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Infuse vs Plex
- Thread starter zooby
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I've found a way that works, for us at least, and I'm posting about it here since I asked about these things earlier.
The key thing for me is to have a solution that allows playing both DRM protected content bought on iTunes and content that's been copied from CDs and DVDs.
Home sharing works really well for this, but only when the iTunes library is shared and accessed on a computer. It's pitifully show on iOS to the point that it just doesn't work.
I found an app called Music Streamer which at about 5 USD isn't the cheapest but it's worth it since it works. It basically accesses the iTunes folder as an SMB share. There are other apps that do this too, like VLC and various file explorer apps. But they don't have a music player built in, which Music Streamer has. In my testing today it's been very reliable. And the library loads immediately. Plus it auto connects to Bluetooth speakers and can play playlists from iTunes.
The key thing for me is to have a solution that allows playing both DRM protected content bought on iTunes and content that's been copied from CDs and DVDs.
Home sharing works really well for this, but only when the iTunes library is shared and accessed on a computer. It's pitifully show on iOS to the point that it just doesn't work.
I found an app called Music Streamer which at about 5 USD isn't the cheapest but it's worth it since it works. It basically accesses the iTunes folder as an SMB share. There are other apps that do this too, like VLC and various file explorer apps. But they don't have a music player built in, which Music Streamer has. In my testing today it's been very reliable. And the library loads immediately. Plus it auto connects to Bluetooth speakers and can play playlists from iTunes.
I definitely don't sweat it, because I eliminate every attack vector I can spot. That means no listening devices in the house, not using the apps built in to media players, and never connecting my home theater to the network. No connected appliances - though I can't be certain a given router chipset might not have a "relationship" built-in with a chipset in a particular appliance. Certain things I can't do anything about, like one of my providers getting hacked. But by being judicious in how I compromise my information, I can prevent my information coming from multiple sources, since in some cases that knowledge can be as valuable as the information itself.
Hopefully thats a passphrase and not a password, and you're not using a password manager.
Since the information requirements and the Plex cloud connection predates much of the connected devices and services out there, thats not a valid excuse for their data collection. Plex should have a lean version for people who just serve their own media and never use those kind of devices and/or services.
Infuse manages to do a very good job of managing video collections all without personal information. Sonos can manage a music collection as well as hook into a person's installed services, if any, all without a cloud account. Plex is not an innocent here.
I did that too. And then I found out that their posted removal methods ignore certain files. Since they know exactly what they installed, I would say that had to be on purpose.
Privacy Policy | Plex
Revised January 1, 2020 Thank you for using Plex! We here at Plex care deeply about your privacy, and we...www.plex.tv
I have no idea why you posted that.
It isn't. 20 or more characters of random case letters, numbers, symbols.
You memory must be a lot better than mine. I can't remember 2000+ username/passwords/license keys, etc. I don't worry 1password security. Even if there is a breach I have tons of identity theft insurance.
Doesn't meet my needs for data collection, customization, managing large libraries, sorting options, etc.
It explains why Plex releases data to 3rd parties. Looks reasonable to me.
Thats a shame. It makes it harder to remember, and puts you in the position where you'd need to have a password manager.
Yep, like I was saying...
Use a passphrase, learn some simple mnemonic tricks to keep the passphrase, and get rid of the manager. It makes no sense to put all your trust in a single company to "protect" your password info. That is the instant weak link. If someone at the company is compromised - never mind the technology, its all over. And you must know that somewhere inside, because you have identity theft insurance.
What kind of libraries are you talking about? I have close to a thousand movies on my drive and Infuse hasn't failed me. Yet. Plex on the other hand was an organizational disaster from the word go, plus it had a terrible interface.
Hey as long as your own particular threshold with data compromises (you get this in return for us getting that) is comfortable for you, thats all that matters.
I'm missing something here. How am I going to remember thousands of passphrases? Didn't think it was a great idea to use the same username/password combo on multiple sites.
I have some 6000+ files in 13 libraries on each of my 3 different Plex servers, giving me in total 18000 files in 39 libraries. I am constantly changing the sort order from recently added, to rating, bit rate, Title, etc. Not so easy with Infuse, very difficulty to manage multiple servers.
Infuse is great if you have a less complex library organization. Can Infuse easily search server X's Movies library for all HDR movies sorted by date added? Do a Duplicates search of Music Videos by title on server Y? How about doing a music search for Albums which were released before December 31 1972? In Plex you switch between these searches in seconds.
I don't re-use passwords, yet I remember mine. My memory is slightly above average but nowhere near eidetic. So how can it be done? As I said, learn some simple mnemonic tricks. I can't really go any further into it than that on a public forum, but suffice it to say it works - and no need for a password manager that could be compromised.
Firecore could have all sorts of library management tools built into Infuse but I couldn't tell you one way or another - I just don't have a need to go beyond simple alphabetical hierarchy so I've never looked for it. They've got a genre-organizing tool that I don't use, so perhaps there are others.
Despite having a fairly serious audio setup I still use Infuse basic for the movie library. (The only reason for me to upgrade would be to get high-def audio, so $60 one-time for that doesn't seem worth it, and I don't buy software subscriptions, ever.) Infuse doesn't handle music files so I rely on the Music app on the iMac or the aTV 4k for that. Both are less than optimal - the user interface alone, with its enormous amounts of white space and photo-coin icons, is very unsettling - and I've been looking for a replacement for years but there doesn't seem to be any worthwhile. Roon looked good, until I found that its just as bad a privacy compromise as Plex, perhaps even worse in some ways.
I recall when I used to spend more time with iTunes that I used the sorting tools on a few occasions. Sometimes I would switch between artist and song title, but most often I would select bit rate, just so I could see what the lowest fidelity files were - either to demo the difference between a 160 or 192 file and a VBR file for a skeptic friend, or just so I could weed out those low res files and know what I needed to replace. I've never used ratings for any files, ever, whether it was video or music. Not to be inflammatory but... I know my library and if something is in there, its good, and I remember whether the file is great or merely good. Placing hearts or stars or whatever next to a song or artist reminds me of an adolescent girl drawing a swirly border around the name of her latest crush on the front of her Trapper Keeper.
In conclusion: where media management is concerned you're far more of a power user than I ever could be, so I doubt I'd be able to talk you into walking away from Plex. I'm always suspicious of any product that requires a cloud account to run a service between two components that are mere feet apart behind a firewall, and then tell me its to provide functionality and security, whether its media software, wireless speakers, mesh network components, or whatever else does that. As I mentioned previously, you've reached a compromise where you're ok with a certain amount of your privacy being compromised in return for certain benefits. Thats all that matters.
Hold-on there sport
The Plex interface is objectively NOT terrible. Both my 4 year old daughter and my 75 year old inlaws can very easily find their way around plex and watch/listen to content - but I'm sorry to hear that you're struggling with it
maybe you are using up too much bandwidth trying to remember all your passwords?Some people may prefer another over it (and vice versa) - personally, I prefer the plex interface to infuse - but I'm not on here telling people that infuse is "terrible". Not everything needs to be binary - it should be possible to have a more nuanced conversation than that when discussing the merits of two different solutions.
I found the plex organisational structure to be absolutely fine - I was previously using the iTunes-style folder structure, and just pointed plex at that - it all indexed without any drama/"disasters" at all. Didn't have to change anything at all, it just worked. That's all I want from the back end - robust, simple, logical, low maintenance - and Plex is that.
I'm more the luxury model, but thanks.
The Plex interface is objectively NOT terrible. Both my 4 year old daughter and my 75 year old inlaws can very easily find their way around plex and watch/listen to content - but I'm sorry to hear that you're struggling with it
That was too good, I got nothing.
Ok, here's the nuance: Plex was terrible for me. It was ugly, byzantine, it concealed portions of itself far deeper than either its support docs or people practiced in Plex apologetics could determine, and it turned out to be an immense privacy risk. Plex most likely is not terrible for you, since you're plagued with hordes of elderly media addicts fronted by a 4 year old.
You let your 4 year old daughter watch TV? Please tell me she has books.
Plex - in my case - showed me its backend, along with a hearty GFYS, as it gave me a list of media slightly worse than DOS, but it managed to catalog an entire directory of NFP photos from TV production that I specifically excluding from the setup. Since Plex reports home, I have no idea what information was put into the wild, neither do you or anyone else in here. Back then they didn't have the mandatory Plex Kidney Stone Pass, but who knows what they did?
As far as simple and robust, I didn't even have iTunes structure to my directory. Mine had metadata and filenames built by iFlicks and loaded into a basic directory tree on a remote drive attached to my Airport Extreme. (Which Catalina did a great job of ruining, thanks Apple!) Infuse found that and did a great job getting it to both of my Apple TVs. If I want to try to fall asleep with a movie and my AirPods, iOS Infuse takes care of that with minimal fuss.
As I keep telling folks - if you're ok with the tradeoffs in privacy for what Plex offers, thats all that matters. I don't know why it turns into such a brouhaha.
lol, ok. In the real world, old people watch TV, and Kids sometimes watch cartoons (as well as reading books)....... if that's surprising or worrying to you, I respectfully suggest you don't open a newspaper anytime soon in case your head explodes.
I think you might need you risk-o-meter re-calibrating if plex registers as "immense". If that fails you could try wrapping your computer in tinfoil to mitigate.
I suppose the point at which you were advocating that it was perfectly reasonable to expect people to memorize thousands of passwords should have been a red flag! A salient lesson here about engaging with people on the internet... thanks - lesson (re)learned!
So... humor escapes you? I got the wrong idea from your posts. You seemed like you had a sense of humor. I'll adjust for that. Sorry!
Its a given in any discussion on the internet: when debate fails, bring out the insults and mockery. "Tinfoil" is at the top of the list, especially in privacy discussions.
Let me recalibrate this for you: any risk that exposes my side of the router is "immense". Any security risk, once proven, is an issue and I don't care if the data exposed is my grocery list or information from a production. In my case, I specifically de-selected photos from Plex setup, and it went ahead and gathered all of my photos under its wing, including all of my "you don't get to see this if you aren't in the production" photos. Set leaks from humans are bad enough without computers getting involved - I don't want to get blacklisted because one of my shots makes it out into the wild. If Plex goes where I tell it not to go, and it has a "phone home" requirement just to get a desktop to talk to a tv 15 feet away, who knows what other things get dripped out into the open?
You'll have to forgive me if I seem sensitive to this stuff from your POV. I'm just guessing here, but I'd wager you've never sat in a planning session where people were baking scenes for a tv event, and later found out that a journalist who was given permission to be there strictly for stills and quotes meant for public consumption was actually funneling production information to a competitor. That was incredible damage from a lone person who was invited in and under view the entire time in a limited area; how much more damage can computer code do when its invited in to a far greater area and given enough time?
So yes, I'm very particular about this privacy stuff whether its personal or business.
Thousands? I don't believe I went that far. Or was that hyperbole on your part? I hope so. I don't know with you. I mean, I blinked out on the whole "humor" thing with you already and hyperbole is like a level or two above that. Its like sarcasm but way more subtle.
Regarding passwords: I think I'm close to a hundred, not a thousand. But I'm sure I could easily go that far. So could you. Honestly man, do you not know anything about mnemonics, "memory palaces", or any of that stuff? It really isn't that difficult. Of course if you decide to do an alphanumeric hash that would be a problem, which is why I recommend passphrases, but its not impossible. I've also read a few good articles from security pros that say the same thing, though for different reasons.
Seriously - learn how to do it, and ditch the password manager. It doesn't mean you're superior übermensch or whatever, its just a trick. A stupid parlor trick. If I can do it, you can too.
Actually remembering 1000 unique, constantly changing username/password pairs (2000 entries) puts you at the eidetic memory level.
Yep. I'm really getting into ease of use these days. I'm not going to worry about something that has a very small chance of happening.
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Only if you didn't resort to trickery to do it. I never said otherwise. And again, it's around 100 for me currently.
Reminds me of something Franklin said about liberty and security. Its tangential to the discussion, of course, but I think you could substitute "privacy and convenience" and it would be a pretty marked parallel.
Does it allow play counts to update? Play counts is a pretty big factor in the playlists I have created.
Possibly your HDMI cable? Some are limited in their output at that type of video quality.
Worked for a friend of mine with a similar issue.
The issue was my wireless setup. I put the Modem/Router closer to the Server and the issue has fix itself. However I have to use the Roku device, the Samsung TV still has issues while playing high bitrate content.
I'm still using everything wireless, but being closer to the server really helped.
You might want to read up on how they work. There’s various resources and white papers available.
Great stuff man.
Maybe look at improving the wireless network? Got a mesh system running at mine and its allowed me to run my plex server over WIFI with no issues.
This is just straight up untrue. I am playing Flash, DIVX, XVID and god-know-what-else things tvOS has no idea about on my Apple TV just fine, thanks to Plex.
Plex handles the transcoding on the server side. Plex requires the Plex server software to be resident on the server compute. The server (your computer) determines what and how to send the properly encoded data to the Apple TV.
Infuse does all the decoding/encoding using the processing power of the Apple TV. It can handle just about any codec natively on the ATV.
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After a little more research I find Plex is testing a new “enhanced” player that is capable of direct playing non Apple codecs directly on the AppleTV. Previously the Plex server had to transcode everything into an Apple native codec. This could result in problems for people running underpowered servers, especially where the server was an NAS.
Apparently however the server software is still required for the whole Plex ecosystem to work. For this reason I still prefer Infuse. I just point it to any folder on my network and it plays anything I throw at it.
Apparently however the server software is still required for the whole Plex ecosystem to work. For this reason I still prefer Infuse. I just point it to any folder on my network and it plays anything I throw at it.