Plex has a broader range of supported devices, a slightly better user interface, and provides a path to sharing your library using logins for friends and family, with https so the traffic is encrypted. You can share your movie collection with Grandma without her getting FBI piracy warnings from her ISP.

I don’t use it because it costs money and it is a very simple vector to get in a lot of legal trouble, should any US government agencies put enough pressure on them to gain access to user data, because your streams pass through Plex’s servers to make the connection.

So far though, it has been safe and reliable for the majority of its users.

If it’s only on your local home network, it’s not a problem at all. When you say ‘phone home’, it makes me think maybe you’re accessing it remotely over the internet, in which case it would be very easy for your ISP or anyone who is curious to see what files are being shared.

Real life consequences range from your ISP saying stoppit to reporting agencies flagging you as a distributor of illegal content and reporting you to the FBI.

Of course, this is me assuming the files you’re hosting are copyrighted movies and things of that nature, and that you sweat the FBI at all. I dunno what country you live in.

Wouldn’t this result in all your traffic being unencrypted?

good bot