this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Privacy

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Plex Discover Together shares a bit too much. ... (www.404media.co)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by joeldebruijn@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Although the headline focusses on a obvious category of media, it really can go wrong on a lot of other categories as well.

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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 31 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This isn't an entirely "new" feature, in a way.

You always had access to see what your friends were watching on your own server. This is a consequences of being an admin, you kind of have to have access to that kind of data to manage your system and streams.

This seems to just extend it to showing you what they're watching on other servers, as well.

Anyway, if the concern is that Plex, the company, has access to this data, then yeah, you probably should have read the privacy policy a little closer.

Jellyfin is there and doesn't have a parent company to "phone home" data to.

[–] frozen@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 20 points 11 months ago (3 children)

It's unfortunate that Jellyfin is just slightly worse than Plex at pretty much everything. Playback is smooth, sure, but set up is harder, getting good metadata is harder, logging in is harder, etc.

The metadata one really put me off. I set up a Jellyfin instance with the exact same media set as my Plex instance, and it immediately started "recognizing" standard movies and shows as porn and hentai. I'm still going to push through and get it properly set up eventually, but even so, I'm not looking forward to manually managing accounts when people can just SSO with Plex.

[–] averyminya 6 points 11 months ago

I've had similar issues/experiences with Jellyfin as well.

[–] Sightline@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Metadata has been far better in JF than Plex.

[–] frozen@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I have a ton of media that Plex recognizes automatically and Jellyfin doesn't, so... Agree to disagree, I guess. I'm not trying to defend Plex's recent enshittification, but that doesn't change the fact that it's generally a better experience than Jellyfin right now.

[–] MayonnaiseArch 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Add to that my usual gripes about it being weird with transcoding. And I'll try it again today, have to see if there really is a way to stop it transcoding everything without a fucking reason. The other thing I remember is that it takes a lot of time and effort to ingest my media. Plex did it in like a minute, this takes half an hour of more. But I'll edit this post once I check.

Anyway, a whole lot of people are saying that somehow jellyfin is better when it simply is not. It's free, that's really really good. But that doesn't magically make it better.

edit:

first issue, jellyfin doesn't start smoothly, it somehow thinks there is another jellyfin server somewhere in my lan, and I had to 'delete' that server, do a couple of refreshes to get it to understand I was connected to the server. Not a biggie, but it's just bad UX and plex does better.

second: selecting a network share asks for a network share. once you enter it it asks for some kind of folder. what? so I'm unable to add a shared folder during initial setup, maybe it's the part where it asks for a local folder or the part where I can't enter my credentials for the share. skipping that for now.

third: the media ingestion takes forever. it's grinding my disks, no idea why it takes so long and is so incredibly intensive. one more point for plex which did this in probably less than a minute. it's been probably 25 minutes and it's still not done (i quit updating this number, it's going to be more than 30 minutes).

fourth: there are no settings for disabling transcoding on the server. this is plain stupid, there is no excuse for not having an option which all of these jellyfin defenders don't have to use. It's like giving people options will take something away from somebody, it's silly. i had to search around again, because these options are hidden in the user settings. have to say again that this is plain hostility. if the devs really can't live without transcoding rename it to transcodefin and have at it, don't let people get the wrong idea about usability and the goal of this project.

fifth: it can't display normal subtitles without a black box if it's not transcoding. like I said, this is fucking embarrassing by now.

I've been doing things around the house while making this edit and the library scan is still working. it's been a long long time.

I'll let this server live for a couple of days because I'm not a fan of what plex does with the nagging and begging for money, but it works soooo much better that it's not even a competition. maybe I'll kill it for fear of it destroying my nas drives with all the grinding, like how is it possible that plex did this in less than 5 minutes without raising the nas temperature? I guess it's like with the transcoding, screw me and screw being efficient.

I'll update after a couple of days I guess

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Jellyfin is so much better than Plex

[–] Vexz@kbin.social 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Imo only in terms of privacy. I tried it a few times over like two to three days but I always went back to Plex. Jellyfin is a nice piece of software though. I can imagine my switch will happen in a few years.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Its better in terms of basicly everything for me. Plex is a pain and simply isn't as polished

[–] MayonnaiseArch 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

You must be kidding? Jellyfin is years behind in every aspect except being free software. The best part is that you can't disable transcoding, which is either insane, malicious or plain incompetent. As soon as that's an option we can start talking about the rest of it

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We clearly have had very different experiences. Transcoding is optional and you can change it in the media player settings. (It works a lot like YouTube)

Also transcoding requires very little overhead on Intel systems so I would just transcode to the resolution of your device.

[–] MayonnaiseArch 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well sure, I meant disabling transcoding and having it play anything. And it's not about overhead, it's just that I want to decide what my hardware does - I don't want transcoding at all, ever, never ever. Not even when I'm using mobile data. The problem was always that jellyfin simply can't play files which any player can play. I understand I didn't really say what the issue was, sort of thought playing media files should be the bar

[–] 1hitsong@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The problem was always that jellyfin simply can’t play files which any player can play. I understand I didn’t really say what the issue was, sort of thought playing media files should be the bar

Please open an bug ticket!

I've used Jellyfin for years and not had any issues with playback, let alone every single video file.

Additionally, I've been a programmer on the Roku client for over a year and again, never heard of someone having an issue playing every single video.

[–] MayonnaiseArch 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Not every single one, just the ones I tried. My tv can play anything using videolan or nova player, or anything else for that matter. I have to install jellyfin again, will do. It's been very strange for me, with people praising jelly when it just never worked for me. And I avoided plex like the plague, but for some reason it works. Anyway, will check and file.

edit:

I realized what the issue is - it's another thing I'd call a bug. If you disable transcoding and want subtitles this thing just hangs there. So how do I file this? Enabling normal subtitles without a black box behind them actually requires transcoding. And if you have a combo of settings which jellyfin will happily let you choose it will simply fail silently.

[–] deeply_moving_queef@lemmy.ml 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

This is how you disable transcoding.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 10 points 11 months ago

What's "futanari," uncle Joeldebuijn?

[–] jherazob 4 points 11 months ago

And like clockwork the enshittification proceeds unabated

[–] zeekaran@sopuli.xyz 2 points 11 months ago

Nice shout-out to Prospect.

[–] joeldebruijn@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

More about this here: https://lemmy.ml/post/8606459