My biggest beef with Plex is that they've pivoted away from being a media server first and are trying to change into a streaming platform first, and because managers inside the company have to show KPI, they're stuffing the streaming buttons and sections and recommendations in everywhere.

Really frustrating because the media server experience is still by far the best.

It really needs to have a "classic" toggle where all the streaming crap is disabled.

I still am not quite sure what value something like Plex offers for my personal HTPC media needs. I have a large collection of disk space that's an SMB file share on my local LAN, on a server in my garage. My home theatre PC mounts it over the LAN.

I have an XFCE4 desktop environment on the HTPC with the font size cranked up a bit and can run nautilus, thunar, or any other file explorer metaphor browser to explore the folders. There's a folder for movies, a folder for TV shows, and then stuff is organized within there by its directory name and filename. I double click on something I want to watch and it opens in VLC. Dead simple and works.

Makes me feel lucky that I got it for $120 in 2021. But I appreciate that they still offer a lifetime pass at all.

How is that even a viable business model? I don't know a single self host person that would pay a subscription for something they are hosting

Have to admit, quite impressive that someone is still paying this much for Plex given the free alternative like Jellyfin that can do pretty much everything the same.

What’s the psychology here that people are willing to pay this much for this software, yet not even $20 for another?

I remember when Plex wasn't a money grab. Many moons ago.

$750?!! Holy shit.

[dead]