Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
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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.
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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.
I think most people probably have a lifetime plex pass for their plex server, or they are using alternative servers.
Lifetime pass grants licenses to all clients, at least it used to unless this changes that.
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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.
You're right. Unfortunately, open-source has proven time and time again to be unsustainable and burn maintainers out
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And what about just plain music? Is Jellyfin or Audiobookshelf better suited for that?
For music, I selfhost navidrome. Works nicely with the Tempo app on android, or Feishin on desktop.
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Can’t say I have a huge issue with this - Plex isn’t FOSS and the infrastructure to make this happen isn’t free. Other options are available if you don’t want to pay the fee.
But what infrastructure does this feature require? I'm direct connecting to my own personal server with perhaps credential handling and a handshake handled by Plex servers to connect. None of the media is passing through their servers - or it shouldn't be if it is.
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Its not. It is setting up a secure route from the client to the server. That is quite literally not a server. No one thinks Tailscale is a Server. That's essentially all they are doing but just handling adding the clients automatically when they authenticate.
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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.
That's just not correct. Mate. It's setting up a secure route from the client to your Plex server. It's essentially doing what Tailscale does but just handling the client setup automatically via their Plex authentication. They are authenticating the connection and setting up the route from the client to the server. They are not handling petabytes of data people are streaming.
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It's not super easy, but you can install it on tizen tvs by enabling developer mode. I was able to follow this walk-through to get it on a new TV for my relatives.
https://github.com/Georift/install-jellyfin-tizen
Since their TV was newer, I had to do extra steps to create a custom certificate.
The whole process took a while, but it's doable.
Thanks for the info! How is your experience with using the app? Is it buggy? Does it need frequent updates?
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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.
jellyfin + tailscale is all you need. It's so damn good and easy
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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.
Tell him to switch to jellyfin and that he should give you tailscale 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.
Seems reasonable. I'm a lifetime Plex pass holder, so it won't affect me or the one person I let access my server lol
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The media segments feature has been released as of 10.10.0 and it still needs a plugin. Feels a bit clunky but works already on my Android TV box.
Do you know how to get intro skipping to work? I’ve reinstalled the latest version of Jellyfin for testing and have the Media Segments Provider plugin installed, but there still seems to be no intro skipping button on any clients. People in this thread keep telling me it exists but outside of this thread there appears to be no evidence it exists.
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With version 10.10 they integrated chapter markers into Jellyfin. You still need a plugin to generate the intro timings, but any client I tried has support for skipping with a button.
I’ve just reinstalled the latest version of Jellyfin and installed the Media Segments Provider, and tested every client available for it and none of them appear to have a skip intro button implemented.
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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.
Mmmmmaybe.
A lot of what they paywall depends on if the server runner's account is a Plexpass holder. You might have to pay a one time fee for the app depending on what platform you choose.
Then again, there's different ways of sharing your server, they might be keen on only including Plexpass for the Plex Home users and then paywall the E-mail shared users.
