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.
I’ve been using Jellyfin on my firestick, roku, and android phone for at least a year now.
What’s your hosting solution for external access? I’m asking because right now, Plex has a lot going for it in terms of allowing me to securely host my own server and share it with the people I want who are outside my network without actually having to open up ports or compromise my network security in any way. I couldn’t imagine hosting costs on a cloud VM for a decently sized, fairly actively used media server, assuming you wanted to go that route. I guess you could set up a reverse proxy on a cloud VM and forward traffic into your local network, but then there’s still the added network traffic costs for your VM.
I think they may have dropped the feature but I distinctly remember being disappointed in the feature that it wouldn’t download MP3s to your server so I’m pretty sure it existed at one point.
“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.
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.
As soon as they pulled this I switched to Jellyfin. No regrets.
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.
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?
You’re mileage is going to vary based on if you’re running off the server’s web interface or from a client. The Roku client has made some amazing improvements and I’m thankful for those devs, but it’s still behind the Android version in terms of features.
For music on Android, as an example, Gelli, Finamp, and Fintunes are all music focused clients.
Lastly, you can run both Plex and Jellyfin off the same library. Give it a try, see how you like it without giving up Plex. I ran them in tandem for about six months because making the jump.
