Imo this is not enshitification yet, but I’m concerned it could pave the way! It all depends on whether they make using your own content harder to promote this, or if it’s just a side hustle to add another revenue stream.
I was trying to think how Plex thinks this is going to play out, knowing that this move will piss off their customer base. Then I realized, this isn’t a play for Plex’s existing customer base. This is a play for their customer’s “friends and family” that are enjoying shared libraries already.
Their ‘customer’ base has for many many years been developing a large user base of technologically naive people with Plex apps installed who could never run their own server. If Plex knows, for example, that for every paying customer there’s three other users pulling from someone’s library, that’s a huge opportunity for them to convert those users to paying customers.
Everyone that set up a Plex server and then shared it with your tech-phobic parents, cousins, friends, etc… We made this possible.
I don’t like it but I can’t argue with the logic from Plex here.
Well maybe not. Without the shared libraries I doubt the tech-phobic users will stick around for movies they can likely find other places, especially since I doubt Plex gets very good deals for content.
I wouldn’t be so sure if that. It’s possible, yeah, but if my theory is right they see the library sharing as the carrot to get normies to download the plex app onto their roku or apple TV.
Pivoting to a streaming only app would close off that avenue for user acquisition permanently.
Is that bad though? I don’t mind renting a movie I really like even if my friend has it on their Plex. Especially if it’s from a small studio. Currently I do that via Google TV. Plex Inc being a small private company might use the money better than a publicly traded giant. I wouldn’t mind my friends and family spending a few bucks on it either.
Of course if Plex starts enshitifying existing private streaming features to push this, that’ll be another matter altogether. Which would not be unexpected.
It’s worth donating if you have the means to. I paid for a lifetime Plex subscription. So, I felt uncomfortable not donating to Jellyfin. They take donations on open collective.
Not until it’s a mandatory popup or recommendation any time you want to watch. Or maybe mandatory ads and popups on “new releases”. With Plex, nothing surprises me now.
Yeah I think I do too in the attic somewhere. Mid chips on those things where a bitch back then when it first started up. I think they got better though.
They made a software jailbreak?!?! So I just looked this up and I have Splinter Cell and MechAssault. I may have to dig that thing out and give this a try.
Sadly in the 4 years I’m using it jellyfin still couldn’t figure out how to correctly display series season covers and has some streaming bugs (no audio when audio is DTS and PGS subs are enabled ect)
You should redo your org from scratch and let all the default plugins do the work. Mine looks great and I never changed anything, just followed the recommended file org pattern for Movies and TV Shows.
Exactly. 99% of these issues are not naming the files as Jellyfin needs, which I understand can be annoying if you have a large number of files to move to it. And having the right access permissions for files, if you are on Linux.
Filebot is nice for that, it is what I used when I first got into Plex and realized the reason I had so many problems is because of the way I named files. This was before I even knew Sonarr and Radarr existed, now you can get them to do it.
Iirc Plex supports transcoding for downloads, while Jellyfin only allows downloading the original file. But I’ve heard transcoding downloads is broken on Plex, so ymmv.
Intro skip is only available as a plugin on Jellyfin.
Also, Findroid has a better ui and supports downloads, while the official app has more features (ie. settings/admin panel).
It’s in the second paragraph. This is the beginning of the monetization for everything in Plex now that they have a good user base. They are starting to ramp up the milking.
It will become like any other shitty streaming service eventually.
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