• @SquiffSquiff@lemmy.world
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    2026 months ago

    This is simply a rehash/summary of an original article on 404media. Beyond that, you would have to be living under a rock to think that Plex was interested in what their users actually wanted. I ran a Plex server for years until I got fed up with trying to turn off some new self serving misfeature with every new update. It’s been clear for years that offering a self hosting media server solution is simply a bridgehead for Plex to seek every more revenue opportunities, even for paying victims customers. I moved to and recommend Jellyfin- comparable user experience (minus the crap), use the same library, apps for all your devices, open source and completely self contained.

  • Possibly linux
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    1006 months ago

    Jellyfin is going to explode in popularity (it kind of has already)

    • @Deiv@lemmy.ca
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      66 months ago

      I’d love it if it had native apps on popular devices, especially on samsung TV. There are ways to set it up, but it has issues

    • @Wogi@lemmy.world
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      26 months ago

      I would love to switch to jellyfin but I can’t get the fuckin thing to work. Same with Emby. Absolutely refuses to find the server.

    • /home/pineapplelover
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      16 months ago

      Yeah I’ve been running Jellyfin for a year now and it’s amazing. The plugins automatically find metadata, cover art, and subtitles for me as soon as I upload them to my nas.

  • @OR3X@lemm.ee
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    536 months ago

    Lol, I just finished building my JellyFin server last weekend too. Bye Plex!

      • @1hitsong
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        126 months ago

        I’m one of the programmers of the Jellyfin Roku client. What are some of the things you’re seeing that need polish? We’re always looking for what to work on next to make it better for users.

        • @artaxthehappyhorse
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          26 months ago

          Ok here’s my personal gripes/nitpicks

          Music:

          • overlay band name on band tile. I know the name is up top, but I don’t recognize a lot of those tile pics and have to go one by one trying to find the right one.
          • when I click a band tile, the “Albums” icon is too small. Ideally have album tiles horizontal along the bottom, but at least make the icon bigger and put next to Instant Mix, also a “all songs” next to “albums”.
          • Instant Mix is confusing, it seems to be shuffle just name it shuffle, and if you hit shuffle from a band details I’d expect it to shuffle just that band, vs “Shuffle All” from main screen, or Shuffle album from album details, etc.
          • when playing and play/pause is focused, if I could push “up” to focus the progress bar, and then left/right to fast fwd/rewind, or “ok” btn to enter a time to skip to (think, where I left off in this 20 hour long audiobook)

          Movies section had some nitpicks too. Like wishing there was a quick bar when you focus a movie, or at least putting “un/mark watched” in the asterisk menu instead of having to drill into it. The rest is probably just me needing to get used to the playback button design, like pushing up I’d expect to see progress bar and some quick functions but instead I see file info which doesn’t seem like a common thing I’d care to look at. Similarly, being able to click the progress bar and skip to a time would be wonderful vs hitting “right” a hundred times on my crappy Roku remote 🙂

          Hope you found my complaining useful!

          • @1hitsong
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            36 months ago

            Here are bugs you’ve identified.

            overlay band name on band tile. I know the name is up top, but I don’t recognize a lot of those tile pics and have to go one by one trying to find the right one.

            There is a setting to always show the titles on the items. On the home view press *, then go to Settings / User Interface / Libraries / General / Grid View Settings / Item Titles. Ensure this setting is set to Always Show. In your music library you will see titles for all your artists, but only if you’re using the Artists (Grid) view - accessed by pressing * while in your library. The titles in the Artists (Presentation) view aren’t honoring this setting. That’s a bug 🐛

            Here are new features you’ve identified that I’ll made enhancement tickets for so we can work on them in the future.

            also a “all songs” next to “albums”.

            Create a new section that shows a selectable list of all the artist’s songs.

            when playing and play/pause is focused, if I could push “up” to focus the progress bar, and then left/right to fast fwd/rewind, or “ok” btn to enter a time to skip to (think, where I left off in this 20 hour long audiobook)

            This has been on my mind ever since I first wrote the audio player. It’s coming once we get the last of what I call “the foundation” items completed. In a nutshell, we needed the behind the scenes code to be improved before we could jump into adding more “advanced” functions to the audio player.

            Movies section had some nitpicks too. Like wishing there was a quick bar when you focus a movie, or at least putting “un/mark watched” in the asterisk menu instead of having to drill into it.

            We’ve had other people mention a similar menu in other locations. We’ve started calling it a context menu. We need to think more about how it interacts with existing * menus and all that, but it’s another good idea.

            Hope you found my complaining useful!

            Very helpful, thank you!

          • @1hitsong
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            26 months ago

            Gonna unpack these in small groups. I’ll start with things I believe the client already does or will do soon.

            when I click a band tile, the “Albums” icon is too small. Ideally have album tiles horizontal along the bottom, but at least make the icon bigger and put next to Instant Mix

            If the artist has albums, you should be able to press down on the remote to get to the album section without having to use the left icon menu. That menu is really only there to help people like me who have some artists with dozens of albums and I don’t want to have to press up through all of them to get back to the top. It’s a little jump menu.

            Instant Mix is confusing, it seems to be shuffle just name it shuffle, and if you hit shuffle from a band details I’d expect it to shuffle just that band, vs “Shuffle All” from main screen, or Shuffle album from album details, etc.

            Instant mix is kinda like a radio play option. It generates a playlist based on the band you’re on. To play all the songs by the selected band, press the Play button on their artist page. To shuffle play the artist, currently you can press the play button on their artist page then enable shuffle mode.

            The upcoming 2.0 release will provide a new option where you can simply press the play button on your remote and it will shuffle play all the songs by the currently highlighted artist.

            The rest is probably just me needing to get used to the playback button design, like pushing up I’d expect to see progress bar and some quick functions but instead I see file info which doesn’t seem like a common thing I’d care to look at. Similarly, being able to click the progress bar and skip to a time would be wonderful vs hitting “right” a hundred times on my crappy Roku remote.

            The upcoming 2.0 release replaces the playback info and subtitle select popups with an OSD (on screen display). It has buttons to play/pause, skip by chapters, a chapter list, and the moved playback info and subtitle select popups. It also shows you where you are in playback (but this bar is not selectable due to technical reasons - thanks Roku 👎

    • @CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world
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      76 months ago

      Doesn’t Plex require you to buy their premium service in order to use it on mobile devices?

      I remember setting up my Plex server and was shocked that I had to pay to view my own media.

      • @warmaster@lemmy.world
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        116 months ago

        devs have to eat too, open source software (when fully free) is sometimes built as a hobby like Jellyfin, or as a portfolio project, or worst case scenario as a bait and switch to paid (sometimes it’s death sentence). Then there are sponsored projects like Vulkan, or others that live off of donations like Mozilla.

      • @ScoobyDoo27@lemm.ee
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        46 months ago

        I always see this but I used Plex on my iPhone for months before I bought the Plex pass. I did buy the Plex app way back when and maybe that’s why but I’m also using a new Plex account so I don’t see how’d they be tied together.

        • @Unmapped
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          6 months ago

          I’m not sure if it is exactly the same on Iphone. But on Android you can choose to either pay for the app( a one time payment) or have Plex pass. Either way lets you watch on the mobile app.

        • LUHG
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          16 months ago

          Buying the premium app and Plex pass are different things. You need to buy the app to be able to watch on mobile via the app.

  • MudMan
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    516 months ago

    I’ve been seeing this story do the rounds and I feel like we’re burying the lede here.

    Who the hell is watching porn over Plex? That is somehow simultaneously the most uninformed and the most complicated way to access porn.

  • @Unmapped
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    6 months ago

    I’ll admit this feature should have definitely been opt-in. But when the update came out there was a big pop-up on your screen when you logged in. Where you just turned all of this off and hit save. It is super easy to disable.

    The sharing what I watch with friends part is dumb. But it is pretty cool how you can recommend stuff to friends.

    • @dirtbiker509@lemm.ee
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      416 months ago

      I got the pop up. I disabled it. But I just got an email from Plex telling me everything my family member watched in the last week. This is complete shit!!

    • @CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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      66 months ago

      I followed the instructions and opted out yet I’m still seeing what my users watched along with getting emails listing the same. I’m certain none of my users are interested in this and likely skipped through the pop-up without reading/comprehending it.

      • @LufyCZ@lemmy.world
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        36 months ago

        I think that as the server owner it’s a given that you’ll be able to see what people watch.

        • @CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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          6 months ago

          Having the ability to see it versus having it pushed in your face in the app and in weekly emails are two completely separate things.

    • ISometimesAdmin
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      -206 months ago

      Yeah, considering how in-your-face this popup was, I can’t really take someone seriously when they just say that it was “opt-out”…

      Like, I get it on a technicality. But c’mon.

  • @Pyrozo007@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    436 months ago

    If you’re using Plex for porn and also adding friends on it, what were you thinking in the first place? Like, it was so obvious something like this was going to happen, and that’s besides the already existant risk of accidentally sharing the wrong library with your friend.

    It’s a cool feature, it obviously would have been better if it filtered by age rating or adult film by default to begin with but I really see this as an overreaction.

    • @const_void
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      86 months ago

      Someone in their marketing department

  • BarrierWithAshes
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    316 months ago

    This is far from the first horrible thing I’ve heard Plex do. Why are they like this?

    • @Lem453@lemmy.ca
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      416 months ago

      Enshittification is the norm for all for profit endeavours. Exceptions to this are exceedingly rare and usually just a matter of time rather than truly being an exception.

    • @npz@lemm.ee
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      76 months ago

      They’ve raised over $80 million. Investor money is a poison, and the only antidote is enshittification.

      • BarrierWithAshes
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        26 months ago

        Well thats just short sighted. Theres barely a reason for the average consumer to even think about plex let alone sell em on anything. Maybe if they tried to resurrect DVD sales or become the bandcamp of movies they would have a plan. But just a media organizer? Theres no way those investors are getting that 80mil back.

        • @AlexWIWA
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          16 months ago

          Especially given the demographic of Plex users. The likelihood of them jumping ship is much higher than regular streaming services.

          Ultimately, VLC stream still exists for people to go back to

  • Gomiboy
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    306 months ago

    The great enshittening of internet platforms continues

    • @LufyCZ@lemmy.world
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      46 months ago

      So how exactly is this enshitiffication?

      It’s a stupid feature that’s for sure, but you’ve gotta stop calling everything enshitiffication mate

      • Gomiboy
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        306 months ago

        ?

        It’s a degradation in functionality masquerading as an improvement. And as for labelling everything ‘shit’, have you seen my comment history. This is the first time I have used this term on any platform. Smh

        • @LufyCZ@lemmy.world
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          16 months ago

          Re: using it the first time - sorry, people just tend to use it when not applicable.

          It’s not a degradation in functionality, it’s a dumbass move, but I’m sure they didn’t intend to worsen anything.

        • Echo Dot
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          16 months ago

          It’s not really degrading functionality there is it. It’s a feature that no one wants and is annoying and badly thought out but you can turn it off but they haven’t disabled any functionality to add this feature

          • @jonne@infosec.pub
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            96 months ago

            I feel that for a platform that is commonly used for pirated content, having telemetry that shows exactly what content people have is probably bad.

            Next they’ll start selling that info to the MPAA so they can sue individual users.

            • @LufyCZ@lemmy.world
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              -46 months ago

              They will never sue users, you can not prove the user doesn’t own the corresponding Blueray, etc.

              That, and it’d completely destroy the company, like in an instant, gone.

          • @EddoWagt@feddit.nl
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            26 months ago

            It’s a feature that no one wants and is annoying and badly thought out but you can turn it off but they haven’t disabled any functionality to add this feature

            So it’s just more unnecessary bloat

  • @June@lemm.ee
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    216 months ago

    I’m a little shocked at how difficult it seems to be to find instructions on how to disable this feature. Pretty sure I got it, but it wasn’t a feature called discover together but a series of sharing options.

        • Echo Dot
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          36 months ago

          Plex has been kind of bad for a while though in terms of UI being just hard to use.

          I don’t actually think it’s even intentional I think it’s just they don’t have anybody on staff who really knows what they’re doing.

          • @June@lemm.ee
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            16 months ago

            Yea, it’s what all my people use though so I’m a little stuck with it. It’s also dead simple to set up and I don’t feel like learning jellyfin right now.

  • @Fluid@aussie.zone
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    146 months ago

    Would love to just pay someone to access their jellyfin server. Does something like this exist?

          • @Gestrid@lemmy.ca
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            16 months ago

            Ironically, my Lemmy app (Boost for Lemmy) likes the regular URL but doesn’t like the !link (or whatever it’s called).

            And, yeah, it loads the community in the app, not in a webpage, when I tap on it.

            • @OsrsNeedsF2P
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              16 months ago

              Boost automatically handles the most common Lemmy instance URLs, but even Boost can’t do them all. Fediverse linking is still a bit awkotaco

    • @n_emoo@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Yes. Youll have to find one that works for your region though (local servers will have better latency and b/w)

        • @xthexder@l.sw0.com
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          96 months ago

          Just FYI, as soon as money starts changing hands, it can open you up to a whole extra level of legal damages for piracy, assuming the content isn’t licensed for distribution. Ripping your own DVDs for yourself is one thing, but selling access to the copies via a media server is way less of a gray area, and they can point to real numbers as damages.

          • @subtext@lemmy.world
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            36 months ago

            Yeah it’s definitely way past the line where it becomes worthwhile to go after you and there’s even a money trail somewhere to trace it back. IMO definitely not worth any potential legal headaches to buy or sell a service like this.

        • @n_emoo@lemmy.ca
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          05 months ago

          Im not certain about lemmy communities but look up plexshares or jellyfin shares in reddit perhaps?

          Also while I do agree money complicates things, since you are the purchaser, typically it carries less risk.

          In either event stay away from shares that do not offer a cheap (few days) or free trial. Then again never sign up for “lifetime” bs, go on a monthly plan so you can drop them if the QoS drops.

    • zeekaran
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      16 months ago

      And how to give access without setting yourself up to have the FBI raid your house or get sued to oblivion