If anyone is curious, then alternatives like Jellyfin exist. It's a bit different and may not have all the features you need, but it works quite well in my experience.
But otherwise I've switched to Infuse[2] since then, it indexes sources reliably on its own (no manual editing though) and saves the entire need for a server if you use it with some cloud storage. Basically replaced my Plex server, with the added bonus of out-of-home streaming without needing high upload. The major disadvantage is that it's Apple-only.
1: https://support.plex.tv/articles/207538527-do-i-need-a-plex-... 2: https://firecore.com/infuse
For this infuriating reason, moving off of Plex is on my to-do list.
edit:
You can also do this: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200890058-authentication-fo...
Being hard of hearing, subtitles are a big deal. I wonder if this is an ADA violation?
What if you change the global accessibility settings to prefer subtitles? (Or just set SDH/CC somewhere in system settings) I know on Google/Android TV and Apple TV it default-enables subtitles in some apps.
I tried Plex years ago, and it wasn't to my liking because it was philosophically like Windows (Load the filename up with show information and constantly ping the internet for matches) instead of macOS (Metadata where it belongs — with the file).
I'm considering adding a Sony phone to my household, so now that Plex is in the news, this reminded me to check it out again.
If you're purchasing everything through iTunes (do people still purchase stuff through whatever is "iTunes" now? I guess I don't know that either) I assume its handling transcoding/different device playback and delivering all the metadata for you.
Also once Plex pulls metadata down you're right that it doesn't store it with the file but AFAIK its not constantly hitting the net to pull that info down - it keeps a local cache.
I will say at this point - I wouldn't bother switching to Plex and look for an alternative like Infuse. The company is clearly under pressure to monetize beyond the Plexpass subscription you can buy. They've been steadily adding crap no one wants and automatically jamming it into the home screen of the app where you then have to go turn it off. Its just a matter of time before they cross a line somewhere and people jump ship. When that happens I imagine some of the open source alternatives (Jellyfin) will see a huge influx of development. I haven't switched just because I don't want to be hassled with figuring out a new system.
Ironically I like Plex & Infuse for the reason you hate them, I just give them files whose metadata is just their filename and they can match them to what they really are. No need to keep all the data in media container tags, and a thumbnail/poster that will be pixelated in a few years because something will scale it wrong.
Sony is a valid option given their love for DLNA but I just never really liked the tech. Hell, I have statically-reserved IPs & DNS-registered names for everything in my home.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot -- the main reason I moved off Plex (and would hate iTunes Home Sharing) is I don't leave my PC on. I switch it off daily and don't like to treat it like a server, and to keep using Plex would require setting up a NAS or something (I had my collection on a local SSD for a while).
To some extent, it's self-reinforcing. Once the FireTV gets a lead, all it has to do to maintain/extend that lead is reasonably support playback of whatever new format/source and Plex works great on it. If FireTV supported TV as well as TiVo does, it might end up with 100% of the living room display share.
(I also have Plex sharing to devices outside the house, but that's a <1% use case, mostly when it's us traveling somewhere and the kids wanting to watch something that's on Plex.)
I'm not in the US or mainland Europe so Fire and TiVo devices aren't really available or working well here, half their apps would just be blank.
Normal people also want to have features like remote streaming, subtitles fetching, familly sharing, etc which are hard to do without centralized accounts. Not even mentionning securing your paid features which you have to do to survive. And that customer doesn't care about the login as long as it is up.
I don't anything plex could do to please this particular demand would ever be enough so for me they do well to ignore it since removing that would effectively kill their business.
I did pay for Plex prior to the cloud auth change, so for me it's a bait and switch, but my concerns are much more about privacy.
One day Plex will be bought by a large media company, and my (and my kids') viewing data and library catalogue data will be owned by MGM, Disney, Fox, etc...
It might not be in a great place now, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a reflection of the product
That would mean running a publicly accessible instance would be ill advised if you can about the privacy of what you host. Plex on the other hand somewhat encourages publicly accessible instances, so you can listen/watch while not at home.
(The caveat being, certain plugins disclose media to Plex but arguably that's a first or second party not some rando on the internet scraping stuff)
Jellyfin may not be perfect but surely it's good enough for most use cases.
One of the things I remember making it real difficult was that the UI of Samsung's dev tools app assumes you have the default light theme in GTK (or whatever widget toolkit they're using), and since I had a different dark theme, I couldn't see any of the icons.
So then I switched to one of my devices that were running Ubuntu 20.04 with Gnome, where the app would not launch due to something about "pixbuf". Side note - I'd had that particular error so many times in Ubuntu with various apps that it's the sole reason I eventually learned Arch (and tiling window managers), and haven't looked back since.
I finally managed to get it to launch and work correctly on Xubuntu running on my girlfriend's very, very old laptop that takes about 8 minutes to boot to full speed. So save yourself the headache, and run the Samsung dev tools app on an unmolested Linux installation, with no special theming, that is not vanilla Ubuntu.
Thanks for the feedback.
* Kodi only works on my local network. It requires exposing my file shares on whatever VLAN my Kodi devices are on.
* Kodi is a pain to configure. To point it at the aforementioned file shares, I need to copy an XML configuration file, and getting this onto every device is a chicken and egg problem.
* Kodi requires each client to scan and sync the entire library at its CPU and bandwidth limits. My Plex server automatically scans and indexes my media.
* Plex allows me to access my content at the office, while travelling, and to share with friends
* Kodi doesn't transcode, requiring all of my client devices to have enough power and bandwidth to do so locally. Plex makes it much simpler to (for instance) stream a 4k video to a low power device
I know enough to have ran Kodi for years and intentionally switched to Plex full time
Kodi can do all those things but you wouldn't as it has much better options to achieve the same result.
Bold of you to trust an opaque corporation with access to your network and the data they can log through that. I wouldn't even trust Synology with their account quick access thing, as seamless as they claim it to be.
I don't really see remote access being secure without it being a self hosted VPN.
If they asked, I'd show them exactly what's up. They haven't, so they don't seem to mind.
It's not full access to my network, it's access to a carefully curated set of media files transcoded through a service. There are no tax returns, no resumes, no porn. Just FLAC, MP3, and MKV.
I've tried using Plex before and while the UI is nice, they don't seem to be able to write a video transcoder that doesn't have massive stuttering in it.
Jellyfin's DVR service is horrible compared to Plex. Practically unusable. And DVR is the reason I pay for Plex.