I’ve been thinking about this more and more. According to the sidebar, this community is “A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.” Based on that I don’t think Plex qualifies.
Privacy: Plex clearly records the metadata of what you watch. When I used it, it would send me a report by email of what my “friends” were watching. Even with that turned off, their services still track telemetry.
Control: Plex has all of it. They can (and do) make unilateral changes to the service, how authentication works, where you can run it, etc.
So I ask, when you are hosting something that is entirely dependent on a commercial entity to function, is Plex really selfhosting in the spirit of this community?
Plex requires a Plex Pass subscription to share outside of your local network. Plex doesn’t allow you to watch media on your local network if your internet service is down, even if you have the Pass, because the service requires a constant connection to the Plex service itself. You can’t use apps on most streaming boxes and sticks without a Pass subscription. Plex records telemetry on all of your viewing habits and shares it with any of your associates who also use the service.
I switched from Plex to Emby a decade ago because of the restriction on local network streaming without an internet connection. My internet service went down and I said to myself “well I can at least watch my locally hosted files on my tv sitting next to the server”. Nope, not allowed. I emailed Plex support about it once my internet was back and they said that wasn’t a bug, it was by design. I dropped it then and there even though I had a lifetime Pass subscription.
This is incorrect and parroted constantly. It almost feels intentional.
Why would I lie? It was my experience at the time, if it has changed for the better since then, that’s great for Plex users.
If not a lie, you were simply misinformed. Hopefully you will no longer be
I’ll say it again: it was my experience at the time, ten years ago. There is no misinformation. Apparently the situation has changed for the better for Plex users and that’s great. But I’m not going to change what I said, because it was what I experienced; to do so would be misinformation.
The difference between “this is true” and “this was true ten years ago” is huge.
Presenting one as the other is why you’re being challenged
It actually does, you can whitelist local IP addresses, allowing them to bypass plex auth servers.
Good to know, and it would have been nice if that support rep had just told me that ten years ago instead of inadvertently talking me into dropping the service altogether. Hell, it would have been nice if that was in the documentation, but obviously they have a vested interest in mining your data.
Still, for all of the reasons above and more, I’ll never use Plex again. I occasionally help a friend keep his Plex installation maintained and it’s just a shitty service compared to the more open options in my experience. I’ve told him about the better options but his sunk cost mindset (he paid the current lifetime fee) won’t let him migrate.
Its been in the docs for at least 7 years now (check the Last Modified date).
And my experience was nearly ten years ago. I’m glad they updated the documentation. Thanks for the link!
Well that’s good at least!
Does that mean you could theoretically get all setup and pull the internet plug for your Plex server?
(I haven’t used Plex since about 2012)
I think so but it wouldn’t be able to get all the metadata for any new content you add so probably wouldn’t be a great idea