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Plex crossed a line with "Your week in review" emails today. (alien.top)
submitted 2 years ago by [B] to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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As you may have seen Plex decided it was OK today to send an email showing me what my friends have been watching. To be clear, this is Plex telling other people what I've been watching from my server, with my files, and this is not OK.

https://imgur.com/a/DYR4wlh

We all knew it was a matter of time before Plex started collecting data on our libraries and sharing it with advertisers. What happened to their "we don't know, and don't want to know, what is on your server"?. This, for me, is proof that those fears were absolutely founded in reality. On what planet would I ever want this information to be shared with friends on family on an OPT OUT basis?

It's totally unacceptable to collect this data in the first place. It's totally unacceptable to share this information with uniquely identifiable information. And it's totally unacceptable to do this without explicitly asking me if it's OK.

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about this as a server admin, because technically these are Plex users and their marketing email preferences are controlled on the user side in the Plex website preferences. Not on your server.

This is an absolutely egregious overreach.

Thank goodness there are alternatives available in the form of Jellyfin and Emby. I left my Plex server up after the Jellyfin January challenge we did on the Self-Hosted podcast but because of this I feel that I have no choice but to take it down for good.

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[–] [B] 2 points 2 years ago (47 children)

Made the switch to JF about 6 months ago, Never looked back!

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  • [–] [B] 2 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    JF has no proper chromecast support… ☹️😤

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (7 children)

    What do you mean? I have used chromecast with Jellyfin many times.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (6 children)

    Chromecast in JF never worked...
    When I click the chromecast icon in JF "Play On" (top right) I get "Google Cast Unsupported".

    How did you manage to get it working?

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    You need to be hosting jellyfin behind a reverse proxy so that it works through https. Chromecast doesn't support unsecured sources.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Android required, no iphonies

    Jk, i eagerly await ios support but for now android only

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  • [–] [B] 2 points 2 years ago

    Windows browsers such Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave have the same issue. It's not OS or device related, it's how Chromecast has been implemented in Jellyfin.

    https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/6840#issuecomment-1042905147

    I'm also the developer of a local media server, and I've easily managed to bypass the Chromecast client-side issues by doing a server-side discovery. Now no matter how I access my media content, I can always send it to a Chromecast, because the CC and my server are on the same network, so the CC can easily be discovered over Avahi/Bonjour/mDNS. Then it can be the server itself to provide the client with a list of discovered players, not necessarily the other way around.
    The fact that there's no server-side logic to manage the Chromecasts, and instead we rely on the client to discover them, explains why things are so broken. Why not provide a server-side CC scan logic as a backup for users who don't use Chrome on Android but run the server on the same network as the CC, instead of relying on such a brittle client-side implementation?

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    You have to use the Play Store version

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (32 children)

    Is it supported on tv makers?

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  • [–] [B] 2 points 2 years ago (6 children)
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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    There is your answer.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    It says available for Android TV and WebOS. Which are the TV OSes now most of the time.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (23 children)

    Wdym TV makers?

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (22 children)

    They mean Smart TVs. My Dad's Samsung TV has a Plex app, but no way to install anything like Kodi that would let him use Jellyfin instead of Plex to serve media.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (6 children)

    Not sure about if Samsung TV has Google play store where the jellyfin or infuse app exist, but you can do chromecast / airplay if not Google play store

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    Samsung TVs run Tizen OS, not Android TV, so obviously no "Google Play Store".

    Also apps are pretty restricted, most are just able to use web-technologies, so nothing heavy-handed.

    The process in getting TV Apps approved on platforms like Samsung's Tizen OS is pretty annoying for most developers/open-source stuff.

    There is an actual app for Tizen TVs, but it needs to be sideloaded manually: https://github.com/jeppevinkel/jellyfin-tizen-builds

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (7 children)

    Amazon stick is the cheapest (easy) way to turn any TV into a Jellyfin TV.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    Yeah, I use one myself. He's already using all the HDMI ports on his AV receiver though, so there's no room for any extra devices.

    I know modern TVs can send the audio from the TV to the receiver, so in theory he could plug the stick into the TV instead, but his one seems to only be able to send certain formats that way, and you can't see the receiver's overlay on the TV when using it that way, so it's impossible to adjust anything.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (5 children)

    Personally, I'm getting increasingly annoyed with my Fire Stick. It's kind of sluggish, and very locked-down. You used to be able to sideload a custom home launcher, but Amazon is cracking down on that. Their launcher is filled with bloat and ads. Recently I've noticed mine auto-playing Amazon Prime video trailers on boot which makes me want to throw it out the window.

    I have JF installed on my Samsung (Tizen) TV and it works great. And the TV will auto-launch back into JF on boot... something I wish Fire Stick allowed.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    Strange, I haven't experienced that, but I'm also connected to Amazon Canada, so maybe it's different.

    Even side loaded Steam Link to stream games and it works pretty well.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    How has been your experience with higher bitrate/quality stream directplay?

    On my 4-5 year old Samsung TV I notice sluggish playback with 4K and high bitrate files with the Tizen Jellyfin app.

    With plex the same files were working fine.

    On my Desktop (using MPV) all files playback fine.

    Now I think about buying something like a FireTV stick or Xiaomi TV Box...

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    I've been tossing the idea around to set up a cheap mini NUC-like box, like a Beelink or something similar. About the same prices as an Apple TV or higher end Roku, and you can either use Windows, Linux, or even Android on it. Just needs a convenient remote to navigate it without needing to hook up a mouse and keyboard, or gamepad, and it would be a great little set top box.

    Also I'm kind of surprised there aren't more Linux distros for this already. We've got gaming console-like dedicated distros in Batocera, Lakka, RetroPi, Recall Box, etc. even stuff like SteamOS, or customized clones like Bazzite, Holo and Chimera. Where's the TV focused OS? The closest I see are typically just running Kodi on boot, which is ok I guess, but I want something more like an all-around HTPC where Kodi is just an application I launch when I want to watch something, rather than the sole UI.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    Amazon Fire days being based on Android appear to be numbered. Doesn't mean JF or any other client can't have a React-based client for whatever Vega becomes if/when launched, but I'd expect it to take some time. The prior effort for a React-based client seemed to have died a number of years ago.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    I’m also not a fan of Amazon’s streaming devices. I grabbed a 4k fire cube for $50 last year during one of their sales. This thing already lags like crazy and recently started playing an ad when you first turn it on. Annoying.

    My 2017 NVidia Shield still rocks.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

    There's a Jellyfin app for Tizen (Samsung TV) but it's kinda stupid to get installed and is kinda sluggish. Actual playback is perfect however.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    His TV is a few years old, so I'm not sure if it uses Tizen but I'll have a look, thanks.

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