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Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff
- onychomys 3y agoIt's going to be extremely annoying if Plex goes out of business.
- undersuit 3y agoI just renewed my year.
- bberenberg 3y agoJellyfin is a good alternative
- DANmode 3y agoDoes it perchance have a plugin for replacing Plex's "search various streaming services at once" feature?
- bberenberg 3y agoNot sure, I don't have this use case.
- crobibero 3y agoI haven’t seen a plugin with that functionality so I doubt it exists.
- scarface_74 3y agoDoes Jellyfin have user friendly clients for iOS, Android, Roku, AppleTV and various SmartTVs?
- malermeister 3y agoiOS Yes: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jellyfin-mobile/id1480192618 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jellyfin-mobile/id1480192618 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swiftfin/id1604098728 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swiftfin/id1604098728 Android Yes: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jellyfin.mobile&hl=en&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jellyfin.m... Roku Yes: https://channelstore.roku.com/en-gb/details/cc5e559d08d9ec87c5f30dcebdeebc12/jellyfin https://channelstore.roku.com/en-gb/details/cc5e559d08d9ec87... AppleTV Yes: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swiftfin/id1604098728 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swiftfin/id1604098728 various SmartTVs Depends. The Android ones, yes. There's one for Samsung but it isn't officially packaged yet - works quite well from what I've seen tho.
- mdhen 3y agoLG has a good one
- krisroadruck 3y agoEvery time I've asked them about an app for Samsung or LG tvs - the two most popular brands they've pushed back "we're volunteers, we don't use those TVs, it's not on our to-do list but feel free to code it yourself". They aren't open to being paid to develop it either.
- freedomben 3y agoInteresting, I have a Samsung TV but I'v never even considered running Jellyfin as a native app. I keep the TV off the internet so it can't be a spy box. The Chromecast with Google TV is so affordable and so great, I just use that everywhere. To be clear I'm not telling you you're wrong for wanting to do it on the TV, that's a personal preference, I'm just sharing how I do it in case it helps.
- krisroadruck 3y agoI ultimately ended up getting an nvidia shield, but at that point it solved my biggest gripe with plex so I just switched back to plex and have been happy with it.
- dom96 3y agoAre you not concerned about the Chromecast being a spybox?
- scarface_74 3y agoBut you’re not concerned about ChromeCast - sold by an adTech company - being spyware?
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y agoA Roku is what? $50? Cheaper than a new tv and probably a better experience than lgos or tizen…
- alexalx666 3y agoDo you use paid features of Plex and if yes, which ones? Im using Plex daily to stream shows stored on a SSD connected to Windows laptop. I think I would not miss on any paid features they provide. Initially when I decided to try to watch less mindless tv stuff, I thought there will be a plethora of solutions for home streaming but it turned out that the only one that actually works is Plex
- katbyte 3y agoemby and jellyfin work just great and jellyfin is free & OSS
- cassianoleal 3y agoJellyfin is nice. It doesn't work great though. I've had and have way too many issues with it. I run it next to Plex to keep an eye on how it develops. I still have issues with pretty much all clients, from losing server connection information, to jankiness on changing users, or subtitles just not rendering properly, crazy high CPU usage for certain transcodes, etc. Plex just works most of the time. Clients are better (even though the thing about them pushing crappy streaming and live tv stuff bothers me a little), subtitles mostly just work, rendering is ok and most video formats work well on most clients, and so on. I want to like Jellyfin. I have high hopes that one day it will be great and I won't want Plex anymore. That day is not here yet.
- pojzon 3y ago> crazy high CPU usage for certain transcodes The reason I stopped using it for hosting my collection on a PI. Overall decided its just easier to have a public NAS accessible from anywhere. No point to open stuff in a browser when you can simply open a video from another side of the world like a regular local video on my laptop. So much better an easier.
- nickstinemates 3y agoI do both - have it on my NAS exposed as SMB shares but also Jellyfin both on the internet without vpn/tailscale and of course with. Sometimes I want to use a local media player, sometimes, when I am unsure what to watch I browse the media gallery and just watch from the browser. I don't trust Plex. I don't like its media server, all of the dark patterns, the subscription, unknown telemetry (although firewalled.) I liked that it was available as an app on my TV but I solved that a different way.
- katbyte 3y agoemby is a great alternative that allows more control with easy local accounts and no ad supported content jellyfin is also great but lacks apps on some devices and is a 100% free OSS alternative
- RockRobotRock 3y agoI have been a paying supporter of Emby for a while now, and I feel like I bet on the wrong horse. Development is quite slow. It feels like only a skeleton crew is working on it compared to Jellyfin. Neither Emby or Plex are perfect, but Plex seems to handle transcoding better. Emby still has the advantage over Jellyfin of a native Samsung Tizen app, even though Samsung TVs are slow as shit and it's a horrible experience.
- katbyte 3y agowell jellyfin is OSS so if the community is large its going to be hard to match that internally. i went with emby because it has better app support and i know eventually jellyfin will catch up and surpass it at which point it'll be real easy to just switch over. plex was a non starter because they make local accounts hard to use to better push their ad supported crap on users. ie your parents create a plex account to use your server the defaults will mean they see all that ad supported plex content until you walk them through removing it
- RockRobotRock 3y agoI pretty much have to be on-site for any family member to get them on Emby/Plex anyway.
- stiq 3y agoyea - I have a fair number of friends and family who have access to my server. they're gonna be super bummed if it turns off
- fluxem 3y agoPlex has a tough business model. It’s hard to make money from the pirates.
- JohnFen 3y agoI don't know the percentage, but an enormous number of Plex users aren't pirates.
- thfuran 3y agoWhat else do people even use Plex for?
- LASR 3y agoMaybe Linux ISOs encoded as lossy video.
- thfuran 3y agoI heard there's a hidden message from Linus if you play Jaunty Jackalope backwards.
- piperswe 3y agoMy Plex server hosts rips of my (quite large) DVD/Blu-ray/UHD Blu-ray movie and digital/CD music collections.
- freedomben 3y agoBuying DVDs/Blu-Rays, ripping them, and then getting a personal Netflix-like experience instead of the horrible DVD/Blu-Ray player experience.
- thfuran 3y agoIsn't that just expensive piracy?
- samschooler 3y agoI love open source. Jellyfin looks great, and Embey as well. But Plex "just works". I happily paid for a lifetime and would love to see more development. One of my most used services to watch home videos, listen to audiobooks, and stream my dvd collection.
- ElCapitanMarkla 3y agoThe others all lack the apps, Plex is a native app on my TV, Playstation, Phone etc, and it just works. I always found the other solutions to have pretty clunky client options outside of PC browser
- UtopiaPunk 3y agoI primarily use Jellyfin through the app on my Roku stick. Works pretty great for me and my family. I also have an old Android phone hooked up to old stereo system, and use the "Gelli" app for music playback. Also solid.
- ollien 3y agoThe jellyfin app pales in comparison on Roku. It lacks a lot of polish in the player, IMO
- mdhen 3y agoDisagree. It's got less shit, but it looks and feels better if you're goal is only media storage and playback
- ollien 3y agoI disagree. One of the big things that bugs me is you can't see how far you are through something without pausing. Also, you enable subtitles by pressing... Down on the remote? There's no button for it. It's all just polish
- 3y ago
- josteink 3y agoWhile that sounds bad, I must admit Plex has been chasing “the wrong things” compared to what I want a Plex instance for. I have streaming services for content I want to rent. I don’t need Plex for that. I use Plex because it’s currently the best way to stream and organise content I own and have curated. But they’ve completed ignored that use-case for 5+ years now. It’s frustrating. Jellyfin is still not quite there in the “it just works” department, but if it does, I have no doubt what’s going to replace my Plex instance. Being open-source it will hopefully not pushed to weird commercial ventures and use-cases not actually wanted by its users.
- causality0 3y agoPlex "just works" until it doesn't. The further away from the desktop you get the less reliable Plex becomes. In the browser it's flawless. On smartphone and tablet native apps I get maybe a one to five percent rate of not being able to see the server despite the fact I'm logged into it on the same device's browser. On embedded devices like smart TVs and streaming sticks Plex is a stinking pile of shit of an app. It's laggy, it crashes incessantly when you do something like skip forward after skipping back, and it constantly fails to see the server running on the same LAN as the device. This happens across android TV, Roku, Chromestick, and Firestick. It happens across different locations, routers, and ISPs. Plex is high on my list of "things I use because there isn't anything better but I still hope their developers stub their little toe every day of their lives".
- prepend 3y agoI run Plex on an appletv with the server running on a synology. It’s ok. The subtitles don’t work unless I switch off and on for each show. Anything over 1080p gets too laggy and it doesn’t buffer. But I like enough to just download stuff in 720 and watch at that resolution.
- Arn_Thor 3y agoSounds like your Synology just isn’t up to it in terms of transcoding. Direct playback to an Apple TV Plex app is virtually flawless in my experience (exceptions were HDR content but that seems to be fine now)
- Brajeshwar 3y agoFrom my nieve point of view, I think, they made a mistake with the $100 lifetime fee (was that about a decade ago!). I paid that and have been using it since, and have never made another payment since.
- cosentiyes 3y agoAgreed, having a bunch of lifetime customers without a source of recurring revenue also incentivizes telemetry, selling user data, etc. Jellyfin is also a strong enough competitor that many lifetime accounts would switch if new fees appear. I'm afraid that unraid will run into similar problems eventually.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoI'm a lifetime subscriber and if they chose to charge monthly I'd pay it. I've gotten a lot of value from Plex.
- polartx 3y agoI’m a lifetime subscriber that recently moved which brought down my media server. It will probably be another 3 months until it’s back up…if Plex screwed their lifetime subscribers by trying to get more money out of us…I’d cancel my service and zealously criticize them for the duration of my previous subscription
- prepend 3y agoI use Plex every day and haven’t paid them anything. But I only use it as an app (relaxing xbmc and kodi) and don’t use any of their services. I would probably pay $5-10 as a one time fee, but xbmc was an open source project so I’d never pay $100 or any recurring fee. I just need a player for my local media. That’s not a recurring revenue source. That’s buy software once.
- bubblethink 3y agoIt's commodity software. It's hard to justify a recurring subscription for something like this. It targets advanced users. If they can set up plex, they can set up alternatives too. And plex does not invest much in improving the core product. I don't remember it as being any better than it was 5-10 years ago. It still has rough edges. Skipping title/end credits is a nice feature though.
- khasan222 3y agoPlex really just needs to host instances of their servers at something reasonable that I can upload easily to. Add a torrent client for good measure. Just make stream boxes.
- Cyph0n 3y agoPlex is explicitly trying to move away from being associated with piracy, so that won’t ever happen. But what you’re looking for already exists - search for “seedbox” on Reddit.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iLoveOncall 3y agoI don't get all the comments of people saying that JellyFin doesn't "just work". I replaced Plex with it a year or so ago and it has just worked since then, without any issue or any particular setup required.
- nerdjon 3y agoFor me Jellyfin server just works and is great. But the Apple TV experience is not really great with the official (still work in progress) or the one that is often recommended but I can't remember the name for at the moment. As great as the server is, I feel like the apps are where Plex has Jellyfin beat.
- Arn_Thor 3y agoAnecdotes is not data, though. For me Plex “just works” but I’m careful not to dismiss the many comments I’m reading here about people that do have problems.
- starttoaster 3y agoDifferent people have different usage of features, where some features are worse or non-existent on Jellyfin. You’d be correct to argue that just because something is arguably better in some ways does not mean that it’s alternative doesn’t work. But people are not good at expressing themselves. I need to give Jellyfin a fair shake again. One thing I like about Plex is watching content off of my server, and then without logging out, switching to watching content on a friend’s server, on client devices like my smart TV.
- arrakeen 3y agoi JUST bought a lifetime pass two days ago... i'm really not pleased to read this news
- codeslave13 3y agoApps are the main driver. If there isnt a very strong client ecosystem it will always be niche. I run jellyfin side by side just waiting for a good tvos client
- stock_toaster 3y agoI've been really happy with Infuse as a jellyfin client (ios, tvos, macos).
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y agoCan jellyfin reverse engineer the server so it works with plex client?
- crobibero 3y agoWe have no interest in doing that. We do however have a tvOS client in development.
- packetlost 3y agoIMO they should have focused on building paid addons. Their life-time license thing is well worth it, but it's bad for building a sustainable business around. Hell, I'd pay extra for a nice mobile music client. I'd pay extra for a better Python API. I'd pay extra for access to high-quality metadata, etc.
- blactuary 3y agoThey have a nice mobile music client
- packetlost 3y agoyeah, they should've charged money for it lol
- mayneack 3y agoPlexamp is my default music app. It's great!
- bluedino 3y agoI thought this was the ERP company https://www.plex.com/ https://www.plex.com/
- ndiddy 3y agoAnd I thought that ERP stood for erotic roleplay
- bilekas 3y ago(This happened 2017~2018) It's so interesting to hear this one, I interviewed with them because I had some random linked in notification, I use their product, I wanted to be a part of it and I worked on a similar proprietary platform with live tv. Loved that work. From the job spec, I was maybe over qualified but it was Plex, it's sitting in my NAS, remote servers phone and tablets, purchased multiple time from their odd monetary system with iOS. It's a great product I was happy to get behind. The interview process was non-existent. One person spoke to me high level, maybe 20 mins, I imagined an intro to the interview process, I was happy in my job to not worry, I wasn't looking, it was plex in a random linkedin email, after a week I get a call. "Everything great, we are excited etc etc, when would be good to talk to some of our 'engineers' ?" Organised for 15 days ahead as I knew there was a release coming (a release for who I worked for) earlier so wanted to be fresh. 12 days passed with no feedback. I email the whole CC of email to confirm. No response. To this day. :) Flaky. Amazing product but bad business choices. I really do feel bad for the employees in this case because if they're even half of me, they wanted to do some good work. Edit: Clarity context - And grammar. I would like to point out too, within those 5 years they could have changed. Hired better (seems not)
- indigodaddy 3y agoSo just to clarify, if someone is even half as good as you, they’re still pretty damn good?
- DeltaCoast 3y agoMaybe it depends on which half.
- samcheng 3y agoTo be honest, it sounds like a contingency recruiter found you, made sure you were interested, and then pitched you to a hiring manager. The hiring manager maybe didn't want to deal with the recruiter for one reason or another. I get cold recruiter spam on a daily basis... You might blame the recruiter instead of the company, in that case.
- jmbwell 3y agoBanked on free, ad-supported content, then the ad market stumbled. I don’t know the solution for Plex. I haven’t agreed with all its decisions, but I use the product every day and get enormous value from my lifetime subscription. What would induce me to pay monthly? I am not sure, but it wouldn’t take much. Pitch me, plex.
- mk_stjames 3y agoI used Plex briefly right after it came out from the roots of XBMC. The reason was, at that time, if you wanted to play something off a computer on your TV, better have a long DVI cable and a headphone-to-RCA cable and hookup your laptop and screen mirror, or better set up a PC sitting next to your TV and have a media server running. That option felt cool and useful so I did that, between like 2009 and 2012 ish. Now? I stream most of my content, but if I am torrenting something, I pop the file in a folder on my NAS and my smart TV can see that drive on my home network. I don't need fancy thumbnails. I don't need any fancy sorting. I typically don't need transcoding. I just navigate the folders using my TV's built in browser and hit play, and it works. And it has worked that way for years.... I think I am in the place where most home users are now. Most people, even technologically-adverse people, know that they can put some media on a USB stick and plug it in their smart TV and that is simpler than setting up media servers for home media content. And streaming services have taken away the need for a lot of people to have local content. So who is left? People who hoarde local media and want instant access to it in their home theatres, who have vast libraries and want advanced sorting, playlisting, and multi-device streaming? How many people can that possibly be, and how would those people be supporting Plex financially?
- lelandbatey 3y agoI just paid the $150 lifetime membership the last few months, and I'm not the only one. Most folks in this boat are trying to support sharing and managing a media collection with more people than just ourselves. For me, it's my wife and some family friends. And with Plex, I can share my whole library, or just parts, with them and they can watch easily on their TV. No big downloads on their end, no navigating a file tree, just a slick app like all the other streaming apps. Add in the *Arr apps and Overseer for slick request management and youve got a great system that's easy enough for my accountant brother and my non-technical wife to use without any hiccups.
- austhrow743 3y agoNever occurred to me that people would use Plex for local media. Afaik its main use is for seedboxes. Torrenting on a server. You set up Plex and Prowlarr, then you have your own streaming service with all of the content on streaming services put together plus everything out on dvd, bluray, etc. I don't think Plex would be getting much financial support from them, not because they're not willing to pay* but because having purchased the lifetime licence seems to be fairly widespread from what ive seen. *Check out plans on seedbox providers. Most are more expensive than streaming services. Then you've got people who dont want to/can't manage the above paying for access to remote Plex libraries, much like they would a streaming service. There's plenty of people pirating for the better experience who are willing to pay a premium for it.
- bane 3y agoPlex can be amazing, but the core user community has absolutely no idea what the heck the Plex devs are doing these days. I've almost never seen such a disconnect between product development and key user community. /r/plex is basically full of posts complaining about long-standing requests, bugs, and broken features that are just simply ignore, followed by posts of "plex just released new feature literally nobody is asking for or wants, wtf?" Most of the WTF feature releases are rolled back or deprecated within a few releases. So the community tends to be right on with what Plex should be doing. There's a lot of pigheadedness on the engineering side it looks like. I also agree the lifetime pass was a bad business move. I think a better model would have been something like "pay $45, get every release in this major version, new major versions come out approximately every year" or with an alternate tier that would be "use plex, pay $35 per year, get all the updates". It would have smoothed out revenue and focused development on paying customer demands.
- i_am_jl 3y ago>I also agree the lifetime pass was a bad business move. As someone with a lifetime PlexPass, I also think it's a terrible move. I'm starting to regret signing up with a company that allows that sort of purchase. It underlies all of the problems I have with Plex. Lifetime membership sounds great, but it changes the nature of my relationship with Plex. If I pay a subscription I'm a customer; I use their services but I pay more in a subscription than I cost them, everyone is happy with the arrangement. But while I'm coasting off of my $79 Lifetime Plex Pass that I bought years ago I'm not a customer, I don't represent a revenue stream, I represent a growing cost. I've paid for them to provide a service, but I've also incentivized them to change the service in a way that I use it less, because me using the service costs them money. That dynamic explains the problems I have with Plex. It explains why they're seemingly incapable (unwilling) to fix long standing bugs, and it explains the development of features that their base doesn't want (because Live TV, rental, and gaming represent new markets with new potential subscribers)
- antisthenes 3y agoUntil this news, I honestly thought Plex was an open-source project ran by 1 or 2 people. What's their actual business model to support presumably ~100 person staff? That's not a huge amount of money but not peanuts either.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoWhat gave you the impression that it's open source?