this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Plex crossed a line with "Your week in review" emails today. (alien.top)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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.

https://imgur.com/a/DYR4wlh

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (9 children)

Jellyfin FTW!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Problem is my user base are TV and mostly non technical people. No way they setup and maintain a JellyFin install. That’s why Plex just wins.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

What? Why would they need to setup a whole install to use your server? Just connect to the server in one of the numerous apps and login to your account?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Made the switch to JF about 6 months ago, Never looked back!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

JF has no proper chromecast support… ☹️😤

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yes it does.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You have to use the Play Store version

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

iPhone has no Play Store. I got the app from the AppStore for iPhone, no luck, chromecast does not work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Ohhh, that's too bad then.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean? I have used chromecast with Jellyfin many times.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Chromecast in JF never worked...
When I click the chromecast icon in JF "Play On" (top right) I get "Google Cast Unsupported".

How did you manage to get it working?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Android required, no iphonies

Jk, i eagerly await ios support but for now android only

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Windows browsers such Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave have the same issue. It's not OS or device related, it's how Chromecast has been implemented in Jellyfin.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/6840#issuecomment-1042905147

I'm also the developer of a local media server, and I've easily managed to bypass the Chromecast client-side issues by doing a server-side discovery. Now no matter how I access my media content, I can always send it to a Chromecast, because the CC and my server are on the same network, so the CC can easily be discovered over Avahi/Bonjour/mDNS. Then it can be the server itself to provide the client with a list of discovered players, not necessarily the other way around.
The fact that there's no server-side logic to manage the Chromecasts, and instead we rely on the client to discover them, explains why things are so broken. Why not provide a server-side CC scan logic as a backup for users who don't use Chrome on Android but run the server on the same network as the CC, instead of relying on such a brittle client-side implementation?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

You need to be hosting jellyfin behind a reverse proxy so that it works through https. Chromecast doesn't support unsecured sources.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (26 children)

Is it supported on tv makers?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There is your answer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It says available for Android TV and WebOS. Which are the TV OSes now most of the time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I also recently installed it on Tizen(Samsung's OS) and using the docker container(https://github.com/babagreensheep/jellyfin-tizen-docker) it was stupidly easy and the hardest part was enabling developer mode.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

No Apple TV client. Bummer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Guess it's too late to change the stupid name.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

It is what it is, until it isn’t

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

AppleTV + Infuse

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I am also strongly considering to make the switch now. Any notable drawbacks/learnings from using it for 6 months?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

And if JF won't work for you, Emby is pretty decent as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Is there some way to send a invite to someone from your jellyfin where they just need to install the app and follow your link? Or some other way to seriously streamline install and setup?

The whole use this hostname and managing reverse proxy etc is the reason I have not switched. It's just not user friendly for a grandma or typical consumer. That's the majority of my users.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

What's the safe way to expose jellyfin for users to access without a vpn or cloudflare tunnel (tos)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I would love to switch but their agent is so bad. It only finds like 10% of my videos. I dont want to spend 80 hours searching the metadata one at a time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Plexamp?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Does Jellyfin have an adequate apple TV iphone and android client with library sharing thats comparable to plex? Im not trying to start a war here, i just want to know. Only reason I don't use jellyfin is because back in the day it didnt have library sharing or a decent apple tv app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately Jellyfin is just missing features. Opening and Credits skip? Nope. There is a plugin, but it doesn't work with the Android client. On that front the Android client is so temperamental. Half the time it just doesn't work on my Nvidia Shield. The UI is really clunky as well. I was using it for several months and the app just frustrated me so much I just went back to Plex.