Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
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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.
The thing that's going to be locked behind the subscription is your ability to watch those files on your NAS through Plex when you're not in the same network as the Plex server. That's streaming.
If you only use Plex while at home, you will indeed be unaffected
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Hellooooo jellyfin!
Only use open source software
They do not have chromecast support. (Atleat the last time i checked) Thats a deal breaker for me, would live to use it.
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This is what people don't realize. If you want something good, you have to pay people for their time and talent. Free products that are free because of ideology are just exploitation with extra steps.
That's a good reason for people to take the money they would have spent buying a proprietary solution and instead donate that money to an open source project.
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Judging by the rest of the thread I'm going to get downvoted for this, but what the hell:
I'm sure I'll switch to Jellyfin eventually but I tried it out a few weeks ago to see what all the hype was about and it just... wasn't great. It was difficult to setup, with way too many overly-complicated settings, and then it refused to play one of the two test files I tried. Like it or not there's a reason that Plex is the dominant player in the game, and a large part of that reason is that it verges on plug-and-play for simplicity of both setup and use.
Yes, it sucks that they're removing remote streaming for free users, but I imagine there's a significant chunk of users who don't know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies for their streams (which happens entirely in the background), and those aren't going to be cheap to run. Maybe putting them behind a paywall will provide the resources to make them faster.
I did buy a lifetime pass last time they announced a price hike; it's honestly paid for itself many times over, and I've been encouraging other users I know to do the same before this next one, because yes, it is a significant hike this time around. That said, while I wouldn't pay monthly for it, I do still feel like the lifetime pass is tremendous value for such a polished product. It's a shame they've had to do it at all, but I don't begrudge them for it.
It was difficult to setup
I'm not really sure here - I just did the setup and you literally paste one command into your terminal. There you'll find the Jellyfin IP and port, visit it in a browser and you'll get a simple wizard which guides you into setting up your libraries. Which also is not complicated, you just select a folder where your stuff is?
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I gotta be honest, when I look at the problem pragmatically, it'll be a lot easier to pay $20 a year than to switch to jellyfin and get all my users to figure out how to install clients and make it work for them.
I'm already at the point in my life where my primary concern is making things work smoothly, and if I need to throw money at something to make it work smoothly, the choice is a no brainer. (At least for some values of "money")
If you're not selling access, why should you care? You are providing a service to your users and if they want to stream from you, they will figure out how to do this
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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.
Dammit, my friend just said he would give me access to his file server, all I have to do is install Plex. Presumably this announcement means that will become impossible without a subscription.
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If you're not selling access, why should you care? You are providing a service to your users and if they want to stream from you, they will figure out how to do this
That was my thought...
"Somehow they got the Plex app installed..."
Jellyfin somehow works on freaking Roku, even, and WELL. Just give the URL to connect to, they pick a profile, and boom, "Netflix who?".
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I don't really have a problem with this. I paid for a lifetime quite a long time ago. Right now I only use Plex for plexamp and everything else is on jellyfin.
Is finamp at a point that it can replace plexamp yet?
Yeah, they're even doing a revamp. Even though I still prefer navidrome.
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It was difficult to setup
I'm not really sure here - I just did the setup and you literally paste one command into your terminal. There you'll find the Jellyfin IP and port, visit it in a browser and you'll get a simple wizard which guides you into setting up your libraries. Which also is not complicated, you just select a folder where your stuff is?
Libraries were simple enough, sure, but have you delved into the full settings? Trying to figure out the correct settings for QuickSync hardware acceleration was a mission in and of itself and there's very little guidance on what any of the options mean or do. I don't have the container running right now or I'd provide examples, but In Plex it's a single checkbox.
I'm sure Jellyfin will get there and it's a cool project, but it's fairly obvious that it's written by hobbyists, for hobbyists. Meanwhile Plex excels at just working straight out of the box.
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I run both on the same media sources. Works great. Some movies even seem to buffer quicker via Jellyfin than Plex
Good to know. Being able to run both at the same time will probably help ease the transition.
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Dammit, my friend just said he would give me access to his file server, all I have to do is install Plex. Presumably this announcement means that will become impossible without a subscription.
All it means is you can’t go through their servers. If you setup a different way to access your network (VPN) it’ll still work.
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Why is this getting upvoted? Plex isn't running a server. You are. Your computer and your media files are quite literally "the server" that is serving the files to you remotely. Plex is at best doing authentication.
Because he’s right. You can’t access your own server remotely without plex’s infrastructure (provided you don’t just set up that infrastructure yourself). You don’t need to open ports or anything. Your server reaches out to plex server, which creates an entry point to your network. Your stream is then either routed through their servers or possibly setup as P2P stream.
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I found audiobooks to be kind of awkward on jellyfin. I set up Audiobookshelf for audiobooks, radio shows and podcasts. Together with the Lissen app on Android, it works very nicely!
And what about just plain music? Is Jellyfin or Audiobookshelf better suited for that?
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Judging by the rest of the thread I'm going to get downvoted for this, but what the hell:
I'm sure I'll switch to Jellyfin eventually but I tried it out a few weeks ago to see what all the hype was about and it just... wasn't great. It was difficult to setup, with way too many overly-complicated settings, and then it refused to play one of the two test files I tried. Like it or not there's a reason that Plex is the dominant player in the game, and a large part of that reason is that it verges on plug-and-play for simplicity of both setup and use.
Yes, it sucks that they're removing remote streaming for free users, but I imagine there's a significant chunk of users who don't know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies for their streams (which happens entirely in the background), and those aren't going to be cheap to run. Maybe putting them behind a paywall will provide the resources to make them faster.
I did buy a lifetime pass last time they announced a price hike; it's honestly paid for itself many times over, and I've been encouraging other users I know to do the same before this next one, because yes, it is a significant hike this time around. That said, while I wouldn't pay monthly for it, I do still feel like the lifetime pass is tremendous value for such a polished product. It's a shame they've had to do it at all, but I don't begrudge them for it.
I have a lifetime Plex account but have not used it in two years. I use Jellyfin. Obviously opinions vary.
At home, I have FireTV and Roku devices. I stream remotely to iPhones and tablets using Twingate.
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I use Jellyfin and VPN into my home network to stream on the go.
This is the way
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If you're not selling access, why should you care? You are providing a service to your users and if they want to stream from you, they will figure out how to do this
Well my users are my family and close friends, so I just do care about them... Some of them use a smart TV app to access Plex, which is pretty convenient as it doesn't even require additional devices or remote controls.
The fact is, as the family tech guy I spend a lot of my effort trying to make tech as easy to use for everyone as possible. And more than anything else, making things intuitive and simple is what eliminates the most amount of hassle for me.
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That's a good reason for people to take the money they would have spent buying a proprietary solution and instead donate that money to an open source project.
The problem is people don't put their money where their mouth is. Even less in the scale needed to produce a product of the quality te average person expects. You see this again and again. It's very nice to think it works, but it doesn't. A random guy saying "actchually I donated 1 Monero" doesn't mean a project is financially sustainable.
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So lazyness is the real answer.
This is fair enough, to be sure, but logically I continue to have problems with it.My wife sets nothing up, that's my area of expertise. My wife's a user. This is true for Jellyfin but also things like our home automation that she very much enjoys but has no clue to how I made it work on a technical level. She just taps things in the Home Assistant app as desired.
I would also argue setting up Jellyfin is a lot easier then setting up things like an *arr strack or ripping BR media.
Plex does very little in a vacuum so despite it being easier to set up, it would be equally unlikely she ever would.It never occurred to me that when people talk about “wife factor”, they mean setup. I also thought they just meant use.
My wife uses Jellyfin and complains about it less than Netflix or Prime.
My wife is an iPhone and Mac user and asks me to set all her Apple stuff up. I get asked to fix things all the time.
Apparently neither Apple or Jellyfin have sufficient “wife factor” if we include setup.
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That's how I'm feeling about all these "TImE FoR evErYoNE tO swITCh To JElLyfiN" comments. You mean the program that also doesn't support this functionality out of the box?
Exactly. I'd love to use jellyfin, but it's just not feasible
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Because he’s right. You can’t access your own server remotely without plex’s infrastructure (provided you don’t just set up that infrastructure yourself). You don’t need to open ports or anything. Your server reaches out to plex server, which creates an entry point to your network. Your stream is then either routed through their servers or possibly setup as P2P stream.
