Seriously. I hate when people assume default settings are the only option. You don’t even need a Plex account to set up Plex. It will just be less seamless and user friendly. Never adopt the server, configure these via localhost (ssh tunnel works) and then set up your networking. Don’t even need to update it, it will run for as long as the database stays stable. Which should be years or more.

For sure the quality will be worse than software but typically if I’m away from home I’m watching on an ipad and then you really can’t tell the difference.

Thank goodness, now I can defend my home against tyranny and people who look different than me with a pseudo-machine gun, just the way the Founding Fathers intended! (/s just in case)

EDIT: I meant QSV Gen 7, which would be intel Gen 11. Kaby Lake and up can still handle HEVC in hardware but they have to use software as well for 4K.

worth mentioning that any intel cpu with an iGPU from generation 7 (kaby lake) and up can handle 4k hevc transcode in hardware. i just upgraded my plex box to an i7 8700K and it works quite well. an old office workstation with like a 9th or 11th gen intel cpu would probably rip through transcodes.

Caveat: I am not a programmer, just an enthusiast. Windows programs typically package all of the dependency libraries up with each individual program in the form of DLLs (dynamic link library). If two programs both require the same dependency they just both have a local copy in their directory.

“The bypass uses a CXH (cloud experience host) URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) string during the OOBE to invoke the hidden local account setup screen.” this had to be data mined or something yeah.

Plex has pretty bad DV “support” as an example. AFAIK it will only play back dolby vision profiles that have the HDR10 compatibility mode or whatever. Any time I get an older DV file I have to play it through some Android TV app.

Ease of setup was how I just got one techie friend and two non-techie gamer friends to set up Plex servers and we had libraries shared to each other within 15-30 minutes. I don’t want to think about explaining VPNs and SSL to them for the alternatives.

Plex still offers that option, it’s just buried in the settings.

i’m not sure why it would do this, i’ve never had any issues with watching plex while the internet is down (in fact that was one of my original uses for it, to have movies and tv in a building without internet). I don’t have it turned on but I do know you can go into server settings -> network and set a list of IPs/subnets that can access without any authorization at all. That lets you use plex without even having a plex account afaik.

As a techie I hate this answer but it’s hard to beat a Roku with Plex from an ease of use standpoint. My 70+ year old parents have no problem navigating it.

I agree that cybersecurity features should be included. In fact I think they should be included for free. The problem is that Microsoft wanted to charge the Department of Defense and it sounds like they used politics to make sure they could, and if true then they (and maybe also the DoD?) may have violated some federal laws around government procurement and “gifts” from contractors to the government.

Docker takes a lot of the management work out of the equation as many of the containers automatically update. Manual updates are as simple as recreating a container with a new image instead of your local one. I would like to add try running Portainer (a graphical management interface for Docker). Breaking out the various options into a GUI helped me learn the ins and outs of Docker better, plus if you end up expanding to multiple docker hosts you can manage them all from one console. I have a desktop, a laptop, and a RPi 4b all running various dockers and having a single pane for management is such a convenience.