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I do have some sympathy for Plex trying to run a viable business based on a fairly niche product, but I agree the direction they've gone is pretty puzzling. Peo
by freetime2 5y ago
I do have some sympathy for Plex trying to run a viable business based on a fairly niche product, but I agree the direction they've gone is pretty puzzling. People use Plex for basically the opposite reasons that they use streaming services - they want to actually own their content libraries, they don't want to pay subscription fees, they don't want their personal information stored in the cloud, they don't want to see advertisements, etc. Plex's strength was that they offered an alternative to all of that - and I wish they would have doubled down on just making that whole experience as nice as possible, while also maybe adding in some tools to make it easier to obtain content from "alternative" sources.
Instead they've kind of gone down the route of trying to copy streaming services, and done a really poor job of it, and my experience the last time I logged into Plex was basically "wtf is all this nonsense?". To be fair though I was actually able to accomplish what I wanted - which was to be able to stream a ripped DVD from a media server (Raspberry Pi) to my TV - and for that it still worked pretty well.
- Terretta 5y agoIt's not puzzling at all if you think about a couple other Plex "audiences": SmartTV and STB makers, and investors. What story works better for those two (valid) audiences? Everyone knows nobody has massive libraries of home movies. These other features offer a more clearly supportable "look, it's not just for (ahem) home video libraries" narrative.