Moving away from Plex....

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Moving away from Plex....

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#2889780 21-Mar-2022 23:23

reven:

You should use FileFlows instead of tdarr its so much better, and its written by a kiwi...... :|

Legend. That looks amazing.

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Tinkerisk

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#2889864 22-Mar-2022 08:06

jellyfin - has all the features you only get were the plex pass begins. And in contrary to plex it‘s open source.

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JimmyH

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#2892363 26-Mar-2022 12:05

I recently moved away from Plex, but not very far as I just went to Jellyfin. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, but on balance I and my family preferred Jellyfin. So, after running them both in parallel for 6 months, Plex finally got shutdown on my server about 3 weeks ago.

Plex is best for streaming outside your house (which I don't tend to do), and has a wider range of devices with apps if that's important to you.

Jellyfin seems more responsive (I got sick of Plex's spinning orange circle while I waited for something to happen), supports plugins (which Plex has annoyingly deprecated and is slowly removing), proper local authentication, and the ability to quickly spin up accounts for house guests etc without much palaver. It works on all my devices (Chromecast with GTV, Chromecast Ultra, Roku Ultra, android phones/tablets). Plus it's open source, which I like.

The clincher was that Plex has just got more annoying. It's UX seemed to get worse with each update - the ability to select servers removed, pushing their own ad-saturated dreck, settings not sticking every time apps updated etc.

We also have Netflix and Disney+ for the family, but I wouldn't be without my server.

JimmyH

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#2892365 26-Mar-2022 12:10

blackjack17:

How much storage space are talking? and how much of this storage space is hoarded media that you will probably never watch (I just cleared up a couple of hundred gigs by deleting a bunch of stuff I have watched or will never watch, I don't need to keep all 20 odd seasons of the simpsons).

Get rid of the server replace with a 2 bay/4 bay NAS and stay with neon. Best of both worlds.

I don't tend to delete things. I might want to watch them again later, as might family members or house guests etc. (Mind you I also hang out on the Datahoarder sub-reddit, so my perspective might not be normal). And things like the Simpsons and Qi do tend to get rewatched from time to time.

My storage was a NAS with 8x6TB drives (in RAID6 for 36TB usable). But it's used for more than media storage and over time has go full. So I have just added a second array (10 bays, or which 6 are populated, using 18 TB drives). I prefer that to deleting.

Next on my wishlist, when/if the budget ever runs to it, an LTO tape setup for backup.....

ratsun81

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#2892476 26-Mar-2022 18:02

Shapenz:

One thing Plex definitely has going for it though is high WAF since everything is in one App - I can guarantee if we have a couple there will be only one that gets used... my wife likes things that just work - she's not really into hunting for media.

We mainly watch on iOS devices so not sure the missing features from Neon really affect us? We do have a 4k TV but that's mainly for Paw Patrol apparently.....

My drives are a mix of shucked Seagates which seem to be failing - and SAS enterprise HGST drives... I have them in a SAS connected enterprise DAS so its not really made for power efficiency. I could probably rebuilt them into one consumer case to save some power but then cabling / cooling becomes an issue when you have 10+ drives.

I'm basically trying to talk myself out of buying a bunch of new drives to replace the failing ones......

I run a similar setup to you, except i dont use any SAS drives or shucked sata, Unraid with sonarr, radarr, jackett and jellyfin all in docker containers.

Ive used WD red's as well as currently seagate ironwolf's. Never had a failure and the drives have lasted at bare minimum 6 years.

My preference would be to drop down to a small chassis like the Inwin MS-04 but that is hard to find these days. And just run 4 large disks max.

Having an extra DAS sounds like more hassle.... How much total storage are we talking about?

JimmyH

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#2893395 29-Mar-2022 10:28

ratsun81:

Ive used WD red's as well as currently seagate ironwolf's. Never had a failure and the drives have lasted at bare minimum 6 years.

I had 3 out of 8 WD reds (WD60EFRX) fail over a 6 year period, although admittedly a small sample and probably not statistically significant. Between that and the debacle where WD started submarining SMR drives into their NAS lineup and actively concealing this from users, I went off the WD brand.

I replaced the Reds with 6TB Ironwolf drives in that array, and have been using 18TB Ultrastars in my shiny new array. So far, touch wood, no failures.

Shapenz

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#2893416 29-Mar-2022 10:51

ratsun81:

I run a similar setup to you, except i dont use any SAS drives or shucked sata, Unraid with sonarr, radarr, jackett and jellyfin all in docker containers.

Ive used WD red's as well as currently seagate ironwolf's. Never had a failure and the drives have lasted at bare minimum 6 years.

My preference would be to drop down to a small chassis like the Inwin MS-04 but that is hard to find these days. And just run 4 large disks max.

Having an extra DAS sounds like more hassle.... How much total storage are we talking about?

I now have 50TB storage + 10TB parity so ended up with 6x 10TB SAS drives. Having a seperate DAS is actually kinda easier setup / work wise. Just one cable to the HBA and all the drives are hot swappable with drive sleds so easy to install / remove etc.

Downside is power consumption is not great due to it normally being in a enterprise environment

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NzBeagle

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#2893595 29-Mar-2022 16:39

JimmyH:

ratsun81:

Ive used WD red's as well as currently seagate ironwolf's. Never had a failure and the drives have lasted at bare minimum 6 years.

I had 3 out of 8 WD reds (WD60EFRX) fail over a 6 year period, although admittedly a small sample and probably not statistically significant. Between that and the debacle where WD started submarining SMR drives into their NAS lineup and actively concealing this from users, I went off the WD brand.

I replaced the Reds with 6TB Ironwolf drives in that array, and have been using 18TB Ultrastars in my shiny new array. So far, touch wood, no failures.

A similar ratio of WD Red failures here and have replaced them with Ironwolf drives. I wasn't too upset, they'd had a good few years on them, but interesting to hear. I still have working Reds in the array today, touch wood.

jjnz1

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#2893640 29-Mar-2022 19:00

Sorry post edit - this is bloody hard to navigate on mobile!
Anyone care to share their rough Total Cost of Ownership?

Might help convince purchasing all those subs 😂

fe31nz

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#2894040 30-Mar-2022 01:08

I have also had a WD60EFRX fail at what I consider to be early. It was being used for MythTV recording, not a NAS, but it was running 24x7 and getting large video files written every day. Interestingly, my older WD Green drives (WD40EZRX) are still working fine (7.9 years and 7.4 years). I still have one other WD60EFRX that is used for video storage, so it does not have nearly so much use. It is running 24x7 though, and is up to 6.8 years or rotation, so it may be that WD60EFRX drives are sensitive to how much actual data traffic they get. When I got mine, I thought they were supposed to be higher quality drives (rated for more throughput), but it seems the Green drives are actually better. I have been investing in both WD and Seagate enterprise drives as replacements (16 & 18 Tbytes), so eventually I will be finding out which lasts longer.

xpd

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#2894048 30-Mar-2022 07:39

I'm running Plex and Emby on my little server (5TB) - was using Plex for years then found Emby had some features that Plex wanted $$ for, but had to keep Plex to keep family happy and its mobile app is still free whereas Emby is paid.

Just using a Seagate ST4000VN008-2DR166 and an old WDC WD10EADS-00L5B1 for storage and an old Intel SSD for boot.

Power wise, no idea, SWMBO has never mentioned anything about an increase - think I do have a power meter thing somewhere, might plug that in this weekend when I look to replace the SSD (its very old and starting to show its age :) )

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shrub

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#2894058 30-Mar-2022 08:14

jjnz1: Sorry post edit - this is bloody hard to navigate on mobile!
Anyone care to share their rough Total Cost of Ownership?

Might help convince purchasing all those subs 😂

Older PC needs to be at least an i5 + 8gm ram = Free - Whatever you can budget

HDD - this is where its user pays. The more you store the more you pay including JBOD sata controllers

Plex license - I think its $120 us for lifetime or if your not sharing outside your own home its free or use emby

Unraid License is around $100 us

If you want free downloads then torrents are good or you can go nzb for around $120 us per year.

Then there is the power costs of a 24x7 pc. probably $30 a month

Overall not cheap but you have control of the media and are not paying multiple for subs

xpd

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#2894062 30-Mar-2022 08:31

I was running Plex on an old Dell Vostro 410 for quite some time - was fine for 2-3 720p streams. That was a Intel Cored 2 Quad CPU :)

But yes, better the CPU the better - Im planning on upgrade my current build (4th gen i5) to at least a 10th gen i5 in the very near future to future proof it for a while.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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ratsun81

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#2894127 30-Mar-2022 11:03

jjnz1: Sorry post edit - this is bloody hard to navigate on mobile!
Anyone care to share their rough Total Cost of Ownership?

Might help convince purchasing all those subs 😂

As others have mentioned it depends,

Unraid basic Licence $60USD (up to 6 disks)

I run the following setup,

Prices (NZD)are at the time of purchase so will be different now.

Inwin ms-04 $250

MSI b450 ITX $250ish i dont have record of what i paid.

AMD Athlon 3000G $100

Kingston A400 120GB M.2 $50

Kingston 8GB DDR2666 $90

Plus harddrives.

Software: Jellyfin, Jackett, sonarr, radarr. Or just Plain Kodi works too but can be less WAF.

The other thing to consider is what devices you will use for playback. Android TV's or a Shield TV. Other options is to sideload android onto a raspberry pi 4.

There are other playback options but im not going to list them as i dont have personal experience....

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qwertee

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#2912264 10-May-2022 11:56

May I ask PLEX users here on how I can clear the library of old content that does not exist.
Didn't want to create another forum topic for a trivial query. Sorry for the hijack!

I use the PLEX app on my Sony TV to connect to a HDD that stores all my movies.
The HDD is run off a NUC that I use to download content. ( all on the same WIFI network)

Last week the HDD failed (bad sectors etc), and I had to reformat it and start again.
But the PLEX library still shows movies that are no longer there. Clicking on the thumbnails or metadata of the movies
show the details with a brief synopsis of the movie, actors etc but obviously cannot play.

I have re-scanned the library and also logged out and logged in, but this cache remains unchanged.

Thanks

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