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Comment by TechBro8615 | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood why Plex phones home or why Plex the company has any insight at all into what's running on your Plex installation. I was never able to look past that, so I never installed it.

After years without a media server, I've started using Jellyfin and it's great. It's self-hosted but still has decent client apps. And there's no sketchy corporation watching my server, which just runs on my laptop and streams to my phone via my local network.

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I've used Plex and I also don't like the way they do business, so it's gone now.

I really like the Chromecast model, browsing on a mobile device to select content is just a much better UX. I'm planning to implement Jellyfin (on NAS) + Kodi (on TOX3 streamer), and I just found Yatse [1] which claims to be able to control them. Has anyone here tried a combo like this?

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.leetzone.a...

I used Yatse for many years to control xbmc then Kodi. Always worked well enough though requires to be talk with the media center on the same network so might have to shut VPN and such. I've never tried with jellyfin as I now have a physical remote for my Kodi set top box.

You might be interested in the https://libreelec.tv/ project. Kodi for low end devices. Which uses HDMI CEC to allow for your tv remote to control the Kodi interface.

> I really like the Chromecast model, browsing on a mobile device to select content is just a much better UX.

I feel the same. I have a Kodi setup with LibreELEC and I just feel like it does too much and is inconvenient for my use. I don't really want to build and manage a "media library" on the device that's playing back content (small NUC-like computer connected to a projector). I wish I could just send a file to it from my computer or phone and instantly play it back without having to go through the whole media center style UI thing.

Have you tried Yatse?

Looking this up it says it’s a Kodi remote for Android, I don’t have an Android phone in use at the moment.

Can you not? I have the Plex app installed on my Chromecast, but casting works fine.

Yes, I got my old Chromecast to work with Jellyfin. Heads up: You'll have to redirect DNS from 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 to your router if you'd like to use a local hostname (i.e. in your LAN), though, otherwise the Chromecast will never use your DHCP advertised DNS service.

When I used a Chromecast, I was fond of an even more direct method. On my laptop I ran a Node CLI called "peercast" [0] with a single argument (a magnet link), and it streamed a video file while downloading its torrent, and since it called the torrent library directly, it could prioritize downloading the earlier chunks of the file so I could start streaming the video before the download completed.

It looks like that repo hasn't been updated in a while, although it might still work. It's an offshoot of peerflix [1], a Node CLI that streams video from a torrent to an h264 playlist. So without peercast I would just open my browser to the local network address where peerflix was hosting the h264 playlist, and use the Cast button to stream it to my device (which I believe technically means Chromecast "takes over" downloading the playlist, rather than my laptop pushing the video to it, so I just needed to use a URL with the LAN IP of my computer).

[0] https://github.com/mafintosh/peercast

[1] https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix

> I really like the Chromecast model, browsing on a mobile device to select content is just a much better UX

I couldn't disagree more. Non-touchscreen remotes (RIP Harmony hub) are far superior as is browsing on the TV. I like the separation of concerns, others in the room can see what I'm doing on the screen, and I'm never scrambling to open an app to pause/rewind/etc.

My pet theory is that people who feel this way have only used low-end set-top boxes (or ones built into the TV which are low-end) and/or have used crappy remotes.

> people who feel this way have only used low-end set-top boxes

Yes I was thinking about this when I wrote it. All the set top boxes I've seen are crap with terrible UI latency and are slow to load new data. I'll admit that maybe it's possible to make it slightly less crap. But there's no way in hell typing out something on a remote with left-left-left-left-left-left-left-down click right-right-right-right-right-up click down-down-left click up-left-left-left-left click is remotely (ha) a good experience compared to a phone keyboard. And if I'm gonna have a device with a whole damn keyboard on it... it might as well be my phone.

I get that. And while I know "Apple" is a non-starter for some people I love my Apple TV for this reason. It's responsive, loads my plex library and lets me navigate it easily, and anytime I hit a text area I get a notification on my phone that I can tap and enter text from my phone. It's sort of the best of both worlds. Manually entering text via remote does suck, 100% agree.

Personally I believe that a touch screen mobile device is a degraded experience for any UX. This is just the cheapest way to manufacture a device so it's what has won out. But I hate the lack of tactile feedback and avoid using my phone for anything I can

Agreed. That's why the Harmony Hub + Remote was/is the best option on the market. No touch screen, just buttons, I can operate it "blind", I don't have to point it at anything (I've left it in my pocket while cooking and I can reach in and play/pause/navigate all without even taking it out of my pocket). The battery (a coin battery) lasts somewhere in the 6 months - 1 year range, I literally have no idea because it's so rare that I have to update it.

It's a shame that Harmony has left the remote business. Sofabaton is the closest to what my Harmony's can provide but they have a screen on the remote which I'd really rather do without. If my Harmony Hubs died today I'd probably get an X1 (though I actually like the design of the U2 way more) but I'm really hoping that I can ride the Harmony wave a little longer until a real spiritual successor comes out.

Sure. It works. You will have to pick one of two plugins for kodi to hook it into Jellyfin. See which one you like.

You can also try jellyfin-mpv-shim (headless target player, stellar codec coverage because mpv) and/or "casting" from Jellyfin Android or Web.

If your only media library is going to be Jellyfin, I'm not sure Kodi is worth it unless you have a preference for its UI/UX.

Plex collects plenty of information to identify who is running these servers and who the users are. I suspect resellers put layers of obfuscation in place.

What would Plex gain from collecting information about user content ?

Is Plex capable of collecting user content information if requested by authorities ?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.plex.tv/en-gb/about/privacy-legal/

Plex collects the following information:

- Personal Data

- Individually identifiable

- Usage stats (what, when, where)

- Debug info (logs, metadata, devices, media)

- Device info

- Opt in info through the software

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Plex Media Server

- Config data (may include IP address and the name of a Plex Media Server)

- Application info (unique application ID)

- Debug info

- Usage info

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Plex does not collect

- Content titles (of personal content) EXCEPT for debugging

- Metadata (of perosnal content) EXECEPT content syncing, metadata matching (anonymous) or third parties.

- Data through Plex relay service EXECEPT for buffering (but is end to end encrypted)

Yeah, these "excepts" I don't trust at all. Facebook only collected phone numbers for 2fa, then used them for advertising, sometimes debug builds ship instead of prod builds and then everything you type is collected into a plaintext file on your computer, and data leaks all the time. When I use a software like this, I fully expect the data to be public (or given to authorities) at a point, and separate my concerns accordingly.

> or why Plex the company has any insight at all into what's running on your Plex installation

They actually don't. Open this link and CTRL-F for "Plex does not collect:"

This is also why Plex isn't tied into the Apple TV features like universal search and deep linking into the "Uo Next" feature that shows you what you're watching in all your apps. They'd have to break this to provide that data to Apple

https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/

Honestly, there are few apolitical things I come across in my day to day life that have as much misinformation slung at them than Plex does. The “begrudging user” community is incredibly toxic. It really does seem like half the people there are there to tell you about how some other thing they’re using is supposedly better despite them lingering in hope that whatever they have a gripe with has been fixed. It’s one of the few times I’ve actually gone as far as to semi-regularly comment on Plex hate threads online just to say that I’m for the most part a happy and content user, on the off chance that someone on the team sees it.

You can always email Elan the founder directly, he's always replied to me :)

Ditto, not sure why everyone hates on plex so much. Sure they do some dumb stuff- but overall media handling capability has improved. I am still pissed about camera upload and podcast support. But not enough for all the reddit user rage I see.

I tried Jellyfin, doesn't work for most things, went back to plex. Everything just works. My use case is pretty simple, family photos and videos but somehow that was problematic.

I’ve never had any issues with jellyfin. Maybe your use case is outside of what it’s for, but for watching series and movies it worked with everything I could throw at it for me.

Somehow my Jellyfin Android TV app became incompatible with the server application on my home PC and I can no longer watch videos, so had to head back to Plex or Kodi+NFS mounts.

you've most likely never tried to view subtitles. It's well known that its subtitle support isn't so good (to put it lightly). It seems to be unable to stream subtitles out of an MKV itself and has to extract them and send them separately. (or at least thats what it seems like from observation).

Same here.

Jellyfin is good aslong as the content is not HDR and needs subtitles.... Also the chromecast support is very non-wife friendly

I use subtitles all the time and they work really well for me - both embedded and separate files. I'm streaming from an SSD though, maybe that makes a difference?

Jellyfin works perfectly fine with subtitles.

But if you use ASS subtitles, which are entirely unspecified and unsupported and only have a single working implementation that requires half of Wine to work correctly, well, then you're fucked.

The only problem with subtitles I've encountered is the Roku Jellyfin client does not support VOBSUB subtitles which is annoying.

Kodi -> jellyfin -> a4k subtitles addon. Never transcodes

Works on Android devices like the shield or libreelec on something like a pi.

Those native Android apps, be it jellyfin or plex dont handle subtitles wel, be it .srt or .ass

You were likely unlucky with the client you used. I host a small server for family and friends. Some seem to go great (browser, roku, android(to an extent)), but others seem to have a whole myriad of issues. I've ended up just putting a roku in the hands of people i give access to.

That could be it, the client is LG webos so not that popular.

Same. I have plenty of issues with it.

I've used clients on all classes of Apple devices, LG WebOS and browser. They're all quite problematic.

I still run it alongside Plex and give it a go every month or so but the same or new problems always arise.

have the Jellyfin integration running on Home Assistant OS on a Raspberry Pi 4B, works brilliantly for music, movies and series. Appears to have no support for photos. Android & Roku apps are fast and seem to have less network buffering than Plex, no 3rd party accounts or logins needed, on Plex I had to keep logging in every few days not sure what the issue was.

Immich.app is great for photos and open-source, including local face recognition.

Please be careful with backing up photos with immich.

They define uniqueness as "${filename-with-extensions}-${filesize}".

How many times does your system have IMG_4223.jpg? I got many. Different cameras, iPhones, etc, all started at IMG_0000.jpg.

How often does the file size collide? I don't have stats, but the reason I know this is because I had multiple occasions of failed backups and imports.

That is terrible. I have a number of issue reports open with immich but didn't know about this particular snag. Has this been reported to their GitHub?

wish all these manufacturers would do what pixel does and start filenames with PXL00X

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