Plex To Launch a Store For Movies and TV Shows 22
Jay Peters reports via The Verge: Plex, known for its media server software and as a place to watch ad-supported content, is going to launch a store for to buy and rent movies and TV shows in early February, executives told Lowpass' Janko Roettgers. "Most studios" are lined up for the store's launch, and there are "plans to complete the catalog soon after," Roettgers says. The store will also integrate with Plex features like its watchlists for movies. Roettgers points out that that Plex has announced plans in both 2020 and 2023 to launch a movie / TV store -- hopefully Plex is truly ready to do so this time. Plex chief product officer Scott Olechowski told Roettgers that more changes are coming to Plex down the line, including a "pretty major UX refresh" and more social features like public profiles.
Future headline.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Plex plans to remove self-hosting abilities due to pressure from Hollywood studios
Calling it now.
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Re: Future headline.... (Score:4, Informative)
Even then there's Jellyfin or Emby.
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Jellyfin rocks!
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Jellyfin rocks!
Its useful. Its free. It is not that great.
Re:Future headline.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you not read that article? Plex was never in bed with Hollywood before. But they've been cozying up to them for years and now they're making deals to sell their content on Plex. The Plex investors are going to be making a lot of money soon. The self-hosting community that supported Plex since the beginning generate very little in the way of revenue for them and so will become easily disposable once Plex can establish themselves as a 3rd party seller for media content.
Re: Future headline.... (Score:2)
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No way. Plex has been around for a very long time as this type of software goes. It would have happened already. And it's not Plex's fault that the retarded streaming companies all want their own ever-shrinking piece of the pie, driving people back to piracy. Not sure how they'd ever pressure Plex, short of a buy-out.
You used to be able to access content on your local network, without needing an online presence and then they changed that. For that reason, I wouldn't put anything beyond them.
What's the meaning of 'buy'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not use PleX (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine they will. I was using Plex for about 5 years, and in that time, they've increasingly been pushing their "social" features more and more.
It started as a simple self-hosted media server. It's becoming enshittified as they desperately search for profits, because their original user base, people who host their own media files, are not profitable. I imagine they're trying to formulate some kind of exit strategy involving a buyout.
I dropped them a couple of months ago. Plex servers have a sharing feature whereby you can allow select friends to log in to a server you host and stream its content. Someone in their infinite wisdom decided it was a good idea to universally and unilaterally opt everyone in to a new "feature" that lets your friends (anyone with an account on your Plex server) know what you've been watching. Now, while the claim to have notified users and given them the chance to opt out of this "feature:, I can assure you, I received no such notification and was opted into sharing my viewing history with everyone who has an account on my Plex server. And yes, I have pr0n on there.
What they did was enable this sharing feature by default, and then made a half assed attempt at providing an opt out, by way of a modal popup at some point. The trouble is, with so many apps that the server can run on (my frontend was running on a Roku), they missed some, thereby opting people in to this without consent, likely violating federal law in a few dozen jurisdictions.
Once that happened, I dropped them like a hot potato, with extreme prejudice. They're a horrible company and care nothing for the end user. (Yes, I'm still pissed off about such an egregious violation of my privacy. To make matters even worse, the flat out lied through their teeth and told the world that everyone was informed [forums.plex.tv].
Do not use PleX as a home media server. They will rape your privacy, lie about it, and they don't give a flying fuck.
https://www.404media.co/plex-u... [404media.co]
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/... [reddit.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/... [reddit.com]
(I cannot link to their official forum as they deleted anything critical of this new "feature")
Re: Do not use PleX (Score:2)
My family has grown quite comfortable with plex. I have a HDHomerun and a lifetime plex pass for the LiveTV/DVR functionality. Works great. I started going through all my CDs and ripping them onto it in hopes of dropping my Spotif
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Yeah it's really a waste. PleX really is the best home media server out there, at least in terms of the feature set. I'm currently using Jellyfin and I'm less than impressed. If you don't name your media files just the way they expect you to, nothing gets indexed properly, among other reasons. I think I'll try out Emby next.
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I think I'll try out Emby next.
I would skip it. Emby is just Plex minus a couple of years.
Jellyfin would be better if they spent time fixing it, instead of trying to stuff every piece of tech into it.
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You may sacrifice your privacy and porn viewing habits for the sake of convenience if you wish. I will not.
For what it's worth, I've switched to Jellyfin for now, and you're right - the UI is... nascent, for lack of a better term. It needs a lot of work.
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I've done neither. Firstly the sharing of your habits on Plex is *opt in*, which I didn't do, and secondly who in their right mind publishes their porn collection to the network for any device to stream.
Privacy is not an on or off thing. It's nuanced. There's things to care about, and things to not care about. Things I don't care about? My Plex viewing habits. Hell fuck it, stranger on the internet here's the last 30 things I watched because ... and let me make this perfectly clear, some of us don't conside
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This was the exact same thing that happened with Google Buzz. They used Gmail data to start a "social network", and they led to mas
Sorry Plex, I don't need you ! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Plex as a place to watch ad-supported content and buy/rent movies/shows ! No thanks, as I can stream for FREE any movie/show I want ad free !! WHY would I want to pay for ads ???
No judgement, but because some people don't want to steal content? And Plex isn't proposing to pay for ad based content streams, it's more akin to Crackle et al.
Prepare to engage enshitification! (Score:2)
Enshitification engaged! Honestly, they act more like antivirus software of a decade ago where they just keep adding features that few need or want and making their memory footprint bigger until you have to find something else because they're a pig now and you can't tolerate the garbage they throw at you. I DON'T NEED OR WANT SOCIAL "FEATURES"! Once Enby or JellyFin have a decent Roku app I'll be considering moving to those platforms. Also, Plex on Win10 is frakking miserable. Don't bother. If you mus
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just keep adding features that few need or want
You're confusing consumers with your own desires. You don't need or want these features. But the sum of users that make up your opinion already use Plex. In order to get growth they need to reach beyond their current feature set to those people who would be enticed by them.
You may not recognise the "want" here probably because you're a sane person. But there's plenty of social media addicted nutjobs that would want this. I say social media addicted nutjobs, but we should use Plex's term here: "potential cus
worried (Score:2)
This makes me worried.
I do use Plex at home to stream self hosted videos to a smart TV. Recently gave a try to Jellyfin and found it lacking compared to Plex, the chief issue (and show stopper) was the way it works with subtitles. My fear is the chase for money will turn Plex into crap for my use case and the replacement is not up to the task.