Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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I don't understand this argument.
I paid once many years ago. I've never been asked to pay again. Why would I switch before they make a change?
In the meantime, jellyfin is getting better and better. Plex will probably be dead to me at some point, and when that happens, I'll hop over.
I'm in this same boat. Right now jellyfin just isn't close enough.
I was at a buddies house last week, he uses jellyfin. We were having weird decoding issues, pink/purple flashes that looked like HDMI desync.
Resetting/reseating etc etc anything on the TV did nothing. Had to restart his server then it was magically fine 🤔
I'm fine dealing with that kind of stuff occasionally, but my family is not capable.
Yeah, this is it. When they ask me for more money, or when they demand I host on their servers, I will adios. Until then, I paid $75 one time and the service does exactly what I want it to do, and it's ezpz for a basic individual myself.
I think the most likely scenario is the company goes under because they didn't have enough money, and then folks will come here and complain about that. Maybe I'll be one of them, but I'll try to remember I paid $75 more than 10 years ago, and so I think I've more than gotten my money's worth.
Currently, they've been content to get more money out of you without asking you, so you're right so far, but only if you consider your advertising details and personal information to be valueless.
They're expanding data collection and showing more ads as a matter of course for years now. When they can no longer get money from other companies because of you, they'll switch to nickel and diming you.
I find that it helps to think of transactions in a more reductive way, like bartering + money. I am trading X amount of money, Y amount if privacy, and Z amount of hassle for whatever service or product. Even though Y and Z are hard to quantify, they are real things with real value, so not considering them at all is surely worse for me, and what they're counting on.
I have found that nearly every mainstream online service I might be interested in presents a negative value proposition when calculated like I described, but everyone values their privacy and time differently, so your mileage will, of course, vary.
Yeah, that's really overthinking things. I host my movies and shows, I watch them from wherever. I feel like I'm not going to spend more time analyzing it, because my usage of the app is literally finding my movie and watching it, or putting it on for my kids. If my junk email gets more junk emails, so be it. I personally lost the privacy battle a million years ago, although I guess I do my best by not having Facebook or Instagram or anything of that ilk. I do exist, and so I'm fucked anyway, but I'm not going to spend energy that somehow doesn't get me a meaningful return on that energy spent.
It may be applying more thought to it than you are willing to do, or be regarding things you don't consider important or valuable, but very many people value those things and find them worthy of consideration.
To "overthink" something is to expend more time and energy making a decision than can be objectively gained from making the "best" decision vs. the others. Your decision to not consider the non-monetary costs is your own and your prerogative, but it has no bearing on the objective value of your personal privacy.
You've decided not to participate in the privacy battle and so have lost much of it without a fight, which is understandable. Its a hard, thankless battle without end against powerful foes, requiring vigilance and continually gaining knowledge. I think it is fair not to fault people for giving up, but passively encouraging others to give up, too, is working for they enemy you've surrendered to.
Its OK to let people choose their own priorities and pick their own battles, especially if it isn't hurting anyone and entirely within their own lives like this issue is. People fighting for causes that you aren't fighting for, but still benefit from, is a public good. Someone defending their own privacy is done for their own good, but helps you, too. See "do not track", adblockers, the EFF, and countless other consumer protections as examples.
Charging for certain services is one thing. That's not what drove the last Plex exosdus.
Most people take umbrage at Plex offering features for free, saying they'll never be paid features, and then removing them as options for free accounts and effectively paywalling them.
Plus you can easily run them side by side. I setup jellyfin a while back when Plex used to charge users for streaming on mobile but now they don't if the server owner has a Plex pass.
For me Plex is still a lot simpler to manage if you have a lot of users, and if users have their own servers they share with you
I did that for a bit, but there was a noticeable increase in power usage on my server for something I'm not using.
They became dead to me much sooner then you. Once they knew what I was watching I left.
Same brought mine almost 8 years ago, and have never had to pay them a cent more.
Overall not a bad investment.
And plex just looks nicer and offers a better experience.
If it changes I'll consider migrating but for the moment Plex had done right by thier lifetime pass members
That hasn't been my experience. They unilaterally changed their TOS repeatedly after I was already subscribed to a lifetime agreement. Even if they made the terms better, that's still bogus, as contracts of adhesion are ethically dubious in general. This is economics, not Calvinball.
That's pretty much where I'm at too.
Both Jellyfin and Plex are pretty great currently, I prefer Plex slightly, but if Plex becomes worse then I'll likely make the switch over to Jellyfin. I've liked Jellyfin for years but Plex has still been my main app.
I have both of them installed anyway.
Plex is less confusing to use if you want to share your library, but thankfully I don't have any concerns about that because I'm selfish with my media and just have it set up for my own personal use.
*when Plex becomes worse
I am not aware of any company that has reversed course on enshittification once it has begun, so Plex seems certain to follow that path. I would consider at least being prepared.
It happens when they're punished for it in the market. Microsoft finally realized they're bleeding Windows and Xbox users, so they've got major initiatives to improve both. Unity tried to make the worst business pivot I've ever heard of, and their customers were very clearly and vocally jumping ship in response, so they undid that pivot. Plex's only competition is an alternative that doesn't have a business model, so if they bleed enough users to Jellyfin, they'll either reverse course or stop just shy of some threshold where people leave Plex; or their business will die, which is also an option on the table.