I've been using Emby only for a few months now and love it. I was considering switching to Plex (for its probably better looking interface) but the comments here have convinced me against it.
All the News That’s Fit to Plex
21–30 of 50 posts
Re: All the News That’s Fit to Plex
#22Am I the only one who wants Plex to just be Plex, i.e. a media server for what I have stored locally? All of these new features make me think Plex is going in the direction of a cloud-only service and may drop local storage support down the line.
If a Java-based option is OK, check out Serviio[1]. I've been using it for years and it's fairly thin and straightforward.
There's also minidlna/ReadyMedia[2] if your server is Linux.
Re: All the News That’s Fit to Plex
#23Am I the only one who wants Plex to just be Plex, i.e. a media server for what I have stored locally? All of these new features make me think Plex is going in the direction of a cloud-only service and may drop local storage support down the line.
I'm with you. I have trouble seeing the actual use case for the stuff mentioned in the OP.
My primary use for Plex is for viewing on my home TV, through my Roku. All of that streaming content is already available directly on my Roku, so I'm not getting anything new by Plex subsuming it into their interface.
Secondarily, I may occasionally use Plex on my phone to access some media stored at home. But that's all I'm doing - looking for my own media. I don't see myself using it for streamed content. I mean, if I'm stuck in a hotel room or something, they all have news on the room TVs.
Re: All the News That’s Fit to Plex
#24I lost faith in Plex when I upgraded my server about a year ago and after testing, etc, I deleted the old container (run it in docker). I didn't find out until a few days later that FF/REW was broken. At that point I didn't have the old release around. Went to the forum and found I wasn't the only one. Problem was, they had just moved to 1.0 and they removed all previous versions from their servers. I begged to get an older one, and after a week or two I got it from another forum user. During that 2 weeks, though, FF/REW was broken on my Roku.
Yeah, now I download the .deb and build my container from a local .deb file, rather than downloading in the container. It was stupid, but I had grabbed the container build script from someone and didn't think about it until it was too late.
I'm still on a pre-1.0 release, and when the Roku client doesn't work anymore, I'll switch to Emby, or whatever is free and hot at the time.
Re: All the News That’s Fit to Plex
#25Am I the only one who wants Plex to just be Plex, i.e. a media server for what I have stored locally? All of these new features make me think Plex is going in the direction of a cloud-only service and may drop local storage support down the line.
I'm a Plex user, but let's not be naive. They are a business and a cloud-based subscription model is way more profitable than giving away software for free to let people stream from a local server. You can't blame them for making logical decisions for the health of the business (even if they negatively impact you).
They already charge for features on the software.
Re: All the News That’s Fit to Plex
#26I'm confused why everyone (both regular users and plex pass users) gets ads.
Wait, Plex has ads now?
Re: All the News That’s Fit to Plex
#27Plex News. It’s the perfect complement to your media library — video news from some of the most trusted sources on the planet,
I always get nervous when companies start talking up the credibility of news outlets. To me, it indicates a lack critical thinking especially when the very next image on the page has logos from CNN (of "reading wikileaks is illegal if you're not a media outlet" fame) and TheBlaze (of Glenn Beck fame).
I suppose you could write it off as marketing fluff, but.. still. That little nagging feeling. So long as they give me the ability to ban specific sources from ever showing up in my feed, fine, otherwise this will just be another feature that has to be ignored to avoid consuming propaganda.
Re: All the News That’s Fit to Plex
#28Am I the only one who wants Plex to just be Plex, i.e. a media server for what I have stored locally? All of these new features make me think Plex is going in the direction of a cloud-only service and may drop local storage support down the line.
If a Java-based option is OK, check out Serviio[1]. I've been using it for years and it's fairly thin and straightforward. There's also minidlna/ReadyMedia[2] if your server is Linux. 1. http://serviio.org/ 2. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ReadyMedia
Does serviio provide any kind of organization or custom interface? After plex suddenly quick working on my media server, I started using miniDLNA/readymedia to stream things to my roku, but the organization and interface of "Roku Media Center" leaves a lot to be desired.
Re: All the News That’s Fit to Plex
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this what Kodi (formerly XBMC and source from which Plex forked) is all about? https://kodi.tv
AFAIK, Kodi is still client-based, and doesn't have the nice server component that Plex does. It's nice to have a single server handling transcoding, media management, etc. etc, and allowing the clients to be thin.
How "nice" do you want it to be? Kodi can be told to act as a UPnP server, and any UPnP client should then be able to pick up on it.
Kodi also has an optional web interface, which is primarily used to act as a remote, but I've found it can also be a thin client receiver--any media within the library can be streamed to the browser tab.
Re: All the News That’s Fit to Plex
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this what Kodi (formerly XBMC and source from which Plex forked) is all about? https://kodi.tv
I guess it depends on the features you use. I can't use kodi as I need transcoding and streaming to multiple local devices.
Did you try sharing via UPnP?