It used to be that simple: r/plexshares, click any link, join the server, watch all you want.

Well, they really cracked down on that. Plex purged the servers en masse, my server switched to some obscure emby, r/plexshares is closed for good.

I’m in a need of a new server. Where do I even go? What platform is best to sail the seas now? Jellyfin?

P.S. my torrent days are over, thanks. I’m not interested in self-hosting anything either, again, thanks. 10$/month is a reasonable subscription fee for an all-you-can-eat streaming service

  • Brownian MotionEnglish
    10•4 months ago

    “obscure Emby”… You don’t get out much, do you.

    Emby is a direct competitor to Plex, and its better. It doesn’t require and internet connection to work, doesnt force signup, its completely self hosted if you want. The dev is responsive, bugs are fixed quickly.

    It does have subscription options if you want, none are required for full functionality.

    Emby is not FOSS, but neither is Plex.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•4 months ago

      Needed a cracked version for Android. I’d pay them 5$ or whatever, but they insisted on a ludicrous subscription. There’s a very limited TV support. Web app is glitchy.

      We switched from Plex to emby and the difference is night and day.

      • Brownian MotionEnglish
        3•4 months ago

        no. Jellyfin aims to be totally open source.

        Emby is not, and the reason it works better. They pay the licenses for mp4 etc. earn it back from those who support, but it never was truly open source.

        Jellyfin is open source, and that is the reason they have “problems” (licensing issues, that you have circumvent if you look hard enough).

        For set and forget, Emby and Plex are the choices. Emby does not have a bullshit money making agenda, and is the better option - currently.

          • Brownian MotionEnglish
            4•4 months ago

            Well, yeah true it started like that. But still Jellyfin followed the open source path. I’d expect that under the hood there would be very little left of what was Emby, it was just a starting point. (https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby , before they changed the licensing and removed any further work to the GPL 2 version).

            Also Emby is at 4.8.1 now and has been making leaps and bounds in changes lately.

            As I said, licensing was the issue for Emby, and the easiest solution was to change their license. It wasn’t just to make money, it was about being able to handle licenses from other software, such as Fraunhofer