4 reasons Plex is turning into the thing it replaced
4 reasons Plex is turning into the thing it replaced
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4 reasons Plex is turning into the thing it replaced
209 comments
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- It's a commercial product, what else could you expect?
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Should be a full stop with "profit". All the shitty things that go with companies chasing it.
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It’s going to be super funny when plex gets sued for directly profiting from piracy.
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I'm going to call it like I saw it, a very long time ago.
<rant>
You have a product that is basically purpose built to make data hoarding and piracy practical, yet it requires a login with a central service. I don't care what justification anyone thinks makes that worthwhile or even a good compromise. Signaling to any corporate entity that you're in possession of such a thing is a bad idea to begin with. They shouldn't even know you exist. That information, along with anything else you do with the product is compromising to you and can be sold for money if aggregated with everyone else's data.
If you find this rant out of place in our modern world, I'd like to point to the concept of shifting baselines. This didn't used to be normal and nothing short of greed continues the behavior. The technology before this ran/runs without anyone knowing. Consider VLC, or XBMC.
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Jellyfin is a complete replacement for Plex
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I prefer open source, but if I’m buying proprietary software, let’s do it fairly and sustainably. Don’t charge me a 1-time fee and then enshittify what I bought because your business model isn’t working. On the other hand, don’t charge me multiple times for the same software with a subscription. The most fair arrangement to both of us is to sell perpetual licenses for a specific version and then charge me for major updates. If your newer versions introduce massive improvements, then I might give you more money. It’s also fair to do free upgrades for a period of time and then charge for major upgrades. Finally, don’t force me to use your software always online and if you must have an activation process, provide a way to activate from a different machine by uploading an activation file or whatever.
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If they were going to get enshittified, they should've been smarter about it to gradually introduce lock-in. The switching cost of going to Jellyfin is almost zero. Did it in an afternoon about a year ago. Ya done goofed, Plex
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I never felt comfortable with Plex, glad I've got JellyFin.
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FYI, they never capitalise like that. It's always Jellyfin, not JellyFin. They actually have a policy detailing it.
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Indeed. Seems every week Plex takes some action to enshitify their service more and more.
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Jellyfin is great :D
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Does jellyfin have an easy way for remote streaming? I have a couple dozen people on my Plex server, most not very tech savvy, so setting up tailscale and running remote that way isn't an option. I have a Plex pass so I haven't been screwed by Plex yet, so I'm not rushing to get out, but I could see myself running both.
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Yes-ish, it's harder for you than the users. But you will have to secure a URL and they will have to remember that URL. Also there's some security issues with some unsecured endpoints on Jellyfin. That said I have mine out there exposed to the net and am comfortable enough with it.
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no, tailscale is still the easiest option.
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You could just get a domain and set up a reverse proxy. Or use Cloudflare tunnels.
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I set mine up with HAProxy for TLS offloading and ACME for the server cert. Restrict your access to just your country/region by GeoIP and you are pretty good to go.
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I moved away from plex as well. I do have remote access but had to set up Tailscale on the accounts that access it. It’s a bit of a hassle initially but works well.
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I'd love Jellyfin if not for their incredibly infuriating seek behaviour. Why do I have to press play to start the video again?
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In case this helps, for me when I use it on Android TV with said TV's remote, the arrow buttons on the direction pad for anything require pressing play/OK button after. But if I use the fast forward buttons, it does seek and then just keeps playing.
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For me I just want a fast forward button. They have something they call fast forward, but it seeks instead.
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Except the sync / group watch feature is pretty broken which makes me sad
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Agreed! I stayed with Plex for a long time because Jellyfin had a rough time with live TV (antenna) and I already had a PlexPass because of a sale a long time ago. Now Plex is only still running because I love Plexamp.
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Dude, yeah. Plexamp had me keeping my server up far longer than I should have.
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I struggled to find a decent plexamp replacement and ended up using symphonium, if you're looking for any suggestions. Its been working out pretty well with jellyfin.
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The way you switch between two servers you own is more than inconvenient; it's what keeps Plex in my life.I wish things would change because everything else is better.
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Thats how I describe Jellyfin, it works fine, its just inconvenient to use.
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That's why I use Emby. Paid for lifetime within a day of switch from Plex (which I also have has lifetime for like a decade) because it has a ton of plugins that have been useful and has a cloud server switch function.
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For the love, as a Plex alternative, they don’t even have a native app on all major tv stores. It should be a P1 feature. I would throw money at them if they get Apple TV support. Right now, there are no functional apps running on the latest Apple TV OS.
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For the love, as a Plex alternative, they don’t even have a native app on all major tv stores. It should be a P1 feature.
Are you really bitching this hard about a completely free and open source project?
It's not technology or finances that kill most FOSS projects and burn out the devs. It's this kind of shitty entitled unappreciative demanding attitude from users.
As others have pointed out, there are fully functional and good quality frontends available, such as Swiftfin.
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I haven't used apple tv in a few years, but like, swiftfin worked just fine for me??
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Swiftfin?
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I believe Infuse has Jellyfin support on Apple TV. But they want like £100 for a lifetime license or £2 a month / £13 a year.
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Just to think of replacing the mount points in the docker container from Plex to Jellyfin (in order for it to read my Riven and Decypharr symlinks) scares me... Mostly because after I finish a docker project my mind seems to go blank lol.
At least they still kinda honour the Plex Pass lifetime users...
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Playing devil's advocate, I understand one point of pressure: Plex doesn’t want to be perceived as a “piracy app.”
See: Kodi. https://kodi.expert/kodi-news/mpaa-warns-increasing-kodi-abuse-poses-greater-video-piracy-risk/
To be blunt, that’s a huge chunk of their userbase. And they run the risk of being legally pounded to dust once that image takes hold.
So how do they avoid that? Add a bunch of other stuff, for plausible deniability. And it seems to have worked, as the anti-piracy gods haven’t singled them out like they have past software projects.
To be clear, I'm not excusing Plex. But I can sympathize.
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I wish more people understood this perspective
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There is that but it’s primarily that they’ve taken over 40 million dollars of venture capital. They are almost certainly under immense pressure to turn profitable asap and converting lifetime pass users into revenue streams somehow, converting new users into SaaS, etc are going to be things they pursue more aggressively.
Don’t take the devils money if you don’t want the devils stipulations
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They've taken other measures as well. Nobody knows the details besides them, but they blocked an entire cloud provider called Hetzner because too many people were using it for pirate Plex servers. They absolutely have to maintain the image of being legitimate like you said.
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Sure, apart from charging for remote access.
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That serves the purpose too. It’s harder to pin Plex as an “illegal distribution service” when you have to pay for access. Either the streamer or “distributor” can’t be very anonymous, which makes large scale sharing impractical.
On the other hand, the more money they squeeze out, the more they risk appearing as if they “make money from piracy,” which is exactly how you get the MPAA’s attention.
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Dynamic DNS does cost money. But not $8 a month. Development also costs money which falls under the $8 a month, but really not my problem, which is why I use Jellyfin. I used to run Plex off of my Nvidia shield, which was a cool gateway drug to self hosting and I'm grateful to them for that, but I like handling the technical stuff myself.
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Remote access via their servers.
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I hate headlines like this. I’d love to hear the REASONS WHY Plex are doing all of this. But no, it’s just “4 ways in which Plex now sucks” which we all know already.
Before someone says “the reason is money” we need to ask: do the developers of Jellyfin not use money? Why won’t the same thing just happen to them too?
Before someone says “enshittification,” we need to ask: does this mean Jellyfin will soon have the same problems?
We all seem to love Jellyfin so I think we need to understand the actual reason why, or this will just continue happening.
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I hate headlines like this. I’d love to hear the REASONS WHY Plex are doing all of this.
- Greed... do you really need 3 more?
Before someone says “the reason is money” we need to ask: do the developers of Jellyfin not use money? Why won’t the same thing just happen to them too?
Plex is a private company wanting money... Jellyfin is a voluteer-drive effort
Before someone says “enshittification,” we need to ask: does this mean Jellyfin will soon have the same problems?
Enshitification happens to privately develop products due to
<checks notes>
greed... Jellyfin is not a private company pushing a product for profitWe all seem to love Jellyfin so I think we need to understand the actual reason why, or this will just continue happening.
Back to "greed"
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plus jellyfin is open source. if they start enshittifying, people can just fork it. That will keep them in line. Look what happened with emby. They've been sent to oblivion and no one even talks about them anymore.
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As predicted, a one-dimensional answer.
Let’s say they want more money: they do have a healthy software subscriptions business. How can they get more by becoming the world’s tiniest streaming service? And won’t that cannibalize their subscriptions business as the experience gets shittier and shittier?
Some actual “whys” within this would be things like (made up, but for example)
- the subscriptions business is dying - less than 1% of users ever buy a pass and efforts to increase that failed for (another reason here)
- streaming services are dumping cash into viewer acquisition because a war is on for dominance in that space and Pled is capitalizing on that
- Plex has high overlap with gamers and are making good money on midroll gaming ads during these streams
- Plex has legal concerns about facilitating piracy - this is the real reason why sync is shit and they killed watch together. They are desperately trying to pivot out of their old business before they get sued - OR all this streaming nonsense gives them a kind of fig leaf over that somehow
See, issues can be complex and interesting. Just calling them greedy is neither. How is this the greedy play, even?
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Plex is a private company..
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Plex took a significant degree of other people’s money, to the tune of over 40 million dollars. The people who gave said money were not kickstarter funders, donators, subscribers, etc but investors, who have an expectation that plex will move the company in a direction that makes them profitable enough to not only repay the 40+ million investment, but to then earn profits for a lengthy period (possibly in perpetuity) as they are stakeholders. This is the same thing that happened to Reddit (though Reddits scale and timeline was FAR more vast), openai, Google, literally every company ever basically. Plex now has an obligation to not just continue development but to continue it in a way that maximizes growth and revenue, even if that is anti consumer.
Jellyfin on the other hand has language on their contributions page that almost discourages financial support. This is because the only financial support they accept is donations, which are clearly explained are to support the free software and give no ownership stake. The software does not generate profit and donation does not equate to any kind of investment, other than supporting continued development. Expecting any kind of return on your part (again, other than the project continuing to move forward) is foolish. Lemmy is similar, as are many other FOSS projects. Jellyfin can remain ideologically stable to its goals, and because it is free if its users feel the lead developers are straying from this they can fork it and make “new ideologically pure jellyfin” (see xmbc to plex to emby to jellyfin, or lemmys 938 forks, many of which are tweaks and some of which are because people got beef with the main devs)
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Further to this, I heard Cory Doctorow talk about open source licensing being a Ulysses Pact. Basically Ulysses wanted to hear the sirens song. Normally, hearing it would drive you mad and you would wreck upon the rocks. Ulysses ordered his men to bind their ears with wax so they would not be affected by the sirens song. He also ordered them to tie him to the mast.
In the moment, he knew he would not be strong enough to resist the sirens song and because he was bound to the mast, he could not jump overboard. In the same way, people that use open source licenses on their projects are binding themselves to the open source license so that if a large temptation was to present itself (such as investors wanting to give them life changing money in exchange for mistreating their customers) they are already bound by that license and cannot break that bond.
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Here you can see, what they do with the money:
https://opencollective.com/jellyfin
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Meh, I went into plex settings on the server and just turned off all the bloat. Its all on one page. Not a big deal.
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I went into no settings on Jellyfin and everything stayed sane and the same.
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Sure, but you also don't have the option to use those features because they don't exist in jellyfin.
In my plex instance, I have discover enabled, and enabled all the streaming services so that discover is populated with all the movies and shows available. Then I have an automation setup so I can search in discover for a movie, and add it to my watchlist, and my automation will automatically download that movie and add it to my library.
I can do it right from my couch, and its WAF approved. Using those bloat features against them, in a way.
But, its just as easy to turn those all off if one doesn't want to utilize them. I'd be annoyed if they forced them on permanently but that's not what plex does, but they sure get a lot of hate for just having those features.
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whoa, you mean you don't want ads?? what is happening?!
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Stopped using Plex and moved to jellyfin around 12 months ago and have never looked back
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I have both but Jellyfin is not good with duplicates. Having several versions of movies in different languages just puts multiple copies of the movies in Jellyfin, with no distinction between them until you click into the details. Plex does this well with "Play version".
But Plex is worse for other reasons, on my LG TV. It's painfully slow and doesn't play the correct audio track that I select.
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An mkv with multiple audio tracks would save you some storage space.
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Plex does this well with “Play version”.
It does it even better with "editions" support, at least for movies.
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Haven't really tried it but they have support for dupes.
You just need to name them correctly (too lazy to link the docs. Just look up versions in media library)
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Same brother
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Goodness, how am I supposed to store and stream more entertainment than I could watch in a lifetime now?
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The thing it replaced... XBMC? O_o
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Xbmc was renamed Kodi and it's still revenant. It has a totally different use case than Plex or jellyfin and there's plugins for both.
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Did you mean to type 'relevant' or are you suggesting it's a zombie project?
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Sure, you can disable a lot of features from the home page, but even the remaining bits push you toward Plex’s ecosystem with things like recommendations. And I’ve even seen people complaining about needing to re-disable promotional content after updates. It’s simply a shady business.
Edit: It's just occurred to me that he might literally be referring to the Recommended tab on your home page - which you only have to interact with by choice.
If anyone would care to tell me where I'm being pushed towards Plex's ecosystem I'd love to understand what the flying fuck he's talkin about. The only thing I could find that could generously be called part of the Plex "ecosystem" are the social features. Does it give more "ads" if you have a free account or something? Also I've had a server for 15 years and I've never had to re-do my customization from an update.
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I believe I experienced what they called "re-disable promotional content after an update." Everything was reset and my media was hidden with only their streaming options available. Similarly setting up a new Chromecast it only had their streaming content and I had to hide their content and unhide mine.
I seem to remember there being some weaselly link that would re-enable their content after it was disabled too.
Generously, they're providing more content and a way to support the development of the product through ads. But all the changes and the way they're happening show me a picture of a company with changing priorities. So I tend to agree with the sentiment of the author.
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Plex has been off limits to me for along time. Just the fact they want to require auth with their central service for something I use for reasons rights holders would love to sue me into third world poverty over (muh Linux ISOs) is enough reason.
Them demanding that auth hook into the server makes me uneasy about what sort of metatdata they are currently, or could exfiltrate later on, should they want to or be demanded to.
Whole thing stinks of willingly being part of a honeypot.
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Clients suck on non plex
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3 Things stop from using jellyfin 100% of the time.
- TV tuner is janky and loading a guide for local channels is garbage. I like watching the morning local news and jellyfin just does not cut it.
- I want sub accounts. They used to have something similar but took it out for security reasons. I want to log all my TVs into one account but then have each user select their profile. So I can easily have a restricted profile for say kids then another for my parents then one for me then one for SO under the same roof. It will track each persons watched profile so when someone watches ahead it doesn't mess with someone else's.
- On the same note, controller/ HTPC remote configs feel janky. I know its there but its not a smooth and easy as Plex. This goes along with above for anyone who says just make another account. You try entering half decent passwords with small HTPC remotes or controllers. Every time you go to watch TV.
If they could fix these things I would ditch Plex all the way. But as it stands I use Plex for my TV and jellyfin for my phones, tablets, PC.
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You can already do number 2 (with some restrictions). You have to set up your networking tab correctly, use blank passwords, and uncheck "allow remote connections" for the "local" accounts. i have things set up so that external users are forced to log in and local users just pick a profile. If you also add your external users' IP addresses to the LAN Networks box, they'll be treated as an internal user too (though how you keep that up to date is a bit more challenging). It's not precisely the Netflix experience but it works well enough for us
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TV tuner is janky and loading a guide for local channels is garbage. I like watching the morning local news and jellyfin just does not cut it.
I DVR local stuff with Plex and play it back in Jellyfin.
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I do that sometimes but I like the morning news and I feel it should be current so not a great solution for me. Jellyfin just needs a bit more polish. Its great I like it but also at the same rate the appear to fix some things like their security bugs I'm not going to hold my breath. I do hope they push through though like Immich.
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Jellyfin has local channels? Why don't you just watch local channels?
Does plex have local channels? Seems like that is a use case that doesnt make any sense to me.
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In the US there is still a thing ad broadcast TV. Stick a TV antenna up in the air, free TV. Get a tuner card for PC and TV for your PC before streaming was ever a thing. Used it on my laptop when I traveled more. But with setting it up in jellyfin it works but is janky and needs polishing, and setting it up to download the TV guide is kinda a nightmare. With Plex life pass ( this is the feature that made me get it and dropping Comcast cable TV) it just works auto scans for channels and auto downloads TV guide, easy to flip throughout channels even my mom does it.
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If jellyfin was easier to use and had the same options as Plex, id switch over. But I'll keep my Plex lifetime pass as long as I can until they make all lifetime passes null in the next 2 years and make us all pay monthly.
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If jellyfin was easier to use and had the same options as jellyfin
Just guessing here, but I think it just might.
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Individual user accounts, so multiple people can use the same device without needing to log into a new account each time. For example, User A watches a show on the TV. Then User B opens the TV, and has to log in to be able to access their own watch history. Then User A returns, and has to log back into their account.
Braindead remote access. I use a reverse proxy so it’s not a need for me, but plenty of people don’t understand how to properly set something like that up.
Single Sign On. It flies in the face of what Jellyfin stands for, because it would require a centralized authentication server that everyone’s servers phone home to. Just like Plex. With Plex, you log into one account, and can see all of your available servers, because they’re all tied to the same account. With Jellyfin, every server requires its own authentication, because there is no central server to manage all of the “Account XYZ has access to libraries A, B, and C” stuff. If I want to watch something, I can’t easily just search all of my servers at once; I need to individually log into and search each one to see if it has the content I want to watch.
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it is proprietary software behind a paywall... need i say more?
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laughs in Jellyfin
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I want to like jellyfin, but it's authentication sucks
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Are all four reasons "money"?
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You guys are still using plex? I just make it publicly available on a webserver. Access control? Why would I care, I stole it.
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Idk. Maybe you don't want to spend the bandwidth and power on streaming it to a bunch of randoms.
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Wireguard, or even just jellyfin with a password
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Bandwidth is free, as long as it doesn't get to the point its tanking my performance I don't care. If people do start to abuse it I will bother to change it but until then no reason to bother. Obviously not giving the URL out here because then immediately it is going to get hammered.
Security through obscurity is fine when the only thing you are securing against is a bit of an inconvenience and the benefit is its easy to give friends a URL to go to. But sure, if it became a problem I would probably look into something else.
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Like sftp?? Hope you configured it right
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Not for me. Before Plex I was browsing folders on my TV and I actually had to organize everything, plus find and download matching subtitles. It sucked so much.
I got into self hosting because of Plex and ran it on a 2015 Shield (both the server and the player) for ~8 years. Just moved the server to another machine this year. Still happy premium user.
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I use Plex for audiobooks and TV shows primarily.
The fact that you can't (or at least can't easily) scan library files from Plexamp is utterly insane to me. Especially after they made audio libraries completely unavailable on the regular Plex app.
I'll probably switch to Audiobookshelf or something else down the line.
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You can scan from plexdash.
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+1 for audiobookshelf, after using tools like Plex for a long time I was honestly shocked by how much more user friendly it felt. And it's a one man team! The only significant demerit is that the IOS app is stuck in test flight limbo, so you have to find another player. Though most do that already I think.
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Moved to Stremio + A debrid service. I’m good.
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Its so good and you can just login on anyone else's device lol
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Serious question. I have been using the free version of plex for years and been happy with it. I have no desire for remote access and I never consume media on my phone. I just use it to watch TV shows and movies in my living room. I don't want anything more from it so I'm fine with the free version. Is there anything else I'm missing out on my not using jellyfin? I've considered it but to me it doesn't seem to be worth the effort to switch if I'm happy with the free Plex. But I'm willing to have my mind changed
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It may have very well changed recently or I could be misremembering, but the reason I switched over was being unable to play certain codecs/media types (types of hdr?) over stream while converting on host.... unless I had a subscription.
Utter lunacy to want me to pay to convert on my own machine. I've since swapped to jellyfin, donated, and am happier for it (and the open source part is such an added plus).
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For your use case its pretty much identical.
I prefer the plex interface slightly. But id rather use open source
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I would say get to know how to use it at least so you can hit the ground running if they ruin Plex for you.
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I never stopped using Kodi
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Ah, good ol' Xbox media centre. I still have that installed on my OG Xbox.
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TL;DR: $ $ $ $
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I'm still annoyed that I spent £100 on Plex a few years ago. It seemed like a good investment at the time but I ended up never using it.
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That’s more on you than Plex, though, right? Like do you get mad at Walmart or Home Depot because you bought a tool you never use, or don’t use as frequently as you thought you would?
Not defending Plex, I’m just curious.
EDIT: I realize your post referenced pounds as currency, but I don’t know the equivalent stores on that side of the pond. Been 20 years since I was in London! Apologies.
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You can turn it around nowadays on something like Craigslist or FB marketplace. It will easily sell for 150 quid. Some of the plex shares will be happy to take it off you because their accounts get constantly nuked.
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Stremio + Torrentio FTW
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I said it when Netflix launched, and I said it when Plex became popular.
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🍪
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Nobody talking about Emby?
Why not? I haven't used it yet but it seems great too.
209 comments
One reason: It's not FOSS, and because of that, it's not protected from the Capitalist profit motive that's always pushing the creators/owners towards enshitification.
The same forces act upon FOSS too, but the difference is that FOSS has structural immunity built into it. If the software enshitifies, it can be forked and maintained by a community that values software freedom.
We've seen it happen time and again. Terraform, CentOS, RHEL, The Xen Hypervisor, etc. When companies try to take freedom away from FOSS, they fail, because their users and maintainers are empowered by FOSS licenses (especially restrictive ones like the GPL) and can fight back.
With proprietary software, the users are powerless, only the owners have control.
Don't trust promises, good intentions, or corporate slogans. Trust free software and the open ecosystems they thrive in.
PS, Jellyfin is amazing ❤️
I just need Jellyfin to fix their subtitles issues on Apple TV and I'll be all set. Swiftfin needs some work yet, though I'm told the fix is in the pipeline for release soon^(TM) (probably by Q1 next year?).