5 ms·

Plex Raises $40M

26 points by Sytten 3y ago

PaulHoule 3y ago
Note that packing in ads for a lot of off-brand streaming services is why I quit Plex and switched to the otherwise inferior Jellyfin. Way to go!
sokoloff 3y ago
As a long time, happy, paid user of Plex, this makes me worry that they're going to continue to make it a worse experience...
- pjerem 3y ago
  Try Jellyfin. It’s the same thing Plex once was but fully open source.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    I have (and have a Jellyfin server running on the network). IMO, it's nowhere near as polished as the 2017 version of Plex. Cover art and metadata matching is terrible. Plex seems to handle slightly "off" filenames and folder names far better. Every so often I update jellyfin and try again, only to find it's still a worse experience than Plex.
    - maxglute 3y ago
      That said, it does feel like PLEX hsa been introducing better features and cleaner UI since jellyfin launched. I wonder if they keep track of Jellyfin installs on local system. Competition is good.
    - pmx 3y ago
      I'm more than willing to take the trade off of slightly worse metadata and a less polished UI vs plex reporting all my media, habits, etc to their movie studio bed partners. They've already turned on their users and are abandoning what made plex great to begin with. Once you get used to JellyFin it's really great.
      - speff 3y ago
        This is why I never take the jellyfin evangelicals seriously. Plex is good software - nothing has been taken away and my experience with it has been consistently good and stable for multiple years. > plex reporting all my media, habits, etc to their movie studio bed partners There is no proof that they're doing what you're claiming. From what I've seen, people love trying to to push jellyfin by making things up about plex. Also a polished UI/UX counts for a lot more than the solo-user jellyfin crowd thinks.
        zipping1549 3y ago
        > This is why I never take the jellyfin evangelicals seriously. It's mostly better not to take evangelicals anything seriously but I don't think you calling them evangelicals is a bit too far.
        walth 3y ago
        > There is no proof that they're doing what you're claiming. do you recall when Plex started ingesting your media history and then emailed all shared users in your library what you were watching? Many Plex users were pretty embarrassed to be outed for soft porn to family members and colleagues. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/180maoe/plex_crossed_a_line_with_your_week_in_review/ https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/180maoe/plex_cr...
        speff 3y ago
        > reporting all my media, habits, etc to their movie studio bed partners is the claim. What you posted does not support that.
        pocketarc 3y ago
        Yep, tried Jellyfin, UX was terrible, got back to Plex. If it’s not as good as Plex, it doesn’t matter if it’s open source or not.
    - pavel_lishin 3y ago
      I have had a devil of a time getting Plex to recognize file names. I wish I could just directly write things to its damn fucking database.
      - endisneigh 3y ago
        Follow the naming standard: https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-... You can go to open subs and use those names alternatively, which follow the standard. Or just use jellyfin.
        pavel_lishin 3y ago
        I have also googled this, and this does not reliably work - especially for things that aren't TV shows, such as videos from YouTube channels or music videos.
        endisneigh 3y ago
        for that I dump them in an "other" library and it uses the file name title. though I mainly use it for my blu ray rips.
      - sam0x17 3y ago
        FileBot is your friend ;)
  - Larrikin 3y ago
    It's not as good as Plex. I hope one day it will be, it continues to improve, but it's a worse experience. Once they have proper intro skipping, I'll check it out again to see if they have fixed their other issues.
    - rigrassm 3y ago
      Fwiw, the Intro Skipper [0] plugin is actually fairly straightforward to install and set up and works as advertised (I personally just have it configured to auto-skip). [0] - https://github.com/306bobby-android/intro-skipper https://github.com/306bobby-android/intro-skipper
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
DonnyV 3y ago
Can they use some of that money to actually fix there horrible syncing with music on Android? Its been years now since it worked right.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  Oof, I keep thinking of switching off Youtube Music in favor of Plex :/
endisneigh 3y ago
Good. Nice to see it becoming better funded, but I hope the growth doesn’t bite it in the butt. I use Plex and turned off all of the sponsored stuff. It’s easy. Jellyfin is neat too but I find Plex to be superior, albeit not open source. Ymmv I do always wonder why folks complain about Plex ads. It’s pretty trivial to remove all of them.
- eightysixfour 3y ago
  Because we paid for lifetime licenses before the enshittification started.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    I’m confused - is the experience different if you pay now?
    - zdimension 3y ago
      One major paint point for me is their policy concerning the mobile app. I paid for the lifetime pass for my account with the goal that Plex would work well for my users and myself. This is not the case anymore since now users need to pay to be able to use the mobile app to stream from my server, otherwise they're limited to 5 minutes. I ended up making a small web UI where they can log in, search for movies and episodes, and download them. Why? Why do my users have to pay to stream from my server?
    - eightysixfour 3y ago
      No, I paid for a lifetime license to an application that didn't have ads, didn't collect viewing data (and email it to my friends!), and wasn't blocking people hosting Plex wherever they want. If you can find a company that went from simply paying for a license to incorporating data collection, advertising, and raised VC funds and became better after, I'd love to hear about it.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
How would you bring media ownership to the masses? A hardware "hub" you can put a disc in and it rips it and organizes it and allows your family to stream it? They could add a cloud based subscription for storage if you don't want their hub. The tech is all out there, someone just needs to do it in an Apple-like dead-simple manner.
psyclobe 3y ago
I’ve been buying Blu-ray’s.. so tired of plex messing up the simplest of encoded videos. Was good while it lasted.
cocacola1 3y ago
I hope they toss a few million to make sure that jumping forward and backward work properly. I can fast forward or backward once and then if I try again, it hangs. That’s pretty much my biggest Plex woe. Unless someone has a solution to that?
- adamomada 3y ago
  I use plex daily on fire tv and have not had any issues with seeking forward or backward. I use the “skip back 10 seconds” with the left button all the time when I miss some dialogue. When speaking of Plex you have to mention the client, it runs on almost everything but some clients work better than others.

26 points by Sytten 3y ago

Note that packing in ads for a lot of off-brand streaming services is why I quit Plex and switched to the otherwise inferior Jellyfin. Way to go!

sokoloff 3y ago

As a long time, happy, paid user of Plex, this makes me worry that they're going to continue to make it a worse experience...

pjerem 3y ago
Try Jellyfin. It’s the same thing Plex once was but fully open source.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I have (and have a Jellyfin server running on the network). IMO, it's nowhere near as polished as the 2017 version of Plex. Cover art and metadata matching is terrible. Plex seems to handle slightly "off" filenames and folder names far better. Every so often I update jellyfin and try again, only to find it's still a worse experience than Plex.
  - maxglute 3y ago
    That said, it does feel like PLEX hsa been introducing better features and cleaner UI since jellyfin launched. I wonder if they keep track of Jellyfin installs on local system. Competition is good.
  - pmx 3y ago
    I'm more than willing to take the trade off of slightly worse metadata and a less polished UI vs plex reporting all my media, habits, etc to their movie studio bed partners. They've already turned on their users and are abandoning what made plex great to begin with. Once you get used to JellyFin it's really great.
    - speff 3y ago
      This is why I never take the jellyfin evangelicals seriously. Plex is good software - nothing has been taken away and my experience with it has been consistently good and stable for multiple years. > plex reporting all my media, habits, etc to their movie studio bed partners There is no proof that they're doing what you're claiming. From what I've seen, people love trying to to push jellyfin by making things up about plex. Also a polished UI/UX counts for a lot more than the solo-user jellyfin crowd thinks.
      - zipping1549 3y ago
        > This is why I never take the jellyfin evangelicals seriously. It's mostly better not to take evangelicals anything seriously but I don't think you calling them evangelicals is a bit too far.
      - walth 3y ago
        > There is no proof that they're doing what you're claiming. do you recall when Plex started ingesting your media history and then emailed all shared users in your library what you were watching? Many Plex users were pretty embarrassed to be outed for soft porn to family members and colleagues. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/180maoe/plex_crossed_a_line_with_your_week_in_review/ https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/180maoe/plex_cr...
        speff 3y ago
        > reporting all my media, habits, etc to their movie studio bed partners is the claim. What you posted does not support that.
      - pocketarc 3y ago
        Yep, tried Jellyfin, UX was terrible, got back to Plex. If it’s not as good as Plex, it doesn’t matter if it’s open source or not.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    I have had a devil of a time getting Plex to recognize file names. I wish I could just directly write things to its damn fucking database.
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      Follow the naming standard: https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-... You can go to open subs and use those names alternatively, which follow the standard. Or just use jellyfin.
      - pavel_lishin 3y ago
        I have also googled this, and this does not reliably work - especially for things that aren't TV shows, such as videos from YouTube channels or music videos.
        endisneigh 3y ago
        for that I dump them in an "other" library and it uses the file name title. though I mainly use it for my blu ray rips.
    - sam0x17 3y ago
      FileBot is your friend ;)
- Larrikin 3y ago
  It's not as good as Plex. I hope one day it will be, it continues to improve, but it's a worse experience. Once they have proper intro skipping, I'll check it out again to see if they have fixed their other issues.
  - rigrassm 3y ago
    Fwiw, the Intro Skipper [0] plugin is actually fairly straightforward to install and set up and works as advertised (I personally just have it configured to auto-skip). [0] - https://github.com/306bobby-android/intro-skipper https://github.com/306bobby-android/intro-skipper
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

DonnyV 3y ago

Can they use some of that money to actually fix there horrible syncing with music on Android? Its been years now since it worked right.

pavel_lishin 3y ago
Oof, I keep thinking of switching off Youtube Music in favor of Plex :/

endisneigh 3y ago

Good. Nice to see it becoming better funded, but I hope the growth doesn’t bite it in the butt. I use Plex and turned off all of the sponsored stuff. It’s easy. Jellyfin is neat too but I find Plex to be superior, albeit not open source. Ymmv I do always wonder why folks complain about Plex ads. It’s pretty trivial to remove all of them.

eightysixfour 3y ago
Because we paid for lifetime licenses before the enshittification started.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  I’m confused - is the experience different if you pay now?
  - zdimension 3y ago
    One major paint point for me is their policy concerning the mobile app. I paid for the lifetime pass for my account with the goal that Plex would work well for my users and myself. This is not the case anymore since now users need to pay to be able to use the mobile app to stream from my server, otherwise they're limited to 5 minutes. I ended up making a small web UI where they can log in, search for movies and episodes, and download them. Why? Why do my users have to pay to stream from my server?
  - eightysixfour 3y ago
    No, I paid for a lifetime license to an application that didn't have ads, didn't collect viewing data (and email it to my friends!), and wasn't blocking people hosting Plex wherever they want. If you can find a company that went from simply paying for a license to incorporating data collection, advertising, and raised VC funds and became better after, I'd love to hear about it.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

How would you bring media ownership to the masses? A hardware "hub" you can put a disc in and it rips it and organizes it and allows your family to stream it? They could add a cloud based subscription for storage if you don't want their hub. The tech is all out there, someone just needs to do it in an Apple-like dead-simple manner.

psyclobe 3y ago

I’ve been buying Blu-ray’s.. so tired of plex messing up the simplest of encoded videos. Was good while it lasted.

cocacola1 3y ago

I hope they toss a few million to make sure that jumping forward and backward work properly. I can fast forward or backward once and then if I try again, it hangs. That’s pretty much my biggest Plex woe. Unless someone has a solution to that?

adamomada 3y ago
I use plex daily on fire tv and have not had any issues with seeking forward or backward. I use the “skip back 10 seconds” with the left button all the time when I miss some dialogue. When speaking of Plex you have to mention the client, it runs on almost everything but some clients work better than others.