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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

#91

Post by nickthegreek »

thiht wrote: post #84
beAbU wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

TV manufactures are known to slurp up all this data while also providing these apps on underpowered systems. Many techie's recommend hooking up an external media box to your TV and not providing internet directly to the tv.

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

#92

Post by nickthegreek »

xoa wrote: post #85
Hamuko wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

The cost isnt ideal. Especially for a jellyfin user.

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

#93

Post by beAbU »

reprodev wrote: post #70
beAbU wrote: post #54

I've been a paying Emby user for close to ten years, ever since plex tried to launch a VR player or some shit, while there were still critical bugs in the player for web and other devices. Emby just works, it's players are great, and issues actually get fixed. I know it's a closed source fork of XBMC, I know that's controversial, but the product itself is just so good.

I'm definitely curious about those that moved over to Emby from the XBMC days. Did you try anything else before hand or just go straight to Emby? I have to say I never really gave it a proper chance

I started with XBMC, with the media library on the same machine as XBMC. Then I developed a need to have acces to my library on different devices. After faffing about with samba shares and whatnot I discovered Plex. I started using that as a free user, and was very impressed and happy. 3-4 years into that journey I was considering buying a lifetime pass.

At some point their web client felt like it was abandoned, because they kept on releasing apps for a bunch of niche devices and for VR. I was unsure if my subscription was going to make my experience any better.

Eventually I discovered Emby, trialled it for a couple of months alongside Plex (same XBMC core, so the same library naming convention and folder structure). After that I decided to get the subscription for Emby. Their server is solid, the web client is solid, and their android clients are solid. Happy camper since then!

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

#94

Post by zparky »

gorbachev wrote: post #88
wiether wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

dear lord, what kinda size are you talking about? in terms of TB/# of shows/files?

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

#95

Post by wiether »

gorbachev wrote: post #88
wiether wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I currently have 10Tb of 1080p content and rescans takes a few seconds. The only thing that actually takes time is the intro detection on new content, but it's because I don't have a lot of compute power on the server hosting my Plex instance.

I just checked: my "com.plexapp.plugins.library.db" is 24Mb. Meanwhile, I have some custom apps with SQLite db's that are >10Gb and I don't have performance issues.

So I don't see how big a library have to be for its db to become a bottleneck?

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

#96

Post by wiether »

reprodev wrote: post #81
wiether wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Thanks for the explanations around the Remote Watch Pass thing!

It was nice having a chat here because you felt more nuanced than in the article and we basically agree overall!

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

#97

Post by wiether »

zbentley wrote: post #82
sparky_z wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's what I meant, yes!

I always have a hard time with this one because, in French, it's not a towel that is thrown: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jeter_l%27%C3%A9ponge

The French version version naturally comes to my mind, even when I'm thinking in English, and then I can't find the translation because it's too close, yet so different.

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

#98

Post by beAbU »

thiht wrote: post #84
beAbU wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Smart TV's are famously a massive privacy and data theft trojan horse.

Connecting your tv to the internet is quite frankly insane.

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

#99

Post by zbentley »

wiether wrote: post #97
zbentley wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's what I meant, yes! I always have a hard time with this one because, in French, it's not a towel that is thrown: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jeter_l%27%C3%A9ponge The French version version naturally comes to my mind, even when I'm thinking in English, and then I can't find the translation because it's too close, yet so different.

I mix up "throw down the gauntlet" and "throw in the towel" at least monthly, don't worry.

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

#100

Post by M95D »

mingus88 wrote: post #87
M95D wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sett…

> Does it organize your content?

There is a delete function (if enabled in options), but generally no - files stay where they are. There is a searchable library where files are sorted into various categories. I never used it much, though. I do file management with a file manager.

> Does it download summaries for every episode? Does it create thumbnails and posters for you?

It can, but I take great care to keep those options disabled. If enabled, it would leak the contents of my library to imdb, tmdb, cloudflare, amazon, microsoft, palantir and God knows how many 3-letter agencies.

Thumbnails are ok. They are extracted from the video file. There is a local cache that doesn't pollute the remote storage where the video files are.

> Create mobile transcodes and allow you to cache downloads on your clients?

No. This is the client. I already expressed my doubts about the need for transcoding in 2026.

> 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?

Anyone can just turn on the TV and have free access to everything in LAN. Why create accounts? I don't give access to outsiders.

> I have used XBMC

It's called Kodi now. :) But the name change was a long time ago.

> 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.

Yes, that what I don't understand: What exactly is this "streaming experience"?

I turn the TV on, navigate to a file, press play. What else is there?

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