Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
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I wonder how much money Plex still makes through their lifetime purchases. Is it that they were struggling and then made bad business decisions with the aim on increasing revenue (ad supported video on demand)? Or was it the other way around?
In the 80s new systems usually came with new OSs, which required porting software it. Thus a lifetime license was practically limited.
I wouldn't be as opposed to a subscription model if it was cheaper and they focused on their actual core product, not all the other fluff around. 5€/m is a bit much given they don't pay for my bandwidth.
I have no idea how well it works in reality, but I can imagine the Lifetime Pass being a good business model for them: only the most enthusiastic user will pay for 3 years up front (lifetime currently costs 3x the yearly). So when they get a Lifetime pass they're getting 3 years paid up front and an evangelist who will probably tell their friends about Plex. If that Lifetime subscriber gets even one person to sign up for a yearly sub who otherwise wouldn't have, then Plex came out ahead.
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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
I greatly prefer Emby to Jellyfin.
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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 didn't say I'm satisfied. I just think this comment-section about Plex's rug-pull isn't the place for such niche criticism of Jellyfin.
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If you want to keep using plex and remote it’s important to you, they usually have pretty good deals on pass from time to time.
I don’t regret my lifetime pass - I still feel like it’s a pretty solid app and service all things considered- but if I didn’t have the pass already I would be a bit pissed as well ngl.I still use Plex because they offer the product I bought, an easy way to stream content on my devices. Others have technical or philosophical issues, which I totally understand. Plex is the easiest option for my situation as of now.
Nothing lasts forever so it's good to realistic about the future. If I start having technical issues, it's Jellyfin. If Plex doubles down on subscriptions, it's Jellyfin.
If you're like me, a lifetime Plex Pass holder, I would experiment with Nginx Reverse Proxy now so you understand how it works. I have Overseerr running through a reverse proxy now.
I think it's a matter of when, not if, Plex will make a business decision that pushes me off their platform. It's a company focused on profit and that's fine. And it would be good to be prepared for the future.
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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.
I don’t like it, but it’s a pragmatic decision.
Hosting for a simple website can be as little as a few bucks a month. That’s easy for any project to absorb, even if they are open-source with no one pulling a paycheque.
Streaming requires high-performance, high-bandwidth machines that cost anywhere from several dozen dollars to several hundred dollars a month. You build a resilient high-availability network, and you could easily be looking at several tens of thousands of dollars a month.
That isn’t easy to absorb, even for a for-profit company with clearly-defined revenue streams.
Some people want everything for free, but free doesn’t pay the bills.
Full disclosure: I don’t use the streaming feature. I prefer to grab actual copies to drop onto my NAS. I also don’t share to friends and family, as I am the only one I know of who uses Plex.
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Same here except we’ve also started living somewhere with managed internet and we don’t have the ability for port forwarding or upnp anymore. Plex relay is the only reason I can still stream to my phone or my family and jellyfin has no equivalent.
This is incredibly common in smaller countries that are double natting inside their ISPs. This used to be very common in the US before the FCC blocked apartments from contracting with ISPs. Unfortunately for many of us this is coming back rapidly since the current FCC has reversed that rule and landlords can force you on a specific ISP and equipment again.
I can go way out of my way to make this work anyway with a lot of router on a stick style garbage out to a cloud host somewhere and retrain my entire family to connect a jellyfin app to my server or I can keep using plex and not work that hard
You can use Cloudflare Tunnel as well.
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Well I'm a Luddite so I'm probably exposing myself to miners or something
Better than exposing yourself to minors
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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.
So basically.. this is a blatant cash grab, and a nearly 200% one depending on the level of service you pay/paid for. Wonder how long it will be before the lifetime pass is discontinued and everyone gets forcibly moved over to a monthly subscription model
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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.
remote streaming rarely works for me so I won't be losing anything.
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You can use Cloudflare Tunnel as well.
Which starts at $20/mo. Meanwhile I bought plex pass for $50 over 12 years ago. Even with the new pricing plex pass is cheaper than cloudflare tunnel
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Which starts at $20/mo. Meanwhile I bought plex pass for $50 over 12 years ago. Even with the new pricing plex pass is cheaper than cloudflare tunnel
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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.
Anyone know if they're referring to Plex "Home" users or anyone you've granted access to here? I used to just hand out my credentials with my admin account pass code protected but now I make people create their own accounts and just grant them access.
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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.
Yeah, my lifetime Jellyfin subscription wasn’t quite that much, thankfully.
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They aren't, all their server does is handle the login authentication afaik, and then streaming happens directly from the server to the user.
They do actually provide a relay server if your personal server isn't entirely accessible for whatever reason (for example I recently added a new NIC on my server which changed the IP and broke my port forwarding and my users were still able to watch my media via the relay). It is limited to low res quality but it is something they're offering.
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I don’t like it, but it’s a pragmatic decision.
Hosting for a simple website can be as little as a few bucks a month. That’s easy for any project to absorb, even if they are open-source with no one pulling a paycheque.
Streaming requires high-performance, high-bandwidth machines that cost anywhere from several dozen dollars to several hundred dollars a month. You build a resilient high-availability network, and you could easily be looking at several tens of thousands of dollars a month.
That isn’t easy to absorb, even for a for-profit company with clearly-defined revenue streams.
Some people want everything for free, but free doesn’t pay the bills.
Full disclosure: I don’t use the streaming feature. I prefer to grab actual copies to drop onto my NAS. I also don’t share to friends and family, as I am the only one I know of who uses Plex.
Streaming requires high-performance, high-bandwidth machines that cost anywhere from several dozen dollars to several hundred dollars a month. You build a resilient high-availability network, and you could easily be looking at several tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Are you under the impression that Plex uploads the movie files to their servers and then transcodes them there, or something?
And the hard work happens on your own hardware. All Plex's servers are doing is acting as a signaling server, but no media or routed through Plex's servers.
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I didn't say I'm satisfied. I just think this comment-section about Plex's rug-pull isn't the place for such niche criticism of Jellyfin.
Then we'll have to disagree about that - imo this is the perfect place to discuss Plex alternatives and what features are keeping us on Plex. I think this discussion needs to happen if we want to learn how to create viable alternatives.
I especially want to talk about this because I personally want nothing more than to switch myself and everyone who I share my library with onto Jellyfin, and I don't think that will happen unless we talk about what's missing. I'm personally invested in Jellyfin enough to donate to apps I don't even use in hopes that they will improve.
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As far as I know emby is a jellyfin fork that I think they took closed source? I also went the emby route after getting annoyed at how much Plex was pushing their own content. Emby felt more polished to me than jellyfin, I get that there is some community resentment over some of their decisions but so far I haven't had any regrets and have more control than with Plex.
Jellyfin was forked from Emby years ago when Emby went closed source I believe on the 4.0 update.
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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.
Man, my Jellyfin subscription just rose in price too.
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This is a huge problem. The blueray remux might be 80 gigs. Most children’s devices will already be filled with other crap.
Your kids will be ok without the 4K60 version of Paw Patrol.
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Oh no I’d absolutely recommend it for anybody switching from Plex. Anybody who liked Plex and the state it was in pre-enshittification will obviously have no qualms with a proprietary solution. If FOSS is your end goal then you’d have a better argument, but Plex refugees are for obvious reasons not a part of that demographic.
Emby is a great product that “Just works” in the same way Plex used to and for that purpose it is head and shoulders above Jellyfin even if it doesn’t have the benefit of being FOSS.
I have had both a Plex and Emby lifetime subscription since around 2018 and relied on Emby for quite a while during Plexs shenanigans 5-6 years ago but still think Plex and Jellyfin are the only true options. Emby is just an amalgamation of the worst qualities of Plex and Jellyfin. It "just works" as a media player in the same way that VLC "just works" but doesn't offer a whole lot outside of that especially nothing that these other two don't offer. Plex is the "polished but expensive and limited" solution and Jellyfin is the "free, some work required, and open" solution.
