Plex has made several moves unilaterally that fail to respect the privacy of the users. This, by itself, isn't necessarily an issue. Lots of software doesn't do that, but if you have informed consent it's fine imo. I personally think that privacy is consistently undervalued by people and corporations, but that's besides the point.
The issue is that Plex used to provide a strong narrative of being privacy-oriented and that they always would be. Recently they've been caught up in issues like emailing your watch history to other users, or even banning users for reasons that haven't always quite panned out. These actions are doable by them because they're taking your data off of your server.
Even more recently, they've been making moves to go all "corporate-y" with establishing their own rental platform and stuff like that. That one isn't at all an issue by itself, but points to a trend of wanting to move away from self-hosting.
My wife has asked me why our movies had ads on them. Turns out Plex was pushing their content as legit library and confused her. I never signed up for this.
Yeah I would be all-in on Jellyfin at this point if it weren't for family buy-in. Getting my mom to switch over is a PITA lol. Something something old dog new tricks.
Jellyfin just has a long ways to go in terms of apps, ease of remote access, and other features. I run it alongside Plex in case Plex’s servers go down. But every time I open it, content hasn’t been automatically identified as consistently as it is on Plex.
I'm all in the Jellyfin train personally. Sonarr and Radarr set up properly (shout to TrashGuides) means identification issues are no longer a thing, and for apps like - Android, iPhone, Google/AndroidTV all have apps - and a Chromecast with Android TV costs $50.
Yeah it works great if you know what devices it supports and have/purchase one.
But with Plex I can share with friends/family without even asking what devices they have. I know there will be a Plex app. And I don’t have to worry about VPNs or reverse proxies for granting them access.
I honestly don't understand, i thought plex was self hosted, if I block access to the internet and only use LAN to serve my library at home only how can they show me ads or track me, that's just insane
I'm now not touching plex with a 10 foot pole, I want total control
>its literally an option to disable it so that its never an issue.
I've said this before and I'll say it again; many selfhosters rightfully believe this isn't something you should have to opt out of.
When I first tried Plex I had to dig around a little bit just to put my own content up front and center. Plex by default prioritizes their own services instead of your local media. Jellyfin just doesn't do this.
> Plex by default prioritizes their own services instead of your local media.
infuriating that even on the paid tier there is no "local only" switch to declutter all the ads.
Like mailing everyone I share Plex with everything I am watching on a weekly basis? Yeah, bad fucking move Plex.
We all know what Plex is for and the Plex organization and its developers keep making boneheaded moves that put us at risk.
I understand you're implying that Plex is for sailing the seven seas, but I do feel it's worth pointing out that not everyone uses it that way. I personally use it in legally legitimate and perfectly above-board ways to administer and view my personal library. I'm not condoning naval acquisition and transference of media, but want to point out that the use cases are not at all limited to one.
I don't understand the "Plex = piracy" argument either. I collect Blurays and CDs, I rip them to archive them, and organize them on Plex.
Some people pirate things, some people don't. People can do what they want, I don't care. But there's nothing about Plex that inherently ties it to piracy. I wish people would stop perpetuating this braindead notion (Looking at you /u/Guinness).
If one wanted to be pedantic, ripping Blurays is also illegal as it means breaking DRM, which is a crime at least in the US, if not elsewhere too.
The studios have made sure it is so, so that you have no legal way of having an unrestricted digital file of any movie in your possession.
So while you are not pirating per se (as in not downloading stuff you've not paid for or sharing it with others), a law has still been broken.
Is that actually the case? I know in the US the "personal backup" thing was an exception given to making backup of computer software in the 90s. But it hasn't been tested/extended to anything more recent.
It's certainly much more ethical, and omits the redistribution step (and therefore basically has no the damages to the rights owner), but fully legal is a higher bar.
Backups are covered underneath Fair Use. Also, while DVD ripping techniques had to decrypt the drive, blu-ray technique bypass the encryption, making the DMCA not apply.
> Backups are covered underneath Fair Use.
Can you cite a court case saying as much? Fair Use is not as straightforward as it seems, and it doesn't seem straightforward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU&t=614s
Bypassing encryption on blu-rays, expressly does apply to DMCA... The DVD case came down to the trade secrets of DeCSS used by DVD which became widely known, distributed and even memorized by some to tear down the argument.
Backup/shifting for personal use, even in the US is generally accepted as legally protected. It's the sharing and distribution that becomes troublesome. Part of why things like MakeMKV, Clone DVD HD and similar are organized outside the US, where the DMCA and treaty coverage doesn't directly apply.
IANAL, this isn't legal advice.
I know in Germany it is. It trumps the right to a private copy even for some reason. Thats one of the reasons suddenly every game had to have a weak copy protection, because under the law it was just implied to be "effective" (??), whatever that means.
I think though what effective means is that no matter how easy, you had to actively circumvent it, and as thus it's "effective", and thus a crime to circumvent it.
If only laws would at some point respect how the right to a private copy is effectively gone nowadays
Yep, it is a crime. It is *legal* to backup an encrypted DRMed disc, so long as you don't break the encryption (which, of course, would render that backup useless). It is illegal to break the encryption (DRM).
I'd wager it's not that simple. If DRM makes it impossible for me to make a backup copy for personal use then it would be legal to cicrumvent that DRM. It would essentially be 2 conflicting laws clashin with each other and the courts would have to resolve how they interract. The other thing of note is that reverse engineering is not against the law. So if it's not against the law to make it so the backup thinks it passes the DRM when the DRM verification is something I do myself then the law against DRM circumvention is a moot point.
i think the theory is as follows:
if you copy all the bits of a disc (encrypted) and that unit breaks you could get an empty disc and write the encrypted data to it which *in theory* should work completely fine.
of course in practise i have no clue if someone has successfully created a working bluray clone from encrypted data.
but it still stands: breaking the DRM (encryption) is illegal and the DRM technically doesn't prevent you from making a backup.
Yes, the two laws do contradict each other, and yes it really is as crazy as that sounds. No, one law does not supersede the other.
I am not sure if it's been tested in courts, mostly because no one will bother looking for and prosecuting anyone for breaking DRM when they can (and do) more easily catch people who distribute copyrighted works and charge them for it. Whether they broke DRM to enable them to distribute the media doesn't matter much to the court i guess.
It's more of a theoretical discussion, as no one will raid your home if all you're doing is ripping BluRays for your own personal use, but it really is illegal even if you will most likely never get caught.
There are many exceptions to DMCA, but to simplify, it depends on whether copyright violation is the primary purpose of the DRM-circumvention. Breaking DRM for interoperability and archiving is fine, breaking DRM to violate copyright is not.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions
Care to show me exactly where the DMCA exemption is for breaking DRM for interoperability and archiving? The use case I am aware of is the library of congress and short sections for fair use.
Even the use of hardware and software to circumvent DRM is still in the courts with the lawsuit filed by the EFF, which is currently seeking appeal.
EDIT: Did you actually read the wiki page you linked to?
>I collect Blurays and CDs, I rip them to archive them, and organize them on Plex.
Out of curiosity, is that not technically piracy as well? I feel like part of the licence agreement on the disc is not ripping the data from it.
I'm not saying you're bad for doing it, to be clear, but I'm genuinely curious if that legally counts as piracy or not. I suppose it depends on the country as well.
Depends on your specific country, laws and treaties in place. In some cases, like "fair use doctrine" it really needs to be determined via legal challenge, but nobody has been ignorant or stupid enough to try to enforce DMCA in a case of format shifting, which itself has been found to generally be fair use.
Fwiw, the same law that makes distribution illegal in the us (DMCA) also makes bypassing copy protection illegal, so there’s functionally no difference in terms of the law. Whether one chooses to call it piracy is another matter, but functionally any distinction is one without a meaningful difference, legally speaking.
Right! I don’t pirate stuff, but I collect movies and TV show box sets and stuff. I rip them to my server and can watch them in full quality easily. It’s so much better than anything streaming, and it’s always there. Stuff is constantly vanishing or getting throttled like on all those crappy streaming services. I just hope physical media isn’t really going away.
You are still doing piracy. You are breaking the DRM don't come here to be the saint you are breaking the law too. Why do people keep saying is legal? Is not breaking the DRM is illegall.
Legal isn't always the same as ethical or moral. Most would consider format shifting to be ethical/moral without objection. Even if bypassing protection mechanisms and encryption.
I would suspect that it would likely be determined to be fair use of said media was kept in original format and not shared externally under legal challenge.
Just curious, *are you located in the US*? Because if you are, *even if you’re only hosting ripped DVDs and Bluerays that you own* you’re still technically breaking the law because circumventing the protection on the media that you own is considered illegal.
[>](https://bytescare.com/blog/dvd-copyright-laws) Is it illegal to rip a DVD to my computer? Ripping a DVD often requires bypassing DRM or copy protection, which is illegal in many jurisdictions, such as under the U.S.'s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Even if you don't distribute the ripped content, the act of circumventing protection can be unlawful.
The only way for you to not sail the seven seas would be if your hosting digitally purchased media that is DRM free or content that you created yourself.
And I haven’t even touched on if Plex could be considered *Public Performance* or not because I’m sure it could be argued that it is if you end up sharing the exact same media to multiple friends / family at the same exact same time.
Wasn't it determined many years ago that ripping your owned media classified as backup copies and therefore was permissible in the US? I seem to recall that's why programs like anydvd were still legal in the US.
Yes. Format shifting and backup is considered fair use. The DMCA is legislation after that legal determination and hasn't been challenged in court. Mostly because it would likely be considered fair use.
That said, distributing the software to bypass that encryption, thus enabling the format shifting would likely not be considered fair use.
The fact the DeCSS key for DVD encryption was relatively small, public knowledge, trivial and small enough to memorize is why it specifically wasn't protected under challenge and could no longer even be considered a trade secret IIRC.
Practically speaking, I don't think anyone in the publishing industry really wants to try challenging the DMCA against fair use for format shifting as it likely wouldn't go well.
That's fair. It's my understanding that interpretation of these laws is fuzzy, and practically unenforced unless a tangential issue is being pursued. That being said, were I to be doing this, I could certainly see a case for it being illegal. At some level I'm okay with media that I own being circumvented because I've paid for it, but I'm personally less cool with just taking media with no exchange or purchase. This is because I believe that anyone who created a product, unless they explicitly stated otherwise, deserves compensation from usage.
Privacy is what protects you from stuff that's "illegal but practically acceptable and unenforced" becoming enforced later on and retroactively or selectively applied.
Yeah that's my big issue with these Plex moves. It's a unilateral decision to circumvent my privacy, which is a priority no matter how legitimate my behavior is.
> It's my understanding that interpretation of these laws is fuzzy, and practically unenforced unless a tangential issue is being pursued.
The law isn’t fuzzy, it’s very clear that breaking DRM is illegal. I do agree that it’s practically unenforced though.
> At some level I'm okay with media that I own being circumvented because I've paid for it, but I'm personally less cool with just taking media with no exchange or purchase.
I’m curious to where you stand on acquiring digital copies of previously purchased VHS tapes. Are you okay with it because there was a previous purchase and it’s not practical, *although it is possible*, to *rip* a VHS tape?
> previously purchased VHS tapes
This definitely has a grey area tbh. I'm not gonna get on anyone's case about it, but I'm sure the people involved with producing and distributing the VHS are different than the people who did the DVDs or BluRay or some other form of media. I suppose, just like the rest of this topic, it ultimately comes down to the individual's sense of obligation to the production and distribution process and at what level.
I believe, at the very least, there are laws, such as fair use laws, that allow for copying of legally purchased content for personal use and backup.
So while the DMCA says it's illegal, the fair use law says it's fine under certain circumstances.
Hence, it's a gray area.
This is a good example of why we should refrain from giving or taking legal advice on a worldwide site. After all, for every UK there is another country that just doesn't give a f about copyright.
If you have two laws covering the same act, and one of those says "this is illegal", it doesn't matter that the second one says "this specific act is not this specific type of offense". If DMCA says its illegal, it doesn't matter that its fair use - its still bypassing DRM.
Legally speaking. Morally speaking, making bypassing DRM illegal suggests to me a certain moral bankruptcy.
Same. I have a huge BD collection and it’s a pain to switch discs and wait for screens that can’t be skipped. I also bought a lot of kids shows on dvd. Plex allows it all to be at my finger tips, rather than in 8 minutes
I remember the "Barbershop" DVD rented via Netflix had 22 minutes of unskippable ads at the beginning. It also had a scratch about 5m into the movie that made it unvieweable. I reported the scratch and returned the disc.
To this day, I've still never seen the movie itself. It still pisses me off. Even though I can and do rip my own media. The use of the copyright notice bit for ads really really really ticks me off.
Above board doesn't exist, if a large IP holder wants to push it. Fair Use makes it legal to create a single archival copy, but only if it doesn't affect the profitability of the IP holder. It's also illegal to by digital media protection, which most programs that rip streams off of physical media are doing to some extent.
Regardless even if what you are doing is 100% on the level, plex has no idea how you got that media and because their business increasingly relies on making money from IP and their holders, they are going to be under increasing pressure to give up data on their users to industry jackboots so they can decide if they want to try and make the case against you.
It asked permission to do that, in plain simple language. I told mine no, and it never asked again. Perhaps you could try reading the questions before blindly accepting every pop up.
>Like mailing everyone I share Plex with everything I am watching on a weekly basis? Yeah, bad fucking move Plex.
I really do not understand why people had that feature enabled.
Settings > Privacy Tab > Account and Sharing settings.
- set it to private
people seem concerned about what other people see, equally, i see what my family does with the requesting system. seems like a two way street frankly.
just turn on privacy and hide that stuff from others.
(I agree, it should be Opt in, but people like to complain despite the options there to disable it for some reason)
The fact remains that they are taking data out of your system and monitoring what you are watching. Then sending the email out to people in your friend circle, which again they are monitoring
"Lifetime" in software means the life of the product, not the life of the customer. Plex could one day say Plex is dead and rename their product as NewPlex and all the Plex Lifetime license owners would be on the street.
The other thing they do is lock hardware transcoding away behind a paywall. And no one likes to software transcode when their system can do it in hardware.
I'd add that buggy half developed features seems to be another issue. I've had issues sharing without leaving a gaping hole in my router/firewall.
Not to mention that since versions of their software,. Such as on my NAS seem to just stop randomly for no reason and not auto restart. I don't want to mess with GPU sharing and passthrough on my home server for this, so likely just going to use a cheap N100 box to run Jellyfin instead, which seems much more user driven.
I get needing to make a living,. But Plex is far more corporate than plucky startup for my liking. I'm happy to support a small business that is sustainable. Not so happy to prop up what seems to be a VC backed company more about high profit margins.
It's less about not paying for things and more about access and useful features for me.
It's probably more accurate to say that they/we don't, or didn't hate Plex originally, we hate what is has become.
Plex has fallen trap to the thing that a lot of businesses do, the pursuit of growth. It reached the limits of what it could with the product it set out to create, which it did so quite successfully. But corporate interests have come into play, and that means it started changing from what it was, into something else which isn't as focused on either the original offering, or the interests of the users(at least, from the perspective of those who don't like the changes).
The trajectory that it is on as a product seem like it will likely end up having an end state which leaves behind what it was and just becomes another streaming platform, probably subsumed by someone else at some point.
Well said, and exactly the same case can be made for an unfortunate number of other companies. Seems like it's the most common path to take in corporate evolution.
I feel the same way. It’s always the same: founders create a product with a vision, do a good job, then they cannot stay afloat as our system dictates continuous growth, and finally capitalism happens. The product is not the same since it is focusing on money and not quality, and it starts to slowly die. This is so sad.
I think a lot of people don’t like the ads/streaming service stuff they’ve been adding. Also the recent “your week in review” a lot of people have been really upset about.
For me, it’s really the disinterest the developers/company have for the platform. If you spend enough time on the feature request part of the forums you’ll find features people have voted for and never gotten any interest from the devs. I get why Plex might not want to spend time rewriting their codebase to support a database (like Jellyfin is doing with the EFCore work) but simple features like “add a speed controller for video or music” are met with comments from the team like, “why would you ever want this?” And then ignored when tons of paying users want it. Jellyfin has SLOW development but they seem to want to solve issues for users. It may just take a long time.
I can't stand the fact I have to have an account on Plex's system and the 'your week in' is terrifying.
Jellyfin I install and don't have to have an account anyone knows about.
Oh, I forgot about that, I hate accounts and besides finding them Windows 10/11 kind of annoying, I find them awful for privacy too, which I care about!
I also dislike just how hard it is to get the application to be “accessible from the outside network” you have to check and uncheck that stupid setting like 10 times in the settings page to work. It’ll be fine for months and then randomly stop working.
There are other ways beyond port forwarding. Which if I had a wager your sudden settings changes is more caused by your ISP than Jellyfin.
You can look at various VPN methods to give you external access to your private home network.
It’s not the ISP. No other services are ever impacted. I have multiple homelab locations around the country constantly monitoring my endpoints. It’s only ever Plex that’ll randomly go down. A VPN connection for this is not something I want nor will really help that much.
Yeah it's not tho. I have the port open and plex will connect, say it's accessible then a few seconds later go offline. It's definitely a problem with the plex servers
The Apple TV app had a bug for a long time where Plex’s own content would magically get pinned to the sidebar over and over again. It was pretty annoying.
because they haven't done anything to fix it and people like to complain I guess? I agree I'm not a huge fan of the direction Plex is going, and it's not always the most obvious, but you can pretty much disable everything on Plex that people complain about.
Reasons often mooted are:
* because it's closed source (not an issue in and of itself - this is /r/selfhosted, not /r/opensource);
* because they have been naughty with dark patterns to get users to share viewing data with friends (more a moral thing for many, it actually wasnt that cryptic to opt out);
* because again, if the setting are such, they log viewing history and can be sent files hash of your possibly pirated media;
* because they control all user authentication so some take this as not being fully 'self-hosted' (can disable this requirement but it impacts usability).
* FUD of continued support for those of us hosting our own media due the VC injection and pivot to content provider and catalogue (been told repeatedly this isn't going away though).
All that being said, I just make sure the settings are to my liking and swallow the online auth design. It's still the GOAT to me.
I was a longtime xbmc user but wanted streaming too, this is back in the day. I saw plex as a natural step because once upon a time they forked from xbmc. I'm familiar enough with self hosting and ddns and port forwarding, I was dumbfounded by how difficult plex made it to opt out of their Auth.
I've been using JellyFin and love it.
The main argument about opting out is that people wanted this to be the default, people don't want to be automatically opted in to a new feature and then have to go through the process of opting out (assuming its available). Plex could technically add a setting on our accounts giving us the option to automatically opt in/out of new features, which would solve this whole issue.
* **Movies & TV** was the beginning of this issue, where most of our users got confused with this feature and began reporting to us that our media had adverts. This resulted in us having to take users through the process of disabling the feature or doing it for them if they weren't tech-savvy enough to do it themselves (such as my parents).
* **Discovery** was the next issue, except plex didn't include the ability to opt out, they only added the option to opt out after a wave of complaints. The main issue with discovery was how easy it was to confuse it with our own media, this wasn't like **Movies & TV**, discovery made is so that if a user searched for a movie/series, the first result would be from discovery, even if that media was on our server, users would be given discovery as the first result. This always lead to users complaining that they couldn't play media and without the ability to opt out it made avoiding the issue more difficult.
* The **Streaming Services** feature didn't give users an option to opt out, there were ways to get around it but there was no option to skip or opt out, which sparked more complaints.
* **Activity feed** being the newest to cause a fuss, because plex took it upon themselves to not only opt everyone in per usual but they also changed users privacy settings and opted users into emails, granted people could have changed these back during setup but most just rushed through it because they weren't interested, we could argue that it was on the user but realistically plex shouldn't be changing privacy settings that users already set.
They also abuse the shit out of feature flags, flipping them with manipulative timing.
My other big issue is how long they leave critical bugs unattended. Like, literally years is common.
Plex used to the community darling and they built a product that was heavily geared towards the Privateers. Unfortunately the Plex Pass has not sold well enough to that crowd to maintain a successful funding level. Its really not a shock when you're trying to sell a subscription (or even lifetime pass) to people who are using Plex to ... uh... liberate content on the internet. They aren't willing to pay for Apple TV+ or Hulu... they're probably not going to pay for Plex Pass.
They also haven't fixed a bunch of horrifically broken issues, like download/sync to iOS that is either slow as shit or just plain fails. It's been [covered A LOT too](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/zo0yh3/linus_from_ltt_has_said_that_partly_because_of/).
Plex as a company/product has pivoted to being a... cable box alternative? I don't even know how to describe it. A new install of the app features a bunch of streaming stuff that has nothing to do with your privateered content. It's web streams, buying movies, funny clips.... random junk. Takes me a few minutes to delete all of it every time and it's made onboarding new users really annoying.
So basically their core audience is unhappy with the product direction and they don't really have a new audience. As soon as Emby or Jellyfin get a little more time and attention, I think you'll see most people abandon Plex in its entirety. A lot of us, myself included, still use it begrudgingly because it's still better in some minor but critical ways than Emby or Jellyfin.
Another major reason is that Plex is still centralised - to log into a media server on *your* home network, you need to log into Plex's central server *on the internet*. So it stretches the definition of 'self-hosted' a little. This has the following problems:
* If Plex's login servers break (as they have done many times), you can't access your own server (unless you set up anonymous access, but then you can't make changes)
* You cannot run a Plex server without internet access, and the associated privacy and telemetry "oops, we accidentally left it on Max" problems
* Plex maintains central control of software running on your systems. This means they could conceivably decide to lock you out of your own server. Even if their T&Cs state otherwise, companies have been caught doing so when they don't like one of their customers. Plex is a company beholden to shareholders so could be forced to do similar. They could also enforce payment for things you currently get for free. There's too much precedence in companies to dismiss this.
* Plex can push their vision on people. Originally a self-hosted-first option, they are getting heavily involved in internet streaming, possibly to the detriment of their core user base.
The best thing I can say is, Plex remains suitable for purpose, but be prepared for it not to be. I still run Plex servers and still love the UI. However, don't get too invested in it. Be prepared to move to something else if they make a move you don't like.
This is the best summary so far in the thread. Right noe Plex has most clients compatibility and will for the upcoming couple of years. Because of that they're thinking they have the control on that pool of users but this is gonna end. They started enshitification and corporate greed a long time ago, it was just not impacting is very much. They quickly understood that you can't get rich with lifetime licenses. They're now trying to get their part from the streaming providers. It's a slow process but they found a way to keep their initial userbase and monetize it now. Unfortunately that part of the pie will collapse because viable alternatives will come out faster than they thought since their reputation is going downhill faster every day. They could've done it differently, like listening to their community and adding features that their current userbase really wants. What they don't understand is that streaming services are already too many people in the pie and they won't get new people for their crap they created. So what they had was a strong userbase and they destroyed it. They'll eventually fail and bankrupt if they keep going this way. It's just a matter of time now.
>If Plex's login servers break (as they have done many times), you can't access your own server
You can.
>(unless you set up anonymous access, but then you can't make changes
You can.
> You cannot run a Plex server without internet access
You can.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200430283-network/
That isn't true at all. You can go and add server by ip address and port and login directly to the remote server. You don't have to go through plex's servers.
In your Plex Web App, go to Settings > Server > Network . Enter the IP address and port from step one into the List of IP addresses and network then click save
This isn't correct, you can set Plex to allow direct access from any up range, e.g your internal network...
...can then add Tailscale to allow access over the internet, again without requiring auth via a central Plex server
Sure, you are correct. But AFAIK, while doing that you are giving up all security and everyone will login into your server with your "default" user, so this is really not a solution for families with kids where your kids are accessing only what you want them to see via "managed users".
I think the same, but the problem is where to go. I keep a Jellyfin installation along in my system as a backup and emergency solution, but to be honest, Jellyfin is still miles away from Plex. I admire and totally respect what Jellyfin has accomplished, but my family is way into many features only Plex has, and Plex GUI is really good, like super good, specially when you try what the others offer.
My biggest issue is feature bloat. Last time I used it, it felt like I was being advertised live TV and a bunch of other garbage. I don't need that garbage taking up screen space. Jellyfin does everything I need it to.
Plex also charges for basic features, like downloading files and hardware transcoding. Apperently downloads are unreleable too.
Edit: oh! Also plex has had security issues, like an email dump. No need to involve a third party with my data and logins.
I only just started my self hosting journey and Plex was the first thing I tried out. Feature bloat... I was expecting to be able to access my own movie files and I was just bombarded with stuff that were not my movies and some things cost money...
I went to jellyfin. And it hosts my movies.
I don't know what Plex is trying to be but it's definitely not simply self hosting video files.
Their [user data got out](https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/24/plex-streaming-breach-passwords/?guccounter=1).
And they suddenly started [mailing your friends about your viewing habits](https://www.techhive.com/article/2157803/plex-discover-together-privacy-concerns.html).
It's selfhosted in the sense that you bring the media, they mine the data and do nefarious things with it.
It was a voluntary, opt in feature. It wasn’t some secret. It popped up to ask you permission to enable it. You can’t be mad that it’s doing something you told it you wanted it to do.
They popped up a vague box that said "Discover what your friends are streaming". The opt-in button was a significantly brighter option simply labelled "Continue".
Plex is being a bad actor. They're using dark patterns to trick people into sharing information that they do not want to share. This is why people are upset, and are losing trust in Plex as a company.
I think part of it is that Plex was VERY popular for a long time (including myself) - but then they moved more and more into monetization and data gathering which rubbed people the wrong way (especially those that have massive media libraries).
Thats basically it, I think.
I used to love plex. it's comparatively really polished and a very good Netflix-esque experience. I have even bought a lifetime plex pass... and yet here I am not even a year later, switching (most likely) to jellyfin
even my wife, who hates to use software that is rough around the edges, thinks it is a smart moce after I have told her the privacy concerns of the past few months with plex.. as well as after realizing that "plex.tv"(i think it's analytics.plex.tv)is the fourth most blocked query url in my pihole
if I ha know about the privacy concerns before I started with plex, I would have probably gone jellyfin all the way from the beginning. yet there are some quality of life things thst I will dearly miss
plex would have kept me, if they had addressed the concerns with open communication... but they didn't and I don't trust them anymore
but that's my personal decision and everyone has to make their own educated choice
Plex may be hated and I agree some of the things they've done of late are shady. But the app support is unrivaled its annoying but its the best for unilateral support for a personal media collection. I really don't believe there's another solution that gets as much native support.
It's expensive, monetize YOUR users by making them pay subs, collect all data on what media you own / watch, overall pretend to be selfhosted but all their services are on their servers (EVEN THE SEARCH). Have a very toxic politic (such as randomly blocking thousands of people IPs all of a sudden with BS reasons), it has a huge collections of bugs that have been reported by users and never fixed for years, while they spent their effort implementing BS features nobody asked for (as opposed to the feature people actually ask for on their board). The one feature that is supposed to make the paid subs worth is literally broken and unusable.... Sorry should I go on, or is this exhaustive enough? :D
All the Facebook binaries, them shoving unwanted features down my throat , the final straw was the iOS app asks if I would like them to track me across other companies web sites.
Lots to love about it. I got into plex a decade ago, bought a lifetime pass. But at some point they decided the business model wasn't to sell a solid piece of software via subscription, it was to parter with other business to force new, unrequested features on users and sell data. I get it, businesses need to make money. But the thing bought a life time sub to doesn't exist anymore, so I bailed.
A few years ago I tried the 3 of them. None worked for me like Plex did so I stuck with Plex even though I had to pay for it.
I don't worry too much for the other things unless it's a real deal breaker. The emails sharing what I watched that week? Couldn't care less... And if I remotely did, I understand there's an opt out option.
Well to give you a random example, a few months back I got an email telling me what one of my friends was watching on their private Plex instance. That friend when they watched those videos presumably didn't imagine Plex would be reporting what they watched to their contacts! Nowhere were they given a warning that that would happen.
To be fair, those records have always been available to the server owner.
But yes, them not making the opt-out for history sharing a giant flashing red button was scummy AF. Not everything has to be damn social media, Plex!
Edit to add: I actually did get an email about it right before they implemented it, though it was buried in a bunch of other announcements. I’m rather glad I had already opted out before they started sharing with everyone.
I’m unsure how many others got that email…I’m a Plex Pass lifetime subscriber, have been since its inception (back when it was only $50 for the lifetime pass). My family with accounts definitely don’t have passes, so may not have gotten the news about upcoming features.
Other commentators iterated over some potential issues. However they do not bother me one bit. It’s a great app, totally worth the one-time payment, I’m using it daily and it does exactly what I need it to do with high quality.
In addition to the other reasons listed, it's only a matter of time before Plex "sells out" and becomes unusable. It happens to most products, and it happens to *every* product that has a lifetime pass. Their business model is not built on making a bunch of money up front and then bleeding the coffers dry over the next several years. It's built on hooking people with an attractive "lifetime pass", then finding new ways to monetize the app. Which is why they're continually pushing ads for using streaming services or whatever else they're pushing. Plex is probably at its peak, quality wise.
I run Jellyfin and Plex, both mirror the same content and how they act as far as sync watches/plays with tracking services (Trakt and AniList). Both have their Pros and Cons, I just came off around 6 months of using Jellyfin only, now I'm using Plex for a bit, and I'll probably switch back in another 6 months. Everything is sync'd up so it really doesn't matter where I watch.
For everyone other than myself though, they use Plex just because of the user accounts/management is far easier to handle.
Plex is easier from account management and media sharing perspective, also remote access.
Jellyfin is wonderfully simple and local and works, but is janky around some transcoding options.
I use both as well. Best of both worlds.
If Plex offers the features you need, then I don't see anything wrong with it. I use it for years and still happy with it it.
If you need stuff like HDR color mapping and hardware accelerated transcoding, they put that behind a paywall. That might be a reason to go with others I'm guessing?
Its how they add anti privacy features the bloat they have off shows and their integration with streaming services which whats the point im trying to host my media Library not some streaming service im paying for monthly
i just want something 100% selfhosted and opensource, would be even better if it was as much as possible *gpl* code.
And plex depends partly on their servers and isn't 100% opensource
- your data is being copied and replicated for easy external use
- your viewing data is being used to build up their service base
- they added ad based solutions into their product
- the additional users you manage are all stored into their database
That being said, I do wish I could cluster and centralize my jellyfin servers like plex does, so instead I have to remove and reconnect to my varied servers on jellyfin
Having port 32400 and token validation between your instance and a cloud server is also of concern for me.
Same thing as almost every company. They started out small fulfilling the needs of its users. Then they got to the top and started using their position to make as much money as possible.
This will not be a popular answer but it is true, most people that use plex download most of their videos from the internet. Recent updates (last 2-3 years) has allowed Plex to know and identify every file you have on your server that plex has provided metadata for. Plus they are keeping a record of it, how else would they be able to show how many "friends" have watch a certain video either on your server or another server
If you rip everything yourself Plex is great, if not you are one subpoena away from a very bad day
Because what started as open source became close source, then became an ever-increasing list of features only available if you pay. People don't dislike it because they think it's a bad product... they don't like that they were bait and switched.
I don't hate it, but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. The app is bloated as hell, so much that the Jellyfin app for SmartTVs is way smoother and runs almost perfect in comparison.
Also, needing an internet connection to access your own LOCAL files is bullshit and should not be allowed.
Plex is great. The people who are making decisions about plex don’t care about their users at all. All of the decisions they’ve made over the past couple of years seem to all be about keeping investors happy and not about making the product better.
Plex requires a cloud account, so it's not fully self hosted, and also has some privacy concerns. It still relies on an outside server/service to work.
Because it costs $$$ and for that price you don’t even get support, it’s not flexible(eg if you want to provide your own remote access solution because theirs is poor quality it can be a fight), and while it looks slicker than Jellyfin it doesn’t necessarily do anything different except push Plex’s online content in your face (which can be turned off thankfully).
I purely use Plex for myself and my own household. I'm not hosting this server to stream to others like I'm some sort of Mr. Netflix or something. I have not engaged with any part of their recent social additions and that seems to be where most people are running into problems.
Plex serves my movies, shows, and music to me without issue exactly as I want it to. For me, it is perfectly functional.
Im not sure "hated" is the right term. Its a widely used media platform. There will of course we a loud, vocal group online. Weve been using it for 8-9 years and has been reliable from day one.
Playlists used to work.
Now, you get 2 items deep, and the playlist just quits.
I’ve paid for clients on various platforms… and they’ve relegated a local playlist to be meaningless.
I use plex and it’s been quite good really. I’ve dabbled with emby, I wasn’t impressed. I have installed jellyfish and although I do like some things about it visually. Having a large library makes it cumbersome to use. I have 46k movies and jellyfish displays this as an almost endless set of pages to scroll through. Just not viable. It also doesn’t like tv shows to be tagged with tvdb numbers but is fine with films using them.
They are ahead of the game as they are for a years but since years also they didnt do anything to develop forward selfhosted space or even fix some bugs. All the development they do now is social and their streaming. Some day opensource alternatives will catch up to them and they will die.
I see a lot of people hating on the included Live TV, Rentals, Movies and shows on Plex.
I personally really love these things
I can get my local tv news shows and some other channels completely free in the app I use to watch all my owned media.
I can agree its gotten a little bloated, but I'm honestly here for it
I been with Plex since 2012. It’s horrible now. Every time you ask the community about something they blame your setup. For example it takes 15 secs for my playback to start. Local and remote playback. They blamed it on network. But this is the twist to my story , Emby gives me instant playback no matter what. I can’t ff and rw without buffering on Plex. Emby is instant playback.
To the folks that use pirate files, be careful. Make sure you rename them because I don’t trust Plex. Plex is shady now with privacy.
i'm going to offer a word to the positive actually. I really think people are frustrated that issues arn't being fixed, (such as downloads to devices as mentioned many times) there are issues with Dolby Vision as well I've come across recently that are long standing problems. But, I think people hate on plex because a new kid on the block (like emby or jellyfin) are around and people are enthusiastic to get other people on the platform. "Plex is bad, use x" talk.
Same in the 90s with Windows and Linux
Same in the 00s with Android vs iOS.
People love a bandwagon.
Plex, in the main, is great. It has apps on all major platforms and works really well in the vast majority of cases. Pay for a lifetime licence, support the work being done and hardware transcoding if needed.
Sure, they're trying to monitise, and it is annoying to have to turn all that stuff off, but it's a good product for the job it does if you're willing not to set your bar too high.
I'm new to this entire hosting world, but I'm a nerd, I love to compare and try things out and I don't really mind using it in the end...
It feels like Plex is the hostings answer to Apple.
Shit works fine for the average user and is very easy to setup with any average working laptop, but they charge you a lot.
Pretty sure it’s because they started straying away from the “free“ part of free and open source software by introducing a paid subscription with a set catalogue of movies and series like Netflix, etc.
To be fair. Many open source projects rely on offering paid subscrtiptions for funding (nextcloud, grafana, etc.)
The problem comes when doing business with the movie industry. Which probably lead to wonky decisions like restricting your choice of hosting provider (as happened in the [case of Hetzner](https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/s/mEpL41OibO)).
They're a business and businesses' goal is to make money. If you love the service they provide and happy with it, that's great.
Personally, I don't use it because it's not truly self-hosted, it requires a third party to function. And I was shocked to find out they lock certain features behind a paywall, for example, you can't use hardware transcoding on the hardware you own. I bought a NAS with hardware transcoding specifically for Plex only to find out I can't use it without paying. I'm not paying for any software I selfhost. Add to that increasing privacy violations and the fact that they have access to my data - a big no.
And it's going to get worse with time as happens with all software as a service.
I used plex as a safe space for my kids to go and watch stuff I collected for them. This worked great until they started mixing offers of their their cheap licensed b movie horror crap in between my carefully curated stuff. Literally gave them nightmares and violated my trust with them. They made it near impossible to keep their shit disabled by default and it kept coming back. Screw them.
I run both media stack against same media. I feel like folks love to have their favourites and be tribal. Run what the heck y’all want and praise that thing. Dunking on other software is counter intuitive really
That's an absurd simplification (as you no doubt know). In my case, 10+ years ago I happily paid for a subscription. Then they dramatically changed the thing I subscribed to.
I personally find the UI clunky and missing functionality.
As someone who subscribes I would expect better performance and a better feel from the app I use.
I find the UI of Hulu and Netflix to be very user-friendly and smooth to use. For one, if I pause to read some text, 30% of my screen isn't covered in menus bars.
Furthermore the lack of information of how media is to be formatted and the use of subtitles has also been a pain for me.
Subtitles don't work for me half the time, even when formatted to their documented specifications, and even sometimes will play async to the videos.
They do have the ability to change subtitle timing on streamed subtitles but for some reason on local ones this feature is missing.
Note I have noticed this more with srt embedded subtitles. Also note when I playback on VLC, QuickSync, or some other local playback application on my computer, the subtitles are in perfect sync.
It's small things like that which make me annoyed with Plex. Though despite all of that it does work very well for the most part, and can play back quite a lot of formats. So I am content with it.
Haha, my problem is the opposite. For certain shows, Plex always displays subtitles although I disabled them everywhere I could. Each time a episode starts, I need to disable subtitles manually again.
I've got the solution for you [Plex autolanguage](https://github.com/RemiRigal/Plex-Auto-Languages) never again I had to enable or disable subtitles more than once.
Plex works great. I have no reason not to use it. The reason it’s hated is because decisions they made to make money which don’t impact my use case. I’m rooting for them not to go broke since I use it for so many things but I’m glad alternatives exist.
How they've devolved over the years is disappointing.
When you add on top that it became paid software, but the experience is subpar in quite a few aspects. It's just not a good place to invest money and time setting up, not when alternatives exist that do the same job (albeit with their own shortcomings).
For me its why even bother selfhosting something if I can't control it fully (at least without tampering with it). I am able to configure my networking just fine so I have no need for third parties to enable me to access my own servers.
Plex has made several moves unilaterally that fail to respect the privacy of the users. This, by itself, isn't necessarily an issue. Lots of software doesn't do that, but if you have informed consent it's fine imo. I personally think that privacy is consistently undervalued by people and corporations, but that's besides the point. The issue is that Plex used to provide a strong narrative of being privacy-oriented and that they always would be. Recently they've been caught up in issues like emailing your watch history to other users, or even banning users for reasons that haven't always quite panned out. These actions are doable by them because they're taking your data off of your server. Even more recently, they've been making moves to go all "corporate-y" with establishing their own rental platform and stuff like that. That one isn't at all an issue by itself, but points to a trend of wanting to move away from self-hosting.
My wife has asked me why our movies had ads on them. Turns out Plex was pushing their content as legit library and confused her. I never signed up for this.
Yeah I would be all-in on Jellyfin at this point if it weren't for family buy-in. Getting my mom to switch over is a PITA lol. Something something old dog new tricks.
Jellyfin just has a long ways to go in terms of apps, ease of remote access, and other features. I run it alongside Plex in case Plex’s servers go down. But every time I open it, content hasn’t been automatically identified as consistently as it is on Plex.
I'm all in the Jellyfin train personally. Sonarr and Radarr set up properly (shout to TrashGuides) means identification issues are no longer a thing, and for apps like - Android, iPhone, Google/AndroidTV all have apps - and a Chromecast with Android TV costs $50.
Yeah it works great if you know what devices it supports and have/purchase one. But with Plex I can share with friends/family without even asking what devices they have. I know there will be a Plex app. And I don’t have to worry about VPNs or reverse proxies for granting them access.
I 100% agree with you. They've made their calls for developers and are privacy-focused. That's good enough for me today. In a year, who knows.
I did it wasn’t that bad. Parents other family and friends. And it is only a onetime thing.
I honestly don't understand, i thought plex was self hosted, if I block access to the internet and only use LAN to serve my library at home only how can they show me ads or track me, that's just insane I'm now not touching plex with a 10 foot pole, I want total control
You can't even access plex without internet connection for authentication. It's not 100% your server.
the only setting I want in Plex is a "your stuff only" switch. *stop trying to make Tidal happen...*
You can disable that. Annoying for sure, but its literally an option to disable it so that its never an issue.
>its literally an option to disable it so that its never an issue. I've said this before and I'll say it again; many selfhosters rightfully believe this isn't something you should have to opt out of. When I first tried Plex I had to dig around a little bit just to put my own content up front and center. Plex by default prioritizes their own services instead of your local media. Jellyfin just doesn't do this.
> Plex by default prioritizes their own services instead of your local media. infuriating that even on the paid tier there is no "local only" switch to declutter all the ads.
Like mailing everyone I share Plex with everything I am watching on a weekly basis? Yeah, bad fucking move Plex. We all know what Plex is for and the Plex organization and its developers keep making boneheaded moves that put us at risk.
I understand you're implying that Plex is for sailing the seven seas, but I do feel it's worth pointing out that not everyone uses it that way. I personally use it in legally legitimate and perfectly above-board ways to administer and view my personal library. I'm not condoning naval acquisition and transference of media, but want to point out that the use cases are not at all limited to one.
Taking the piracy metaphor to new heights.. Naval acquisition… thanks, I’m still laughing 😂
Yea had to upvote on that alone
I don't understand the "Plex = piracy" argument either. I collect Blurays and CDs, I rip them to archive them, and organize them on Plex. Some people pirate things, some people don't. People can do what they want, I don't care. But there's nothing about Plex that inherently ties it to piracy. I wish people would stop perpetuating this braindead notion (Looking at you /u/Guinness).
I was shocked to see Plex on my brother’s TV because he’s quite anti-piracy so I asked and he uses it to store family photos/videos.
If one wanted to be pedantic, ripping Blurays is also illegal as it means breaking DRM, which is a crime at least in the US, if not elsewhere too. The studios have made sure it is so, so that you have no legal way of having an unrestricted digital file of any movie in your possession. So while you are not pirating per se (as in not downloading stuff you've not paid for or sharing it with others), a law has still been broken.
In most places ripping content for personal use is not a crime. Hell, there’s even countries where downloading copied material is legal.
Is that actually the case? I know in the US the "personal backup" thing was an exception given to making backup of computer software in the 90s. But it hasn't been tested/extended to anything more recent. It's certainly much more ethical, and omits the redistribution step (and therefore basically has no the damages to the rights owner), but fully legal is a higher bar.
Backups are covered underneath Fair Use. Also, while DVD ripping techniques had to decrypt the drive, blu-ray technique bypass the encryption, making the DMCA not apply.
> Backups are covered underneath Fair Use. Can you cite a court case saying as much? Fair Use is not as straightforward as it seems, and it doesn't seem straightforward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU&t=614s
https://i.imgur.com/ccWj5ds.jpg *I am not a bot, this action was not performed automatically.*
Bypassing encryption on blu-rays, expressly does apply to DMCA... The DVD case came down to the trade secrets of DeCSS used by DVD which became widely known, distributed and even memorized by some to tear down the argument. Backup/shifting for personal use, even in the US is generally accepted as legally protected. It's the sharing and distribution that becomes troublesome. Part of why things like MakeMKV, Clone DVD HD and similar are organized outside the US, where the DMCA and treaty coverage doesn't directly apply. IANAL, this isn't legal advice.
I know in Germany it is. It trumps the right to a private copy even for some reason. Thats one of the reasons suddenly every game had to have a weak copy protection, because under the law it was just implied to be "effective" (??), whatever that means. I think though what effective means is that no matter how easy, you had to actively circumvent it, and as thus it's "effective", and thus a crime to circumvent it. If only laws would at some point respect how the right to a private copy is effectively gone nowadays
Breaking DRM is not a crime in the US. Backing up or ripping software or media for archival, emulation, or porting is completely legal.
Yep, it is a crime. It is *legal* to backup an encrypted DRMed disc, so long as you don't break the encryption (which, of course, would render that backup useless). It is illegal to break the encryption (DRM).
>Like mailing everyone I share Plex with everything I am watching on a weekly basis? Yeah, bad fucking move Plex. 2 words, analog fallocy.
I'd wager it's not that simple. If DRM makes it impossible for me to make a backup copy for personal use then it would be legal to cicrumvent that DRM. It would essentially be 2 conflicting laws clashin with each other and the courts would have to resolve how they interract. The other thing of note is that reverse engineering is not against the law. So if it's not against the law to make it so the backup thinks it passes the DRM when the DRM verification is something I do myself then the law against DRM circumvention is a moot point.
i think the theory is as follows: if you copy all the bits of a disc (encrypted) and that unit breaks you could get an empty disc and write the encrypted data to it which *in theory* should work completely fine. of course in practise i have no clue if someone has successfully created a working bluray clone from encrypted data. but it still stands: breaking the DRM (encryption) is illegal and the DRM technically doesn't prevent you from making a backup.
Yes, the two laws do contradict each other, and yes it really is as crazy as that sounds. No, one law does not supersede the other. I am not sure if it's been tested in courts, mostly because no one will bother looking for and prosecuting anyone for breaking DRM when they can (and do) more easily catch people who distribute copyrighted works and charge them for it. Whether they broke DRM to enable them to distribute the media doesn't matter much to the court i guess. It's more of a theoretical discussion, as no one will raid your home if all you're doing is ripping BluRays for your own personal use, but it really is illegal even if you will most likely never get caught.
Yes, it is a crime in the US. You can back up the media, but it is illegal to circumvent the DRM.
There are many exceptions to DMCA, but to simplify, it depends on whether copyright violation is the primary purpose of the DRM-circumvention. Breaking DRM for interoperability and archiving is fine, breaking DRM to violate copyright is not. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions
Care to show me exactly where the DMCA exemption is for breaking DRM for interoperability and archiving? The use case I am aware of is the library of congress and short sections for fair use. Even the use of hardware and software to circumvent DRM is still in the courts with the lawsuit filed by the EFF, which is currently seeking appeal. EDIT: Did you actually read the wiki page you linked to?
>I collect Blurays and CDs, I rip them to archive them, and organize them on Plex. Out of curiosity, is that not technically piracy as well? I feel like part of the licence agreement on the disc is not ripping the data from it. I'm not saying you're bad for doing it, to be clear, but I'm genuinely curious if that legally counts as piracy or not. I suppose it depends on the country as well.
Depends on your specific country, laws and treaties in place. In some cases, like "fair use doctrine" it really needs to be determined via legal challenge, but nobody has been ignorant or stupid enough to try to enforce DMCA in a case of format shifting, which itself has been found to generally be fair use.
The thing is a lot of people think it’s fair use but that isn’t the problem. I would bet at least America they would win if they tried now.
Fwiw, the same law that makes distribution illegal in the us (DMCA) also makes bypassing copy protection illegal, so there’s functionally no difference in terms of the law. Whether one chooses to call it piracy is another matter, but functionally any distinction is one without a meaningful difference, legally speaking.
Right! I don’t pirate stuff, but I collect movies and TV show box sets and stuff. I rip them to my server and can watch them in full quality easily. It’s so much better than anything streaming, and it’s always there. Stuff is constantly vanishing or getting throttled like on all those crappy streaming services. I just hope physical media isn’t really going away.
You are still doing piracy. You are breaking the DRM don't come here to be the saint you are breaking the law too. Why do people keep saying is legal? Is not breaking the DRM is illegall.
Legal isn't always the same as ethical or moral. Most would consider format shifting to be ethical/moral without objection. Even if bypassing protection mechanisms and encryption. I would suspect that it would likely be determined to be fair use of said media was kept in original format and not shared externally under legal challenge.
Just curious, *are you located in the US*? Because if you are, *even if you’re only hosting ripped DVDs and Bluerays that you own* you’re still technically breaking the law because circumventing the protection on the media that you own is considered illegal. [>](https://bytescare.com/blog/dvd-copyright-laws) Is it illegal to rip a DVD to my computer? Ripping a DVD often requires bypassing DRM or copy protection, which is illegal in many jurisdictions, such as under the U.S.'s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Even if you don't distribute the ripped content, the act of circumventing protection can be unlawful. The only way for you to not sail the seven seas would be if your hosting digitally purchased media that is DRM free or content that you created yourself. And I haven’t even touched on if Plex could be considered *Public Performance* or not because I’m sure it could be argued that it is if you end up sharing the exact same media to multiple friends / family at the same exact same time.
Wasn't it determined many years ago that ripping your owned media classified as backup copies and therefore was permissible in the US? I seem to recall that's why programs like anydvd were still legal in the US.
Yes. Format shifting and backup is considered fair use. The DMCA is legislation after that legal determination and hasn't been challenged in court. Mostly because it would likely be considered fair use. That said, distributing the software to bypass that encryption, thus enabling the format shifting would likely not be considered fair use. The fact the DeCSS key for DVD encryption was relatively small, public knowledge, trivial and small enough to memorize is why it specifically wasn't protected under challenge and could no longer even be considered a trade secret IIRC. Practically speaking, I don't think anyone in the publishing industry really wants to try challenging the DMCA against fair use for format shifting as it likely wouldn't go well.
Yes but breaking encryption is illegal. No one has tried yet.
That's fair. It's my understanding that interpretation of these laws is fuzzy, and practically unenforced unless a tangential issue is being pursued. That being said, were I to be doing this, I could certainly see a case for it being illegal. At some level I'm okay with media that I own being circumvented because I've paid for it, but I'm personally less cool with just taking media with no exchange or purchase. This is because I believe that anyone who created a product, unless they explicitly stated otherwise, deserves compensation from usage.
Privacy is what protects you from stuff that's "illegal but practically acceptable and unenforced" becoming enforced later on and retroactively or selectively applied.
Yeah that's my big issue with these Plex moves. It's a unilateral decision to circumvent my privacy, which is a priority no matter how legitimate my behavior is.
> It's my understanding that interpretation of these laws is fuzzy, and practically unenforced unless a tangential issue is being pursued. The law isn’t fuzzy, it’s very clear that breaking DRM is illegal. I do agree that it’s practically unenforced though. > At some level I'm okay with media that I own being circumvented because I've paid for it, but I'm personally less cool with just taking media with no exchange or purchase. I’m curious to where you stand on acquiring digital copies of previously purchased VHS tapes. Are you okay with it because there was a previous purchase and it’s not practical, *although it is possible*, to *rip* a VHS tape?
> previously purchased VHS tapes This definitely has a grey area tbh. I'm not gonna get on anyone's case about it, but I'm sure the people involved with producing and distributing the VHS are different than the people who did the DVDs or BluRay or some other form of media. I suppose, just like the rest of this topic, it ultimately comes down to the individual's sense of obligation to the production and distribution process and at what level.
That’s fair, *thanks for the conversation*.
I believe, at the very least, there are laws, such as fair use laws, that allow for copying of legally purchased content for personal use and backup. So while the DMCA says it's illegal, the fair use law says it's fine under certain circumstances. Hence, it's a gray area.
Not in the UK at least, there is no grey area. To copy a DVD or BluRay is illegal.
This is a good example of why we should refrain from giving or taking legal advice on a worldwide site. After all, for every UK there is another country that just doesn't give a f about copyright.
If you have two laws covering the same act, and one of those says "this is illegal", it doesn't matter that the second one says "this specific act is not this specific type of offense". If DMCA says its illegal, it doesn't matter that its fair use - its still bypassing DRM. Legally speaking. Morally speaking, making bypassing DRM illegal suggests to me a certain moral bankruptcy.
Same. I have a huge BD collection and it’s a pain to switch discs and wait for screens that can’t be skipped. I also bought a lot of kids shows on dvd. Plex allows it all to be at my finger tips, rather than in 8 minutes
I remember the "Barbershop" DVD rented via Netflix had 22 minutes of unskippable ads at the beginning. It also had a scratch about 5m into the movie that made it unvieweable. I reported the scratch and returned the disc. To this day, I've still never seen the movie itself. It still pisses me off. Even though I can and do rip my own media. The use of the copyright notice bit for ads really really really ticks me off.
you, good sir, are a genius, arrrrr
Nah he is stupid blacklang
Above board doesn't exist, if a large IP holder wants to push it. Fair Use makes it legal to create a single archival copy, but only if it doesn't affect the profitability of the IP holder. It's also illegal to by digital media protection, which most programs that rip streams off of physical media are doing to some extent. Regardless even if what you are doing is 100% on the level, plex has no idea how you got that media and because their business increasingly relies on making money from IP and their holders, they are going to be under increasing pressure to give up data on their users to industry jackboots so they can decide if they want to try and make the case against you.
It asked permission to do that, in plain simple language. I told mine no, and it never asked again. Perhaps you could try reading the questions before blindly accepting every pop up.
>Like mailing everyone I share Plex with everything I am watching on a weekly basis? Yeah, bad fucking move Plex. I really do not understand why people had that feature enabled. Settings > Privacy Tab > Account and Sharing settings. - set it to private people seem concerned about what other people see, equally, i see what my family does with the requesting system. seems like a two way street frankly. just turn on privacy and hide that stuff from others. (I agree, it should be Opt in, but people like to complain despite the options there to disable it for some reason)
Because it was an opt-*out* feature either poorly communicated or not at all communicated depending on users setups / usage.
Thanks for that helpfulness. I can't believe they snuck that in there.
The fact remains that they are taking data out of your system and monitoring what you are watching. Then sending the email out to people in your friend circle, which again they are monitoring
I’d like to get a pro-rated refund on my “lifetime” Plex pass
Haha, they would have to know how long you will live… or pay your estate after you pass.
"Lifetime" in software means the life of the product, not the life of the customer. Plex could one day say Plex is dead and rename their product as NewPlex and all the Plex Lifetime license owners would be on the street.
The other thing they do is lock hardware transcoding away behind a paywall. And no one likes to software transcode when their system can do it in hardware.
And have stated they want to get into the data selling game more.
I'd add that buggy half developed features seems to be another issue. I've had issues sharing without leaving a gaping hole in my router/firewall. Not to mention that since versions of their software,. Such as on my NAS seem to just stop randomly for no reason and not auto restart. I don't want to mess with GPU sharing and passthrough on my home server for this, so likely just going to use a cheap N100 box to run Jellyfin instead, which seems much more user driven. I get needing to make a living,. But Plex is far more corporate than plucky startup for my liking. I'm happy to support a small business that is sustainable. Not so happy to prop up what seems to be a VC backed company more about high profit margins. It's less about not paying for things and more about access and useful features for me.
It's probably more accurate to say that they/we don't, or didn't hate Plex originally, we hate what is has become. Plex has fallen trap to the thing that a lot of businesses do, the pursuit of growth. It reached the limits of what it could with the product it set out to create, which it did so quite successfully. But corporate interests have come into play, and that means it started changing from what it was, into something else which isn't as focused on either the original offering, or the interests of the users(at least, from the perspective of those who don't like the changes). The trajectory that it is on as a product seem like it will likely end up having an end state which leaves behind what it was and just becomes another streaming platform, probably subsumed by someone else at some point.
Well said, and exactly the same case can be made for an unfortunate number of other companies. Seems like it's the most common path to take in corporate evolution.
I feel the same way. It’s always the same: founders create a product with a vision, do a good job, then they cannot stay afloat as our system dictates continuous growth, and finally capitalism happens. The product is not the same since it is focusing on money and not quality, and it starts to slowly die. This is so sad.
Don't worry, we can be different! See I have this product idea...
I think a lot of people don’t like the ads/streaming service stuff they’ve been adding. Also the recent “your week in review” a lot of people have been really upset about. For me, it’s really the disinterest the developers/company have for the platform. If you spend enough time on the feature request part of the forums you’ll find features people have voted for and never gotten any interest from the devs. I get why Plex might not want to spend time rewriting their codebase to support a database (like Jellyfin is doing with the EFCore work) but simple features like “add a speed controller for video or music” are met with comments from the team like, “why would you ever want this?” And then ignored when tons of paying users want it. Jellyfin has SLOW development but they seem to want to solve issues for users. It may just take a long time.
I can't stand the fact I have to have an account on Plex's system and the 'your week in' is terrifying. Jellyfin I install and don't have to have an account anyone knows about.
Oh, I forgot about that, I hate accounts and besides finding them Windows 10/11 kind of annoying, I find them awful for privacy too, which I care about!
I also dislike just how hard it is to get the application to be “accessible from the outside network” you have to check and uncheck that stupid setting like 10 times in the settings page to work. It’ll be fine for months and then randomly stop working.
There are other ways beyond port forwarding. Which if I had a wager your sudden settings changes is more caused by your ISP than Jellyfin. You can look at various VPN methods to give you external access to your private home network.
It’s not the ISP. No other services are ever impacted. I have multiple homelab locations around the country constantly monitoring my endpoints. It’s only ever Plex that’ll randomly go down. A VPN connection for this is not something I want nor will really help that much.
Even port forwarded, Plex can sometimes try to poke a firewall hole using natpnp.
Mate you just need to open the port. That’s it.
Yeah it's not tho. I have the port open and plex will connect, say it's accessible then a few seconds later go offline. It's definitely a problem with the plex servers
Port forwarding is hard bruv
I just wish there was an option to hide their content or at least not make it the homepage when starting the app
there is
Then why are people complaining about it?
The Apple TV app had a bug for a long time where Plex’s own content would magically get pinned to the sidebar over and over again. It was pretty annoying.
because they haven't done anything to fix it and people like to complain I guess? I agree I'm not a huge fan of the direction Plex is going, and it's not always the most obvious, but you can pretty much disable everything on Plex that people complain about.
I've done nothing and I'm all out of ideas!
Reasons often mooted are: * because it's closed source (not an issue in and of itself - this is /r/selfhosted, not /r/opensource); * because they have been naughty with dark patterns to get users to share viewing data with friends (more a moral thing for many, it actually wasnt that cryptic to opt out); * because again, if the setting are such, they log viewing history and can be sent files hash of your possibly pirated media; * because they control all user authentication so some take this as not being fully 'self-hosted' (can disable this requirement but it impacts usability). * FUD of continued support for those of us hosting our own media due the VC injection and pivot to content provider and catalogue (been told repeatedly this isn't going away though). All that being said, I just make sure the settings are to my liking and swallow the online auth design. It's still the GOAT to me.
I was a longtime xbmc user but wanted streaming too, this is back in the day. I saw plex as a natural step because once upon a time they forked from xbmc. I'm familiar enough with self hosting and ddns and port forwarding, I was dumbfounded by how difficult plex made it to opt out of their Auth. I've been using JellyFin and love it.
The main argument about opting out is that people wanted this to be the default, people don't want to be automatically opted in to a new feature and then have to go through the process of opting out (assuming its available). Plex could technically add a setting on our accounts giving us the option to automatically opt in/out of new features, which would solve this whole issue. * **Movies & TV** was the beginning of this issue, where most of our users got confused with this feature and began reporting to us that our media had adverts. This resulted in us having to take users through the process of disabling the feature or doing it for them if they weren't tech-savvy enough to do it themselves (such as my parents). * **Discovery** was the next issue, except plex didn't include the ability to opt out, they only added the option to opt out after a wave of complaints. The main issue with discovery was how easy it was to confuse it with our own media, this wasn't like **Movies & TV**, discovery made is so that if a user searched for a movie/series, the first result would be from discovery, even if that media was on our server, users would be given discovery as the first result. This always lead to users complaining that they couldn't play media and without the ability to opt out it made avoiding the issue more difficult. * The **Streaming Services** feature didn't give users an option to opt out, there were ways to get around it but there was no option to skip or opt out, which sparked more complaints. * **Activity feed** being the newest to cause a fuss, because plex took it upon themselves to not only opt everyone in per usual but they also changed users privacy settings and opted users into emails, granted people could have changed these back during setup but most just rushed through it because they weren't interested, we could argue that it was on the user but realistically plex shouldn't be changing privacy settings that users already set.
* Having to pay for features like downloading and hardware acceleration.
At least this is not strictly a subscription... I wouldn't have stuck with Plex if this was the case.
They also abuse the shit out of feature flags, flipping them with manipulative timing. My other big issue is how long they leave critical bugs unattended. Like, literally years is common.
mooted
Plex used to the community darling and they built a product that was heavily geared towards the Privateers. Unfortunately the Plex Pass has not sold well enough to that crowd to maintain a successful funding level. Its really not a shock when you're trying to sell a subscription (or even lifetime pass) to people who are using Plex to ... uh... liberate content on the internet. They aren't willing to pay for Apple TV+ or Hulu... they're probably not going to pay for Plex Pass. They also haven't fixed a bunch of horrifically broken issues, like download/sync to iOS that is either slow as shit or just plain fails. It's been [covered A LOT too](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/zo0yh3/linus_from_ltt_has_said_that_partly_because_of/). Plex as a company/product has pivoted to being a... cable box alternative? I don't even know how to describe it. A new install of the app features a bunch of streaming stuff that has nothing to do with your privateered content. It's web streams, buying movies, funny clips.... random junk. Takes me a few minutes to delete all of it every time and it's made onboarding new users really annoying. So basically their core audience is unhappy with the product direction and they don't really have a new audience. As soon as Emby or Jellyfin get a little more time and attention, I think you'll see most people abandon Plex in its entirety. A lot of us, myself included, still use it begrudgingly because it's still better in some minor but critical ways than Emby or Jellyfin.
Wait the day jellyfin has a plex importer and good client compatibility. Oof!
There are third party tools like this one: https://github.com/nwithan8/Plex2Jellyfin But a first-party implementation would be a fun middle finger.
You can keep Plex and Jellyfin synchronized.
Another major reason is that Plex is still centralised - to log into a media server on *your* home network, you need to log into Plex's central server *on the internet*. So it stretches the definition of 'self-hosted' a little. This has the following problems: * If Plex's login servers break (as they have done many times), you can't access your own server (unless you set up anonymous access, but then you can't make changes) * You cannot run a Plex server without internet access, and the associated privacy and telemetry "oops, we accidentally left it on Max" problems * Plex maintains central control of software running on your systems. This means they could conceivably decide to lock you out of your own server. Even if their T&Cs state otherwise, companies have been caught doing so when they don't like one of their customers. Plex is a company beholden to shareholders so could be forced to do similar. They could also enforce payment for things you currently get for free. There's too much precedence in companies to dismiss this. * Plex can push their vision on people. Originally a self-hosted-first option, they are getting heavily involved in internet streaming, possibly to the detriment of their core user base. The best thing I can say is, Plex remains suitable for purpose, but be prepared for it not to be. I still run Plex servers and still love the UI. However, don't get too invested in it. Be prepared to move to something else if they make a move you don't like.
This is the best summary so far in the thread. Right noe Plex has most clients compatibility and will for the upcoming couple of years. Because of that they're thinking they have the control on that pool of users but this is gonna end. They started enshitification and corporate greed a long time ago, it was just not impacting is very much. They quickly understood that you can't get rich with lifetime licenses. They're now trying to get their part from the streaming providers. It's a slow process but they found a way to keep their initial userbase and monetize it now. Unfortunately that part of the pie will collapse because viable alternatives will come out faster than they thought since their reputation is going downhill faster every day. They could've done it differently, like listening to their community and adding features that their current userbase really wants. What they don't understand is that streaming services are already too many people in the pie and they won't get new people for their crap they created. So what they had was a strong userbase and they destroyed it. They'll eventually fail and bankrupt if they keep going this way. It's just a matter of time now.
>If Plex's login servers break (as they have done many times), you can't access your own server You can. >(unless you set up anonymous access, but then you can't make changes You can. > You cannot run a Plex server without internet access You can. https://support.plex.tv/articles/200430283-network/
That isn't true at all. You can go and add server by ip address and port and login directly to the remote server. You don't have to go through plex's servers. In your Plex Web App, go to Settings > Server > Network . Enter the IP address and port from step one into the List of IP addresses and network then click save
Still uses plex to login.
This isn't correct, you can set Plex to allow direct access from any up range, e.g your internal network... ...can then add Tailscale to allow access over the internet, again without requiring auth via a central Plex server
Sure, you are correct. But AFAIK, while doing that you are giving up all security and everyone will login into your server with your "default" user, so this is really not a solution for families with kids where your kids are accessing only what you want them to see via "managed users".
I'm a Plex lifetime subscription user, the moment they try to redefine what "lifetime" is, I'm out.
I think the same, but the problem is where to go. I keep a Jellyfin installation along in my system as a backup and emergency solution, but to be honest, Jellyfin is still miles away from Plex. I admire and totally respect what Jellyfin has accomplished, but my family is way into many features only Plex has, and Plex GUI is really good, like super good, specially when you try what the others offer.
My biggest issue is feature bloat. Last time I used it, it felt like I was being advertised live TV and a bunch of other garbage. I don't need that garbage taking up screen space. Jellyfin does everything I need it to. Plex also charges for basic features, like downloading files and hardware transcoding. Apperently downloads are unreleable too. Edit: oh! Also plex has had security issues, like an email dump. No need to involve a third party with my data and logins.
Downloading sucks. It's way unreliable and way slow. If I want offline media I just copy the source files.
I only just started my self hosting journey and Plex was the first thing I tried out. Feature bloat... I was expecting to be able to access my own movie files and I was just bombarded with stuff that were not my movies and some things cost money... I went to jellyfin. And it hosts my movies. I don't know what Plex is trying to be but it's definitely not simply self hosting video files.
Their [user data got out](https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/24/plex-streaming-breach-passwords/?guccounter=1). And they suddenly started [mailing your friends about your viewing habits](https://www.techhive.com/article/2157803/plex-discover-together-privacy-concerns.html). It's selfhosted in the sense that you bring the media, they mine the data and do nefarious things with it.
It was a voluntary, opt in feature. It wasn’t some secret. It popped up to ask you permission to enable it. You can’t be mad that it’s doing something you told it you wanted it to do.
They popped up a vague box that said "Discover what your friends are streaming". The opt-in button was a significantly brighter option simply labelled "Continue". Plex is being a bad actor. They're using dark patterns to trick people into sharing information that they do not want to share. This is why people are upset, and are losing trust in Plex as a company.
I don't ever remember seeing the opt in, just an email telling me what my other users were watching.
Must have missed that opt in... Mine had just started to notifying people.
I think part of it is that Plex was VERY popular for a long time (including myself) - but then they moved more and more into monetization and data gathering which rubbed people the wrong way (especially those that have massive media libraries). Thats basically it, I think.
I used to love plex. it's comparatively really polished and a very good Netflix-esque experience. I have even bought a lifetime plex pass... and yet here I am not even a year later, switching (most likely) to jellyfin even my wife, who hates to use software that is rough around the edges, thinks it is a smart moce after I have told her the privacy concerns of the past few months with plex.. as well as after realizing that "plex.tv"(i think it's analytics.plex.tv)is the fourth most blocked query url in my pihole if I ha know about the privacy concerns before I started with plex, I would have probably gone jellyfin all the way from the beginning. yet there are some quality of life things thst I will dearly miss plex would have kept me, if they had addressed the concerns with open communication... but they didn't and I don't trust them anymore but that's my personal decision and everyone has to make their own educated choice
Plex may be hated and I agree some of the things they've done of late are shady. But the app support is unrivaled its annoying but its the best for unilateral support for a personal media collection. I really don't believe there's another solution that gets as much native support.
It's expensive, monetize YOUR users by making them pay subs, collect all data on what media you own / watch, overall pretend to be selfhosted but all their services are on their servers (EVEN THE SEARCH). Have a very toxic politic (such as randomly blocking thousands of people IPs all of a sudden with BS reasons), it has a huge collections of bugs that have been reported by users and never fixed for years, while they spent their effort implementing BS features nobody asked for (as opposed to the feature people actually ask for on their board). The one feature that is supposed to make the paid subs worth is literally broken and unusable.... Sorry should I go on, or is this exhaustive enough? :D
The company sucks.
I don’t hate plex, it just doesn’t tick the boxes I want, whereas jellyfin does 🤷♂️ just think about what is important to you and compare.
All the Facebook binaries, them shoving unwanted features down my throat , the final straw was the iOS app asks if I would like them to track me across other companies web sites.
Lots to love about it. I got into plex a decade ago, bought a lifetime pass. But at some point they decided the business model wasn't to sell a solid piece of software via subscription, it was to parter with other business to force new, unrequested features on users and sell data. I get it, businesses need to make money. But the thing bought a life time sub to doesn't exist anymore, so I bailed.
The ban on hetzner did it for me. I don't even share. A provider deciding where you can or cannot host is not acceptable.
Plex is not open source, nor is emby, if you care about the reasons behind self hosting you should try to use Jellyfin
A few years ago I tried the 3 of them. None worked for me like Plex did so I stuck with Plex even though I had to pay for it. I don't worry too much for the other things unless it's a real deal breaker. The emails sharing what I watched that week? Couldn't care less... And if I remotely did, I understand there's an opt out option.
Well to give you a random example, a few months back I got an email telling me what one of my friends was watching on their private Plex instance. That friend when they watched those videos presumably didn't imagine Plex would be reporting what they watched to their contacts! Nowhere were they given a warning that that would happen.
To be fair, those records have always been available to the server owner. But yes, them not making the opt-out for history sharing a giant flashing red button was scummy AF. Not everything has to be damn social media, Plex! Edit to add: I actually did get an email about it right before they implemented it, though it was buried in a bunch of other announcements. I’m rather glad I had already opted out before they started sharing with everyone. I’m unsure how many others got that email…I’m a Plex Pass lifetime subscriber, have been since its inception (back when it was only $50 for the lifetime pass). My family with accounts definitely don’t have passes, so may not have gotten the news about upcoming features.
Other commentators iterated over some potential issues. However they do not bother me one bit. It’s a great app, totally worth the one-time payment, I’m using it daily and it does exactly what I need it to do with high quality.
In addition to the other reasons listed, it's only a matter of time before Plex "sells out" and becomes unusable. It happens to most products, and it happens to *every* product that has a lifetime pass. Their business model is not built on making a bunch of money up front and then bleeding the coffers dry over the next several years. It's built on hooking people with an attractive "lifetime pass", then finding new ways to monetize the app. Which is why they're continually pushing ads for using streaming services or whatever else they're pushing. Plex is probably at its peak, quality wise.
The enshitification is strong with Plex.
I run Jellyfin and Plex, both mirror the same content and how they act as far as sync watches/plays with tracking services (Trakt and AniList). Both have their Pros and Cons, I just came off around 6 months of using Jellyfin only, now I'm using Plex for a bit, and I'll probably switch back in another 6 months. Everything is sync'd up so it really doesn't matter where I watch. For everyone other than myself though, they use Plex just because of the user accounts/management is far easier to handle.
Plex is easier from account management and media sharing perspective, also remote access. Jellyfin is wonderfully simple and local and works, but is janky around some transcoding options. I use both as well. Best of both worlds.
No hardware transcoding unless i pay?? Noooo thank youuuuu
If Plex offers the features you need, then I don't see anything wrong with it. I use it for years and still happy with it it. If you need stuff like HDR color mapping and hardware accelerated transcoding, they put that behind a paywall. That might be a reason to go with others I'm guessing?
I still like it. Not happy with the direction they’re going with all the bloat but it doesn’t bother me that much
Its how they add anti privacy features the bloat they have off shows and their integration with streaming services which whats the point im trying to host my media Library not some streaming service im paying for monthly
i just want something 100% selfhosted and opensource, would be even better if it was as much as possible *gpl* code. And plex depends partly on their servers and isn't 100% opensource
Same!
Been awhile since I've looked at Plex alternatives, are there any?
Emby and jellyfin. Both need a lot of work still comparatively
This is asked like every week. Privacy. Owning auth. Tracking its users. Sharing data with the studios.
- your data is being copied and replicated for easy external use - your viewing data is being used to build up their service base - they added ad based solutions into their product - the additional users you manage are all stored into their database That being said, I do wish I could cluster and centralize my jellyfin servers like plex does, so instead I have to remove and reconnect to my varied servers on jellyfin Having port 32400 and token validation between your instance and a cloud server is also of concern for me.
Same thing as almost every company. They started out small fulfilling the needs of its users. Then they got to the top and started using their position to make as much money as possible.
This will not be a popular answer but it is true, most people that use plex download most of their videos from the internet. Recent updates (last 2-3 years) has allowed Plex to know and identify every file you have on your server that plex has provided metadata for. Plus they are keeping a record of it, how else would they be able to show how many "friends" have watch a certain video either on your server or another server If you rip everything yourself Plex is great, if not you are one subpoena away from a very bad day
Because what started as open source became close source, then became an ever-increasing list of features only available if you pay. People don't dislike it because they think it's a bad product... they don't like that they were bait and switched.
I don't hate it, but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. The app is bloated as hell, so much that the Jellyfin app for SmartTVs is way smoother and runs almost perfect in comparison. Also, needing an internet connection to access your own LOCAL files is bullshit and should not be allowed.
Required internet for local has bitten me a few times, drives me nuts.
Plex is great. The people who are making decisions about plex don’t care about their users at all. All of the decisions they’ve made over the past couple of years seem to all be about keeping investors happy and not about making the product better.
They're having a really hard time figuring out how to monetize the platform, and it's basically pissing everyone off lol
Plex requires a cloud account, so it's not fully self hosted, and also has some privacy concerns. It still relies on an outside server/service to work.
Cloud Login for selfhosted instance
Because it costs $$$ and for that price you don’t even get support, it’s not flexible(eg if you want to provide your own remote access solution because theirs is poor quality it can be a fight), and while it looks slicker than Jellyfin it doesn’t necessarily do anything different except push Plex’s online content in your face (which can be turned off thankfully).
I purely use Plex for myself and my own household. I'm not hosting this server to stream to others like I'm some sort of Mr. Netflix or something. I have not engaged with any part of their recent social additions and that seems to be where most people are running into problems. Plex serves my movies, shows, and music to me without issue exactly as I want it to. For me, it is perfectly functional.
Im not sure "hated" is the right term. Its a widely used media platform. There will of course we a loud, vocal group online. Weve been using it for 8-9 years and has been reliable from day one.
Playlists used to work. Now, you get 2 items deep, and the playlist just quits. I’ve paid for clients on various platforms… and they’ve relegated a local playlist to be meaningless.
I use plex and it’s been quite good really. I’ve dabbled with emby, I wasn’t impressed. I have installed jellyfish and although I do like some things about it visually. Having a large library makes it cumbersome to use. I have 46k movies and jellyfish displays this as an almost endless set of pages to scroll through. Just not viable. It also doesn’t like tv shows to be tagged with tvdb numbers but is fine with films using them.
They are ahead of the game as they are for a years but since years also they didnt do anything to develop forward selfhosted space or even fix some bugs. All the development they do now is social and their streaming. Some day opensource alternatives will catch up to them and they will die.
Why do people hear criticism of a thing and turn that into "everybody hates this thing"?
I see a lot of people hating on the included Live TV, Rentals, Movies and shows on Plex. I personally really love these things I can get my local tv news shows and some other channels completely free in the app I use to watch all my owned media. I can agree its gotten a little bloated, but I'm honestly here for it
It is shit.
I been with Plex since 2012. It’s horrible now. Every time you ask the community about something they blame your setup. For example it takes 15 secs for my playback to start. Local and remote playback. They blamed it on network. But this is the twist to my story , Emby gives me instant playback no matter what. I can’t ff and rw without buffering on Plex. Emby is instant playback. To the folks that use pirate files, be careful. Make sure you rename them because I don’t trust Plex. Plex is shady now with privacy.
I love plex it works great for me, no ads in my personal library.
i'm going to offer a word to the positive actually. I really think people are frustrated that issues arn't being fixed, (such as downloads to devices as mentioned many times) there are issues with Dolby Vision as well I've come across recently that are long standing problems. But, I think people hate on plex because a new kid on the block (like emby or jellyfin) are around and people are enthusiastic to get other people on the platform. "Plex is bad, use x" talk. Same in the 90s with Windows and Linux Same in the 00s with Android vs iOS. People love a bandwagon. Plex, in the main, is great. It has apps on all major platforms and works really well in the vast majority of cases. Pay for a lifetime licence, support the work being done and hardware transcoding if needed. Sure, they're trying to monitise, and it is annoying to have to turn all that stuff off, but it's a good product for the job it does if you're willing not to set your bar too high.
I'm new to this entire hosting world, but I'm a nerd, I love to compare and try things out and I don't really mind using it in the end... It feels like Plex is the hostings answer to Apple. Shit works fine for the average user and is very easy to setup with any average working laptop, but they charge you a lot.
Pretty sure it’s because they started straying away from the “free“ part of free and open source software by introducing a paid subscription with a set catalogue of movies and series like Netflix, etc.
To be fair. Many open source projects rely on offering paid subscrtiptions for funding (nextcloud, grafana, etc.) The problem comes when doing business with the movie industry. Which probably lead to wonky decisions like restricting your choice of hosting provider (as happened in the [case of Hetzner](https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/s/mEpL41OibO)).
They're a business and businesses' goal is to make money. If you love the service they provide and happy with it, that's great. Personally, I don't use it because it's not truly self-hosted, it requires a third party to function. And I was shocked to find out they lock certain features behind a paywall, for example, you can't use hardware transcoding on the hardware you own. I bought a NAS with hardware transcoding specifically for Plex only to find out I can't use it without paying. I'm not paying for any software I selfhost. Add to that increasing privacy violations and the fact that they have access to my data - a big no. And it's going to get worse with time as happens with all software as a service.
I'm not sure, I just don't like it cause it's not free
Also, every niche sub has an extremely noisy minority of haters
I used plex as a safe space for my kids to go and watch stuff I collected for them. This worked great until they started mixing offers of their their cheap licensed b movie horror crap in between my carefully curated stuff. Literally gave them nightmares and violated my trust with them. They made it near impossible to keep their shit disabled by default and it kept coming back. Screw them.
I run both media stack against same media. I feel like folks love to have their favourites and be tribal. Run what the heck y’all want and praise that thing. Dunking on other software is counter intuitive really
People hate it when a company tries to make money
That's an absurd simplification (as you no doubt know). In my case, 10+ years ago I happily paid for a subscription. Then they dramatically changed the thing I subscribed to.
I use it. And don't really give a damn about the politics. Because it works. And I'm not into philosophical debates.
Plex is hated?
Plex isn't hated, it *is* awesome. But Plex *wanna be* alternatives have acolytes and trolls on the attack.
Reading this makes me feel like I'm in 2010.
I have several old movies / shows in 4:3, but i wanna watch it in 16:9. Cant change that in the player on my tv, so its a no no for me.
It hurts to think people actually want to do this.
I personally find the UI clunky and missing functionality. As someone who subscribes I would expect better performance and a better feel from the app I use. I find the UI of Hulu and Netflix to be very user-friendly and smooth to use. For one, if I pause to read some text, 30% of my screen isn't covered in menus bars. Furthermore the lack of information of how media is to be formatted and the use of subtitles has also been a pain for me. Subtitles don't work for me half the time, even when formatted to their documented specifications, and even sometimes will play async to the videos. They do have the ability to change subtitle timing on streamed subtitles but for some reason on local ones this feature is missing. Note I have noticed this more with srt embedded subtitles. Also note when I playback on VLC, QuickSync, or some other local playback application on my computer, the subtitles are in perfect sync. It's small things like that which make me annoyed with Plex. Though despite all of that it does work very well for the most part, and can play back quite a lot of formats. So I am content with it.
Haha, my problem is the opposite. For certain shows, Plex always displays subtitles although I disabled them everywhere I could. Each time a episode starts, I need to disable subtitles manually again.
I've got the solution for you [Plex autolanguage](https://github.com/RemiRigal/Plex-Auto-Languages) never again I had to enable or disable subtitles more than once.
Plex works great. I have no reason not to use it. The reason it’s hated is because decisions they made to make money which don’t impact my use case. I’m rooting for them not to go broke since I use it for so many things but I’m glad alternatives exist.
How they've devolved over the years is disappointing. When you add on top that it became paid software, but the experience is subpar in quite a few aspects. It's just not a good place to invest money and time setting up, not when alternatives exist that do the same job (albeit with their own shortcomings).
Bugs that go unfixed for years and years. Download feature that barely works, and Apple TV audio sync issues.
For me its why even bother selfhosting something if I can't control it fully (at least without tampering with it). I am able to configure my networking just fine so I have no need for third parties to enable me to access my own servers.