[HN Gopher] Plex raises $40M to expand and compete with tech giants
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       Plex raises $40M to expand and compete with tech giants
        
       Author : Sytten
       Score  : 16 points
       Date   : 2024-02-02 19:49 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.inc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.inc.com)
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | Note that packing in ads for a lot of off-brand streaming
       | services is why I quit Plex and switched to the otherwise
       | inferior Jellyfin. Way to go!
        
       | sokoloff wrote:
       | As a long time, happy, paid user of Plex, this makes me worry
       | that they're going to continue to make it a worse experience...
        
         | pjerem wrote:
         | Try Jellyfin. It's the same thing Plex once was but fully open
         | source.
        
           | sokoloff wrote:
           | I have (and have a Jellyfin server running on the network).
           | IMO, it's nowhere near as polished as the 2017 version of
           | Plex. Cover art and metadata matching is terrible. Plex seems
           | to handle slightly "off" filenames and folder names far
           | better.
           | 
           | Every so often I update jellyfin and try again, only to find
           | it's still a worse experience than Plex.
        
             | pmx wrote:
             | I'm more than willing to take the trade off of slightly
             | worse metadata and a less polished UI vs plex reporting all
             | my media, habits, etc to their movie studio bed partners.
             | They've already turned on their users and are abandoning
             | what made plex great to begin with. Once you get used to
             | JellyFin it's really great.
        
               | speff wrote:
               | This is why I never take the jellyfin evangelicals
               | seriously. Plex is good software - nothing has been taken
               | away and my experience with it has been consistently good
               | and stable for multiple years.
               | 
               | > plex reporting all my media, habits, etc to their movie
               | studio bed partners
               | 
               | There is no proof that they're doing what you're
               | claiming. From what I've seen, people love trying to to
               | push jellyfin by making things up about plex. Also a
               | polished UI/UX counts for a lot more than the solo-user
               | jellyfin crowd thinks.
        
             | pavel_lishin wrote:
             | I have had a devil of a time getting Plex to recognize file
             | names. I wish I could just directly write things to its
             | damn fucking database.
        
               | endisneigh wrote:
               | Follow the naming standard:
               | 
               | https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-
               | your-...
               | 
               | You can go to open subs and use those names
               | alternatively, which follow the standard. Or just use
               | jellyfin.
        
       | DonnyV wrote:
       | Can they use some of that money to actually fix there horrible
       | syncing with music on Android? Its been years now since it worked
       | right.
        
         | pavel_lishin wrote:
         | Oof, I keep thinking of switching off Youtube Music in favor of
         | Plex :/
        
       | endisneigh wrote:
       | Good. Nice to see it becoming better funded, but I hope the
       | growth doesn't bite it in the butt.
       | 
       | I use Plex and turned off all of the sponsored stuff. It's easy.
       | Jellyfin is neat too but I find Plex to be superior, albeit not
       | open source. Ymmv
       | 
       | I do always wonder why folks complain about Plex ads. It's pretty
       | trivial to remove all of them.
        
         | eightysixfour wrote:
         | Because we paid for lifetime licenses before the
         | enshittification started.
        
           | endisneigh wrote:
           | I'm confused - is the experience different if you pay now?
        
       | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
       | How would you bring media ownership to the masses? A hardware
       | "hub" you can put a disc in and it rips it and organizes it and
       | allows your family to stream it?
       | 
       | They could add a cloud based subscription for storage if you
       | don't want their hub. The tech is all out there, someone just
       | needs to do it in an Apple-like dead-simple manner.
        
       | psyclobe wrote:
       | I've been buying Blu-ray's.. so tired of plex messing up the
       | simplest of encoded videos.
       | 
       | Was good while it lasted.
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-02 23:01 UTC)