Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
-
Alright, so I have had Jellyfin installed for years now, but my primary issue is that most devices myself or my users use lack official, readily-available clients. For example, the Samsung TV app is a developer mode install. Last I looked, nobody has put a build into the store.
I really want to use Jellyfin, but I feel like my users simply can't. I'm interested in others' experiences here that could help.
The only major pain point I had with Jellyfin was getting it on my Samsung TV yes. It is absolutely not a good recommendation for people with Samsungs unless they're willing to get their hands very dirty. Now, once I got the app side loaded on there, it works perfectly well, but the process sucked ass.
-
As a plex pass lifetime user, this doesn't change anything for me.
I am, however, blown away that the price went from $75 CDN to $350 CDN over the last 10 years!! That's just insane!
I'm not sure where you're getting that from, the article literally states the price hasn't changed in 10 years, and still hasn't, but it finally will on the 29th of April.
This tracks with my experience as it's probably been 10 years since I bought the lifetime pass and here in the UK it's often on sale for basically the same price (about £75 if I recall).
-
So I have a lifetime Plex pass, but my friend (who is remote) does not. Does this change mean they have the have a Plex pass to connect to my device remotely?
-
It totally depends on how you expose it to the outside world. If it's exposed just like it is, it works fine with every device. If you put an authentication before it (e.g. Authelia), it can only be accessed by browsers from outside the network. That being said, it's not recommended to expose Jellyfin directly, because there are a ton of security flaws. Best practice is to use a VPN
Well I'm a Luddite so I'm probably exposing myself to miners or something
-
Yes? Is that odd to you? If jellyfin supported it then that would be one less reason against switching which would be a good thing, wouldn't you think? If you advocate for using jellyfin then shouldn't you want such basic features to be supported for those who want to use them?
Even though I still use Plex full time, I very much want Jellyfin to succeed (I run it and offer it to everyone I share with), and so I want Jellyfin to be usable for people of all skill levels. I can't get my parents to use an app that requires them to know anything about file sizes or codec compatibility or converting anything. That is why Plex is as successful as they are.
If you're satisfied with Jellyfin lacking certain features, that's your perogative. But I don't think it's that hard to empathize with someone wanting more feature parity, especially if the motivation is to make Jellyfin accessible to more people and increase adoption.
I mean the person you’re talking to is having trouble grasping the concept of friends.
-
Even with Plex pass they were really pushing their paid content. Much happier with Jellyfin, and it was very easy to switch.
-
A Chromecast TV device might fill your gap. There is a jellyfin android TV build in the app store and it works with every TV. Just costs about 50 dollarydoos
-
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS:
For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.I guess that's something.
Gonna be a long slow explanation to my family and friends how to switch to jellyfin. Hopefully there's an app ecosystem there as well. I was lucky to get a lifetime pass way back in 2009 when I did some work for them. It's very different now.
-
We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
Would Tailscale/ZeroTier work as a workaround for this or do you think Plex would also put that behind a paywall?
-
True and while they are both enshitifying their services. Somehow in this one area Google seems to be going slower. And making slightly less bonehead moves
-
Jellyfin needs to partner with someone people can pay a very low and reasonable and/or one-time fee to enable remote streaming without the fuss of setting up either dangerous port-forwarding or the complexity of reverse proxies (paying for a domain-name, the set-up itself including certificates, keeping it updated for security purposes).
And no a VPN is not a solution, the difficulty for non-technical users in setting up a VPN (if it's even possible, on smart-tvs it's almost always not, and I don't think devices like AppleTV and other streaming boxes often support them) is too high and it's an unwanted annoyance even for technical users.
I'm not talking about streaming video's through someone else's servers or using their bandwidth. I'm talking about the connection phase of clients and servers where Plex acts like an enhanced dynamic DNS service with authentication. They have an agent on the local media server which sends to the remote web service of the third party the IP address, the port configured for use, the account or server name, etc. When a client tries to connect they go to this remote web service with the servername/username info, the web service authenticates them then gives them the current IP address and any other information necessary. It then sends some data to the local Jellyfin server about the connecting client to enable that connection and then the local media Jellyfin server and the client talk directly and stream directly.
Importantly the cost of running this authentication and IP address tracking scheme would be minimal per Jellyfin server. You could charge $5/year for up to 20 unique remote clients and come out ahead with a slight profit which could be put back into Jellyfin development and things like their own hosting costs for code, etc. Even better if they offer lifetime for this at $60-$80 they'd get a decent chunk of cash up-front to use for development (with reasonable use restrictions per account so someone hosting stuff in Hetzner or whatever and serving 300 people with 400 devices will need to pay more because they're clearly doing this for profit and can afford to throw some more money at Jellyfin).
Until Jellyfin offers something that JUST WORKS like that it's not going to be a replacement for Plex, whatever other improvements they offer to users it's still a burden for the server runner to set up remote streaming in a way that isn't either incredibly dangerous (port forwarding) OR either involves paying money to third parties AND/OR the trouble of running your own reverse proxy and/or involves walking users through complicated set-up process for each device that you have to repeat if you change anything major like your domain name when using a VPN.
Umm AppleTV has a Tailscale app and it's dead simple to set up, so I would argue that it is a solution.
-
We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
-
Umm AppleTV has a Tailscale app and it's dead simple to set up, so I would argue that it is a solution.
That's what I do. Jellyfin + Tailscale + Apple TV box. It works like a charm.
-
All these comments mentioning jellyfish and I haven’t see a single mention of emby. Is it considered bad or something? Because I switched over to it and I am liking it a lot better than plex so far
Its quite annoying how licensing is tied to devices. I can't even sign in after reinstalling my OS.
-
Jellyfin needs to partner with someone people can pay a very low and reasonable and/or one-time fee to enable remote streaming without the fuss of setting up either dangerous port-forwarding or the complexity of reverse proxies (paying for a domain-name, the set-up itself including certificates, keeping it updated for security purposes).
And no a VPN is not a solution, the difficulty for non-technical users in setting up a VPN (if it's even possible, on smart-tvs it's almost always not, and I don't think devices like AppleTV and other streaming boxes often support them) is too high and it's an unwanted annoyance even for technical users.
I'm not talking about streaming video's through someone else's servers or using their bandwidth. I'm talking about the connection phase of clients and servers where Plex acts like an enhanced dynamic DNS service with authentication. They have an agent on the local media server which sends to the remote web service of the third party the IP address, the port configured for use, the account or server name, etc. When a client tries to connect they go to this remote web service with the servername/username info, the web service authenticates them then gives them the current IP address and any other information necessary. It then sends some data to the local Jellyfin server about the connecting client to enable that connection and then the local media Jellyfin server and the client talk directly and stream directly.
Importantly the cost of running this authentication and IP address tracking scheme would be minimal per Jellyfin server. You could charge $5/year for up to 20 unique remote clients and come out ahead with a slight profit which could be put back into Jellyfin development and things like their own hosting costs for code, etc. Even better if they offer lifetime for this at $60-$80 they'd get a decent chunk of cash up-front to use for development (with reasonable use restrictions per account so someone hosting stuff in Hetzner or whatever and serving 300 people with 400 devices will need to pay more because they're clearly doing this for profit and can afford to throw some more money at Jellyfin).
Until Jellyfin offers something that JUST WORKS like that it's not going to be a replacement for Plex, whatever other improvements they offer to users it's still a burden for the server runner to set up remote streaming in a way that isn't either incredibly dangerous (port forwarding) OR either involves paying money to third parties AND/OR the trouble of running your own reverse proxy and/or involves walking users through complicated set-up process for each device that you have to repeat if you change anything major like your domain name when using a VPN.
Authelia maybe?
-
Why do you need to explain to your family and friends how to switch to Jellyfin, if you have a lifetime pass and therefore aren't impacted at all by this announcement?
Just because I and my family benefit now, doesn't mean it'll stay that way. Also again, I don't want to support or platform an app that charges others, who are not me, to share their own collection.
If they want to charge for the Plex TV or Plex Movies they host, and leave the app free of cost for a person's own personal collection to be shared. That's fine.
I have no confidence that'll happen though.
-
Emby is a one time purchase for a lifetime subscription and I don't regret it for one second. It's open source and free, but some features are locked behind purchase. Worth every penny, in my opinion.
-
I'm not sure where you're getting that from, the article literally states the price hasn't changed in 10 years, and still hasn't, but it finally will on the 29th of April.
This tracks with my experience as it's probably been 10 years since I bought the lifetime pass and here in the UK it's often on sale for basically the same price (about £75 if I recall).
Well, it was $75 CDN when i bought in 2012, it's $150-170 CDN now, and going up to $249 USD which converts to $358 CDN, so I'm assumong they'll round down to $350 or up to $360 CDN.
The conversion from USD to CDN kills it for us sadly. It's just such a huge jump this time. More than double on this bump.
-
I believe emby went proprietary, and jellyfin is the fork that stayed open source. Naturally Lemmy prefers the FOSS one
Yup, that's why I was on NextCloud, why I avoid MongoDB like the plague, and why I'm here on Lemmy (I justified Reddit because of their open API).
So yeah, that tracks.
-
I would go for a reverse proxy to get ssl running.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/networking/#running-jellyfin-behind-a-reverse-proxyHandling users with forgotten passwords is, sadly, a manual chore for the administrator.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/users/adding-managing-users#profileIf I reverse proxy does the video stream itself travel via the proxy too?
