Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
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Not here to defend Plex' enshittification but you can still use Plex offline just fine. I had 0 issues yesterday when I had no internet all day.
I'll probably get the details wrong but my understanding is that when you sign in, you get an authorization token. That token is valid for some period of time, let's say 48 hours. You can use that cached token but let's say it's on your phone and not your TV. Maybe you haven't used Plex on the TV this week. Want to use your TV, out of luck. Want to use a different local account, out of luck. Want to use Plex longer than the token is good for, out of luck.
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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.
For remote streaming they do, here are their docs on it https://support.plex.tv/articles/216766168-accessing-a-server-through-relay/
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Plex is trivial to set up, most plex users I know actually don’t use the arrs. Anyone can do it with a short list of instructions in minutes that mostly consist of “download app, make account, point to your media.”
I just setup jellyfin and it totally is the same. Install. Point it to a media folder. Setup port forwarding.
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It’s not broken. It’s the core difference between Plex and something like Jellyfin. They handle all the infrastructure/security elements, you’re just hosting the media and transcoding. If you use Jellyfin and don’t know what you’re doing, you open the world up to your router.
I’m not saying everyone should use Plex, but it’s not broken in the way you’re describing. That’s how it works. It has to roll through their infrastructure at some point, it’s not designed for LAN playback.
I memba when it was primarily for LAN playback and you didn’t have to login to anything to use it on your LAN
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Yes, it’s one thing to offer a lifetime subscription early on to get a large cash infusion and reward early adopters, but it’s a big red flag if they don’t get rid of the lifetime subscription eventually. What will happen is one by one, the people that use the service the most will switch to lifetime and your cash flow will dwindle. Eventually the only people left on the month to month are the casual users who don’t use it very often and will leave as soon as a price increase happens.
This is my exact concern.
If I pay for the lifetime pass now, what's to stop them from restricting even more features behind new types of subscriptions and paywalls. "We're adding back the 'Watch Together' feature but it requires a Platinum Plex subscription and will not be a part of Plex Lifetime Pass users."
Seems kind of inevitable honestly.
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I memba when it was primarily for LAN playback and you didn’t have to login to anything to use it on your LAN
I don’t think plex has ever facilitated direct playback from your server to your screen. If that was the case at one point then it was many many years ago, but afaik that was never a feature.
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I just setup jellyfin and it totally is the same. Install. Point it to a media folder. Setup port forwarding.
You don’t need to manually setup port forwarding with plex and if you want access off your network (such as when traveling) or to let others in it gets way more complicated.
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I'll probably get the details wrong but my understanding is that when you sign in, you get an authorization token. That token is valid for some period of time, let's say 48 hours. You can use that cached token but let's say it's on your phone and not your TV. Maybe you haven't used Plex on the TV this week. Want to use your TV, out of luck. Want to use a different local account, out of luck. Want to use Plex longer than the token is good for, out of luck.
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No, the article only mentions the feature by name, the docs for the feature mentions the relay https://support.plex.tv/articles/216766168-accessing-a-server-through-relay/
I see. So if you read that instruction you'll see it's the exact same setup that I outlined. They use a vpn to connect your client to your server and just negotiate the meeting in the middle. It's the exact same risk scenario as running a reverse proxy on your own vps. Unless I'm missing something else?
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I used to use Plex, then one day my internet was down and since Plex couldn't phone home, it wouldn't let me log in to watch media ON MY LAN.
So yeah it's inherently broken. That's before you even consider the licensing.
i'm not sure why it would do this, i've never had any issues with watching plex while the internet is down (in fact that was one of my original uses for it, to have movies and tv in a building without internet). I don't have it turned on but I do know you can go into server settings -> network and set a list of IPs/subnets that can access without any authorization at all. That lets you use plex without even having a plex account afaik.
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I memba when it was primarily for LAN playback and you didn’t have to login to anything to use it on your LAN
Plex still offers that option, it's just buried in the settings.
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ITT: valid critiques of plex, understatements about how easy it is to set up and run Jellyfin for you and your friends/family, and a surprising number of people who don’t understand how plex works.
Ease of setup was how I just got one techie friend and two non-techie gamer friends to set up Plex servers and we had libraries shared to each other within 15-30 minutes. I don't want to think about explaining VPNs and SSL to them for the alternatives.
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Because that basically requires transcoding for modern codecs. H265? Transcode. Subtitles? Transcode. The JF client on the same hardware can usually direct play.
Oh fair enough, I'd highly recommend enabling transcoding anyway it just eliminates all sorts of issues like this.
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Don't ask me? I'll ftp before I'll WebUI like so, but for online viewing, I'll take streaming please. My kids, wife, and mother-in-law find that a million times more convenient.
Meanwhile, there's a dude hating on the notion that Jellyfin's app will download the Raw file for offline viewing purposes. Please, do not ask me to pretend to care what is going on in that person's head. In my world, using VLC to play my files is a perk. Gimme that yummy 2x or slow-mo as I see fit, please.
WebUI is streaming though on desktops though and I assume they're also using iOS/Android/TV which all have clients, so I'm trying to get at the difference there.
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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 never got the appeal of plex. I've been using Serviio back in the day and it was free, open source and did what I needed it to, which is play a video on tv, that's it.
Plex wanted me to purchase subscription years ago and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out how to set it up for free.
I've been using stremio for a few years now but i think it's closing in on the EOL as well, so i might go back to serviio and kodi one of these days. Just need a good NAS that could run a streaming server as well. Don't want to keep my gaming rig on at all times just to watch movies.
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You don’t need to manually setup port forwarding with plex and if you want access off your network (such as when traveling) or to let others in it gets way more complicated.
But let's be honest - it really is not complicated. That was a one minute configuration in my router.
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Jellyfin is very versatile but a bit clunky. I have it set up for my parents on their Roku and it works well enough for them. I set it up for other family members on their WebOS TV but they don't really use it. I used to use it with Roku as well, but had issues with some captions, Dolby Atmos and HDR. I finally broke down and got an Nvidia shield, which fixed all my problems since the developers focus on Android TV the most. I also have Plex, and it is easier to set up, looks more polished, but is less versatile.
Plex has pretty bad DV "support" as an example. AFAIK it will only play back dolby vision profiles that have the HDR10 compatibility mode or whatever. Any time I get an older DV file I have to play it through some Android TV app.
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But let's be honest - it really is not complicated. That was a one minute configuration in my router.
One minute for you and me, but that sort of thing just isn't feasible for many even if they have someone walking them through it over the phone.
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WebUI is streaming though on desktops though and I assume they're also using iOS/Android/TV which all have clients, so I'm trying to get at the difference there.
I thought their implication was that they would use the WebUI for downloading videos for offline watching later. Beyond that, I don't really know or care; Their suggestion was weird to me, but I took it at face value and replied accordingly.
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But let's be honest - it really is not complicated. That was a one minute configuration in my router.
I consider myself pretty tech savvy but after I got Jellyfin set up I accidentally broke it within weeks, I wasn’t even able to get it consistently playing outside of my home network to my devices. Some ISP’s also make it hard to tinker with their modems/routers, and let’s not forget that most people when they set up their Internet just use whatever the ISP provides for them.
