Selfhosted

well, except WinRAR

I just wonder if plex will ever sell the list of movies and IP address of everyone. Many people have the ARRs to auto download, even stuff still in theaters. What good is a VPN when plex knows your email and IP.

Exactly. Thats why i use jellyfin now. Try installing it alongside. For me it worked well.

I started down the Jellyfin path after they made that announcement. It's super easy to install, and in many ways the UI is nicer than Plex. But I ran into challenges getting my server safely accessible for users outside my LAN. And I haven't had the time to look into that further.

Would be great if there was a clean, easy way to set up the webserver portion so it's as easy to share content entirely as Plex. But I get they are a volunteer project with a lot on their plate.

2. Open source has high immunity to devs making changes at the expense of user for their benefit because anti-features can be removed. Recommending another proprietary alternative here would be like saying they aught to leave an abusive partner but then recommend someone with the same red flags.

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.

3 - An OpenWRT router with Wireguard connecting to another router 1000 miles away will do the trick.