And fuck. I really miss plex. I’ve had Netflix and Hulu forever as family won’t let me cancel. Decided to sign up to Paramount + for some Trek. Twice in lower decks it didn’t save my watched episodes. Doesn’t mark episode as watched if you exit during the credits. And multiple playback issues.
Wanted to add no ad Disney to the Hulu for some Doctor Who. Only the add supported is available through Hulu. So I’d have to cancel, wait for the month to end and sign up via Disney. Deal with ads or pay almost double the duo plan costs, or include ESPN, and honestly fuck sports.
What is so difficult about just providing a decent service for a fair price? Why is plex like a decade ahead of the streaming UI’s? I’m trying to give you fucks money and you’re making it extremely difficult.
Everyone here who has used Plex has had fuck ups. Between finding corrupt movie files, Plex messing up meta data, or forgetting where I am in a movie (and between multiple devices this is especially bad); my list of Plex/xbmc fuck ups would far outpace any issues I have with the services.
In general most of the streaming services work just fine and have most features you need.
The biggest issue by far is the need for $140 in streaming services to get what you want. I’m probably just going back to cable IMO.
Idk if I’m just lucky, but I’ve been running Plex on Linux for years without any major issue. Occasionally I had to hit things with a chmod, but that stopped being an issue after I changed a setting in qbittorrent, and that isn’t really Plex’s fault.
Rarely, if it is transcoding something and I pause for a long time, I may have to stop it and play it again to get the transcoder running again. It is a very minor issue that I barely ever think about unless I’m traveling.
Does it run differently on Windows or something?
Sure there’s occasionally issues with source media or how it was imported, but the big difference: I can fix problems with emby/plex. I can correct messed up metadata, or run a partially corrupted file through a converter to fix it, or just replace files entirely; all in a few minutes. (and none of these I have to do very often. Like one or two files a month, while constantly adding new content daily)
Most of the problems paid streaming services have, just have to be delt with until the provider gets around to fixing it, if they ever do at all. Then you add on content being scattered across 10 different services, artificial quality limitations, tracking, lack of or very poorly implemented offline playback, the inability to share with friends/family, advertising (now even being added to services built-on being ‘ad-free’), the list goes on…
As a note: I use Emby and have never had an issue losing my watched position and have only had maybe 1 in 1000 items incorrectly identified (out of a library of 4k movies and 34k tv epps).
Some more examples of why piracy is a service problem
There are steps to piracy which cost time and effort. For most of the media I consume that time and effort cost is significantly less than the time, effort, and capital I would need to invest in a paid service. However, the time, effort, and capital I spend to play videogames has been less than piracy would cost for me for decades. Being able to effortlessly get those games running on a mobile steamdeck is orders of magnitude cheaper than what it would have cost me to set everything up myself even if I’m not paying for software and my costly version wouldn’t be nearly as smooth. This quote would be true enough even if a counter-example didn’t exist, but Steam and GOG are pretty clear demonstrations of the kind of service the average person is satisfied with even if they still have some real issues.
It really is. Everyone splintering off to their own app is what got me back to it. Had Netflix, Hulu, max, Disney, prime and I think Apple plus or peacock for a while and I could never remember what service the shows I was watching were on. Opening up 4 streaming apps to find what I was watching the other day got tiresome. When it was mainly Netflix and Hulu I only pirated the few shows that were on like HBO that I wanted to see. Arr apps with plex is so nice in comparison.
I could never remember what service the shows I was watching were on. Opening up 4 streaming apps to find what I was watching the other day got tiresome.
I know what community this is, but using something like a Chromecast w/ Google TV lets you search across all your streaming services simultaneously.
Check my profile for a media share option, if you would rather not dive into the technical aspects yourself. Ditch the enshittified media services and improve your life for the better.
What is so difficult about just providing a decent service for a fair price?
Nothing. It’s just not profitable.
I have been using this Mini PC as an always on running Kodi for over a year. Up to 4K resolution.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0B2C1GL48?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
I’ve coincidentally bought this machine for similar purpose, arriving tomorrow.
I’m intending to install a Linux KDE environment on it and use it as a living room PC, steam Linux machine, stream from my PC for 4k gaming, and a Jellyfin /Kodi box. I could probably keep windows 11 on it but I prefer the privacy and control I get with Linux plus it’ll be a fun little project.
Was on sale for £270 here, and looks overpowered for what OP’d need.
Raspberry Pi 5 is also available for like £80 and that’s capable for 4k video (although frustratingly the web browsers aren’t able to take advantage of hardware video accel from my tinkering; you have to use dedicated apps like Kodi, freetube etc). That could also be a viable route for Plex / Jellyfin / Kodi machine media server and player or even just server.
Edit: worth point out a raspberry Pi costs the same as 10 months of just Disney+ without ads. Once you throw in other streaming subscriptions… May pay for itself much sooner…
I read on the Jellyfin site that the Pi5 has no hardware encoders…
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/hardware-acceleration
Since I’m only streaming locally (on a Pi4) I don’t need to record anything but still.
I’ve got a slightly older (8th Gen Intel) off lease dell micro in my living room, mostly for early ed games for my kids. A quick user switch and it’s steam time for me.
Cost me about $150, then I tossed about $75 in upgrades, roughly 2 years ago.
Ultra small form factor PCs like this and the beelink are fantastic options. I’ve got a stack of them running all of my home services.
Exactly.
Most of these units don’t need (or have) a fan (except for the ones with like an Nvidia quadro in them, but those I keep in my rack for other purposes, like tdarr and work stuff)
Plenty of power for proxmox, containers, whatever. Intel QSV is fantastic for Jellyfin and Plex transcoding, I’d say 7th Gen and up is plenty for most people.
Really any of these little units are well worth it. I’ve got some older ones (4th-6th Gen Intel) doing other duties, like being testbeds, managing backup storage, etc.
