Plex will be blocking access from at least one VPS provider
Plex will be blocking access from at least one VPS provider
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Appears to be Hetzner for now, wouldn't be surprised if all VPS get affected eventually.
I never understood this, it's your selfhosted server but you kind of don't own it and depend on them, so you just have an application which depends on a their service which means plex isn't 100% selfhostable, correct?
Plex has been hostile towards self-hosting since the very beginning. They have been asked to add local authentication for more than 10 years.
The problem is that they want to route control through their own servers for making sure you can't use some of the extra features without paying.
A few years back they dropped some clients (including the one for my old TV) because they were dropping support for legacy SSL ciphers on their servers - and those devices didn't have support for the new ciphers. This is a pretty stupid dependency due to the way they want to do things - so I moved to jellyfin back then, and have been encouraging people to drop plex ever since.
A few years back they dropped some clients (including the one for my old TV) because they were dropping support for legacy SSL ciphers on their servers
TLS 1.0/1.1? Those were deprecated and dropped by the IETF with RFC 8996. You can't even get a certificate using 1.0/1.1 anymore unless you are self-signing.
You can also allow unauthenticated users on certain networks, usually limited to your local nets. But I do agree that doesn't solve the problem. I'd love to allow users to optionally use local authentication with, eg, Authelia, something built in, or an LDAP backend.
as always for profit orgs are proven to be abusive on their customers... so happy that I'm using Jellyfin
If i could get HW accelleration to work with Jellyfin, like it does in Plex, I would switch yesterday.
What's the problem? I gave it GPU access and it just worked. Given Jellyfin is a fork, it shouldn't be too different
Works better for me, I do av1 which I don't remember plex even supporting
This is the last straw. I already was very shakey with all the restrictions that were piling up, but this is just one thing too much. Cancelling my subscription and installing jellyfin.
Jellyfin ftw
Plex is still the better platform. Jellyfish lacks so much features and isn't supported on most native TV OS.
I've had no trouble setting up jellyfin on Roku, Google/Android, and FireTV. It seems AppleTV is the only major one lacking support right now, and that will hopefully be addressed soon.
I tried out Plex (and Emby) before Jellyfin and was annoyed how much functionality was locked behind a paywall even though I was hosting the content myself. Jellyfin is completely free and lets me add as many users on as many devices as I damn well please.
switched to Jellyfin, took about 10 minutes to have it up and running. Cya Plex
AFAICT for self hosted only Plex works with smart TVs.
There's definitely more Plex apps but I'd suggest just getting a third party streamer if your TV doesn't have a Jellyfin app (which suggests it's probably quite out of date and probably not the best option).
Am not even surprised, Plex went to the gutter long ago when someone gave them the brilliant idea to start a media company on software used by pirates.
Why is anyone still using plex?
After the last time they fucked over their userbase, jellyfin was created, an open source system that is awesome.
Dump plex, come to jellyfin, we got cookies.
The Jellyfin experience on iOS and Apple TV is not as good as Plex. Hopefully someday that will change.
Probably because those are just as proprietary as plex
Jellyfin was forked when emby went closed source, I don't think it had anything much to do with any specific event at plex
It's been a while now but I remember it happened when Plex forked over their users
This seems kinda scummy. If someone breaks TOS then ban the one account. I’ve seen for years now people bringing up jellyfin, knew it was coming when I saw this headline. I never tried it because I have iOS devices and an Apple TV, but now I see there are 3rd party apps for jellyfin on iOS/tvos. I may try it out, move if it satisfies my needs.
Been using Jellyfin for about a year, love it. I watch movies and TV shows with my spouse, and listen to my music collection on the go with Finamp.
Works great on desktop Linux, GrapheneOS, and my Steam Deck.
Jellyfin is awesome
The thing that keeps me from switching to other systems like Jellyfin is that none of them have a music app as good as Plexamp.
I also don't think their Live TV features are as good. I have a TV antenna and a HDHomeRun and record shows using it.
I recommend infuse over swiftfin. Swiftfin is FOSS, so it has that going for it, but Infuse works better right now.
Heavily agree, a lot of content had issues playing for me with swiftfin. No issues at all with Infuse other than the fact that intro skipper doesn't work with it
The one thing keeping me off Jellyfin is the fact that Infuse for Apple TV doesn't have great support for it yet. Infuse is by far the most capable media player on the device, and it has excellent integration with Plex.
Air Video HD and its server software was so smooth. I've begged for it to return, but I am only able to use it still because I own old licenses.
It runs great on M1/M2 macOS, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV. Streams all my content without issue every time.
Infuse is.. alright, but it lacks the ability to adjust some things, and I really wish it had a more "list mode" style, and easier setup. I am getting more used to it, but I only use it for some files, where AirVideoHD and VLC play everything.
Who is going to to revive Air Video HD??
Swiftfin isn’t perfect, but Is pretty good on AppleTV.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web NAS Network-Attached Storage PIA Private Internet Access brand of VPN Plex Brand of media server package SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption TLS Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL VPN Virtual Private Network VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) nginx Popular HTTP server
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 12 acronyms.
[Thread #138 for this sub, first seen 15th Sep 2023, 05:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Im very curious about what was the actual violation
It's about the server access sellers, but to block a whole major VPS instead of accounts that commit the violation is kinda absurd.
It looks like another step towards further restricting what users can do with their servers, local or virtual.
So these are people that sell access to (presumably media-filled) existing Plex installations?
That does seem like a problematic thing to do and I understand why Plex wants to shut that down.
But surely their tons of online-integrations and user-account-requirements gives them other tools at their disposal than outright blocking a major VPS provider, that seems insane.
More reasons I'm glad we switched to Jellyfin
Forget their reasoning, the fact that they can block access at all should be reason enough for anyone to abandon them. Glad I abandoned my lifetime membership years ago.
Why is every company committing suicide by user hate?
Is there something in the corporate water?
Starting in ~2010 there was an absolute gold rush of investment in the tech sector - if you had a moderately good idea, knew how to put a proposal together and could get it in front of the right people, you could get $10-50 million without having to worry about little things like "how are we going to turn a profit" and "how will will we keep paying the expensive developers and infrastructure costs when the investment money runs out".
This has changed in the last few years - the money is drying up, and the investors that are left and much more worried about their investments actually having a business model and a path to profitability rather than just throwing money at people and hoping that Google buys them for 50x the original investment.
No special insider knowledge, but I'd bet this is what is happening - Plex probably isn't in a spot where they can sustain the current staffing and infrastructure costs purely out of existing revenue. They will be reliant on ongoing investment to let them keep developing rather than just keeping the lights on, and that investment will come with more conditions than it would have had 5 years ago - they will need to hit targets for number of accounts, percentage of paid accounts etc or they won't be getting further investment, which for a tech product is effectively a slow death sentence
I had to move to cloud cause energy prices. Using plex just to having easy access to my music collection. Now need to find good alternative for plexamp.
Finamp. Literally the same thing but for jellyfin :)
Not even close. Where is the Android auto support?
This would be viable for users who don't use smart/programmable/dynamic playlists, and the various features backed by a track analysis ML model in plexamp
Finamp with Jellyfin works, or you could look into a pure audio streaming service like Airsonic or Navidrome. They both work with Subsonic ecosystem apps like dSub on android. There's also Audiobookshelf for audio books.
I abandoned my lifetime plex license long ago. It’s the sunk cost fallacy, some people are immune to it and others aren’t. Quite obviously some people here aren’t, because they still defend plex.
I won't defend Plex, but Jellyfin just isn't quite there as an alternative yet. Their ATV app leaves still leaves a lot to be desired. I'm hoping it gets there sooner than later though so I can finally jump ship. The only other thing I really want is some tool to migrate the "watched" status of all my content to Jellyfin.
Only reason I haven't switched is cause many of my users are clueless boomers and no matter how painless the switch should be it won't be for them 😂
I'll probably switch to Jellyfin in the near future anyway tho since Plex just keeps getting enshittified
I just run them side by side on the same nuc. All my friends still use Plex though I think because the apps look nicer. I wish jellyfin had federated features so that you could choose to use a single account across many friends instances. I still use Plex because I don't want to deal with syncing watched status between instances.
Jellyfin is incredibly simple to use. It's even incredibly simple to setup.
I've been using Plex because it's what I heard the most about and I liked that it has native apps everywhere. Wasn't so tempted by Jellyfin since, even as a web developer, I'm not fond of web apps on other platforms. However, it's starting to be tempting to switch...
Good thing I didn't get a lifetime pass back when it was on sale, was kind of tempting a couple years ago
I understand what you’re saying here, but I want to let you know that it just sounds like “sour grapes”.
It sounds like this provider is allowing something that could put Plex in legal hot water; why would they allow this and potentially jeopardize everything for all Plex users?
A lot of people self host so they are in control. This is Plex taking away that control, plain and simple.
I don't know how many people host completely legitimately acquired content in their libraries, but your reasoning is such a cop out. Are you gonna defend them if they start scanning libraries for potentially illegally obtained content and blocking that because it could "put them in legal hot water?"
ITT: People who don't use Plex proudly talking about how they don't use Plex.
This move makes sense to me. They could be liable for what's hosted in the cloud, and on top of that you can't pay for access, and the host is known as a great place to let people do that.
I really don't understand the people who use jellyfin but insist on shitting on Plex. You can both use jellyfin and not also not be smug about it. It's the same reason people are tired of the Linux user or back in the day why android users were so annoying.
They could be liable for what’s hosted in the cloud
Liable for something hosted on someone's private VPS? That's like saying Apache or Nginx is liable if someone uses it to host a torrent site. I don't really buy it tbh.
I really don’t understand the people who use jellyfin but insist on shitting on Plex.
I think people are allowed to critique and express disappointment over a product that they paid for. Just because you personally don't care about the direction of Plex doesn't mean other users can't express their valid viewpoints. Plex at one point said they didn't really care what people put up on their private servers and now they're dialing that back and essentially asserting control over what people already paid for. People are right to be upset.
That’s like saying Apache or Nginx is liable if someone uses it to host a torrent site. I don’t really buy it tbh.
Tell that to your company's team of lawyers who are telling you just to take it down. Even if it's a grey area legal will tell you just to be proactive and avoid the whole thing. Plus like I said, charging for access is against ToS anyway, and most hosters who do that use this cloud service. Few bad apples spoil the bunch as they say.
and I'm cool with valid viewpoints, but god is everyone in this thread saying the same lazy thing. "Plex is trash, I dumped it, get Jellyfin". Like okay, I get it, can we not have 98% of the thread talking about Plex just saying "It's trash". At least some of them have valid criticism you're talking about, and I'm all for that, but I'm just over the pure vomit that most of these comments are. You're criticism is valid and makes sense, the lazy comments just saying "lol I switched to Jellyfin" are just annoying to me. Great, high five to you.
Agreed. They're trying to kill off Plex Shares, where people are essentially using their software to run their own for-profit streaming service using pirated content. This shit affects all of us as it brings on lawsuits and new laws to combat just so some random dude can make some extra cash selling access.
On one hand I hate that legit users are punished for the actions of few cunts selling massive plex libraries and using Hetzner because of cheap storage and unlimited transfer, but I sort of understand that plex doesn't want to be associated with piracy (lol).
On the other, fuck Plex. Seems trivial to detect these massive libraries with hundreds of "friends" and just shut those down. Seems insane to block a whole fucking provider over this. I've been a paid subscriber since day one and then bought a lifetime pass, but this dumb move is making me consider other products.
But on third hand, I don't really care because I use tailscale so I almost never use the plex's proxy anyway.
I wonder if you can get around this by using cloudflare proxy for a domain and then in the settings for the server disabling remote access and only allowing discovery through your domain? I'm not with Hetzner but I'll give this setup a try and see how it goes.
It's against Cloudflare ToS to use video through their services (both the reverse proxy and the tunnel) unless you pay for their video streaming service.
Oh, thanks for pointing that out. Didn't know
They removed that clause. Ctrl-f "video" on their ToS page gives 0 results
Never even heard of Hertzner, but I'm super curious about your results, I'm currently running a proxy with CloudFlare on some services but not on Plex
So I got mixed results. With remote access disabled and just using subdomain for plex, it worked on the Windows desktop app, and my iPhone too through the browser, but on my Apple TV even though I could browse the library and select any video, they would not load.
What ended up working on all my devices is essentially running plex behind a VPN, AirVPN in this case because I need the port forwarding, and enabling remote access with the port assigned in AirVPN.
I followed this guide, in case you're interested: https://reddit.invak.id/r/PleX/comments/152kihs/guide_plex_remote_access_without_port_forwarding/
it's a german hoster with datacenters in germany, sweden and since recently the east coast of the US. depending on where you live, hetzner is therefor not an interesting option for you (due to physical distance)