I got so fed up with Plex constantly shoving their streaming service and nagging me to log into Plex servers when <i>I just want to stream my own files locally</i> that I threw my hands up and installed Jellyfin[0]. It's severely lacking in the same polish and functionality as Plex, but I'm pleased that I can run Jellyfin without ads or having to create a non-local account.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin</a>
I hope plex devs read this thread and get the clue that their system is totally ripe to be replaced with something else, I've used plex for many years and the technical quality of the server has just declined. people who use plex, who are therefore the types of people with an appetite to "run their own server", have <i>absolutely no interest</i> in having to sign up on a website, or get ads, see anything "streaming" (insane! the streaming market has tons of huge players, plex...) or any other kind of crap, all of which has been added to plex over the years, while meanwhile the server uses tons more disk space and memory than it used to and still fails to classify some very simple content quite often.<p>I havent bothered to look at alternatives in a long time and it seems there are more now than there used to be. will be looking when i next have time.
I am just gonna live this here<p>- <a href="https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin</a><p>- <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin</a>
I predict a "Streaming Day of Reckoning" happening one day, where a critical mass of users suddenly loses access to a critical mass of content, because they became utterly dependent on streaming instead of physical media or local media storage. We occasionally read news of a handful of users losing access to a handful of content, and just shrug saying "Oh, well, streaming isn't perfect and this is growing pains." Maybe a user loses access to all their purchased Amazon movies because they got banned from the platform. "So sad," we say, as we continue to depend on streaming more and more. A niche streaming platform goes out of business and its small user base loses access to content. "Oh, well, there's still Netflix and Hulu," we say, as we keep switching to these platforms.<p>One day, a big one is going to go dark, and millions of people will suddenly lose access to the hundreds of movies they got used to accessing, and <i>maybe</i> we'll start waking up and looking for better alternative business models than streaming the same bytes over and over from centralized services.
Looks like Plex Pass (paid [1]) features are all aimed towards people running their own media center and Plex is targeting casual users with free features that the core audience of Plex doesn't care about or use. I understand that the market of people running their own media server is pretty limited but if growth means totally alienating your core (paying) audience then maybe the approach is wrong.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.plex.tv/plex-pass" rel="nofollow">https://www.plex.tv/plex-pass</a>
I am annoyed that somehow Plex got this to work but Apple TV app does not with Netflix.<p>Also annoyed that Plex does not integrate with Apple TV App itself.<p>I wish I could make the TV app my goto. It's great for the things that support it, but sucks that not everything does. I wish apple would be "brave" and force any apps to integrate with it.<p>I keep looking for a good alternative (especially given the online requirement), but it seems like Plex is the only one with a decent Apple TV app. I have jellyfin running but the app situation is less than ideal.<p>If anyone has any recommendations with good Apple TV support?
I do wish Plex would focus more on technical aspects of their ecosystem than features at this point.<p>I run a server for family, and use the Nvidia Shield as the client for pretty much any "nice" TV or sound system. This worked great for a couple years until a software regression made all 4k content have a 70% chance of locking up the Shield - which exists to this day.<p>There are other small annoying bugs like that that don't make much sense, things like transcoding being weirdly laggy (minutes) on a quite idle machine that I never fully tracked down.<p>I suppose writing this I am on the "bleeding edge" in that I expect to have "gold" 4k remux copies on-server, and then transcode down to whichever device is playing it.<p>The Plex Kodi plugin is a workaround for the above mentioned 4k "original quality" playback bug, but that is not a great option for most end-users.
Channels-DVR blows Plex out to of the water for live content, including live streamed content from services like YouTube-TV. Will have to see if Plex can aggregate the rest now!
Surprised on HN that nobody complained yet that Plex's media server is python2 for life with no intention of going to python3 codebase. Source: <a href="https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-will-plex-media-server-shift-to-python-3/600689" rel="nofollow">https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-will-plex-media-server-shift-t...</a>
I manage a Plex instance for my whole family (old). Plex keeps adding "online" features like this and each and every time I get evening messages confused with the changes. I'll be getting a couple tonight it looks :)
Slightly off-topic, but I have been interested in setting up Plex (or similar) in my homeserver but never figured out a good workflow or source to add movies/shows to it? Are people generally just torrenting, or are there DRM-free stores that I do not know exist? Or if there is an efficient workflow for ripping blurays?
The latest Chromecast w/remote has this kind of functionality, and it's a real gamechanger. Kind of funny how we're right back where we were, price wise, but at least now you do the bundling yourself and can dial in what you are paying for.
Is plex like stremio? Stremio has torrent plugins which make it function like popcorn time. Absolutely and totally illegal if you use it with a VPN or not! That's why I avoid it.<p>Just wondering if plex has anything similar so I know to avoid that too.<p>Also if anyone knows of any other things that could be similar to stremio that I can avoid please let me know. Thanks.
I, for one, still enjoy the plex server and plex app. The new version on nvidia shield fixed 4k performance issues, and plex.tv being an IdP for friends to login to my server is cool.<p>I don't think logging in locally with a cloud account should be required, but IIRC it isn't strictly required... just a dark pattern.
I use Plex for my whole family, storing all our content on a cloud provider. I don’t mind at all the internet connectivity/login requirements. I enjoy the “channels” Plex adds, if only to add a little background noise so I feel less lonesome when home alone.<p>If the internet goes down, we’ll read a book or play a game.
> On average, viewers in the US alone spend over 600 million minutes every single night trying to figure out what to watch<p>Fake news. I spent barely 300 million minutes every night trying to figure out what to watch. And my friends are usually down under 200 million.
this broke plex for at least the non US users that is me on my shield.<p>it insisted on throwing up the configuration screen for selecting the streaming services that I am subscribed to. However, since I'm not in the US and they didn't test where I am (unsure how many places they did test) it failed and crashed the app on startup.<p>A redditor found the solution that you needed a vpn into the us to get past the initial configuration. One still can't reconfigure the streaming services, but that doesn't matter as at least it doesn't crash once one gets past the initial configuration.<p>I wonder how much plex devs get paid, because my job wouldn't be happy if I broke peoples usages like they regularly do.
I would LOVE the ability to have a unified place. I have Amazon, Netflix and Disney+. Obviously Plex is entirely offline. I disable all those streaming and plex stuff they keep trying to force.<p>I tinkered with this last night. This is false advertising in my books. Took me awhile to discover this:<p>>Does this mean I can play [streaming service] content in Plex?<p>>If you select an available Plex Media Server or Plex’s own streaming service, then you can obviously play the content in Plex itself. Content from other streaming services does not play in Plex, though.<p>Not only was it hard to find this new feature, it was worthless.
All I want Plex to do is serve some MP4 files from a raspberry pi. I had it working at one point with some hidden setting. But now it keeps trying to transcode and such. And it'll randomly just stop working and I have to reboot the pi. Looking for something simpler, something I can use to just Chromecast MP4 files without all of Plex bells and whistles that seen to make it fragile.
I feel like Plex is late to the game with this given that all the new, up-to-date smart TV/streaming stick interfaces already have this feature - either they allow downloaded apps to register the movies they can stream, or there’s a central directory that surfaces apps that can stream certain content even when they’re not locally installed. See the TV app on iDevices or Google TV for an example.
For local media streaming to Chromecast or Apple TV devices, I highly prefer Airflow app[0] over Plex. The experience for playback really is a night and day difference. Scrubbing/seeking is instant and it basically avoids transcoding whenever possible, including when using subtitles.<p>[0] <a href="https://airflow.app/" rel="nofollow">https://airflow.app/</a>
I‘m assuming this is at least partly a client feature so every user has to add their own subscriptions to their Plex account or does this allow to share subscriptions through a server with multiple users? So so you could add your subscriptions to your server and anyone with access to that server will also be able to use your subscriptions?
I was surprised to find out recently there is even whole sub dedicated to paid plex sharing r/plexshares<p>I don't use it personally, but I guess it can have some appeal for some, I'm fine with no nice UI for my downloaded files from USB stick, I do all my research prior downloading so I'm in no need of fancy UI.
Plex is nice if you have one of the TVs they support, but they recently pulled the Panasonic client over a falling out over certificates (iirc) and their attitude in their forums seems to be that they are doing you a favour.
They've been hinting this for a while now.<p>It kind of is one of those missing features which I would have wanted back when I was subscribed to several streaming services. But now there is only one at the time + plex.
The Apple TV+ app gives me a dashboard with Netflix, HBO, etc. material at the top of the screen - even before their exclusive content. I just wish Apple supported all streaming services with this.
So how would I use this when I have an Apple TV? Is there an app I download and then I use Plex to find what I want to watch and then it launches whichever streaming service has the content?
if anyone streams plesk on a browser, i made an extension that adds 21:9 ultrawide support, a dynamic audio compressor (night mode), library shuffling, and links to trailers. its open source and cross browser too! enhance-o-tron for plex:<p><a href="https://github.com/conceptualspace/enhance-o-tron-for-plex" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/conceptualspace/enhance-o-tron-for-plex</a>
This is a neat feature to introduce alongside what Plex offers. It seems pretty similar to what JustWatch [0] does; I'm interested to see how they compare in practice.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.justwatch.com/us" rel="nofollow">https://www.justwatch.com/us</a>