Welp, looks like I’m never buying, and therefore using plex
It’s still hilarious to me that Plex, a project forked from the XBMC (now Kodi) free open-source app for organizing and playing one’s own entirely legally obtained video files, is a big streaming business thing that charges people money.
It’s like finding a tree in the forest that gives out infinite free apples, and then setting up an apple-selling table right next to it stocked with apples you obviously got from that tree.
This happens all the time in FOSS
Someone comes in, contributes a bit, then forks, then closes it off once they realize there’s a path to monetization.
Plex is a particularly egregious example: the initial author forked xbmc to make a mac port. This led to a crazy amount of popularity very fast and they saw the path to monetization. They soon after created plex server separate from the client and went to the crazy step of rewriting everything GPL so they could fully close source.
This is legally fine but ethically fucked; they had a derivative app that technically no longer shared code with kodi but there was the fact that design cues, data structures, etc were mostly inherited. Plex wouldn’t exist without kodi. And that’s totally fine, derivative works should be allowed and encouraged. But what’s fucked is that they made serious efforts to close source and give nothing back to the community that they were built from. Code? Nothing. When they got 40 million in VC? nothing.
See also a bunch of players in 3d printing, notably Bambu at the moment. But they’ll keep getting away with it thanks to a combination of governments that are like “money is more important than fairness or progress” and idiotic consumers that are like “oh I have to spend 30 seconds longer figuring something out? Ugh fuck you im gonna buy what some YouTuber was paid $400 to recommend”
I’ve never used any of the features they’ve added after they allowed me to host my library of ripped optical media ~2013-2014.
No… it’s like picking up those apples, shipping them across the country, and then charging customers a delivery fee. Which is perfectly reasonable because time and fuel cost money.
Plex helps you (and others) stream from your library pretty brainlessly. Sure there are other options, but all of them are more complicated.
This is it. People have always paid for convenience.
Just look at console vs PC gaming.
Steamdeck made Linux gaming mainstream because it’s brainless. Backed by proton.
But console has a vice grip on some communities / groups due to a long standing “plug and play” sales pitch. Now they’re stuck because “my friends are there.”
My brother-in-law is a sysadmin and stuck on Playstation due to his friends. Doesn’t even own a gaming PC because “he doesn’t have the time to tinker.”
Technically, it’s like facilitating the shipping of those apples, but leaving the customer to ship.
Plex server->client streams don’t go through Plex’s servers themselves, but directly from server to clients. P2P. AFAIK the only exception is when something goes wrong and it falls back to a Plex-hosted server as an intermediary, which should be rare.
That’s still a pretty useful service though. Getting P2P reliable and easy isn’t trivial, and is one reason why open source projects haven’t really supplanted it yet.
Jellyfin Lifetime Pass continues to be better value.
I heard their quadrupling their lifetime membership.
Oh bugger, I might actually have to start still paying nothing
“Lifetime” – a.k.a. until Plex folds
Just checked: I’ve paid 10% of that 12 years ago. Inflation is really bad ;)
I think I got it on sale for 5% of that.
I use jellyfin now. Plex was too bloaty and restrictive.
Good for you! I’m still finding it useful and doing exactly what I’ve paid for.
Oh, I’m already on the Lifetime Hard Pass and it’s all but free —ad-free, slop-free, greed-free, bullshit-free, etc.
IIRC, the cost is ~$5/mo for upkeep, took me no time at all to set up, and I get to listen to/watch whatever the fuck I want, whenever & wherever I choose.
Fuck Plex. I hope it dies gurgling & terrified. 🥰
Sure, can I bundle it winRAR subscription?
I have 2 Plex licenses I bought for something like $80 AUD each, but I then went and bought an Emby license and moved 6 months ago. I have tried Emby, Jellyfin and Plex. If anyone if curious on some feedback
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Plex has the best interface, it is logical and everything works. That said, the stuttering on some the Apple TV on hdr /4k files for years without being fixed was the breaking point for me
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Emby has some quirks in the player where some functionality isn’t logical, the android apps on a 4K Tele look terrible, but the server software itself is fantastic
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Jellyfin does what it says on the box, but it is terribly slow to index and is very basic. I use it to host some music, but that is about it
The free Jellyfin apps are bad on iOS and AppleTV.
Also, I found the Jellyfin default client(s) to be pretty mediocre. But they have an excellent Jellyfin for Kodi plugin.
Now, Kodi has had 2 decades of development and has just about everything you could ever want from a client (way better than Plex IMO).
Can I use Kodi the same way I use plex? Like can it be my replexment?
I just want to watch content on my home network 99% of the time, and occasionally use it on my phone/tablet/laptop while traveling (if I have good internet)?
I was always under the impression Kodi was something else…
Everything the jellyfin mobile app can do via vpn (or without if you feel brave)
totally, have Jellyfin as well actually but tbh it doesn’t always feel super stable, especially if I leave my home network.
Not sure what Kodi is exactly though.
Can’t confirm for me.
Rock stable.
Only stutters on bad cellular coverage or my upload at home being insufficient for the requested bitrate.Might by my build out, definitely have it on a pretty antiquated set up.
Could be.
Or maybe some setting.When configuring my setup 1 or 2 years ago I had someone point out my older kernel and that I should use the linuxserver opencl mod for the jellyfin container.
After that it worked like a charm.
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Turns out, lifetime is difficult to budget for
It would be fine if Plex wasn’t hooked on VC capital and needed to make the line go up constantly. Most self-hosters like me have zero interest in what they are funding with subscriptions.
I have a lifetime pass already but I’ve been souring on the app as they changed direction.
Previously it was the best app for running your own personal streaming service. It lets you share your library with friends and it even had its own group watch feature allowing multiple people to watch the same stream together. It was perfect for remote friends and family, brilliant during Covid…. And they removed it for no obvious reason.
Now the company spends more and more time trying to promote their own ad-laden video streams, they want us to rate movies and presumably sell that data. The company lost its way.
Lifetime Plex was still worth it with those features at $200, not at $750. If I had to do it all over again I’d probably use JellyFin.
And they removed it for no obvious reason.
$
sooooo Jellyfin time?
Emby time.
I have not tried emby, is it much/any better than plex or jellyfin?
try it and see.
I paid… $74.99 for a lifetime plex sub in 2014. Is this the same service?
No it’s worse. Old accounts are grandfathered in to downloads when a library is shared with another user. Otherwise the library recipient needs a plex pass too.
Afaik, if you didnt have the lifetime pass
Original lifetime Plex Pass for $74.99!
That’s what their email said. So my understanding is I must have been grandfathered into the pay one time and have it forever thing.
yup
Yes, if you bought the lifetime pass years ago, you still have it. This price increase only affects people who don’t already have a lifetime pass.
We need a support group for the whiners.
It’s been dirt cheap and you still don’t have to do it.
At the end of the day the core of the software is free. They still have to support and develop the clients and services… Go shit on emby or the other one for how unfriendly they are to deal with.
Garbage take which amounts to bootlicking. To each their own though.
It must be so easy to be a CEO these days. Whether you do a good or bad job, whether the company is thriving or not, the next step is enshittification. And the playbook is always the same: raise prices, layoff workers, make the product or service worse, fuck over your customers. Rinse and repeat…
