this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
1069 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
59590 readers
5441 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I dust off my robe and wizard hat.
Plex is a great streaming alternative. Cancelling Netflix pays for the upgrade to gigabit Internet. Hard drives are cheaper now than ever. Usenet access remains safe and speedy. The DIY community for automation is thriving.
Is that the Jolly Roger coming in to port? Welcome back old friends.
Worth checking out Jellyfin as well
I MUCH prefer Jellyfin to Plex. Jellyfin seems to have active development whereas Plex is more interested in adding in a ton of "features" (aka garbage) that I never ever wanted and continues to leave YEARS old bugs out in the wild. I think it won't be long until Plex enshittifies itself to death. They clearly have a financial situation that is not aligned with its users.
I agree, I'll give the software another try once I have more free time to learn and troubleshoot
I think it depends on what client devices you have. Last time I checked, some content (like HDR) won't play on Apple TV via Jellyfin unless you spring for a relatively expensive paid client (like Infuse). The open source client won't work.
Infuse is only $10 per year and that includes on your Apple TV and iPhone. It really is quite slick and looks really good.
Agreed. This is not expensive at all. 100% worth the value which is less than a dollar a month.
FWIW, my Plex Pass has worked to be much less than that since I purchased it.
Much (not all) of the negative I see about Plex is associated with cost of a Plex Pass. If subscribing monthly, it costs more. If you play the long game with the Lifetime Pass, it’s dirt cheap and pretty darn solid.
$1/month or $10 year. I’d say that’s relatively cheap as far as paid media apps go but certainly more expensive than free.
I'm only interested in one-time purchases, so I just saw the $75 and decided it was too expensive. It's also just a hurdle to get over. Right now, my Apple account doesn't even have a payment method associated with it, because I generally just use free / FOSS apps.
Plex has a client on my TV and Xbox. How would I watch Jellyfin content on those?
I say this a guy that got his RasPi3 Plex server running just good and stable a year ago and doesn't touch it except to cycle in new content.
You could use Emby instead. Jellyfin is the FOSS version of Emby and Emby has apps for everything. I moved to Emby from Plex five years ago or so and it’s been great.
I tried but the technical gap from Plex to Jellyfin was too intense for me to try and make work at this time of my life. Plex works well for my purposes and I paid for the phone apps when needed ($6 per device I think).
I admire and support Jellyfin as FOSS and hope I can jump on when I have more time to make it work.
Yeah for sure, didn't mean to imply folks shouldn't use Plex just giving it a shout out as an alternative. I've used both and they are both pretty awesome. One of my friends set up a seed box with Jellyfin so I kinda cheated in leaving the tinkering to them but I don't think it was too bad with the provider they went with.
Exact same thing happened to me, i just couldn’t get it to consistently work.
I can't for the life of me get HW encoding working with Jellyfin. Plex was just plug and play.
i7-11800H
Is there any links/guides on how to get into the usenet side of things? I've been using torrents forever but people keep saying usenet is safer.
Google/learn about/consider these things
VPN, Usenet provider (i.e. EasyNews), Usenet indexers (i.e. NZBgeek), Usenet client (i.e. NZBget), Managing your library (Sonarr, Radar, Prowlarr, Filebot),
Media server & streaming (i.e. Plex, Jellyfin)
I watch through my firestick or android phones
I might be missing something, but there are lots of guides once you figure out what you're looking for. A little technical know-how makes things go smoother and faster though.
Thanks for the info. I've got. Sonarr radarr and prowlarr set up with qbitt right now and jellyfin. I'll have to do some digging this weekend.
Worth mentioning that NZBget is no longer in development. It still works but there is a fork out of a new client someone is developing. I can't recall the name but easily findable. This would be the equivalent of your torrent client.
It's nearing year end and you can get end of year deals soon on providers and indexers so off hold off until November\December. I think I got a lifetime NZBGeek membership last year for like $100 or something. It was my first time doing usenet but I actually switched my instances to use usenet indexers first over torrent indexers its that good.
There's a few recent guides on Reddit that discuss this and automation. I got access to some private torrent trackers this year, but haven't touched them since I got my Usenet subscription. I've been waiting decades for it to be this easy once you get it set up.
I tried to get into Usenet but I’m old and unable to learn new tricks. I just looked at EasyNews and it’s $9.99 pm for 20GB :| so, like, a single 4K movie with Atmos. I don’t understand the allure of UseNet, perhaps because I am a dumb.
I have EasyNews, I think I paid $30 for 6 months of unlimited.
Here you go, $6 a month unlimited signup link https://signup.easynews.com/checkout/unlimited-special-deal/
Running a VPN makes torrenting just as safe and you'll be paying a subscription fee for Usenet so it's a wash in my opinion.
Plex is cracking down on pirated content. They can't do anything locally (yet) but they sent out a mass email about two weeks ago saying that anyone that hosts a Plex server in the cloud (they didn't specifically mention Hetzner, but that's who is largely being affected) will lose access on October 12th.
That's because people were creating their own 'streaming services' using pirated content and selling access to it using Hetzner servers, which is very bad for all parties involved because it brings a lot of negative attention when actual profits are being generated from distributing pirated material.
People thought hosting copyrighted content on someone's cloud and making it available to others was a good idea? 🤦🤦♀️🤦♂️
This is why we can't have nice things.
It's specifically people doing this and selling access to the servers en masse, like these servers have a hundred or more users each. The don't care about the small fish that are doing this privately for no monetary gain.
Yeah, I guess it's often profit-driven. If you can get $5 per month from 100 people, you can probably clear hundreds of dollars per month. So that ten times, and this becomes quite a serious profit stream.
Yet.
I'm just as jaded and cynical as the next guy, but I think that this is a mischaracterization of that email. People were hosting Plex servers with thousands of users and terabytes of pirated content on Hetzner and selling access. I don't read them taking action as a signal for them blocking local libraries in the future.
They all do it just to get the lawyers off their backs. Plex is just a bigger target. Plex can't block anything locally so they take action against user distributing pirated content on a cloud service and are like "Here, we took action, can you leave us alone now?". It would practically be impossible for them to block the distribution of pirated content at the local level.
Plex fucked up when they created their Client-Server model because it allows traffic to run through their servers (the Plex Relay and their "phone home" model). This makes them legally responsible for "facilitating access to pirated content" even though they don't host the content. Jellyfin doesn't have this pitfall since you host everything yourself, they just provide the software.
You're the second person that says " Plex isn't cracking down on pirated content.... but they're banning people who are hosting servers with pirated content." If that's not " cracking down on pirated content" IDK what is....
That’s their entire userbase. Bold call haha
Yeah, people act like Plex and other media servers are used for legally obtained content only. Plex is just covering their asses and they can't block users hosting locally so this is a "here we did something, are you happy now?" to the copyright lawyers.
Plex's (almost) entire user base is pirates, it's the same with Kodi, Emby and Jellyfin. I don't know of anyone that has legally ripped all of their DVDs and Blu-rays themselves, it's just too much of a pain in the ass, and I know multiple people that have run servers for years.
Plex is just covering their own asses from getting sued for "enabling the distribution of pirated content". Kodi and Jellyfin aren't big targets since they aren't a business, they don't sell a product, Plex (and Emby) does. Kodi and Jellyfin can't get sued (or it doesn't make sense to sue them) because they have the disclaimer that says "we make this for streaming content you own, we don't host anything, we don't support the piracy plugins, do what you will with it, we're not responsible for your actions" but since Plex can route traffic through their servers (the Plex Relay) and the fact that they offer PlexPass puts them in hot water.
Instead of Plex blocking the specific users based on email, specific IP or something else specific to that account, they said "fuck anyone using Hetzner, regardless of whether or not you're violating our ToS."
I've paid for a lifetime PlexPass and have actually paid for it a few times over since it took years before I finally bought one. Yet, I get treated like I'm some mega-pirate making money off of them. They don't give a shit about their users, all they care about is money and not getting sued.
Sorry I don't buy it. It stinks of puppeting for rights holders. I moved to Jellyfin as soon as that story broke. I've been a Plex pass user for over 10 years (albeit lifetime single purchase) and the only thing I miss is in-TV subtitle search.
Yep. Finally got Radarr and Sonarr with overseerr setup this summer because I need a GUI solution for my family. It’s been working pretty great so far!
Got any names in particular? I’ve been looking at Usenet for a long long time and I think I’m going to finally get serious about it
Sure, check through this comment thread as a few have already been mentioned.
I will take a second look!
Stremio + Real Debrid is definitely not worth investigating. Avoid it at all costs. Keep giving these media companies more money. All the money. Disney needs your dollars.