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It's very interesting to see Plex users slowly turn against the platform primarily due to costs being imposed. Plex has better client software than Jellyfin but
by s_dev 9mo ago
It's very interesting to see Plex users slowly turn against the platform primarily due to costs being imposed. Plex has better client software than Jellyfin but the 'proprietary vs open source' debate for NAS/video streaming software seems to be reversing. Jellyfin is catching up to Plex and in a few years despite Plex having a first mover advantage here -- I expect it to surpass Plex in monthly active users.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
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- vachina 9mo agoPlex misjudged their market bigly. They’re turning into a streaming company, when what people paid for is a media server.
- paxys 9mo agoIt's about more than just costs. Plex started out as a home media server (a direct port of XBMC/Kodi in fact), but over time due to its success the creators decided they wanted to turn it into Netflix instead. So using Plex to stream your own media to your own local or remote devices is being made harder with every update.
- bombcar 9mo agoXBMC is still somehow the best of them all, perhaps only in my memory. But damn if it wasn't magical having all those movies at your fingertips in the early 2000s.
- gf000 9mo ago> own media to your own local or remote devices This was the point that made a bunch of people (me included) absolutely furious with Plex. Like I gladly pay for services and donate to open source projects. But it hits differently to pay for my very own hardware being used.
- jaffa2 9mo agoWhat is the difference between paying for plex to stream your own video from yourown hardware and paying to use microsoft word to write your own letter which also runs on your own hardware?
- horsawlarway 9mo agoYou still use word? --- As a more serious response - The last time I purchased MS office (decade+ ago) I paid once for a product license I could use forever. That felt fair - I buy a tool, I use it. Plex had that payment model and got a lot less pushback from the community - but this whole "we're a SaaS now!" thing is just not going to fly. I just don't trust the company anymore, and Jellyfin is absolutely great.
- ffsm8 9mo agoI don't think anyone would've had an issue with buy to use, that's not their business model however. As a matter of fact, I paid them 150€ for a "lifetime license" - because a long time ago, that was their business model. I too left for jellyfin because of their pivot to being "Netflix" as paxys phrased it. They just decided to throw away the market they established themselves into previously. Saltines should be expected at that.
- TacticalCoder 9mo agoTotally. I'm not into politics and basically all I want is a local streamer and I'm running Plex (on an old HP EliteDesk NUC) but... I already tried Jellyfin (and trial was successful with a few movies), so I'll very likely be switching my entire setup from Plex to Jellyfin soon.
- jdboyd 9mo agoI paid for Plex, but then they broke the the downloading features from the server to the Android client, and never repaired it to work reliably. Meanwhile most of their updates were about streaming support, and then they started cramming their streaming service into it, and pushing it, and I just got sick of all of that. Eventually I just switched to jellyfin. It is far from perfect. The music player isn't as good as plex's, there is no download feature. But at least it hasn't turned on me yet.
- NegatioN 9mo agoI feel like they did a somewhat recent update to the downloader which fixed things. I had issues before as well but not anymore. The streaming issue is another matter though :/
- BeetleB 9mo agoIt's still poor after the new design. If I downloaded N episodes for M shows, it shows me N*M episodes all at once. No way to say "Hey, filter this list to just episodes of show M, Season K".
- crtasm 9mo agoJellyfin's Android app does let you download files but having to do music tracks one by one isn't very useful. Finamp is the app to use for proper offline playback/sync of music from your Jellyfin server. Go for the beta version, it's far ahead of stable and works well.
- Krastan 9mo agoI have the old version of the app pinned so it doesn't update to the new app. I occasionally check the reviews but they continue to be really bad.
- 1980phipsi 9mo agoYeah, I don't mind paying for something, but they broke a bunch of stuff last year and it's still not fixed. That's what annoys me about plex.
- add-sub-mul-div 9mo agoI've never paid Plex a dime because I don't need any of the paid features. But its usability gets worse with every update, which is an underappreciated reason to want off the platform.
- observationist 9mo agoJellyFin is an open source project and is community driven and motivated by open source principles. Plex is a VC funded project, they've raised some $50m to date. Crazy what money can buy, isn't it?
- DANmode 9mo agoControl over the user?, ability to turn them into a product (data)?
- gosub100 9mo agoI also want to shout out to Emby, which is almost identical to Jellyfin. It seems a bit more polished, and works very well. I've been using it for over 2 years. It does have a paid tier and nags me to upgrade for 10s on my TV, but that doesn't bother me. I have it running in a freebsd jail and it's been rock solid.
- Macha 9mo agoNote that Jellyfin is a fork of Emby from when Emby closed their source.
- xienze 9mo agoFor me it wasn't even about cost, it was the fact that logging into my self-hosted Plex server required an auth flow that went to Plex's servers for some reason.
- zen928 9mo ago[flagged]
- xienze 9mo ago> 'For some reason'? You mean for the sharing library and streaming services and all the other features that require identification to even use ...? All I wanted to do was self host a Plex server and access it from devices on my intranet using Infuse. Why should I have to bounce to a third party server to do that? And to be clear, the devices using Infuse didn't have to do that, but accessing the dashboard (for admin) did require an external hop. There's no reason IMO for that to be necessary.
- zen928 9mo ago> All I wanted to do was self host a Plex server and access it from devices on my intranet using Infuse. Why should I have to bounce to a third party server to do that? Cool, a real discussion. Plex has the weakness of requiring a first time online auth because they didnt implement a local ldap/oauth/sso pathway. After that point, Settings > Network > "List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth", use a generous netmask. Entirely local after that point if desired.
- xienze 9mo agoWell, I didn't know that at the time, and I was so annoyed by it I just moved to Jellyfin. And based on another comment in this thread: > https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authentication-for-local-network-access/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authentication-fo... They certainly try to scare people away from changing this setting, which is not a good look IMO.
- seniorThrowaway 9mo agoAgree with others it's not solely about cost. For me it was about the very clear monetization drive Plex started doing years ago, while remaining nominally free to use for your own media. At some point, and I've already switched off it so maybe it's already happened, they will monetize tracking/meta data about what is in your own collection.
- darknavi 9mo agoI have a Plex lifetime subscription but hold no strict allegiance to the company. If Jellyfin was a comparable product (in user experience and ease of use for my extended family's platforms) I'd switch tomorrow.
- horsawlarway 9mo agoYeah... worth looking again (or... with all due respect, maybe actually trying a first time). Spoken as the person hosting a jellyfin instance for my extended family. I switched years ago and it's only gotten easier. You can find things to complain about if you want to, but generally speaking - Jellyfin just works. The idea that it's not comparable is pretty silly.
- driverdan 9mo agoI have a lifetime subscription to Plex. I hate everything they've been doing over the past few years. They're completely ignoring their existing users in the quest for growth. * Social sharing stuff that shows what you watch to others by default. * Adding their streaming services and other paid services. * Changing the UI layout to hide self hosted content, promote paid services, with poor UX for changing it back. * Ignoring bugs that have been known and unfixed for years. * Ignoring user feedback, doubling down on their poor decisions.
- TheCondor 9mo agoAre they that terrible, or is it the market and those of us with our own media are becoming more of the minority? I do question, at times, the amount of effort I put in to curating and backing up and maintaining our media. I too have a lifetime subscription, I don't mind a lot of what they do, but it feels like our media has become less centric, they want to stream pluto.tv channels and stuff like that. The biggest thing I dislike was how I had a single app to all my media and then they blew that up and I need multiple apps. It's not that big of a hassle; I just wish I had more heads up to when it was going to happen. And while I'm not aware of them having any music-streaming media, the music app ever only streams my own media and feels like it might be on life support. Maybe music streaming is "done" but it feels kind of neglected.
- driverdan 9mo ago> Are they that terrible, or is it the market and those of us with our own media are becoming more of the minority? That's what I was implying with saying "existing users." It seems they're caring less about their self-hosted core userbase and trying to expand to other types of users.
- barbazoo 9mo agoWe run a plex server and I hate it. Hiding "timer" functionality (turn off in x minutes) behind a paywall feels like a shit move to me as a parent for whom this is a pretty basic functionality.
- jaffa2 9mo agoAsk for a refund.
- barbazoo 9mo agoDidn’t buy, not gonna reward them for it.
- jaffa2 9mo ago> Didn’t buy My point exactly. If you want the timer pay for it? Otherwise what are you complaining about ? Ferrari dont’ even let me use a car for free, and I dont post complaining about how if I wanted one I would have to pay.
- barbazoo 9mo agoSure obviously you're right. I think it's shitty of them because I learned about it after already setting up everything because I thought this was basic functionality. My bad. So it would be more like Ferrari giving me the car for free, and then after a while when it starts raining I find out the windshield wipers are behind a paywall. Sure that would also be my fault, technically but it's also a shit company for doing that.
- jaffa2 9mo agoCan you not just set your TV to turn off after X hours ? In the EU this is actually a legal requirement that they can do this. (for 'energy saving') Many TV's also have an explicit sleep timer. Yes this doesn't resolve plex issue but could solve the issue in the meantime. Or go old school and plug an actual electric timer in the socket and cut power to the TV after X minutes/hours
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- 0x457 9mo agoIt's not just that. It was great for all of us with large media archives, but every "big" release is making things better for those who don't run their media libraries at expense of those who do. Syncing (a paid feature) was broken for years. It might download video, it might fail. You will find out on the plane. When internet goes down, Plex becomes weird...my home network still works just fine. Library navigation follows netflix pattern, but netflix pattern is to let me browse for hours without finding anything.
- BowBun 9mo agoNot to pile on, but the reason we're pissed at Plex is because they did a classic rug-pull: advertise to nerds like us who own our servers + media, then slowly make deals with publishers, requiring them to police _my_ content. Then start adding subscriptions and limiting how I can share (again) _my_ content - what are they offering me anymore? The irony is they won't have a customer base from my mom/dad. Why in god's green earth would a layperson pay for Plex when they can get streaming bundles? I just don't get it. And that's why I got rid of my ~10 year plex instance and replaced it with Jellyfin in maybe ~1 day. Happy to help others do the same!
- JuniperMesos 9mo agoI never even looked into Plex, I don't want to run proprietary software I have to pay for on my own computer to serve my own music. I've only ever used Jellyfin and it works more or less ok for my use cases.