As you may have seen Plex decided it was OK today to send an email showing me what my friends have been watching. To be clear, this is Plex telling other people what I’ve been watching from my server, with my files, and this is not OK.
We all knew it was a matter of time before Plex started collecting data on our libraries and sharing it with advertisers. What happened to their “we don’t know, and don’t want to know, what is on your server”?. This, for me, is proof that those fears were absolutely founded in reality. On what planet would I ever want this information to be shared with friends on family on an OPT OUT basis?
It’s totally unacceptable to collect this data in the first place. It’s totally unacceptable to share this information with uniquely identifiable information. And it’s totally unacceptable to do this without explicitly asking me if it’s OK.
Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about this as a server admin, because technically these are Plex users and their marketing email preferences are controlled on the user side in the Plex website preferences. Not on your server.
This is an absolutely egregious overreach.
Thank goodness there are alternatives available in the form of Jellyfin and Emby. I left my Plex server up after the Jellyfin January challenge we did on the Self-Hosted podcast but because of this I feel that I have no choice but to take it down for good.
It says available for Android TV and WebOS. Which are the TV OSes now most of the time.
They mean Smart TVs. My Dad’s Samsung TV has a Plex app, but no way to install anything like Kodi that would let him use Jellyfin instead of Plex to serve media.
There’s a Jellyfin app for Tizen (Samsung TV) but it’s kinda stupid to get installed and is kinda sluggish. Actual playback is perfect however.
Amazon stick is the cheapest (easy) way to turn any TV into a Jellyfin TV.
Not sure about if Samsung TV has Google play store where the jellyfin or infuse app exist, but you can do chromecast / airplay if not Google play store
PSA: Pre-built images are available, which avoids having to compile the app yourself. https://github.com/jeppevinkel/jellyfin-tizen-builds
The install process is pretty straightforward. I’d recommend giving it a try. More or less copying commands, then you’re left with the Jellyfin client on the TV. Works great once installed.
No Kodi sadly though.