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Plex Share Servers
Hey folks - So I've been running a local plex server from my home via my Synology NAS for a small knit of friends and family and I already have a good 50TB of content collected over the years - 70% of them 1080p and above. Several of my mates have recommended to share this wider to their friends and family. I can't do that obviously from my local ISP - obviously due to the the bandwidth choke that I'd get.
I've seen several Plex Shares on Reddit that charge a basic amount and offer insane amounts of data along with transcoding for a minimal amount.
How can they afford it? I've looked at high storage servers with high-bandwidth and they are phenomenally expensive. What do people do? Would appreciate some insight on the same. Thanks
Comments
Encrypted unlimited google drive mounts, as far as I know. I personally wouldn't do it.
Yeah nah! Me neither... I won't trust that... But are all those Plex Share offerings splattered across reddit doing this?!
I can't say for everyone , but I know at least 2 forum members from another community
It's not sustainable at all if you'd ask me.
It's only a matter of time when Google implements a cap and starts deletion. Right now, Google workspace entreprise allows unlimited storage but not sure for how long.
Just start charging your friends and rent a dedicated server
I knew someone who used to purchase these app boxes. Basically, they usually have 2 sections, cloud and local. Cloud is usually encrypted Gdrive mounts which are optimized, and they contain the bulk of the content that isn't frequently watched but contains content that helps pump up their numbers. Local is usually just local storage, they'll usually have something like a couple hundred TB of some local storage, which is actually not that much given that 10x16TB from Hetzner used to be ~€140/month and these app boxes are usually paid. Either that, or, some of the absolutely massive app boxes will have their own storage clusters and owned hardware. These app boxes make way more money than you might expect, more than even a lot of smaller Low End providers, from the data I've seen. It's just that selling these Plex shares is highly illegal, so there is a somewhat decent chance that law enforcement will eventually take them down.
Thanks for the responses folks - I'm defo not going the GDrive way - it's way too risky - especially if one fine day they end up enforcing limits... @Advin would you be able to elaborate on the app boxes?