Plex now want to SELL your personal data
Plex now want to SELL your personal data
Text:
I consent to Plex to: (i) sell certain personal information (hashed emails, advertising identifiers) to third-parties for advertising and marketing purposes; and (ii) store and/or access certain personal information (advertising identifiers, IP address, content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners. This data is used to deliver personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Your consent applies to all devices on which you have Plex installed. You can withdraw your consent at any time in Account Settings or using this page.
Soure: https://www.plex.tv/vendors/ (Might have to clear cache)
Can also read about the changes here: https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/
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I don't know why everyone in the selfhosting community still even mentions Plex or uses it.
It's closed source, not free; Jellyfin is a no brainer yet people still go to Plex??
The sunken cost of buying a plexpass on sale for 39 dollars 15 years ago.
I bought a Plex pass for 90 or something. I officially dropped Plex about 4 months ago now. For 90 bucks I got something like 8 years out of it. I'll call that a win, I don't feel like I wasted my money, I don't feel like I overpayed. Just moving on now.
Same.
Yeah great perspective. I think we all need to have this perspective more as many tech companies will randomly change their minds on their products.
Kind of like how I got free photo backup on my first two pixels. It was a nice feature, I'm sad it's gone, but it's fine.
Did they really kill off free photo backup? That's so incredibly shitty, they even compressed them!
Did they really kill off free photo backup? That's so incredibly shitty, they even compressed them!
Yeah it was over after pixel 3 or a little before iirc! Although to me it was obvious they would eventually kill it off because that's soooo much storage. It was just a trick to get people bought into Google photos (which is a great service but much too expensive for me and now basically totally replaced by Immich)
damn I've been out of the loop on that one for a while! Agreed, I set up Immich and it's pretty much a drop-in replacement now
How has immich been compared to photoprism? My issue with immich is that new releases kept breaking things. Has it finally stabilized? Lts are super important to me as I don’t want to spend every weekend reconfiguring services for my family.
I'm new to self hosting and I've only used it for about a month. During the last month all updates have been stable for me! But according to their roadmap they plan to do their official "stable" release a little later this year, so you could wait until then?
Also I'm running it in docker so that might help
Forgot to mention- can't compare to photo prism as I've never used it!
Plex is easier to run on older NAS systems, but yeah - that was me :) but i switched to jellyfin, finally
Hence the term "sunk cost fallacy".
I stuck with Emby for way too long for this reason. I spent $50 in 2017. Gotta get my money’s worth no matter how broken their app was.
Jellyfin is hardly a no-brainer. I set it up out of curiosity a few weeks ago and my first question was how do I give access to my friends and family. So I searched, and all of the results were talking about setting up a VPN or a reverse proxy or whatever. Man, I just want to tell my mom "install this app on your tv and log in", which is exactly what Plex does.
I get that Plex is enshittifying, but pretending Jellyfin is a drop-in replacement is delusional.
Jellyfin is a no-brainer. Publishing services on the Internet is complex.
If they adhered to somewhat modern security principles for their Backend I wouldn't mind hosting it behind a reverse proxy. But since large parts of the API is unauthorized and unprotected, I wont.
And I do not plan on supporting family and friends in setting up vpns on all of their devices
Seconded it’s not a no-brainer. I spent days trying to get it set up with Docker on two different computers and three different distros. It wouldn’t install, if it did install it had errors, if it would even open at all with anything other than a black screen. Hours trying to search how to fix it. I gave up and installed it as a standalone app on a common distro. Not as convenient, but FML it finally worked. Really felt like I wasted my time. Personally, this is the exact bullshit linux fanatics completely ignore when they insist on how great linux is vs whatever. I’ve got a shitload of patience, willpower and modest skill to try to get something like this working, but 99% of the population doesn’t. That’s why linux will stay on the back burner. And if it ever becomes just as easy as Windows…guess what? You’ll have many of the same problem as Windows.
I've definitely pulled my hair out with docker too. Banged my head against the wall for a couple days before finally giving up.
I'm not ridiculously tech savvy, but I've tinkered with Linux since I was young, daily drive it on my laptop. I'm not afraid of the command line, and I'm smart enough to search for help and guides when I need it.
But something about docker just breaks my brain. Maybe I'm too old and there's too much abstract thought required, I don't know. But I can't figure it out.
IMO it was my hardware on the first tries. Not sure what your problem was, but after digging around I found something that loosely indicated that my hardware was too old or something - it didn’t play well with the onboard graphics or similar. But the second hardware set I tried it on was far newer, and after all the installation was complete I got a black screen. Every time. No matter which guide I used, no matter what dependencies I thought might be missing or whatever I tried to get it working. A hair pulling experience indeed.
I just want to tell my mom “install this app on your tv and log in”
I mean, if I didn't know better, I'd start to suspect that the large multimedia corporations building walled gardens of apps in closed Smart TV ecosystems don't really want you to be able to easily tell your mom how to watch shit for free. I mean they'll let you, if you really insist on having that app available, but someone will have to pay THEM money instead first (and probably let them spy on you). That's their racket.
The reason Plex can do it is because they do make money, doing shitty stuff like this to their users, so they can use that money to open these doors into SmartTV-land. The root of the problem is that your SmartTV itself (and your mom's) is a locked down proprietary piece of shit, designed exclusively for shoving all proprietary content these media companies develop down your throat, and there are few convenient workarounds that are available to us, because of course they make workarounds as inconvenient as possible.
Unless you're willing to ditch everything proprietary and insist on open technology for everything, which is hard on its own, you're going to end up with a janky mix of proprietary and open systems that always require some compromises, because the proprietary stuff forces us to compromise. It's literally a "this is why we can't have nice things" situation.
Or... You know... Jellyfin could make it so I don't have to setup elaborate VPN schemes and have every user install that on every one of their devices. For example they could fix their security issues to make it safer to expose JF through a reverse proxy, bug they refuse to not break client compatibility
I'm not a hardcore tech person and this is exactly the issue for me as well.
I want to be able to stream my music collection when I'm away from home without having to get an associate's degree in networking.
Tailscale makes this easy if you are the only user.
I'll look into Tailscale then. I'm guessing there's something funky about adding additional users. I would eventually like to add one or two other people.
I think the free tier lets you have three users. I ended up going with headscale so that could be wrong.
It's not that hard but they will have to make accounts and set the correct exit node or use the weird magic dns. Takes some hand-holding and depends on how you set things up.
Jellyfin is a fully self hosted drop in. That means it's up to the server operator to handle everything. You would still tell your mom to just install the Jellyfin app on her TV with the one additional step in your server address which you would tell her.
But yes, you as the operator have to do some extra things like implementating a reverse proxy and if hosting out of your home make necessary network configuration changes to accommodate this access.
You as server operator also have to check what device your mom has and point her to what app download, because Jellyfin doesn't have an app for everything
True though that's less server operator and more "just being helpful to your mom". That said it seems nowadays that a Jellyfin app is available on most devices/ecosystems (or maybe I just don't have experience with enough devices to have an accurate idea).
Since you need to self-host Jellyfin, then you are responsible for making the service public.
“install this app on your tv and log in”, which is exactly what Plex does
Yes, but that person has to create an account. Everyone has to create an account. With Plex. Some people I know immediately say no, others are annoyed that plex would try and shake them down for money.
If you configure Jellyfin, all that goes away. THEN they can simply download the app and login.
I make the account for them. Then I log in as them and set it up so they only see my server. Then I send them the credentials and have them login
There is one thing I want from jellyfin. It is to be able to login from their Android app to watch or set something to record without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
and all of the results were talking about setting up a VPN or a reverse proxy or whatever. Man, I just want to tell my mom "install this app on your tv and log in",
This is why I use Yunohost. It makes all of that just a "click buttons" affair. Then you can tell your Mom the same thing. Only the domain is yours so Jellyfin can't hold it over your head.
Does it work on a smart tv or roku or whatever?
Yeah they have apps on all the platforms.
All of these, plus more unofficial ones: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/
So I searched, and all of the results were talking about setting up a VPN or a reverse proxy or whatever.
The best thing is, you can't use a reverse proxy with it, it doesn't even support it.
I don't even know what a reverse proxy is
Odd, since my Jellyfin sits behind a reverse proxy.
Oh, right, it was basic auth (behind a reverse proxy, or even in general) that Jellyfin doesn't support and isn't planned to support IIRC.
Here is a GitHub issue where they said they don't plan on supporting it: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-android/issues/123
"still even mentions plex"
I've been using plex for a LONG time, and bought a lifetime plexpass 12 years ago. I'm pretty sure I haven't started a thread on Lemmy regarding Plex, but I'm sure I'm not alone as a LONG TIME user. Plex just works for me and cost me $75 in 2013. Right now I've got no pressing reason to switch.
If they remove my plexpass features, or start showing me ads / making my user experience worse, then I'll probably look to change, and won't participate in these awful 'plex' posts.
P.S. we should encourage as much new content on Lemmy as possible if you ask me.
Same with me, 12 years, about $70, and it still works just as well as ever. I turn off any new features I don't want, my friends and family can still stream from me for free since I have plex pass already, and it's easy to share without having to pass around my IP address.
Same. I bought the lifetime pass on sale many years ago, my setup is still working fine without me having to have touched it for at least the past 3 years outside of applying an update from time to time. I don't stream their free shows or movies and have those setup so that they don't even show up as an option on my tv.
Do I wish it was still the same company it was a decade ago? Of course... but so far they haven't impacted my experience to the point that I feel the need to replace it with something else. The second that happens I will be spinning up Jellyfin.
Plex was the reason why I learned Docker + watchtower, so that I wouldn't have to worry about updates (work smarter not harder). Now I have like 35 containers and am comfortable with docker. 🐳
Yep, exactly, when they screw me I'll leave
Another longtime user here. If you haven't already, you might want to disable autoupdates on all your devices. The "new experience" is not without its controversies.
Yeah, first thing I did after testing the new app. Still don't know why they feel the need to push this out so aggressively instead of letting it run in parallel until its ready
I would switch in a heartbeat if Jellyfin didn't... kinda suck, honestly.
But the difference in usability is enough that it's just not an option.
For the record, I updated Plex today and I haven't seen a notification like this anywhere, although that text snippet does match their privacy policy ad data opt-in settings blurb that has been in place for a while. I may need a bit more context here.
Only issues I've had with Jellyfin are reduced flexibility in naming/organizing files and inability (for me at least) to detect personal media.
i manage all files and metadata outside of jellyfin/kodi using mediaelch... it scrapes, renames and sets up all the local metadata files for ingestion perfectly into both my media services.
I'll say that not having to do that is a major postiive. One of the UX things that bounced me off of jellyfin was ending up with a reconfigured library. The correct UX choice is for the software to adapt to your preexisting library, not having to rebuild it all with a different set of information files and naming conventions.
That is a BIG deal when you have a big library. Also why I hate Calibre. Screw Calibre.
There is that. Remote access is a pain to set up and maintain, and I had some significant performance issues with library scraping, too. The interface is also kind of a mess, particularly if you want to bolt on more than just a video library.
There should be a library type called "Home videos and photos" for that.
I probably made a small mistake in setting that up but I tried making the dedicated "home movies" folder and it wouldn't show my videos.
@BrianTheeBiscuiteer @MudMan might I suggest FileBot - just a few bucks but it curates your schtuff and can rename, sort and collate everything in Jellyfin form automagically using imdb and other dbs.
So integrate it in Jellyfin.
I don't want five additional pieces of software to fix Jellyfin's shortcomings, I want it to work.
Mind you, there are still edge cases in Plex, and the renaming dance can still be annoying, but still, it's one thing to have classic Doctor Who DVDs be an alien artifact no software can process and another to have to install additional software to masticate things for Jellyfin on a task that is fundamental to the thing it's supposed to be doing.
Also, I don't want my stuff to be curated and renamed. My library is fine as it is. Part of the annoyance is for software to insist on moving crap around. I know what I have, where I have it and it's all rationally named. It's on the software to parse it.
To be clear, I think you're being friendly and useful, it's just that I'm frustrated by the pattern of helpful users and additional software creating this cluster of self-connected software spaghetti to address UX faults that are fundamental but OSS devs like to ignore indefinitely.
I'll switch to jellyfin as soon as it works nearly as well.
But for the moment it's missing a lot of features compared to Plex.
I have Plex running alongside Jellyfin.
When transcoding video, Plex uses an extra 5 watts of power. Jellyfin uses an extra 55 watts.
Jellyfin also has security holes for accessing videos via URL without being authenticated.
I don't feel like Jellyfin is ready for being exposed to the internet.
Because this is the selfhosted community, not the FOSS community. There is some overlap, but they are different. There are many reasons to not use Plex, it not being free and open source are not among them.
I host a Plex server for close to 70 friends and family members, from multiple parts of the world. I have over 60TBs of movies, tv shows, anime, anime movies, and flac music, and everyone can connect directly to my server via my reverse proxy and my public IPs. This works on their phones, their tvs, their tablets and PCs. I have people of all ages using my server, from very young kids to very old grandparents of friends. I have friends who share their accounts with their families, meaning I probably have already hit 100+ people using my server. Everyone is able to request whatever they want through overseerr with their Plex account, and everything shows up pretty instantly as soon as it is found and downloaded. It works almost flawlessly, whether locally or remotely, from anywhere in the world. I myself don't even reside in the same home that my Plex server resides. I paid for my lifetime pass over 10 years ago.
Can you guarantee that I can move over to jellyfin and that every single person currently using my Plex server will continue having the same level of experience and quality of life that they're having with my Plex server currently? Because if you can't, you just answered your own question. Sometimes we self host things for ourselves and we can deal with some pains, but sometimes we require something that works for more people than just us, and that's when we have to make compromises. Plex is not perfect, and is actively becoming enshittified, but I can't simply dump it and replace it with something very much meant for local or single person use rather than actively serving tens to hundreds of people off a server built with OTC components.
Can I guarantee? There are no guarantees in self hosting. By this logic you can never move away from Plex. There's always unknowns. There's always new issues to trip over. Plex is hardly without it's own warts, but because they're 'known' to you and your users nothing else will ever be able to measure up.
It's a logical fallacy and a trap.
I set up Jellyfin basically overnight when the Plex pass changes occurred. Reverse proxies are trivial, as are docker containers, don't let the anecdotes about things being hard or VPN being needed intimidate you.
There were absolutely bumps in the road. I had to make users for each person and email them customized sign-up links. Yes, that kinda sucked, but that's the price for running and controlling the authentication yourself instead of though a 3rd party service that can and absolutely will eventually use that data to snoop.
Most of the time, once sent the link the users were fine, 9/10 of my users had no further issues and quickly adapted. For the last 1/10, I had to trouble shoot a few things and eventually ended up recommending a different device to connect with (it was an old TV with a really old version of Plex for TVs, they ended up buying a $40 Google TV device from Walmart and got set up that way).
The whole time I was running both Plex and Jellyfin so the migration process could happen at my speed.
My point is this: no, it wasn't painless to switch. Yes, some tech support was required. Yes, the user who was getting hundreds of dollars (annually) of streaming services effectively for free had to shell out a paltry sum to upgrade and actually enjoys their experience much more now. No, that didn't make it impossible or not worth doing.
I'm not saying what's best for you and your users, and I'm absolutely not guaranteeing you'll have no issues beyond these, but I hope you understand your hands aren't actually tied, you're just boxing yourself in.
That's just the nature of service migration; of course for people like you who are very dependent on it, it's not a no-brainer, but for anyone who wants to start hosting one of the two, yes it will be.
In your case yes Plex is more appropriate but at the same time the clock is ticking for Plex if they continue on this route...
It's not fair to characterize jellyfin as being unable to scale, and it's just downright wrong to cast it as being built "for one single local user".
Jellyfin has great support for setups that include numerous users. The entire dashboard is basically designed around this concept of an admin keeping track of dozens upon dozens of users.
You seem like you have many reservations about specific functions in Jellyfin, but you were vague in explaining thrm - what specific things are you worried about?
Probably because it works well, and has working clients on everything at this point. For some, a one-time fee was worth it when it was cheaper.
Sharing is also easier, as your friends just sign up to a plex account and you share your library with them. No need to send them an ip address and port, or fqdn that you have to maintain if your isp changes your ip address. It has its benefits, tbh, and the core sharing features still work for streaming. All the extra crap you can just turn off.
That why I think its still popular.
There's no jellyfin app on my TV.
It’s already setup, and a lack of motivation/time/energy/urgency to make the change…
I completely agree. I thought Plex would be fast in the collective rearview mirror as soon as they started forcing connections to their servers, pay-walling, etc. I also had issues with the database corrupting and causing huge slowdowns. I spent days trying and failing to preserve my ratings, watch data, etc.
In the end, I switched to a much simpler setup of an NFS/CIFS share accessed by Kodi on my Nvidia Shield TV. If Kodi chokes (happened once since 2017), I can just wipe the app and/or reinstall and then import the local metadata (XML or NFO IIRC). That takes about five minutes. It just works. Kodi also gives me access to the IAGL, so that's a huge plus.
Because it works. Call me in a few years when movies, TV shows, dvr recordings, live TV (with free, built-in guide support), and working picture support shows up. Oh, commercial removal too (again, built-in, just check a box). A not-shit setup process would be nice, too.
I've tried jf three times now across as many years, and it's still got that 'Linux developer feel' of a tool where the devs got what they need the most mostly-working, and just don't give a fuck about anything else - or a decent UI. No, blue boxes on a black background is not a decent UI. It wasn't when W8 launched, and it's not now. And when W8 is winning the competition, you've already lost.
Feature parity or the argument is moot.
Can't access remote unless u setup port forwarding, NAT rule etc etc. Too much work with jelly bin, plus it looks like 1990s UI created by illegal IPTV distributors
The point for me is, that I have an acient synology NAS (ds214play) which acts as my media server. There is a community made plex package which I can install easily. As far as I have seen, there is no way to install jellyfin on this NAS, as it doesn't support docker
My TV doesn't have a Jellyfin app, only a Plex app. I'm not buying a new TV just to use my preferred media server, sadly :-(
You can cast jellyfin to any receiver. I use a Chromecast.
Hearing people think they need an app just to use their TV as a TV is painful.
This is why you shouldn’t use the built-in TV OS. Use an Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, fire stick if you’re fine with ads, a tiny NUC would work, maybe a raspberry Pi although idk about that one.
Jellyfins UI being only mouse based is garbage. Using it on Xbox for instance is terrible. Using it outside of the house is also a pain in the ass.
I don't know why people use dishwashers. It's in the kitchen. A lawn mower is a no brainer, yet people still use dishwashers??
Here's why I still use Plex: for me Jellyfin hasn't been easy to work the way I want it to. I mostly access my media on an Nvidia Shield, and the Jellyfin Android TV app just refuses to play certain videos; I can play them if I use VLC as an external player, but not within the app itself. The more pressing issue is that Jellyfin just refuses to play 5.1 audio, and downmixes everything to stereo. I have other issues, but these are the ones that prevent me from using it.
For me Plex just works.
I don’t use either service. Do they serve the same purpose?
It might be because of security.