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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

#41
post #35

> Got it. So they want to show the lawyers that they’re doing something to “combat piracy” even though they know it will do absolutely nothing and result in a bunch of pissed off legitimate customers. What would be a better solution, legitimately? Plex is ripe for lawsuits from media giants in every corner of the world, so even if their software isn’t illegal, they’re always going to have a target on their back and e…

> What would be a better solution, legitimately? Incorporate in a country where companies/people cannot bring frivolous lawsuits? Seriously, it's pretty well established at this point that providing a video streaming service product is not illegal. Plex is not the one providing the content.

Can you name any specific countries that meet the requirement? (honest question)

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

#42

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 have a lifetime Plex Pass, but I switched to Jellyfin years ago and never looked back. Well, I did switch to iOS at some point and the best app for it at the time was still in Testflight, but the ecosystem is a lot better now.

For those complaining about Jellyfin's performance, which I've not encountered, you should remember that hardware transcoding in Plex is paywalled.

(Made the initial switch after they added their streaming services to the dashboard, amongst other corporate decisions I don't want in a media server I host myself)

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

#43
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 run Jellyfin on my home server, and this has been a problem for me as well. Even within my home network I'll have occasional stuttering while watching movies, despite the fact that I'm using a dedicated server with 128gb of RAM and 12 CPUs, with a 10 gigabit network card in a 10 gigabit switch, and I'll still get stuttering. I've debated moving to Plex but I'm broadly against running proprietary software on a serve…

Is that during direct play or transcoding? Are you running a reverse proxy in front of it?

I'd check those things first.

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

#44

> Got it. So they want to show the lawyers that they’re doing something to “combat piracy” even though they know it will do absolutely nothing and result in a bunch of pissed off legitimate customers. What would be a better solution, legitimately? Plex is ripe for lawsuits from media giants in every corner of the world, so even if their software isn’t illegal, they’re always going to have a target on their back and e…

Determine the type of behavior that likely indicates a server is shared with many different people, which should be extremely easy, then send that user a series of warnings culminating in banning their Plex account if they don't comply, with a transparent easy appeals process in case they get it wrong.

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

#45
post #32

https://jellyfin.org/

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).

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

#46
post #43
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Jellyfin on my home server, and this has been a problem for me as well. Even within my home network I'll have occasional stuttering while watching movies, despite the fact that I'm using a dedicated server with 128gb of RAM and 12 CPUs, with a 10 gigabit network card in a 10 gigabit switch, and I'll still get stuttering. I've debated moving to Plex but I'm broadly against running proprietary software on a serve…

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.

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

#47

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 it on a 50/10 Mbps cable line from a Ubuntu desktop connected via WiFi and it's fine.

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

#48

> Got it. So they want to show the lawyers that they’re doing something to “combat piracy” even though they know it will do absolutely nothing and result in a bunch of pissed off legitimate customers. What would be a better solution, legitimately? Plex is ripe for lawsuits from media giants in every corner of the world, so even if their software isn’t illegal, they’re always going to have a target on their back and e…

It's like you're making YouTube responsible for any leaked movies? It's always the user who does it. Plex is just a platform.

Sure, but YouTube created the Content ID system in a settlement with Viacom in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y.... . Maybe the ruling would've been different if they appealed it to the supreme court, but that could've been a worse situation for everyone (e.g. because Google had to create Content ID, any sufficiently big service must also create a Content ID-esque system).

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

#49

https://jellyfin.org/

How effective is Jellyfin as an alternative? When I tried it un the past it still had some rough edges (especially the app)

As far as UI/UX is concerned their tvOS app is in a really rough shape. The web UI has a fairly reasonable program guide (edit: for Live TV), while the app doesn't. Also navigation in the app doesn't feel polished at all unfortunately.

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

#50

https://jellyfin.org/

How effective is Jellyfin as an alternative? When I tried it un the past it still had some rough edges (especially the app)

I've only used Jellyfin but good enough not to consider switching to Plex.
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