Thanks for sharing your experience. I don't like Plex's telemetry aspects either and am pretty much focused on my own content (e.g. I don't really use Plex TV or other streaming bits). In addition to what I mentioned about my library organization needs, I just need to be able to view/search my content easily (Plex's default grid layout and sorting/filtering options are pretty well done in this regard e.g. being able to sort by Date Added/Release Date etc) and view them on my TV via using Chromecast (Plex's android client is far from perfect but gets the basic job done). If a solution covers these aspects well enough without having to share telemetry, I'll drop Plex in a heartbeat.
>If a solution covers these aspects well enough without having to share telemetry,
MythTV[0] does okay with video and music libraries.
It's available as packages on most distributions[1] which allows me to keep my front end and back ends synched just by performing regular package updates.
It is open source and can also be compiled from source[2] if you prefer it that way.
I run my back end on a VM with 4GB RAM and 2 vCPUs. My front end is a fanless miniPC[3] (I bought it almost three years ago, so I'm sure you can do better now for the same money) which renders 1080p/Stereo (I don't have a surround-sound system, but that's definitely supported) via HDMI pretty flawlessly. I imagine that a newer front end device could easily handle 4K (although I don't have a device to display that) resolution.
Edit: I'd add that the front end and back and can run on the same system, but the physical layout of my home made it more useful to split the two.
The Mythtv Wiki[4] is also pretty good for many set up/configuration issues.
It's not perfect by any measure, but it does the job without telemetry or external dependencies.
Core MythTV development seems pretty active, but the broader "ecosystem" (plugins, addons, etc.) is very weak.
