Selfhosted

Plex requires a Plex Pass subscription to share outside of your local network. Plex doesn’t allow you to watch media on your local network if your internet service is down, even if you have the Pass, because the service requires a constant connection to the Plex service itself. You can’t use apps on most streaming boxes and sticks without a Pass subscription. Plex records telemetry on all of your viewing habits and shares it with any of your associates who also use the service.

I switched from Plex to Emby a decade ago because of the restriction on local network streaming without an internet connection. My internet service went down and I said to myself “well I can at least watch my locally hosted files on my tv sitting next to the server”. Nope, not allowed. I emailed Plex support about it once my internet was back and they said that wasn’t a bug, it was by design. I dropped it then and there even though I had a lifetime Pass subscription.

100% agree. Well said.

To me, self hosting means the service runs on your hardware and is entirely un-reliant on anyone else's.

The purist part of my head wants to define self hosting as something done on your own hardware that no actor external to your net can influence directly, even to the point of requiring a licence check against an outside server is not 'self hosted'.

By that definition it gets a bit dicey with a lot of projects that are at all complex though, so you have to decide your own line.

So I ask, when you are hosting something that is entirely dependent on a commercial entity to function, is Plex really selfhosting in the spirit of this community?

I understand where you’re coming from but, to me, self hosting is an ethos, not a checklist. If self hosting has to be void of a commercial entity then my services at home that are available externally aren’t self hosted since I have to rely on my ISP for that to work. And all of the electricity for my servers comes from a commercial company so those aren’t self hosted. And using a public domain isn’t self hosting.

at this point, Plex is self-shooting-in-the-foot

Plex used to be for the community. Their recent decisions have proven otherwise, they are seeking more of the almighty dollar so the imaginary money line will keep going up forever.

Sounds familiar.

So I don't disagree with you on principle.

Now technically, Plex is self-hosted as you run the server program on your own hardware and can determine whether you want to use their authentication servers or roll your own internal thing.

It’s like a baby step on the self hosting journey. Not as pure as Jellyfin but still a little better than Netflix. I paid for a Plex lifetime pass years ago, when they were still producing cool updates like DVR functionality for OTA broadcasts. I still run it but now Jellyfin is running alongside it with the intent of dropping Plex soon.

Plex technically IS self-hosting but the significance of self is pretty low as Plex has a lot of control over it.

Self hosting is as simple as hosting a service yourself on your own hardware and not relying on 3rd party servers. With that, Plex is partly self hosted, as you host part of it. But as a whole it is not a fully self hosted service. Discussing Plex in a self host group makes sense as part of it is hosted on your own hardware. Technically using a vps isn't really self hosting, but if somebody sticks a service like immich or nextcloud onto a VPS to remove their reliance on Google, I still think posting in a self host group to discuss it is the best option.

when you are hosting something that is entirely dependent on a commercial entity to function

Eh, you can still get in with them down by hitting the local server, so I don't think this is entirely accurate.

Would I recommend it? No, I have a lifetime pass since the early days of it being offered and I just use JF. I recommend Jellyfin.

But I'm also not going to look down on folks who dont want to deal with auth or are unsure when it comes to opening a port on a firewall, access is something Plex makes easy and I get that.

So is it self-hosting? If they are running the server, no matter if its local, a vps, whatever, then I'd say yes. Whether or not it meets with my personal ideals are irrelevant.

Yes. Ask another question, the one we're all aching to respond 😜

I own the media I stream, no commercials and using it local is totally free. Also its been proven to be more secure than jellyfin with their recent scare - https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1s94a18/psa_update_to_jellyfin_10117_immediately_critical/

Im not a self hoster so never mentioned it as peanut gallery but I was wondering reading stuff. I was kinda like. Whats the point of plex sounds like you need to connect with them or something.

Many of us are caught on the convenience of Plex and actively are working to replicate that with alternatives.

There are a few features that are not replicated anywhere else:

1. the Plex magic proxy
2. combined libraries
3. Easy to use apps because of 1

Its a matter of not having these being more annoying than Plex is.

Well that would be the description of the community, but the actual rules section doesn't say anything about privacy/control.

So at the end of the day Plex is self hosted (you run most of it) so it should qualify. It might not 100% match the spirit of self hosting it does still meet the definition.

You can argue most Jellyfin/emby installs have the same problem because most users are still are dependent on external services because of things like metadata plugins.

And on the privacy front those plugins aren't any better than Plex. For instance The Movie DB which is the primary movie and TV metadata provider for Jellyfin has a privacy policy that clearly says they will use and share any interaction you have with the site including location and personal information. They almost certainly keep track of what is in your library. They don't have a user account for you that they can use to track across IPs, but if your ISP keeps you on the same IP for long periods of time they have a good idea of what you are watching.

You can run Jellyfin without those plugins enabled but unless you want to build/collect manual nfo files to import that data you are going to have a subpar experience.

Same problem for the **arr stack since they need metadata as well. Some of which go to different providers so you are giving out that information to additional parties (i.e. Sonarr goes to TheTVDB which has a similar privacy policy).

You can configure the arrs to write out nfo metadata and have Jellyfin consume that so that at least you aren't giving away your info to two external parties.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

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