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As Streaming Offerings Become More Expensive and Convoluted, People Are Setting Up Their Own Smaller, More Intimate Platforms (theverge.com) 159

Posted by msmash from the whatever-it-takes dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Because of the convoluted nature of licensing agreements and the vagaries of corporate competition, what's on Netflix is substantively different than what's available on Hulu or Amazon Prime. Different still are the network-specific streamers, like the up-and-comers HBO Max and Disney+, and the more niche offerings, like Shudder, Kanopy, Mubi, and Criterion. All of them have the same aim, which is to lock up intellectual property to keep people streaming. It's a lot! Plex, a company that sells media server software, has found itself in the strange position of being the answer to that problem. It has two components: the piece of software that organizes media on your computer's hard drive and the client-side program that lets you and your friends and family stream that content from wherever you are on just about any device.

It's clean. It's beautiful. It is extraordinarily simple to use. It looks a little like Netflix. Except, all of the content is custom, tailored by the person running the server. In the company's words, both pieces of its software are "the key to personal media bliss." What Plex doesn't say, however, is how that bliss is achieved. Because what's on Plex servers is populated by people, most of the commercial content you'd find there is probably pirated. And this is the main tension of using Plex: while the software itself is explicitly legal, the media that populates its customer-run servers is not -- at least the stuff protected by copyright law. The company, of course, doesn't condone this particular use of its software.
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As Streaming Offerings Become More Expensive and Convoluted, People Are Setting Up Their Own Smaller, More Intimate Platforms More

As Streaming Offerings Become More Expensive and Convoluted, People Are Setting Up Their Own Smaller, More Intimate Platforms

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  • Don't make it difficult (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @03:14PM (#58980834)

    This happens every time piracy is easier than the legal way.

    > Because what's on Plex servers is populated by people, most of the commercial content you'd find there is probably pirated. And this is the main tension of using Plex: while the software itself is explicitly legal, the media that populates its customer-run servers is not -- at least the stuff protected by copyright law.

    Yes, and? Sharing with your friends is not evil, no matter what the publishing industry wants you to think.

  • Standards CREAM balkanized proprietary crap (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @03:24PM (#58980906)

    One of the big problems with proprietary streaming is that it's proprietary. While I'm not really a huge fan of Plex, it doesn't suck and nobody is ever going to say that using multiple proprietary streaming services, each which requires its own app, doesn't suck. Sucking, being annoying, and especially inconvenience are what proprietary streaming apps are all about. If they want to compete with Plex, Kodi, or even oldschool file managers (!) they will have to standardize, so that the apps are completely decoupled from the services.

    In what kind of shitty amateur hour living room are you unable to have Game of Thrones (HBO), Drunk History (Comedy Central), Stranger Things (Netflix), The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu), City on a Hill (Showtime), etc on the same menu? You could do that 10 years ago with all your DVDs being on the same shelf. You could do it with a 1950s TV, by turning the dial. Pirates can do that with their various solutions. But doing it with "legit streaming" in 2019? Garbage. Ugly, difficult garbage. And too embarrassing for company.

    Standardization is the industry's only chance of ever shaking off its newly acquired shitty cheapskate amateur image. Until they do it, nobody wants to watch TV which isn't pirated. Piracy is the high end because it's standardized, and non-pirates simply aren't keeping up. That needs to change or else we need to stop thinking of this as a serious industry.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

      VRV https://vrv.co/ [vrv.co] is trying, one sub for what was multiple separate services.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ddtmm ( 549094 )
      This! Couldn't agree more.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yup. I actually recently shut down my Plex server. It was full of ripped DVD's, and some pirated shows. I would buy the show (and pay $15 for it), but then couldn't watch it on a plane, or the kids couldn't watch it on road trips. So I'd pirate it and download.

      Now Netflix, Google Play and others let you download for offline viewing. That was an acceptable trade off for me. I found that the Plex wasn't getting used anymore, so I shut it down just to avoid it eventually becoming part of a botnet. It lo

    • The problem is that whoever integrates all sources of content unavoidably becomes a gatekeeper to it, and so has power over everybody else. That's capitalism, it's the middlemen who make the most money. For example google makes more money from the web than anyone else, even though google produces almost none of the content.

      Let's say we make a great standardization protocol, and Samsung TV's implement it. Well, now Samsung has to decide which programs show at the top of the "suggested watching" list,

    • IIRC, several devices already do this. I think TiVo and Fire sticks both have "shows" on the main street. They do open the respective app once you select them, but they can centralize your choice. They both only work on shows explicitly added, but it works..

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The pirates managed to standardize decades ago. They have a standard format for releases, with an agreed show name, the series and episode number in a specific format, and the video file itself encoding with specific settings so you can be sure it's going to play back properly on all your devices.

      It just works. You can get a pirate DVR app that downloads the latest episodes as soon as they are released. It was far ahead of the modern commercial offerings when it really got started 20 years ago, and they sti

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by yabos ( 719499 )
      This is what Apple is aiming to achieve with their upcoming TV app. All the streaming services in one app. Because you are right it’s dumb to have to go to different apps all the time to watch the shows you want. It’s even worse than cable and trying to remember which channel a particular show airs on and at which time.
      If there was a way to easily pay(for a reasonable price) for the shows and have them show up in plex then I think it would take off. The experience is just so much better alon
    • There is one thing no company has ever done before. Digital distribution as a good and not a service. I like digital files and if I want to store the movie I own the license to, I want to be able to put it on my micro sd card on my phone or view it from my dropbox on my mac. I want to use it in the middle of the desert or when there is no wifi. These streaming models like to think everybody has a blank check for data streaming that they forget companies like Comcast have data caps.

  • This will come as a surprise to approximately 0% of /. readers. Although I do subscribe to a couple of streaming services, all my DVDs are on Plex, along with a bunch of other stuff. For a while it looked like streaming would make it easy enough to watch anything you'd like, but the more fragmented the streaming services get the less value they have to me. I'll pay for one, plus Prime, and that's about it.

    • Universal Media Server

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by b0bby ( 201198 )

        The thing I like about Plex is that the Roku/Fire/iOS/Android clients are easy for my family to use. What clients do you use with UMS?

        • It works with any DLNA, UPnP and HTTP client.
          • Seem to me that the problem with DLNA is that the free servers dont transcode efficiently, so if the client device cant decode the video stream as stored on the servers disk its either a bad experience (raspberry pi server cant keep up) or you are using a beefy desktop for the server.

            Most Roku's can only handle h264/mp4 video and ac3/aac audio. h265 is where most of the 4k and new pirated content are so good luck transcoding that on anything but a desktop.

            Plex can keep up. My observation with DLNA is th

  • Just wait for Disney to force ESPN onto all streaming plans in the basic level.

  • Plex + piracy is better than any streaming service (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @03:37PM (#58980998)
    Get yourself a Plex Lifetime Pass . . . they've been putting them on sale from time to time over the last few months. Load the server with quality pirated content -- e.g. Blu Ray rips with multi-channel surround content -- and that content never goes away. Big drives are really cheap now so this is totally possible. No ads (or threats of ads unless you pay more money), no forced previews or piracy warnings, etc. Stream it to yourself wherever you are or watch it on your big screen, or sync it to your device so you can watch it whenever even if you don't have a network connection. It's a solution that is superior to any paid streaming service out there. Once again, these RIAA and MPAA idiots are killing the golden goose with their endless greed. They can't help but make an inferior, fragmented, sucky offering, even when they're holding all the cards.
    • "Lifetime" LOL. As soon as they get bought out they'll dump the "lifetime" subscribers.
    • Wait, what? If all my stuff is on my hard drive, then I'm running my own server. If I'm running my own server then why would I need a lifetime subscription? The only thing I can think of is that this is phoning home, and if it's doing that then I shouldn't give them a single red cent.

      What am I missing here and why shouldn't I just use something like Kodi instead?
      • The Plex "pass" provides authentication and discovery across the internet. You still run your own server, so no need to give them any money if you are just in-home streaming across your LAN.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by b0bby ( 201198 )

          The reason I got the Plex pass is that it also unlocks the hardware transcoding which helps on the machine I run it on. I think I had access from outside before that.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You still run your own server, so no need to give them any money if you are just in-home streaming across your LAN.

          Not true. It was once upon a time, but in order to stream video from your in-home Plex server to your in-home Plex client, as best I can tell from trying several, all the clients insist on phoning home before they'll connect to the in-home server. You need a Plex pass, even if there's absolutely no technical reason for it. You can use a DLNA client, but then you're basically just browsing direc

      • I used to like Plex but then they started adding stuff like that. Why do I have to log in to watch content from my own hard drive?? A while ago our ISP had some problems and we had no Internet for two days. No problems, we'll just watch Plex. Nope, can't watch stuff I have on my hard drive in Plex if I don't have Internet. That was the last straw. There might have been PEBCAK issues, I don't know, but then I blame Plex too for not making it clear enough, so there.

  • Drop Plex and Emby (Score:5, Informative)

    by bluelip ( 123578 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @03:39PM (#58981020) Homepage Journal

    Jellyfin is what Verge should have suggested. Why allow Plex and Emby to control how you share your library? Jellyfin is what Plex and Emby claimed to be when they started out.

    https://jellyfin.github.io/ [github.io]

  • We had Netflix for years and have Prime with our Amazon Prime account. Dumped Netflix as things kept disappearing and we rarely watch Prime. I just download everything with Sonarr, Radarr, etc. to our NAS for viewing on our Apple TV's running Infuse Pro. Very family friendly and nothing is at risk of disappearing as it can on streaming services. We download even what we can legitimately watch because... screw their tracking.

  • A Western Digital NAS box and a roku work fine for me. No need to pay for a plex license nor for any additional hardware. I don't have all of my DVDs on there yet, but it's easier to put the DVD on the WD box and watch it than to carry the DVD around the house.

  • Fair Use and CD Ripping Matter (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The summary fails to at least allude to the realm of 'Fair Use' of otherwise copyrighted material. The summary also fails to allude to whether or not using a software player to play music 'ripped' from a CDROM that you physically purchased is a totally legal, ethical, and moral thing to do. The fact that the issue is still 'fuzzy' in 2019 jesus years is a key indicator of the dark deep underlying legal misinformation issues that have been at play for decades now.

  • Another suggesting is MiniDLNA; it isn't as nice in some ways as Plex; but it is 100% free and very simple to setup. It supports pretty much any dlna renders. In fact my enhanced version ( https://github.com/NathanaelA/... [github.com] ) actually supports passwordable folders on any standard dlna renderer. :-)

    • Plex handles media information. MiniDLNA doesn't. MiniDLNA is a cool thing to run on a limited NAS (like a Pogoplug) but it's no Plex replacement.

      Supposedly Kodi has some way to share media information between instances, but I never did get that crap figured out.

  • ... but it insisted on showing me external (pirated?) content to stream. I punted Plex rather quickly, as it would not do what I wanted it to do, it thought that it knew better.

  • Plex jumped the shark with mandatory accounts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:12PM (#58981250)

    Once upon a time Plex had potential, but today you can't do jack without signing into their system. Only a naive fool wouldn't read that as "we want to track everything that you and any people who touch your library watch".

    It's still possible to install Plex server without signing in, though they make a point of hiding the option. Connecting clients to the server, though, is a completely different story. The Plex clients I've tried all insist on signing into their system, no options.

    If anyone knows of a product that offers what Plex used to be -- no connecting to the mothership required at all -- please chime in.

    • Re:Plex jumped the shark with mandatory accounts (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @06:02PM (#58981788)

      Once upon a time Plex had potential, but today you can't do jack without signing into their system. Only a naive fool wouldn't read that as "we want to track everything that you and any people who touch your library watch".

      If anyone knows of a product that offers what Plex used to be -- no connecting to the mothership required at all -- please chime in.

      Yes I don't understood the point of or popularity of Plex. Just use Kodi as front end client and your favorite file server and or middleware (e.g. TVH) on the backend.

      • A file server wont transcode to a format that the viewer may need.

        I have a lot of old TV shows (early 80s stuff!) stored in AVI containers and a lot of newer shows stored in MKV containers. Many devices only support MP4 these days. They absolutely NEED to be transcoded to be viewable on things like a ROKU, and I dont want to store transcoded copies tailored for specific devices, because thats a rabbit hole I'd rather not fall down.

        • A file server wont transcode to a format that the viewer may need.

          Then do it from the middleware if that's what you want. My personal perspective transcoding is a waste of money and resources that leads to unnecessarily reduction in quality for no reason.

          I have a lot of old TV shows (early 80s stuff!) stored in AVI containers and a lot of newer shows stored in MKV containers. Many devices only support MP4 these days.

          Container formats are irrelevant. All of the above container formats are supported by Kodi.

          They absolutely NEED to be transcoded to be viewable on things like a ROKU, and I dont want to store transcoded copies tailored for specific devices, because thats a rabbit hole I'd rather not fall down.

          Disagree with underlying premise transcoding is necessary but again its not something you are precluded from doing.

          An SBC that can run Kodi and decode 4k HDR HEVC, H264 and MPEG2 in hardware and software decode anything else flawl

          • I think you are missing some things.

            A file server is a file server. It is not middleware.
            ROKU supports less codecs than you think. Apparently a LOT less. You think transcoding is not necessary for AVI files: You are wrong, a full of shit fanboy, or work for ROKU and/or KODI. [roku.com] I dont give a fuck which one it is, but I wouldnt be surprised if it wasn't the first and thus a lying fuck.

            Which part of "On a ROKU" fucking confused you, dipshit?

            • A file server is a file server. It is not middleware.

              My original statement you responded to was "Just use Kodi as front end client and your favorite file server and or middleware" .

              ROKU supports less codecs than you think. Apparently a LOT less

              Why would I buy underpowered crap (e.g. ROKU) when I can spend $30 more and get a HTPC quality SBC that plays everything effortlessly with no restrictions?

              think transcoding is not necessary for AVI files: You are wrong, a full of shit fanboy, or work for ROKU and/or KODI.

              The container formats apply only to ROKUs internal media player and is irrelevant for KODI. If you install KODI on your ROKU you will be able to play AVI files.

              Which part of "On a ROKU" fucking confused you, dipshit?

              See above.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by pnutjam ( 523990 )
              You can get a single board win10 computer with hdmi for about the same cost as the high end roku. You can get old laptops and such for less.
              I use linux for must stuff, but win10 makes a great set-top box, it streams everything, runs kodi, and the tablet UI works great for a TV.

  • Off grid challenge with Plex (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:18PM (#58981292) Homepage Journal

    I used to love Plex, until I had an internet outage.

    I have my Plex Media Server running on a PC and Plex running on an Apple TV. So when the internet outage happened, I figured I’d just watch something from my personal collection. This didn’t work out since Plex now needs an internet connection, even to access a local media server!?

    Already having VLC on my Apple TV ended up being the workaround, but I shouldn’t have needed to resort to that.

    • Re:Off grid challenge with Plex (Score:5, Informative)

      by dslbrian ( 318993 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @05:16PM (#58981574)

      I also found the Plex online signin requirement absurd, but there is a way to disable it (ironically you must signin to disable it):

      After signin, go to Server->Settings->Network. Scroll down to "List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth", and enter a subnet, such as: 192.168.1.0/24

      After that anything on the subnet should not ask for a login when connecting (eg. from PC web browser). Oddly, even though it originally wanted a login when using PC, I don't recall Roku Plex app ever needing auth (perhaps it did and I don't recall).

      IMO Plex is great for the equivalent of a "personal netflix" but really it is just a content/metadata management system. The real unifying device is the head unit, such as Roku since it supports all backend services. Although if I were to upgrade our Roku's I would probably opt for Nvidia Shield, as it is similar, but can also do Steam streaming.

    • Re:Off grid challenge with Plex (Score:4, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @06:38PM (#58981952)
      An Internet connection is not necessary for Plex, nor is a Plex account. They just do a damn good job of hiding the fact that you can run it without a Plex account. The server management page will still defaulted to forwarding me to their website login page. But after a dozen tries, clearing the cache, and letting it time out, and finally wiping the server and reinstalling it this time never letting it know I had a Plex account, I finally got it to revert to my local server management (I think it was detecting that I had used a Plex account in the past, and auto-forwarding me to login).

      But it's still scummy behavior, and annoying enough that I've been looking for replacement media server software. It also doesn't help that they seem to redesign the UI every 6 months, forcing me to re-learn everything.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Yup. That is what I hate about Plex. Also, Plex doesn't let you play directly from VCDs, DVDs, BRDs, etc. too. We shouldn't have to rip and encode. :(

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kwerle ( 39371 )

      What did you move to?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I agree. PLEX bypasses your local DNS. They use their servers as the DNS of what you can get to. Yes, it helps in accessing your friend's plex box. But you could that too, by entering the their IP in your DNS. It is breaking good behaviour of internet to lock you in.

    • Yeah this was the main reason why I sorta ditched the idea. I never paid cause they let you play with it before buying basically with a trial version. This was one of the things I tested and immediately knew this still couldn't satisfy my needs. I've just accepted that local storage is always more convenient than streaming. I just can't wait until we start getting 2TB microSD cards!

  • I just use a single external hard drive connected to a computer which is the PLEX server on on the household LAN. Some people (me) are just too lazy to shuffle through a file of discs to watch a particular movie and would rather invest the (now minimal) effort to rip everything they buy.

    Buy DVD
    Rip DVD to MKV
    PLEX recognizes MKV
    Watch the MKV on my Roku-enabled TV.

  • My server has a directory tree which is shared as a samba folder. All the media is stored there and can be viewed on multiple nettop computers I have scattered around the house.

    Each net top computer has the HDMI port connected to a TV (some directly, some through receivers). They all run Kodi and access the network share via samba. They also all have IR receivers and are controlled via Logitech Harmony 650 remote controls.

    So long as the local network is up, anyone in the house can watch anything in my co

  • "As Streaming Offerings Become More Expensive and Convoluted.."
    I didn't even have to say it.
    Sure, it was cheap, even free, to start with, wasn't it? That's always how it starts. Now that they've got you, and you literally have no easy alternatives, they jack the prices up.

    Seeing all this, I'm still sticking with the antenna on my roof, and TiVo between it and my TV.

  • It's almost like if you make something hard or expensive, people go find easier or cheaper ways.

    Motion picture industry did not learn the lessons of the music industry from the last decade. They will have to learn the hard way - losing billions of dollars on lost licensing revenue and standing up money-losing services that nobody uses instead of sitting back and cashing checks from Netflix, Amazon, Google, and Apple.

    Meanwhile, Netflix and Amazon continue making their own content and become less reliant on

  • kodi has the same problem, they have a hard time distancing themselves from the 'pirtate media' image.

  • I used Plex for a while, then moved on to Emby due to the privacy issues, real or perceived, to use with my Chromecast. Finally I just got rid of the noisy old computer downstairs and replaced it with OSMC (Kodi) on a Raspberry Pi 3B+. So much less complex than Plex or Emby, right behind the TV and quieter too. Makes a great file server for my Volumio rPi 0 on the same network, which handles the music browsing and sound quality much more gracefully than Kodi. I don't do transcoding, hard drives are cheap a
  • If you have any decent paid streaming services then the idea of plex seems very outdated.

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