anyone connecting to they shouldn't need the Remote Pass it so that's probably why you haven't had any complaints from people accessing yours as long as you have it. It's more for people who are sharing their library without it so if you have a few people accessing then I don't think it's unfair to ask them to chip in a bit to future proof you but I think we'll be having similar questions in 5 years time when this one expires for people who picked it up.

I'm still a really big fan of Plex but it's getting harder these days to actually recommend it while the pricing is really all over the place. My advice these days is just get it now and assume the price for things will go up and not down.

Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#82

Post by zbentley »

sparky_z wrote: post #72
wiether wrote: post #51

Weird article. Not only does it acknowledges that Plex is still far better than Jellyfin with its whole ecosystem, but it also depict pretty nicely the entitlement of the users overall. On one side, they paid $75 more than five years ago for a piece of software for which they still receive weekly updates. On the other, they talk about how leadership at Jellyfin decided to throw the blanket after a burning themselves…

> leadership at Jellyfin decided to throw the blanket after a burning themselves out for free. What does this mean?

I think that they meant “throw in the towel”? Not positive though.

Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#83

Post by TiredOfLife »

wiether wrote: post #49
evulhotdog wrote: post #30

Silo is a new up and coming competitor, also completely open source and written in go, and has full Postgres support from the get-go, along with proper architecture decisions to allow transcoding across multiple hosts. The vision of Silo appears to be much more clear, and has quite a few great devs behind it. It also has features to run side by side and has full JF api support. I have no involvement in the project, j…

> and has full Postgres support from the get-go I was like: why should I care? Then I went on siloserver's website and I was even more confused. What made the success of Plex is how easy it is to setup, how nice it looks and how easy it is to use. Siloserver's marketing miss all those points because they focus on the tech stack, don't show a single picture of the UI and don't demonstrate the UX. Even as someone who u…

It's much easier to run for profit media servers with proper big db support

Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#84

Post by thiht »

beAbU wrote: post #55
gbil wrote: post #39

The main drawback of anything other than plex is that you can’t simply install it on some major TV brands.

Why on gods green earth would you connect your tv to the internet, let alone install anything on it??

What a weird comment. I use my TV to watch YouTube, Twitch, my Plex instance, and some local TV channels replays (M6, TF1, Arte…).

I connect it to the internet to use the internet, not sure what you’re expecting?

Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#85

Post by xoa »

Hamuko wrote: post #43
gbil wrote: post #39

The main drawback of anything other than plex is that you can’t simply install it on some major TV brands.

Jellyfin doesn't even have a tvOS client.

>Jellyfin doesn't even have a tvOS client.

Huh? I find Infuse to be a very solid tvOS/iOS client, and they added built-in support for Jellyfin over 6 years ago [0]. It's right there at the bottom with other media servers they support (Emby & Plex). What's your issue with it?

----

0: https://jellyfin.org/posts/client-infuse/

Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#86

Post by xoa »

beAbU wrote: post #56
para_parolu wrote: post #44

At one point I realized I don’t need plex or jellyfin. All I need is network samba and infuse. It’s supported on all apple devices and works well.

And when you are not home?

We live in the age of Wireguard (and Nebula and Tailscale etc). Not being home is not an issue for accessing stuff at home in the slightest, no other public service port exposure required either. In the context of someone considering hosting a media server of their own at all in the first place vs just using cloud subscription options, remote access is a pretty minimal lift. Assuming they aren't already doing it actually, if anything I could see a lot of selfhosters doing that first for other reasons before adding video later.

Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#87

Post by mingus88 »

M95D wrote: post #74
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially, think of it as Netflix for which you provide the media yourself. A browser is one possible way to connect, but clients exist too (e.g. a Roku app and so on). Having the ability to connect with a client running on something connected to your TV is nice, as is the ability to connect remotely (if you open up the ports on your firewall of course). It also gives you things like remembering what shows you were…

Nope. I still don't get it. (Maybe because I'm too old for this stuff?) > think of it as Netflix for which you provide the media yourself. Netflix is a provider of content. If I have the content, why do I need a provider for? > Having the ability to connect with a client running on something connected to your TV is nice (???) But that's what I'm doing now with Kodi. > as is the ability to connect remotely (if you ope…

> Netflix is a provider of content. If I have the content, why do I need a provider for?

I have never used Kodi. Does it organize your content? Does it download summaries for every episode? Does it create thumbnails and posters for you? Create mobile transcodes and allow you to cache downloads on your clients?

Does it allow you to create a home with managed accounts? Can your friends and family access it without setting up wireguard, dynamic dns or other manual access methods?

From what I see, Kodi is a media player but I don’t see what else it really brings to the table if you really want a streaming service experience.

I have used XBMC, Boxxee, mythTV and a bunch of other OSS media platforms over the years and Plex is just the most polished and feature rich that I haven’t had a need to look at anything else for a long time.

Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#88

Post by gorbachev »

wiether wrote: post #49
evulhotdog wrote: post #30

Silo is a new up and coming competitor, also completely open source and written in go, and has full Postgres support from the get-go, along with proper architecture decisions to allow transcoding across multiple hosts. The vision of Silo appears to be much more clear, and has quite a few great devs behind it. It also has features to run side by side and has full JF api support. I have no involvement in the project, j…

> and has full Postgres support from the get-go I was like: why should I care? Then I went on siloserver's website and I was even more confused. What made the success of Plex is how easy it is to setup, how nice it looks and how easy it is to use. Siloserver's marketing miss all those points because they focus on the tech stack, don't show a single picture of the UI and don't demonstrate the UX. Even as someone who u…

You'll understand when/if your Plex media library grows so large that every rescan takes a week.

Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#89

Post by nickthegreek »

evulhotdog wrote: post #30

Silo is a new up and coming competitor, also completely open source and written in go, and has full Postgres support from the get-go, along with proper architecture decisions to allow transcoding across multiple hosts. The vision of Silo appears to be much more clear, and has quite a few great devs behind it. It also has features to run side by side and has full JF api support. I have no involvement in the project, j…

First time I've seen a mention of Silo out on the open internet. This thing is really designed for large scale piracy networks that choke on massive libraries.

https://siloserver.org

Re: The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

#90

Post by nickthegreek »

znkynz wrote: post #8

Should an Emby premiere user consider moving to Jellyfin?

Not until Emby starts to enshitify our jellyfin ui gets alot better. I made the switch around 2 years ago from Plex and tried out both extensively. Jellyfin just doesnt have the polish I was looking for.
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