Plex has had its day for a while now but no valid replacement was out there.
Plex sole focus right now is exploiting new users, this mean further dumbing down the apps and forcing streaming services on us.
The recent merging of views and removal of user customization is a red flag, expect to see those streaming services pop up in more places and this time can’t turn them off…
It’s a matter of time now as Plex is either bleeding money or hires the wrong people, the core users will switch once alternatives like Jellyfin mature a bit more.
Instead of a VASTLY inferior product like JellyFin you can actually use Emby which JellyFin was stolen from. Emby has developers that actually care and the product is not, at least yet, bloated with “extra” functionality.
I use Emby most of the time but there are still a few things I use Plex for. I have tried JellyFin but find it lacking in a lot of ways and its developers seem inferior to those at Plex or Emby but they are pretty good at taking someone else’s work and trying to run with it. In other words they are very good thiefs and even better at hiding the facts.
I just cam to the forum to air similar sentiment. I’ve had quit the same experience. When ever I updated plex something would break and I need to spend hours learning what the new “right” settings are.
I just want to play my media locally. But that most simple use case is broken for me,… often. It’s nice to hear that I’m not the only one.
I tried Emby and gave up because I couldn’t get my music to play on my Alexa speakers. Getting music to play on Alexa speakers was EASY with plex… but Emby seems to insist on installing certificates which is beyond my skill level. I even had to pay for the privilege of discovering this. So there seems to be a trend here… each of these products seem to be good at somethings but not all.
Just tried the Emby docker image with EmbyCon for Kodi (+Embuary skin) and was pleasantly surprised.
Guess that is my main media server from now on thanks for the tip!
Don’t mind a commercial solution so long as it just works and isn’t killing its features / players every 2-3 months.
For me, it has had its day. They have added too much to it and now it is way too difficult to fix. I haven’t been able to use it for months because I don’t understand half the language in the support and there are no detailed step by steps. If you are not an IT person, you will be lost. I’m gone and looking for something like Plex was before it added all this junk to try and compete.
It won’t happen, but it would be really nice if they released a super stripped down, open-source version of the server.
I have a lifetime plex pass and I don’t use any of the add-based streaming services they have added. So, they aren’t making anymore money off of me from those sources. I’d love an open source server without those options because it would allow way more people to work on bug fixes that could then be incorporated into the full plex suite. I mean, it could save them money in the long run!
