Plex has paywalled my server!
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You have this semi-backwards. The VC isn't really a leech because Plex pitches the venture fund with a well developed enshittification plan already in place. Assuming everyone is acting in good faith (i.e. the VC doesn't just want to just shut it down and sell Plex for parts), Plex's (enshittification) plan is the reason it makes sense for the venture fund to invest in the first place. Plex promises their plan is why the VC will make an outsized return on their investment and it is what the VC validates as part of their pre-investment due diligence. But that plan is created (and sometimes even put into operation) before any VC investment occurs.
Yes, you got this bang-on. Plex made the decision long ago.
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I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says "we need you to donate please" would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Exposing Jellyfin/ plex through routing or SNAT plus dyndns would be a cheap option.
As soon as one rents a VPS (to expose the selfhosted at home service through routing/ tunneling) it would cost at least 2€/ month?
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There are a few ways Plex could have played this:
- By attrition. Stop the sale of plex pass, but leave those users and their access alone. New sign-ups get new rules about features/$.
- By using some of their revenue to paywall Premium features, keep a cut-down but functional version for non-paying plebs. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing, even for streaming outside your network (which you could cap at X number of hours per month)
- Start making Plex features a-la-carte, meaning, $2/mth for HDR, 4$ for streaming, etc. Or bundles.
The point is there are lots of companies who do this right and don't have such a blatant disregard for the user. In the long run, this will not help Plex, it will help other streaming service helpers who are actually willing to respect users.
I know you're not defending Plex and I acknowledge that. However, I see a lot of "How are they supposed to make their money?" arguments here, hence my description above of just a few models Plex could have chosen instead of f**king the customer.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yeah. "How are they supposed to make their money" is a question that I'm grappling with right now. OSS is hard enough with a straightforward MIT license but figuring out how to monetize in the OSS space (that doesn't always reward nuance), adds a lot of complexity. I'm starting fresh, so I'm not changing anything on anyone... but getting a monetization strategy that is 100% perfect out of the gate is not likely so seeing this vs. a response like Pangolin's is helpful.
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I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says "we need you to donate please" would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
Plex sucks the butt
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Really glad you replied. Thank you. Your points are really good ones. I want to build something (software) for myself and the community but also struggle with where to draw the line when it comes to making my product generate revenue too. It's a thing we don't really talk about when it comes to OSS. Maybe we should create a new category called SOSS, (sustainable oss) lol.
Some FOSS projects are supported by having a for-profit company offer turnkey packaging and support for those projects. Look at TrueNAS. They sell nice NAS hardware preconfigured with their software and the profits support the development.
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So what is the move for them?
Plex has a two-pronged VOD service. They have ad-supported "live television" and they have content to rent.
I don't know if that's enough to sustain them but I don't really care. I've been a PlexPass owner for over ten years. I have only asked that they resolve bugs and made requests for things like proper organization of classical music (which they've explicitly stated they will not consider).
You do bring to light something I hadn't considered; that they see Plex as a business model. From my perspective, I want to buy a fully developed product with the expectation of bug fixes and security patches etc over time. I genuinely can not think of a single thing the developers have added to the service that I've used in the past ten years.
So, what kind of business model charges money to do things that don't have an apparent impact on the user experience?
Plex has been one of my most used applications in the past decade. However, it has its limitations and they are actively imposing more limitations on the experience in favor of "a sustainable business model".
The issue is that their sustainable business model is interrupting the users' sustained use of a platform they've already paid for. I've had to go through all of my devices and disable all auto-updates to ensure I do not get the "New Plex Experience".
What we should be asking is why "selling a product" is no longer a business model.
What we should be asking is why “selling a product” is no longer a business model.
Because they're not selling a product, they're selling an ongoing service. They run the relay servers, and those cost money every month.
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I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says "we need you to donate please" would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
Someone else already said it and you've already swapped but I'll say it in detail:
when setting the server connection up you selected "ServerName (long string of numbers)" and not "ServerName (your IP - SECURE)"
this routes your connection through the Plex servers and makes it not a local connection anymore. this is extremely easy to do and forget you've done because it barely impacts performance
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Jellyfin is great, but in defense of Plex, they announced that remote streaming would require one of the two parties to have a Plex pass was coming back in March so I don't know if it's fair to say they are holding anything hostage.
If they’re calling it remote streaming when you’re on the same (local) network, that’s not exactly intuitive. I’d say OP’s phrasing was fair.
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Yeah no. That is local. But thanks for the suggestion. Jellyfin works well.
Its not a local connection if you're getting this message. You might be in the same network, but for some reason it's not connecting directly.
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I have had great success with tailscale in this regard.
That’s great until you try and get it working on your <insert person here that doesn’t live with you>’s TV via their streaming device.
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I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says "we need you to donate please" would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
In this thread:
- An OP that doesn’t understand how their network is working
- People rushing to suggest a solution that they fawn over because it’s open source. I have yet to see anyone recommend Emby.
- “Tailscale will solve all your problems!” Great - how do I make that work on an LG TV that’s 100 miles away?
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If they’re calling it remote streaming when you’re on the same (local) network, that’s not exactly intuitive. I’d say OP’s phrasing was fair.
OP has a misconfigured server and isn't connecting to their server over LAN.
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I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says "we need you to donate please" would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
Why anyone still uses Plex for new setups is beyond me.
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I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says "we need you to donate please" would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
Every non-Free Software will betray you eventually. It's only a matter of time.
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Someone else already said it and you've already swapped but I'll say it in detail:
when setting the server connection up you selected "ServerName (long string of numbers)" and not "ServerName (your IP - SECURE)"
this routes your connection through the Plex servers and makes it not a local connection anymore. this is extremely easy to do and forget you've done because it barely impacts performance
In other words, it's a dark pattern that tricks users into letting Plex MITM their connection.
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OP has a misconfigured server and isn't connecting to their server over LAN.
But I keep hearing the value of Plex is that anyone can use it.
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Yeah. "How are they supposed to make their money" is a question that I'm grappling with right now. OSS is hard enough with a straightforward MIT license but figuring out how to monetize in the OSS space (that doesn't always reward nuance), adds a lot of complexity. I'm starting fresh, so I'm not changing anything on anyone... but getting a monetization strategy that is 100% perfect out of the gate is not likely so seeing this vs. a response like Pangolin's is helpful.
That's a good point, and it's one that isn't solved yet in the foss space.
There are some success stories like Blender, and other projects like Thunderbird and KDE who have recently made their model work through voluntary donations, albeit by hiring competent management of such donations. And there are lots and lots of projects somewhere in between.
The interesting questions to me aren't so much about Plex, but the infrastructure behind all the tools we use: NTP on Linux, build tools, ffmpeg libraries, etc. Lots of other companies make products that make money, yet kick back nothing to these.
Would a royalty system work? I dont know.
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But I keep hearing the value of Plex is that anyone can use it.
Yes anyone can use it even people who don't know how to configure their server
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Yes anyone can use it even people who don't know how to configure their server
The OP might disagree from what I'm seeing.
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In this thread:
- An OP that doesn’t understand how their network is working
- People rushing to suggest a solution that they fawn over because it’s open source. I have yet to see anyone recommend Emby.
- “Tailscale will solve all your problems!” Great - how do I make that work on an LG TV that’s 100 miles away?
wrote last edited by [email protected]I'll add to #2 (IDK if it's open source, though):
Give Stremio a try. Once you set it up (basically just add the Torrentio plug-in then whatever content catalogs you want), the workflow is much better and simpler than Plex.
You just browse it like Netflix: see something you want to watch, select it with your remote, then stream it immediately. No server to run, you don't have to build libraries, you don't even have download the content beforehand. Just select and watch. Could not be easier.
