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/
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Relevant XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/743/
Every day of my life trying to explain to friends they need to quit using spoon fed software. Sigh.
Exactly why on so many things it’s like… even when it looks like they are getting it, they don’t get it. Kind of like watching bluesky rising right now. Unless I’m majorly missing something here. It looks like it’s kind of open and kind of federated…
Except in a form that no one can feasibly create their own node. One change in leadership or goals of leadership away, and it can turn into the same neo nazi trash that people are joining it to get away from.
it can turn into the same neo nazi trash that people are joining it to get away from.
And it will. Capitalism makes it inevitable.
And spoonfed news, food…
I think we can make an exception for soup and ice-cream, no?
NO SOUP FOR YOU! NEXT!
Haha totally, I should have said processed food, it’s the most marketed.
We could also say ultra processed news now that I think about it: statistical data -> random blog article misinterprets the charts -> tweet w people not reading the sources -> screenshot goes around on facebook -> LLM regurgitates it -> TV news anchor says it with a straight face
spoon fed software
That’s a new one. I like it.
America always does what’s right, after they’ve tried everything else. - Someone
Jellyfin is the way. Costs nothing other than the hardware needed and nobody is selling anything about you.
Our personal streaming library with Jellyfin is bigger than any public service and we can add to it from VHS, DVD, Blueray, though extra equipment was required for the VHS/Blueray.
It’s also available anywhere we go and we can set up separate accounts for different family members. There’s even a phone app.
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.
Checkout 3rd party jellyfin android apps. Findroid is working pretty well. Theres another one called Streamyfin which is catching up and a third one called Fladder, which is maybe a bit too early in development.
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.
How big is that library supposed to be that it is larger than all public ones? There are some with 10’000s of videos.
We have over 15,000 videos in TV episodes, alone. Not counting movies.
So…yeah.
Wow. But now I had to look it up, the German “ARD Mediathek” has over 200’000 files, a playtime of 100’000 hours.
feels so much more illegal than just streaming for yourself tho
I mean you are literally hosting pirated content for anyone to see, is it denial or is it really less illegal? Yall mention multiple user accounts, if ppl pay you in any way you are now a bootlegger?
content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners
That is a honey pot rights holders will be falling over themselves to pay Plex for access to once they hear about it.
Been telling anyone that would listen that they need to get out of Plex since they implemented that first iteration of trying to require you to sign into your own self hosted server with a Plex.tv account. They were telegraphing what direction they were going in with that kind of user hostile move.
Lots of responses about how it was easy to get around so no big deal (or worse that they liked it for some coping mechanism reason) and that nothing else was as easy and feature rich as Plex so it was worth it.
Well now a few years down the road from that they are now going to use that beach head on everyone’s Plex server they can to collect what is being watched and sell it to the highest bidder.
Yep I see this as the end game of Plex MPA purchases the data and goes after people.
Seeing the replies in this thread it kinda makes me wonder what Plex actually has to do for these zealots to quit using their platform.
Like do they literally have to steal naked pictures of you and pass them around the office? Like wtf.
I’m slowly building up Jellyfin to replace it.
My guess when the MPA buys plex data and they have what movies everyone has on their servers.
Need a jellyfin PS5 app
And a Samsung TV app. There’s an entire branch of Samsung TVs that require side loading to get a Jellyfin app installed.
FWIW apparently this is talking about their free content, not about user content.
And that makes a difference to you?
It does, yeah.
If they are providing the content, they can see that they are providing the content and that much is obvious.
If you are providing the content, you wouldn’t expect that they can identify what you are watching.
That’s the difference to me, yeah.
Mmmmm gross.
I’ll leave you with this, though. Shit like this is all goalposts. For now it’s just “their” content and not yours. But in 12 months it’s gonna be all content. And what excuse will you make for them, then?
I’ll switch to jellyfin like a normal adult who actually reads the updates and not a reactionary who just reads thread titles.
This is specifically related to watching their free content. You can opt out of the sale & sharing of said data, which is used to play you targeted ads when watching their free content. I am not a big fan, but this is the typical “free” TV spiel. Was there something that changed recently or is it just being recognized now?
They also serve you their version of the show with ads if you have the same show on your Plex. I have Ghost in the Shell S.A.C on Plex and I’ve never watched their version but it sure as shit showed up in my “continue watching”. The same thing happened when my gf was watching Midsomer Murders.
I have actually never considered watching Plex’s free shows.
If I did see something I liked, I’d probably ‘acquire’ it and put it in my own library.
It’s the recent “We all hate Plex now” because they implemented a price in regards to the way we access content remotely because it was costing them too much to maintain for free. So anything that smells even remotely like they are trying to make money is getting the shocked and dismayed reaction. Usually followed by a dozen or so people talking about how they’ve ditch Plex ages ago for a truly free platform like jellyfin/Kodi/etc.
My friend in England uses my server all the time and neither of us have gotten that email about being charged for shared library yet lol.
Maybe im just the chosen one.
I’ve yet to see a single email about any of the shit on here about Plex. I’m not defending any of these choices, just more confused as to who this applies to, where and when.
Are you using the free version of Plex or the paid for version?
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…
Kodi ain’t a self host tool, nor a server though but it is a great player, and I happily use the big 3, Kodi, Stremio and Plex (I’d add Cloud Stream as a runner up).
Right. Personally I don’t stream and only access my library from my TV at home. So Kodi is all I need for now. Though I’d like to try Jellyfin one day when I don’t have so much other stuff to do. I actually don’t know what exactly I’m missing out on.
If you want to sync watched state, resume position, that sort of stuff outside of your house, Jellyfin would be a good tool for that. And it integrates seamlessly into Kodi. Plex unfortunately doesn’t, you have to launch an addon from Kodi, so it’s not as nice.
I haven’t set up Kodi, but I would assume the go-to here would be a
minidlna,samba, ornfsserver w/ Kodi providing the FE.
Kodi and mythtv for me. I feel like I am the slowpoke meme.
I’ve never seen Plex users argue in support of Plex. only comments along the lines of, “I use it because…”
the jellyfin users are generally the ones getting bent or upset because people still use Plex for their own personal reasons. they then accuse the Plex users of not contributing to jellyfin because they still use Plex. “if only you used jellyfin, xyz feature would be magically finished because you are a part of the community!”
point is, the only people arguing here are jellyfin users. Plex users are gonna Plex.
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.
I let Radarr and Sonarr handle that (including creating NFO metadata and fanart files), Kodi now only parses/syncs that local data.
This change was a huge improvement for me, though I am using SMB and not NFS. (But I assume NFS would be more robust than SMB.)
Same here regarding *arrs handling the data movement/layout and nfo files. I even have the “Connect” sections for each set to trigger rescans, but it seems especially for files that get replaced by a more optimal version, a duplicate is left over in kodi alongside the new one which only goes away when you try and play it. I tried switching to a dedicated mysql instance for shits and giggles, no effect. Some day I’ll actually dig in the logs.
Can someone clue me in on the reason why anyone would prefer Plex instead of Jellyfin?
I am a die-hard Jellyfin user, but I still haven’t found a proper way to index and stream my music library with it. As far as i know, Plex is still better at that.
Navidrome and Airsonic advanced provide a better music experience than jellyfin for me anyway and both are free.
I dropped my library in, Jellyfin indexed it and streamed first try. What didn’t work for you?
Not the user you replied to, but for me, the issue I’ve been running into is with featured albums or albums with album artist metadata info filled out {image}.
Its been a minute so I dont have the specific cause I was focused on. This problem was more prevalent in EDM tracks
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/5fa246a8-22bc-4bfc-90f5-d9ff04b768a8.jpeg
I don’t think jellyfin does any tagging for you. Pretty sure you can edit it, but it’s not automatic. I use lidarr and mp3tag for that. Maybe musicbrainz picard on a rare occasion, if I’ve got a bunch of files that need to be identified first.
Can this edit the metadata in bulk? I’ll have to give it another shot. I’m pretty sure the album artist was the the problem, and I couldnt just delete that bit.
I’ve recently had really good luck with Finamp on Android at least. With the recent support of time lyrics in Jellyfin and Finamp’s redesign I’ve been using that to stream my Flac audio files. Works quite well with separate collections as well. Though, to this day I still have to force close it more times than I like to get the UI to refresh after closing it. Plexamp was tough to lose when I swapped many years ago, but the third party space has slowly been closing that gap over the years.
I think it mostly comes down to sharing stuff with others.
There’s a lot of stuff in Jellyfin you wouldn’t want to expose to the internet.
No idea if Jellyfin even has a client for my dad’s shonky old 4K TV, but I certainly wouldn’t be able to set up Wireguard or anything on it.
Years ago, I tried out Jellyfin (Emby at the time) and it couldn’t do chromecasting with subtitles (probably fixed by now, this was a long time ago). Since I wanted to watch anime, I bought a Plex lifetime subscription instead, and I’m too lazy to switch.
It can Chromecast these days
They’re going to sell the data to movie companies so they can find out what is being pirated
I fuckin guarantee it.
Trakt did the same thing I bet
It’s not hard to find out what’s being pirated, BitTorrent isn’t private.
The lack of a PS5 app makes Jellyfin useless to me. We have a dumb TV with no casting ability so the PlayStation is our media box.
Have you even tried the web UI?
Chromecast. Regular is cheap, and grab the 4K one if you wanna stream higher quality movies. Cost you less than $100.
End user management.
Essentially, accounts and passwords are not my problem.
TV apps.
What is wrong with Jellyfin’s TV app? I use it on my Android TV and I don’t have any problems
Not available for my Samsung or the kid’s Visio TVs
It just works and has a native app for basically everything.
Sunk cost. It took me loosing my Plex watch history to say fuck it I’m going to Jellyfin.
I saw several solutions on Github that could migrate it.
Assuming you use/-d trakt you could use that to re-import the watch history
I’ve tried Jellyfin and the Live TV / tuner interface sucked so bad I didn’t want to bother with it any further. Maybe I could have found plugins or some shit to make it more usable but I’ve had a lifetime Plex pass for almost a decade and it still works great
Yes, they’ve made a number of decisions that truly suck in that time but it’s still better than the experience I had with Jellyfin or Emby, even recently.
Because Plex used to be good but new it’s just pure enshitification.
User sharing without opening my Plex server to the public internet. For Jellyfin I would have to become a VPN provider and allow people into my private network to share it safely, since you wouldn’t want to have Jellyfin available to the internet with their stance on security
Jellyfin is not as easy as Plex to use. Many of us are not that technically advanced
If you are advanced enough to run a docker image with Plex, you can do the same with Jellyfin
You don’t even have to use docker for Jellyfin, you can install the server as a regular program
My first time fucking around with Plex did NOT include docker. I googled what docker was like 9 times over the course of stupid few months cause I just didnt understand it. Now I do, and I run it via a docker stack but very very few beginners are gonna go for docker.
Then how did you use Plex? Did you even RTFM?
Since I originally started using it on my everyday use Windows PC via an exe, no I did not hahahaha. Now I have it running in Open Media Vault on my NAS.
You can run Jellyfin as exe too.
You can run plexserver as a service outside of docker. That’s how I ran it years ago, before I got comfortable with docker.
Lmao I dont know how stupid got used in my reply, made me sound angry
What is a docker? Plex is just a few clicks.
I went to the Jellyfin landing page, went to the install instructions, copy pasted and ran literally one command, opened it in a browser, made my local account, clicked a button to point it at my media folders and then I was done.
What isn’t easy?
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UpNp or port forwarding is the same way both Plex and Jellyfin work.
I don’t know what makes Jellyfin less secure since they both work the same way for this as far as I can tell…
Can you be more specific about what makes Jellyfin less secure when it comes to UpNp/port forwarding?
In the case of port forwarding at least Jellyfin is open source and has more eyes on it so it’s less likely for someone to zero day it and have at it unless I have misunderstood how each can connect off-network.
Furthermore the hash for your password is stored along with many others at a single (or relatively few) attack point/s on a Plex business server since it’s a centralized business whereas this is never the case for Jellyfin.
Also this thread is about Plex literally selling your personal data so I don’t really consider Jellyfin worse for exposing your personal data.
I’ll take my chances with a single idiot who want’s to compromise my poor asses tiny network versus an actual hacker who wants to compromise an enterprise businesses network that is storing thousands or hundreds of thousands of user credentials, data, and payment information (Which Jellyfin doesn’t store even half of).
If someone hacks Jellyfin on my network -> They have my… media files? Maybe the hash of the one password I use there?
If somone hacks Plex on my network or anywhere - or the people they sold that data to -> They have my password hash, credit card number and probably my name that is associated to it, personal data that Plex is selling, etc.
TL:DR I think Plex is more likely to be hacked rather than myself and the outcome of Plex getting hacked is worse than if my personal Jellyfin server gets hacked.
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I see, thanks.
I’ve been a Plex user. Honestly it was mostly because I chose Plex years ago before a lot of the recent controversy. Plex always seemed like it had a nicer interface, though I never really gave Jellyfin a try. As of late, Plex has started to add a lot of bloat to their interface, so at this point Jellyfin’s UI might actually be a pro.
Just downloaded Jellyfin! Been a Plex user for years. Noticed they’ve stated to add a lot of crap to the Plex interface. I just want to stream my media library. I’m a little disappointed that Jellyfin doesn’t have a native Apple TV app, but SenPlayer looks really nice and their price model is a one time fee. So no subscriptions!
I use infuse for the Apple TV. You can add the jellyfin source and I believe it syncs watch progress. It can’t do prerolls, but it have intro and credits skipping.
I looked at Infuse, but as soon as I saw it was a subscription I decided no. They have a lifetime option but I don’t trust those anymore. If it’s good software with a one time fee of $40 or less, I’m there, but anything $10/month or $100 lifetime is a dealbreaker for me.
Edit: I totally misread the price. It’s a way more reasonable $12.99/year not what I said above
That’s reasonable. I’ve had pretty good experience with infuse over the years and I don’t mind paying for it. If I’m constantly using it, I feel like devs oughta get something out of it.
Edit: you made me go check my subscription. It’s only $10 billed yearly which I think is more than reasonable for something I use almost every day. If they stop developing the application or something changes then I just won’t be paying the subscription anymore. It’s not a necessary thing for jellyfin on Apple TV. It’s just one of the ones that I’ve really come back to over the years as a good video player in general.
Oops I must have misread the price. Tbh it’s the subscription fatigue, but I’m a developer myself $12.99/year is very reasonable.
I totally get the subscription fatigue, that’s one of the main reasons I got a Plex pass whenever you could get the lifetime passes on Black Friday for a pretty decent discount. Now that all that seems to be changing I am more and more getting in the habit of paying a little bit of money annually to have more control over the things that I use.
Infuse is also very good !
I’ve had a lifetime plex pass for several years. Once I tried Jellyfin a few months ago it was all over. My “I’ll run both just in case” period lasted a week or two.
The downside is that Jellyfin will take more setup on your end, especially if you want to let other people connect securely to your server.
The upside is performance and responsiveness. Once I started using it I decided Plex had to go, even if I have to drive to each family member’s house to fix their shit. It was like moving between Linux and Windows, as far as one being designed to work and the other being designed to satisfy dozens of corporate KPIs.
Fortunately the setup for the end user is just as simple once your server is good to go. They just need URL, login, and password.
And since it’s all open source, there’s some fun diversity in clients. I use Finamp specifically for music, and there are audiobook focused ones.
There are a lot of people here who simply cannot be bothered to figure out remote access
A weird one i saw today was actually “jellyfin took too many resources scanning my library” and ‘if it doesn’t have an SSO my family won’t use it’
I think a lot of people just enjoy plex better and will accept any minor inconvenience as justification. That’s fine though. I’ll swear up and down that apple products are not worth the convenience, either, but there will always be people who simply like them more than others, and thats fine
I find it how many useres here almost scream “The year of linux” every day for every little grain of news Windows comes up.
And yet they do literally the same with Plex.“jellyfin took too many resources scanning my library”
That’s a strange one to me. In my experience Jellyfin scans my libraries in about 1/10 the time Plex used to take on the same machine.
Yea, they were extremely vague about what the nature of their problem was, but they mentioned it was running on the same media library as their plex install. They insisted that it was because jellyfin was poorly designed and definitely not user error. Could have been a bunch of things, but it was almost certainly a config error. They said the server ‘locked up’ and all the other services became unresponsive any time jellyfin was scanning. They also did not like the way jf wrote metadata files to the media library volume. It was among their other complaints, such as ‘i didn’t like that you could reskin it’ and ‘it was too complicated to use for managing my book collection’.
sounded like a usergroup mapping issue to me but hard to say for sure. They said they weren’t interested in troubleshooting it so, whatareyagonnado? They seem really invested in not liking it though.
There are a lot of people here who simply cannot be bothered to figure out remote access
I think being apprehensive is natural when you’re entirely left on your own for security, knowing that you could leave yourself vulnerable if you do it incorrectly. Add to this the fact that half the info you’ll find on the process is people claiming you just need to open some ports, which you know to be wrong, and it’s easy to see why it’s hard to trust any advice you find.
Yea, I don’t disagree, and I don’t actually fault anyone for using plex for it’s simplicity of remote configuration.
I do think a lot of people overlook simple workarounds to doing straight reverse proxies. I’ve used a VPN to access my remote services without issue for a long time. Granted, that’s still a prerequisite skill a lot of people don’t have, but I think a lot of people already inside the self-host space already have that knowledge. And frankly, self-hosting as a concept stems from this idea that with a little bit of effort, we can free ourselves from corporately owned SAAS companies - it shouldn’t be so divisive to be advocating for self-sufficiency.
There’s absolutely a place for plex. It’s a lot of people’s first foray into selfhosting. But I think people miss the opportunity to learn a new skill when they decide they’re willing to put up with abuse instead of taking the hint that it’s time to migrate.
Also a lifetime Plex holder. Plex wouldn’t let me watch my local content without authenticating the other day… But my internet went out and I couldn’t. Decided I’d swap to Jellyfin the first chance I could (couldn’t that day because no internet)… So that’s what I did today. It was painless and I’m never going back to Plex.
Disclaimer, I don’t need access outside of my house so I didn’t set any of the remote stuff up.
Yeah, if you’re 100% local, that’s basically the ideal use case for Jellyfin. Plex really shines when it comes to remote access. But if you never use that, then there’s very little reason to use it over Jellyfin.
Plexamp is what keeps me in the Plex ecosystem. I really like the “Mixes for you” and generating mixes based on listening habits. Have you found anything on jellyfin to do that for music?
Same.
One day! 🤞
Not listening habits. But symphonium can do genre and general mix.
And honestly it keeps you from hearing all the same stuff in every mix like Spotify (and seemingly Plexamp) doesVery true. I’m okay with hearing the same songs. It’s when I get the intro/intermission/joke tracks I get annoyed. Plexamp has a deep cuts mix that plays the lesser known music which I’ll throw up to change it up. It’s just easy to pick a premade mix and move on to what I’m doing.
Finamp has artist/album mixer but it’s truly random. You could get the same artist 6 times in a row if that artist selection is bigger than the other artist.
That’s my must-have feature. I need to look to see if there is something already comparable out there.
My suggestion: Get Symphonium in addition/to replace Finamp.
Much more advanced in what it can do.
Only downside: You can’t exclude libraries. If you have a soundtrack-like library separate from the regular music library, it can’t be separated.Thanks for the suggestion. I will try it!
Is it good with gapless playback? It isn’t as crucial for me as for some people who listen to live recordings etc, but it’s always nice to have and is a good sign for the quality of the player.
Didnt notice anything special with gapless. But I only have one album that is peimary gapless. Thus I am no metric to count on. Best you check yourself as you can refund the app if it doesnt fit your needs :)
I don’t even use remote sharing local access only.
What I cannot do without is, resume and watch history.
Skip intro.
Category management of the library.
Does jellyfin support these 3 items?
best bet for your home theater PC is STILL old computer parts with high capacity storage
“enshittification wont happen to my software of choice”
hahahaha… those ppl with discord, iphones, windows,plex…they wont learn.
I think people feel loyalty to Plex and I understand why. I even understand why they’re charging for self-hosting considering their costs of delivering the dynamic DNS, software development, content info, etc. But being closed source, VC funded, and with their core product an increasingly small part of their business, it’s all a powerful recipe for enshittification. Tech Altar has talked before about how enthusiast brands often betray their users. Jellyfin was not a trivial set up for remote access, but I’ve really been happy with it, and I like having the peace of mind of having control over how it works
It was easy considering I was already using custom domain for Plex.
I got concerned when people started buying Plex hats. And being excited about that purchase.
I noticed that Logo on Hats people who are willing to pay for them is often a bit concerning.
Jellyfin was not a trivial set up for remote access
So, forwarding a port on your router was a difficult process?
Nginx/caddy, dynamic DNS, buying a domain, setting it up with cloudflare is well outside the capabilities of most people. Took me a few hours to figure out
So if I’m not behind a double nat, I can just forward a port like a civilized person?
For those who aren’t quite ready to delete their accounts get, this link buried on their privacy page can let you opt out: https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us
Not sure why “us” is in the URL, I’m in Canada
Didn’t even need to dig. As soon as I opened Plex in my browser, it gave me a giant full screen “hey we want to sell your data. Do you consent” page. I disagree with data sale in general, but at least they didn’t go out of their way to bury the opt out. In fact, they actually went out of their way to present the notification in a way that was impossible to miss. If you’re capable of reading, you’ll know what the popup is for.
Yeah, I mean this seems like much ado about nothing. Don’t get me wrong…I’d prefer Plex never even attempt this, but they make it dead easy to opt out. There’s literally an “All No” checkbox. It’s been that way for a while. Every time someone posts another “Plex sux and steals your data!” thread, I check it and everything is still set to opt-out. They’ve never auto-opted-in anything, unlike how back when I still had a Facebook account I’d have to constantly re-opt-out of things because FB seemingly changed my settings to opt back in every time the moon entered its waning phase. Roku does that too. Every time I go into the “secret” menu and turn off ads and stuff, then there’s a system update, you have to go turn that stuff back off.
Agreed, but I don’t always trust myself not to have clicked through something like this on autopilot and make the wrong choice.
This post had me wanting to double-check I’d opted out (I had).
That was very helpful. Thanks!
*For now
also: water is wet.
The downfall of Plex needs to be compiled into an 80 minute YouTube video with sponsors spaced in for NordVPN and Viagra
