Plex now want to SELL your personal data
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For me it's PlexAmp and the few tech-illiterate friends I have who use my server for video streaming. 99% of the time, I just watch movies on my desktop with VLC player but I've yet to find a self-hosting music player half as good as PlexAmp
I just use Jellyfin for this too, not sure I follow the issue but I haven't used Plex since migrating
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I have read many people say this, but I don't understand what they mean by it. When I set up Jellyfin, it was a very simple process.
Simplicity is relative to each person's abilities and the tool in question.
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Let's not act like a user and password is some revolutionary new technical concept. They can remember it for their email provider if they can access the plex link. So why not jellyfin? I think the UX of Jellyfin is more than acceptable in this regard. Sure I wouldn't mind they added this feature but i don't see it as a must have.
I can tell you right now that something like a username and password is exceptionally difficult for most users. Many just have one password for every single application and if they need to use a different email or password, they will be stuck.
The vast overwhelming majority of users do not have password managers, do not know they exist, and will give up at the first sign of complexity. You’re too far into the weeds if you don’t conceptualize this.
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No ma'am, this is a Wendys drive thru.
But really, I think you misunderstood the intended inference from OP, it has nothing to do with email and everything to do with data collection, algorithms, and not quite fair use media access that get's logged to Google (a third party) ad infinitum.
I don't know that Google gets to log your access in that scenario, Plex is just using their login system.
Plex sure does know, though, whether you log in via Google or not, so "I don't share videos using google to log in" is still a bit of a weird statement and not the reason you'd be worried about your piracy habits.
Incidentally, if a friend or family member is hosting a service and "tells me these are the options to sign in to the service I'm hosting" I'd tell them to go away, which is something my own relatives have done to me a bunch when my proposed self-hosted alternative isn't perfectly smooth and just as convenient as the corpo alternative.
Not surprisingly, the only two selfhosted things my family has ever used are Plex and Home Assistant.
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Username, password, and URL*
Also the majority of users will be on a tv, where typing that in is a huge pain. Plex's centralized auth makes it trivial to link with a browser or app on their phone so they can login.URL into bookmark, username and password onto paper. Dont tell me they can't do handwriting anymore.
TV? how did they log into their google account to begin with?
but also: they can log in first on the phone or anywhere else, then use quick connect for the TV... added bonus: phone is now a remote. -
OK, so why can I mess up a config so that the whole thing grinds to a halt?
Plus, I'm not so sure. A bunch of the people I saw mentioning the same thing did so on bug reports that seemed unattended. It's not like I had a byzantine deployment, all the thing was doing was parse library files held in a given location. I installed the software, pointed it to a location and all I ever touched afterwards were the files on the library folders.
I will opt out of a LOT of things on Plex before I troubleshoot that situation, I can tell you that.
so why can I mess up a config so that the whole thing grinds to a halt?
I actually can't tell if this is facetious or serious. There are a couple hundred (if not thousand) configuration options or reasons why your chosen setup might have caused the problem you're describing - it isn't really up to the developer to anticipate how every individual user has configured their home server, with every other application that might be sharing the same environment. It might have even been the plex service that was causing the issue.
I ran jellyfin and plex on the same library and machine for probably a year before migrating completely away from plex without any issues, but that doesn't mean I didn't have to read a bit of the documentation to get the config right.
I will opt out of a LOT of things on Plex before I troubleshoot that situation, I can tell you that.
Fair enough, managing your own home server isn't for everyone.
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::: spoiler spoiler
askldjfals;jflsad;
:::wrote last edited by [email protected]what? It's not like everyone needs to run jellyfin at home. the only thing you need to use is the jellyfin webapp, which I don't understand how is it more complicated than netflix or any other similar service. you log in, pick a movie and hit play. that's it.
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For me it's PlexAmp and the few tech-illiterate friends I have who use my server for video streaming. 99% of the time, I just watch movies on my desktop with VLC player but I've yet to find a self-hosting music player half as good as PlexAmp
Maybe you've tried it already, but navidrome is a great purpose built music streamer. I was using subsonic back in the day, then airsonic, then airsonic advanced. When I first got on navidrome it was a tough pill to swallow since I never maintained my tags, but I gave a little time here and there to comb through it and in the end it feels like a worthwhile investment. It paid off a little bit more when I adopted lyrion music server and squeeze players for local playback around the home since this organizes by the same tags (mostly), so the whole library is kind of plug and play with things that honor the same tags.
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what? It's not like everyone needs to run jellyfin at home. the only thing you need to use is the jellyfin webapp, which I don't understand how is it more complicated than netflix or any other similar service. you log in, pick a movie and hit play. that's it.
wrote last edited by [email protected]::: spoiler spoiler
askldjfals;jflsad;
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But not Fire tablets (kids profile) or Samsung TV or many others that Plex currently supports.
JellyFin android phone app's UI is a little weird at times, but does work pretty well for me.
...
What I would adore from any app would be an easy way to upload specific content and metadata via SFTP or to blob storage and accessible with auth (basic, token, or cloud) to more easily share it with friends/family/myself without having to host the whole damn library on the Internet or share my home Internet at inconvenient times.
Client-side encryption would be a great addition to that (eg. password required, that adds a key to the key ring). And of course native support in the JellyFin/other apps for this. It could even be made to work with a JS & WASM player.
on the tablet it should work fine in the browser. maybe that would also work on the TV, that's exactly what most TV apps do anyway.
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Me eating
and reading the comments of Plex users arguing with Jellyfin users, while myself being a user of Kodi which has it's own problems..Library scans and picking up added/removed media, kill me. I love kodi, but how such a basic function can be so squirrely I'll never understand. Maybe it's just a quirk with NFS back ends.
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::: spoiler spoiler
askldjfals;jflsad;
:::I don't mean to diminish your comment, but I just went through the setup process for both Plex and jellyfin (moving to new hardware) and there was no significant difference between the setups.
Maybe this wasn't the case a few years ago, but jellyfin is just a setup, point to libraries, and enable hardware accel.
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I don't know why everyone in the selfhosting community still even mentions Plex or uses it.
It's closed source, not free; Jellyfin is a no brainer yet people still go to Plex??
It’s already setup, and a lack of motivation/time/energy/urgency to make the change…
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so why can I mess up a config so that the whole thing grinds to a halt?
I actually can't tell if this is facetious or serious. There are a couple hundred (if not thousand) configuration options or reasons why your chosen setup might have caused the problem you're describing - it isn't really up to the developer to anticipate how every individual user has configured their home server, with every other application that might be sharing the same environment. It might have even been the plex service that was causing the issue.
I ran jellyfin and plex on the same library and machine for probably a year before migrating completely away from plex without any issues, but that doesn't mean I didn't have to read a bit of the documentation to get the config right.
I will opt out of a LOT of things on Plex before I troubleshoot that situation, I can tell you that.
Fair enough, managing your own home server isn't for everyone.
it isn't really up to the developer to anticipate how every individual user has configured their home server,
Yes, it is.
People keep answering the question of "why would anybody still use Plex" in this thread much better than I ever could.
Also, "it works on my machine" doesn't mean it's not a bug or a legitimate performance issue inherent to the software. It's always crazy to me how holier-than-thou, not-the-developer's-job people can get without heeding even the most basic, ground-level software development principles.
Also, also, spare me the condescension, I self-host a dozen different things, including other open source libraries for non-video stuff, closed source libraries for other other non-video stuff and increasingly more-trouble-than-it's-worth networking.
But even if I didn't, Plex was one of the first things I hosted because all you have to do is installing like you would any local application and it just works. By the time it's living in a contianer inside a dedicated home server or whatever you are well past the entry level for this stuff. If that's the gap you find acceptable between Plex and Jellyfin you have, again, found your answer to why a whole bunch of people would consider one and not the other.
I just don't think you need to make your whole personality about your pet home server or that it needs to be finicky and annoying to work. Self hosting has tons of potential and it's one of the few areas where open source solutions dominate the field. Somebody should take some time to make it actually accessible before the commercial hounds smell blood in the enshittified waters and turn it into a product all the way.
Kudos to Home Assistant for soooort of doing that, although I still think it's a bit overcustomizable and overengineered. Still the closest to a good self-hosted open application out there by a mile, though.
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Text:
I consent to Plex to: (i) sell certain personal information (hashed emails, advertising identifiers) to third-parties for advertising and marketing purposes; and (ii) store and/or access certain personal information (advertising identifiers, IP address, content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners. This data is used to deliver personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Your consent applies to all devices on which you have Plex installed. You can withdraw your consent at any time in
Account Settings or using this page.Soure: https://www.plex.tv/vendors/
(Might have to clear cache)Can also read about the changes here:
https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/hashed email xD, if someone has email it's just hash(email) == email. given how many emails leaked producing hashes of 90% of population emails is not a problem
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I don't mean to diminish your comment, but I just went through the setup process for both Plex and jellyfin (moving to new hardware) and there was no significant difference between the setups.
Maybe this wasn't the case a few years ago, but jellyfin is just a setup, point to libraries, and enable hardware accel.
wrote last edited by [email protected]::: spoiler spoiler
askldjfals;jflsad;
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I have read many people say this, but I don't understand what they mean by it. When I set up Jellyfin, it was a very simple process.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Apparently all your friends and family are comfortable with hostnames and ip addresses. Not everyone's are. Also, not everyone wants to buy a static ip or setup a dynamic dns service or similar. Plex is definitely simpler. I have used both.
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Text:
I consent to Plex to: (i) sell certain personal information (hashed emails, advertising identifiers) to third-parties for advertising and marketing purposes; and (ii) store and/or access certain personal information (advertising identifiers, IP address, content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners. This data is used to deliver personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Your consent applies to all devices on which you have Plex installed. You can withdraw your consent at any time in
Account Settings or using this page.Soure: https://www.plex.tv/vendors/
(Might have to clear cache)Can also read about the changes here:
https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/They prominently point this change out and kind of force you to choose whether you opt in or out. There is a single checkbox to opt out of all. But yes, it's a bad direction. Just maybe not the apocalypse implied by some.
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::: spoiler spoiler
askldjfals;jflsad;
:::Yep. My son lives in another city and uses my jellyfin server. Actually since yesterday, because Plex stopped allowing him to watch remotely.
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Why does nobody ever mention Emby? To me, it’s everything Plex used to be before it got enshittified!
I think Emby failed to get a lot of momentum due to having hardware acceleration behind a paywall, and then having jellyfin out there offering it for free. When I was first getting away from plex, emby was my first stop, and then I moved over to jellyfin shortly after because of the hardware acceleration situation.
