I throughly recommend Jellyfin if you want a media server that doesn’t track your viewing habits and so on. I’ve been using for the past year or so.
I found this [1] but it appears to be that they were tracking only at a very generic level.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/5zrxtd/plex_the_compa...
I got rid of plex once they made everything (including metadata lookups) go through their system. And you cannot run plex without it calling home and requiring an account.
This is why I left Plex too. It shouldn't be hard to find your own content on a service that exists to play your own content.
I dropped Plex because its quality was getting lower and lower, especially chromecast-wise.
When I tested it the Jellyfin server worked great. But the client apps were terrible in comparison to Plex.
I think that the main problem with Plex (some of those are the same as Emby) are:
* They are trying to add too many features (Plex Arcade? really?) while other features are not stable - chromecast queuing was working then not working then working again with every other release. In the end it stopped working for a while, and I quit using Plex. I just need something to have my collection organized, with a bit of metadata handling and a "watched/not watched" flag. Plex (and Emby) are trying to do an incredible amount of work on top of that.
* The price for the "deluxe" version is too steep for a self hosted solution. Netflix Standard is EUR 144/year, Plex is 40 EUR/year (about the same as Emby, btw). And I need to provide hardware, electricity, and content - it's just not competitive. I'd be happy to pay something between 10 and 20 EUR per year for a properly working software of that kind.
On web:
- Screwdriver/wrench icon top-right
- In the left panel look for the "<your username>" heading, underneath it, click "online sources"
- Click "Edit" and change "Enabled" to "Disabled"
You won't see those sources again.
As for seeking, I never see delays when using direct play (which is near 100% of my usage). I tried seeking with a transcode just now and it takes ~1s from interaction to the video playing again, which isn't too bad and I don't think is avoidable.
If you watch transcodes a lot and this bothers you though, consider whether "Optimized Versions" (transcoding ahead of time) would be good for you. Aside from that, I don't think a solution exists, it's a problem inherent to seeking while transcoding.
Not a Plex employee or anything, I've just been using it for what feels like close to a decade now.
EDIT: I just watched some stuff through Plex on my Apple TV and seeking is actually instant. On the Apple TV, each button click jumps forward ten seconds or so and as far as I can tell, each jump is instantaneous, no buffering or delays whatsoever.
And on the client, make sure Settings -> Quality -> (Internet|Remote) Streaming is set to the highest setting.
Which those settings, my phone defaults to Original quality (no transcoding) even on cellular.
I'll double-check the settings on the mobile client when I have a chance.
It happens occasionally that their servers go down and nobody is able to stream anything. I don't know why their servers are a dependancy in that chain at all, I probably looked it up before but I don't recall it being a good reason.
It's needed for authentication but locally, it should be nearly fully functional. At worst, you should need to set up a subnet that's allowed without auth in the server's network settings.
Aside from that, internet is mostly needed for downloading metadata and the server can work just fine without an internet connection.
Since I started using Plex near 10 years ago I’ve never experienced any sort of service unavailability.
You do need to be online though to set up a client for the first time to your local server, which is annoying, but has never been a problem for me.
If not is there a workaround? I often wonder if I should attempt to flash my TV’s OS. Does someone have experience with this?
For plex, I would recommend looking into an Apple TV, a new Android TV (the one where you can use a remote, older ones only support casting) or a nvidia shield - I can’t fully recommend them but i suspect they suck less than my experience. Failing that, a decent (i5+) nuc may work but ymmv.
I've been using kodi but recently my hdmi cable started going bad. CEC worked with that one but for some reason that I don't understand I can't get another cable that it works with. I've tried old and new cables, microhdmi-hdmi, hdmi-hdmi with a microhdmi adapter, combinations of the above, but no matter what I can't find another cable that CEC works with. Would you happen to have any idea why this would be happening?
Also when I switch back to the cable that's failing CEC works again. I can't explain it. And yes, I have CEC enabled on the TV.
I’d first try different ports on your TV, failing that try reformatting the system.
That said, I'm not too happy about Samsung pushing ads onto me after I paid many hundreds of GBP for the tv itself. It'd be cool if there was an easy way to flash some open source firmware onto it.
Plex has been the best $120 or so that I've ever spent and I'm not kidding. It's a load off to not worry about managing media and adding music to various devices all the time.
How well does jellyfish seamlessly do these things?