Several years ago I was looking to set up a media server and initially grabbed Plex because I’d heard so much good about it at the time. The moment it asked me to create an account with Plex during setup and I discovered this wasn’t optional I immediately uninstalled it.
I remain baffled that anyone was okay with needing an externally managed account in order to use software running entirely on their own hardware, let alone the litany of additional enshittification that has happened since.
When plex initially exploded in popularity, the alternatives required like manual xml config, constant babying the database, and generally barely worked.
Plex had apps on all the devices from wii to your phone and just worked. There was also lots of promises of privacy, you owning your data, segregating accounts to coordinating direct access, etc etc. It was almost a no brainer because there was no alternative that could deliver that experience.
Now is very different. The vibes at plex are very different, the world is a lot more hostile to privacy, and there are open source alternatives that get very close to the same experience.
So for a lot of people, yeah, plex doesn’t make sense anymore.
Plex is a really nice app. And the people who really like it justify in their head the need for the external account. Some will twist up into a froth arguing the need for it.
I think some people may get too emotional over such matters. But if it works for them, carry on my frothy friends.
Truth is, 99% of people really don’t care.
Not that I want to defend Plex which is definitely enshittifying, but I don’t think most people are buying Plex to stream their own media. They’re doing it so other people can stream their media. Not wanting to buy a domain and set up port forwarding or a reverse proxy or whatever doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. My grandparents are never going to use Tailscale, and even if they did, I don’t think there are any Tailscale smart TV apps.
Disclosure: I run Plex and Jellyfin (and Navidrome) in parallel, and bought a lifetime pass years ago.
Jellyfin is nice that even a noob like me can struggle a bit but get it working. :)
I was a big supporter of PLEX for a lot of years but I don’t want all the streaming options and ads and crap it was giving me. All I want is a solid media server application and Plex was no longer it.
JellyFin has been fantastic. I’ll never go back
I got Plex set up for my media server literally the day before they hiked the prices. I was weary about the $150 lifetime and couldn’t afford the new price when they changed it so I went to jellyfin.
Turns out jellyfin was everything I wanted and free. Bought 5 years worth of unlimited hosting and a domain name for less than a month of Plex and now I’m well on my way to a pirate media empire.
Just wish I had anyone other than my spouse to share if with… Or that I could figure out fucking MusicBrainz…
I’ve been using Jellyfin for about 4 months as a home media server on an old laptop I installed Debian on and… I have nothing to add to the conversation, I just wanted to brag about that because it works really well and I was afraid I would fuck it up.
Anyway, Plex no good.
I had Plex long enough to try to watch a movie from outside my house and realize I had to pay to do it. Luckily swapping to Jellyfin on unraid was just uninstalling Plex and using the same folders
Plex stopped being useful to me in 2019. At the time I had only about 300 movies and the same number of TV episodes. The database kept getting corrupt, causing long load times of video info pages, or perpetual spinning progress indicator. After fixing the database (and losing all watch metadata each time) three times in one year, I moved to a plain file share served from the NAS with Kodi running on my Nvidia Shield.
In seven years, Kodi’s local DB has never corrupted. I now have 900+ movies and 2500 TV episodes. I can handle any file type, any video CODEC, can play thousands of games from the internet game library. The DB can be easily backed up and imported into a new install if needed.
And the best part? I didn’t pay anyone to access any of the media I own, and no corpo gets access to my library or watch history.
Forget Plex.
I have been using Jellyfin for over a year, brilliant thing. Makes it very easy to stream my media; I have one client catered to music, and the main one for movies/TV shows.
My opinion: Plex has made it clear that they want your money. They don’t want you to host your own media and be happy with that. They want you to pay a subscription.
The whole Plex Pass Lifetime subscription is kind of a trap. You might be getting away with paying once currently, but let’s be honest: That means that they have taken your money once. And a some time in the future, a MBA dude will notice that they have a lot of non-paying heavy users (meaning: users who have paid several years ago, which is not relevant for the revenue goals of the current quarter) - and they will try to get you to pay again and again. You might be okay with that, but if you don’t want to get hassled, you need to switch to something else.
I don’t understand this argument.
I paid once many years ago. I’ve never been asked to pay again. Why would I switch before they make a change?
In the meantime, jellyfin is getting better and better. Plex will probably be dead to me at some point, and when that happens, I’ll hop over.
Yeah, this is it. When they ask me for more money, or when they demand I host on their servers, I will adios. Until then, I paid $75 one time and the service does exactly what I want it to do, and it’s ezpz for a basic individual myself.
I think the most likely scenario is the company goes under because they didn’t have enough money, and then folks will come here and complain about that. Maybe I’ll be one of them, but I’ll try to remember I paid $75 more than 10 years ago, and so I think I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth.
Currently, they’ve been content to get more money out of you without asking you, so you’re right so far, but only if you consider your advertising details and personal information to be valueless.
They’re expanding data collection and showing more ads as a matter of course for years now. When they can no longer get money from other companies because of you, they’ll switch to nickel and diming you.
I find that it helps to think of transactions in a more reductive way, like bartering + money. I am trading X amount of money, Y amount if privacy, and Z amount of hassle for whatever service or product. Even though Y and Z are hard to quantify, they are real things with real value, so not considering them at all is surely worse for me, and what they’re counting on.
I have found that nearly every mainstream online service I might be interested in presents a negative value proposition when calculated like I described, but everyone values their privacy and time differently, so your mileage will, of course, vary.
Charging for certain services is one thing. That’s not what drove the last Plex exosdus.
Most people take umbrage at Plex offering features for free, saying they’ll never be paid features, and then removing them as options for free accounts and effectively paywalling them.
Plus you can easily run them side by side. I setup jellyfin a while back when Plex used to charge users for streaming on mobile but now they don’t if the server owner has a Plex pass.
For me Plex is still a lot simpler to manage if you have a lot of users, and if users have their own servers they share with you
I did that for a bit, but there was a noticeable increase in power usage on my server for something I’m not using.
That’s pretty much where I’m at too.
Both Jellyfin and Plex are pretty great currently, I prefer Plex slightly, but if Plex becomes worse then I’ll likely make the switch over to Jellyfin. I’ve liked Jellyfin for years but Plex has still been my main app.
I have both of them installed anyway.
Plex is less confusing to use if you want to share your library, but thankfully I don’t have any concerns about that because I’m selfish with my media and just have it set up for my own personal use.
*when Plex becomes worse
I am not aware of any company that has reversed course on enshittification once it has begun, so Plex seems certain to follow that path. I would consider at least being prepared.
They became dead to me much sooner then you. Once they knew what I was watching I left.
Same brought mine almost 8 years ago, and have never had to pay them a cent more.
Overall not a bad investment.
And plex just looks nicer and offers a better experience.
If it changes I’ll consider migrating but for the moment Plex had done right by thier lifetime pass members
That hasn’t been my experience. They unilaterally changed their TOS repeatedly after I was already subscribed to a lifetime agreement. Even if they made the terms better, that’s still bogus, as contracts of adhesion are ethically ducious in general. This is economics, not Calvinball.
You just made those words up.
/s
If only my TV had a Jellyfin app, I could switch, but alas it doesn’t. Got to use Plex if I want to watch stuff from any home streaming thingy. That said, it’s free to do that, at least.
I just don’t have the money or time to buy an external box and fiddle with it to get it running these days either, otherwise I’d build a modern version of the XBMC server I used to have in days gone by :-(
This is one of the most beneficial reasons to even run Plex; it’s ubiquitous. I can access it from nearly everywhere with a simple TV alone, and also provide access to family without having to run tech support for them or requiring any additional investments on their part.
Chromecast of something similar is an option?
Fiddle with birthday are plug and play. What TV?
Fiddle with birthday?
Yeah I don’t get it either… autocorrect?
I assume it’s autocorrect, but I legitimately have no idea what they intended to put.
Same here. This is gonna bug me all day….
It’s not really about cost for me. Accounts in control of someone else and increased fees to use my own hardware can take a long walk off a short pier.
If only people applied these principles to all software…
I find it wild that Plex even got so popular among PC users and not just people who only had a phone and a roku. There have always been better options for PC; the best being built right into the god damn OS so you don’t even need other software.
plex is just simple to setup and share with multiple people while they share their library with you as well, plus you dont have to manage their accounts, passwords, or setup any networking on their end
What is this “better option” you speak off?
Literally just using a shared network folder and SSHing into it from outside the network, or just opening the folder if you’re on the network.
Want the folder to have big icons? There’s a setting for that.
Uhm … do you know what plex actually is?
https://www.plex.tv/personal-media-server/
Unless there’s another app with the same name that also happens to be used for media sharing?
Where can I view the show/episode description and metadata in the shared folder? Where are my playlist? Where does it safe my watch progress. How can I filter my collection by genre or other advanced options, like available audio languages? Where does it suggest related show? Where is the API to auto sync my watch history to list sites?
Seriously, if you think a shared folder in the windows explorer can remotely compare to what plex does I have to assume you have never used or even seen the plex interface before.
Literally all that (except getting recommendations) is handled by the media viewer you use to actually watch the videos. I recommend VLC. You seriously put up with ads just for all that basic as fuck shit?
As we say in Germany: “Wenn man keine Ahnung hat, einfach mal die Fresse halten”.
I started selfhosting just because throwing cash on subscriptions at big corpos is not feasible since subs are increasing on a year-on-year basis. To my mind, if I’m going to self-host to yet again pay sub prices defeats the sole purpose of selfhosting.
That money you can pocket and invest in your own hardware for spare parts, upgrades & the like
You could also consider donating it to the projects you are hosting. Because developing that software still takes a lot of labour and these devs really need it
Oh god,I have to pay $3 to use someone else’s code to stream my stolen media 🤣
Not just code but infrastructure as well.
Plex makes it possible to stream remotely even if you’re behind double NAT, firewalls and whatnot blocking a simple port forwarding approach. they do that through proxy servers that need to handle a lot of bandwidth, even with the limited streams…
One thing is the price, a whole another thing is the cluttered UI with too many features. I just want play a movie/tv series. Switched to Jellyfin and not looking back.
Just hope Jelly doesnt suffer the same fate. 🙂
Jellyfin was created by just such a move and nobody talks about Emby any more.
If Jelly suck, Jelly fork.
Jelly works well for me. Simple, intuitive, hw encoding works great. Responsive app. I had Plex installed on a Phillips TV. It got slower and slower.
But I do understand Plex. They have a business case and need to earn money. Sadly the UI got more and.more confusing.
I heard Jellyfin is doubling prices next year
Its ok. Send me a DM and I can give you a 75% off discount code
😀