I'm with y'all about the Plex privacy concerns. But is Emby really a valid second solution? You guys know, that they are also closed source, now.
I tried Emby, it never completed finding metadata for my entire collection, and while trying to find it, it did consume way to many ressources, like 5-10% of many workers (56cores). But overall, I recon that it's probably streaming wise, equal that of Plx.
The remote pin-code, can be disabled. That way you can still gain access, when their servers go down, but playback will be restricted.
The only real solution I feel, is to stop the "whine" and write your own code. I get it, that we should not be target as a £$ mining group for a bigger cause. But as long as they do not identify us or me as a private person, It does not bother me, that much.
I also think, that wealth should come to those that deserve it, and the Plex team does just that. But they could also surely still gain wealth, without these privacy concerns taking place in the first place.
Windows still does things we dont like
Talk about Facebook?
Ubuntu still does things we dont like, (the desktop version, amazon etc.) in particularly the collaboration with Canonical.
To this day, data-collection is the daily task of almost every company in some way or another. I live with it, and I am ok with it, as long as it does not impact me mentally or physically. Some try to do just that, and we can never be fully sure about: was I impacted, or not?
Code can do so many things no one understands, except the creator. Sure we can monitor and catch some odd behaviours, but not all.