Plex to block all servers hosted at Hetzner
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Use both Plex and Emby. This does not concern me since I think of Plex the same way as I think about a SIP provider. They provide the connection brokering so my devices and my server can handshake.
I have Emby as a backup because some media might have issues with transcode on plex. Jellyfin is a distant third for me due to transcode issues with hdr 4k content. (When last tested)
Either way, my content is for me- still not sure why people are crazy enough to pirate a ton of crap, buy space on a cloud provider then sell it on reddit.
I am sure the backlash on this move will be on par with when Plex said they wanted to collect media hashes and everyone swiftly raged at them.
The sad thing is Plex used to be awesome they killed camera upload and their podcast product is garbage cloud only trash. Plexamp is awesome. It just blows my mind they they don't create a podcast polling module where you can store data locally.
All of their recent focus has been on trying to be a multi streaming site aggregator. If they took a lesson from ye olden dogpile I think they would see this is a bad cart to hitch your horse to- they really need to get back to self hosted stuff.
This ticks me off... But their DVR and advert removal tooling for live TV tuners still rocks and I use for accessing my CATV and OTA channels.
Someday I will drop them- this is just another bad choice by very schizophranic leadership at Plex.
Plexamp is my main Android auto car music app, maybe I drop them for all but my live TV and music use?
Curious why Emby is not brought up more- I love it much more than jellyfin for stability.
If you have an Apple TV, use https://firecore.com/infuse ↗.
To be fair, it's not exactly the same as Plex. But it covers many of my use cases;
- Organizes your media on the fly
- Does not do useless transcoding (it was a huge issue back in ~ 2016 for Plex).
- Can directly connect to SMB shares, my Synology NAS.
- Does not require anything running on the server, so it does not matter your NAS has a decade old MIPS CPU.
- List files from multiple cloud providers.
- Can also sync with Trakt if you want to keep track of what you watch.
It appears (from reddit that):
1. People rent Hetzner servers to load-up with movies
2. They sell access to those servers to multiple users (sometimes dozens).
3. The opinion is also that Hetzner is a cesspool of the Internet:
> Hetzner seems to be a cesspit of internet, outside of russia. They're more than willing to host Indian scammers VoIP systems, as well as scam websites. They're willing to host just about anything as long as they aren't responsible for the content, and you don't get caught.
> hetzner is the worst. whenever we have an attack at work, 7 out of 10 times its coming from hetzner
Interesting. I'd thought that Plex was a self-hosted streaming platform? Am I to understand that while they may provide that functionality, they are maintaining another set of servers in the stream that can be used to cut off end users from streaming backends on servers that are operated by private individuals? I.e. I set up plex for myself, use their app, and then conceivably they have a gatekeeping capability that could cut me off from my own stream box?
If that's the case, then WTF Plex? If I actually cared, that'd be a custom Server/client rewrite and loss of business from me.
This was the wake-up call me and my friends needed to stop using this proprietary piece of garbage. I moved to Jellyfin this morning and I was pleasantly surprised that unlike a few years ago, the Swiftfin app now works well on both iOS and tvOS.
This kind of move by Plex only highlights that even though you’re running the server, they still feel they have the right to break your application at any time for reasons they decide. For me that’s completely unacceptable and I won’t spend a cent with them again.
The notice does not specify the provider, but I host my Plex server on Hetzner and received the notice. (And I don't host any pirated material, nor share my server with anyone else. This is beyond infuriating.)
Discussion on Plex Forum: https://forums.plex.tv/t/not-allowed-to-use-hetzner/853570 ↗
Discussion on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/16iqwf4/anyone_else_get_this_plex_notice/ ↗