Streaming media company Plex raises new funds as it nears profitability
Streaming media company Plex raises new funds as it nears profitability
Media streamer Plex has raised new capital. The company, which began as a media organization startup, has morphed over the years to become a one-stop shop
I hope this doesn't mean they are on the slippery slope of selling user data, thoughts?
Honestly the writing's been on the wall for Plex for a while now. I think it was when they introduced podcasts or news or something that it first became clear to me that Plex was trying to grow beyond a software company for self-hosters and prepare themselves for an IPO or something. I still use it simply because their client availability is second-to-none and I've got a bunch of people signed up already, but I've already made my peace that the "Plex getting shittier" line and the "Jellyfin getting better" line are getting closer and closer to crossing each other.
At the moment all is fine. I'm just going to ride with it until I have to stop and change to something else.
I'm mostly in the same boat. So far anything I didn't like could be easily turned off. I unpinned the Plex TV and movies so it never shows up. I don't mind discover because it means it returns results for things I don't have, letting me watchlist it so overseerr can request it without me needing to leave Plex.
I have a jellyfin container running in the same docker compose yml with the exact same media folders mounted to it with quicksync passed through to it in addition to Plex, reverse proxy already set up so switching is as easy as opening a different URL or app since it's already up and running.
I had to drop Plex when it made me sign in for a locally hosted setup. I'd rather not have them in my library.
Replaced with Jellyfin as others here have, found every device in the house so far works with it and it streamed 4k to the TV from an RPI 4.
That is only true when you use their "home" feature. It puts the entire thing behind oauth because it has to do so in order to restrict libraries/content to non-full users. Think about the instance where you have a thirteen-year-old kid and you want to restrict them to pg13 and under. Without forcing oauth on local connections they could just sign out and watch all your star trek porn parodies or whatever you don't want them to see. If you remove the server from a "plex home", it disables the oauth workflow for local connections as expected.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not really happy with a lot of their new sharing/social features, and their recommendations on the homepage can fuck right off, but I do think it's important to be accurate when criticizing. Requiring oauth on local vlans when plex home is enabled is the objectively correct solution.
How about transcoding subtitles on those 4k titles? That's where I find Plex is a bit worse for wear right now in my environment.
Does Jellyfin have an xbox app?
No, but most people find Kodi with the Jellycon plugin to work very well on Xbox.
You know what would be a killer feature?
Being able to buy movies without DRM crap at full resolution (blu-ray or 4k HDR) at a reasonable price (same or less than physical media) that includes extras. Extra points if everything is already named and in the correct folder layout to just drop it on the server in the right folder. Extra Extra points if Plex manages the download in the background and puts it in the right place when finished, or an incoming folder that awaits approval. Even several hours or more to download it would be fine (just make download resumable).
(yes I know this is exceedingly unlikely to happen, but we can dream)
Sounds like gog for movies. And built into Plex? That’s one of those ideas that makes way too much sense to ever happen
ya, the 18 streaming companies will say - no! we have exclusive access to our library of media now! buy our subscription~!
Plex is yet another service on the enshitification high road, might aswell switch to Jellyfin now and spare the future trouble if you ask me.
As soon as they pulled this I switched to Jellyfin. No regrets.
“One of the things we’ve already started to prove in 2023 is that we can absolutely monetize some of that data…in a very privacy-friendly way. There’s no personally identifiable information being used,” Valroy said. “We already proved we could make money on that this year, so, in 2024, we’re putting more wood behind that arrow. And arguably, even though our current business is already growing 30%-40% per year, that could dwarf it in two to three years. That is a really big market opportunity,” he added.
Sounds like they already have, on that note, for me it no longer matters if they are or aren't as long as they put dev time into features that'll actually create value for me as well.
That makes me nervous. We keep seeing evidence, again and again, that "anonymized" data is actually pretty easy to de-anonymize if you have enough of it. So I'm really not a fan of companies selling "anonymized" user data unless they transparently specify EXACTLY what data they're selling.
I'll stick with Plex for now because it's so easy for others to use, but the moment I smell smoke, I'm heading for the door. I've already got Jellyfin installed and connected to my library, I just haven't bothered to set up a reverse proxy for remote access yet.
Yeah I don’t like it. Gonna ride this out for now like some of the other people here but I suspect I’ll be moving onto Jellyfin in the next few years.
Come join us on Jellyfin. The project has made some great progress.
I most likely will eventually, but Plex works great for me for the time being and I've already paid for Plex Pass so I wanna get some mileage out of it.
Does Jellyfin have:
A dedicated music app?
Music filtering/smart playlists? Sonic analysis for music?
Good 4k/x265 performance?
Has a third party (or built in) utility that shows me streaming usage per person?
Allows me to limit remote users to streaming from a single IP address at a time?
Let’s me watch something together with another remote user?
Has an app for most any device (like Plex or Emby) that does NOT require sideloading?
Built in native DVR steaming/recording support?
Built in two factor authentication?Can I watch it on my xbox?
I'm already on my way out of Plex to Jellyfin.
I had a nice run with my lifetime pass, but the road ahead has been very clear the last couple of years of where Plex is headed.
After they purger all the pirate shares, their clock is ticking.
Soon they'll have no data and no customers. These tools come and go and the community will migrate while they continue their profitable enshitification.
That's how I ended up here
Well, I look forward to having to switch to something else when inevitably someone at Plex says "if we just monetized traffic for home servers we'd be able to make so much money"
Had to cancel mine once Hetzner got blocked.
I mean, people were using it for blatant in-your-face piracy.
Plex has always been about under-the-radar privacy so they have plausible deniability.
Hetzner got blocked by who?
Where can I watch The Grudge