Oh, you expect proprietary software to behave nicely? That’s cute!

I’ll just be over here with Jellyfin, watching the chaos unfold with my popcorn!

Nothing is ever truly free in this world. They gotta pay their bills too.

Is that really the message you got? It’s worded differently than what I see in mine.

Is Kodi still a thing? Been a while since I had a media server but I have another one in the works because fuck streaming services

My aim is to get my friends and family to stop paying for streaming services and if I have to pay for Plex to achieve this then that’s a win.

Jellyfin is nowhere near as feature complete as Plex and not by a long shot. My users don’t like the UI of Jellyfin and setting up for remote access is no trivial feat. With this in mind and my goals Plex is better suited.

So far have 8 users all saving £10-40 a month not going to streaming services.

The more services you have depending on a 3rd party which can do whatever the fuck they want, either directly or by changing the rules when the feel like it (i.e. not bound by rules they cannot change, such as root DNS providers are) and then doing it, the less your system is actually self-hosted, IMHO.

For me the whole point of self-hosting is exactly being as independent as possible of 3rd parties that can just fuck you up, be it on purpose (generally for $$$) or because they go bankrupt and close their services.

This is why I’ve actually chosen to run Kodi on my home server that doubles down as TV Box even though I can’t easilly use it from anywhere else (it’s possible but it involves using a standalone database that is then shared, which can only be safelly done through customly setup ssh pipes) rather than something like Plex.

It’s kinda funny to see people into self-hosting still doing the kind of mistake I did almost 3 decades ago (fortunatelly in a professional environment) of trusting a 3rd party to the point of becoming dependent on them and later getting burned when they abused that trust, and which led me to avoid such situations like the plague ever since.

Mind you, I can understand if people for whom self-hosting is not driven by a desire to reduce vulnerability to the whims of 3rd parties (which includes reducing the risk of enshittification) and is instead driven by “waste not” (for example, bringing new life to old hardware rather than throwing it out) or by it being a fun challenge, don’t really care to be as independent as possible from such 3rd parties.

OP is posting misleading hyperbole

This from the Plex site, emphasis mine.

Consent

We take your privacy seriously. If you’d like more details on how we collect, use, and transfer your information, please review our Privacy Policy. Plex is able to provide free-to-watch movies, shows, and live TV by displaying a modest number of ads before and during playback. While it is not possible to opt-out of these ads, you do not have to consent to the selling and sharing of certain information.

We’re never going to get anywhere if people on these communities can’t act in good faith and share correct and information - not sensation. Change the OP or mods delete this misinformation.

ETA: shame on the 63 people who mindlessly upvote this crap without factchecking OP too.

“enshittification wont happen to my software of choice”

hahahaha… those ppl with discord, iphones, windows,plex…they wont learn.

@Sunny lol OK so which subdomain do I block.

If we find out “I do not consent” opts out, I’m fine with it. If we find out “I do not consent” leads to a “Close our account” page, it’s time for pitchforks, especially since they recently had a huge sale on lifetime memberships.

Last shit they pulled I moved to Jellyfin. Today I deleted my Plex account.

Do people actually watch whatever plex streams? The only reason I use plex is to rewatch Star Trek for the 18th time.

Force PlexPass first, get money, then change terms.

Coordinated big-brain evil.

Big plus - identify all accounts interested in privacy. Thus = suspicious accounts.

This is the path for Plex to become Digg, Playon, and reddit.

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

python -m http.server is still my media server of choice. It’s never let me down.