Plex has paywalled my server!
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Remote, yes, they announced you need Plex pass one side or the other for it to work.
Local, no, that shouldn't happen. Your device isn't reaching your Plex server locally.
To work around the remote issue, you can VPN to your local network.
But you're better off in the long haul with Jellyfin as you're doing now.
Yeah no. That is local. But thanks for the suggestion. Jellyfin works well.
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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.
I had a plex pass and was still having tons of issues streaming to other devices such as Apple TV. So I switched everything over to jellyfin with news server and have everything scheduled through radarr and sonarr. Never going back.
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This is just some glitch. They’ve not said anything about watching stuff locally becoming a pay thing.
Much too convenient to be "just" a glitch. Anyway, jellyfin works fine. Has been a good ride mostly.
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It's a fork of open source software. If only "line go up" didn't have to be the way things worked they could have stopped developing features no one wants just to squeeze out profit, and sustained without enshittifying. Maybe.
Yeah. I was a fan. I knew it would go down that road. When they paywalled remote clients i kinda smelled blood and started to try jellyfin. Best decision in hindsight.
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Plex really needs to do a Tailscale style connection to your server. But instead they chose to keep their outdated method of funneling all of their traffic through their servers, and need to charge lots of money in order to pay for it.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Considering both Plex and Tailscale are going toward VC exits, Headscale and Jellyfin is the only FOSS way atm.
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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.
Yeah, there is no defence on enshittification, sorry. I have jellyfin now. Its also not remote which makes this a huge dick move too.
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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.
This almost seems like a leopards ate my face situation. I remember Plex supplanted some other proprietary media server that went evil. I couldn't understand why people burned by the first one switched en masse to another one like it. Once wasn't enough? If you're going to switch at all, go to something that is 100% libre.
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Investors are like parasitic leeches to any business model. As soon as you add them, the business has to grow in order to satisfy the leeches who provide no benefit to the model other than to be attached to it. If you ignore the leech, they'll drain all your lifeforce, so your only option is to satisfy them and feed them. Unfortunately, they are also ravenous creatures who are never satisfied. If you feed them a little, they'll want more next time in an endless cycle.
Once you are infected by investors ... eventually they will destroy whatever you created.
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.
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I've never been a Plex user. Always been with Jellyfin. I've heard that plexamp is a killer app but finamp has always been sufficient for my pretty basic needs. But I have a question for you (meant in good faith). You say,
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.
If Plex needs a sustainable business model, asking for donations isn't enough. So what is the move for them? What do they do to both fulfill their need for a sustainable business and also not upset their userbase? (I'm not defending Plex or this move of taking your server hostage, in any way.)
I'm genuinely curious how, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, they should have played this or at a minimum, made better moves than they did.
Very glad you're with jellyfin btw. You can check out some cool plugins at awesome-jellyfin.
From my view, a sustainable business model is very different from the way things are done lately. I built and managed multiple successful businesses and making them sustainable is doable without fucking over your customers.
They could absolutely have done a lot better things to gain more income. The important base question here is "how much do they need?" Because software does not have huge ongoing costs but massive initial costs and lower sustaining costs. Of course, large changes or complete makeorvers will be intense but they are not needed in every company.
Once that is clear, they could have started with better public relations, engaging people about the need for a specific sum or recurring revenue. They could have gamified it by selling badges, additional functions, tiers, restrictions on new installations, etc. But they didnt. They chose to paywall existing functions. one. After. The. Other.
Dick move.
So yeah, building a business is no joke but thats not for me.
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This almost seems like a leopards ate my face situation. I remember Plex supplanted some other proprietary media server that went evil. I couldn't understand why people burned by the first one switched en masse to another one like it. Once wasn't enough? If you're going to switch at all, go to something that is 100% libre.
I have no idea what you're talking about but its definitely not a comparable situation.
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I started down the Jellyfin path after they made that announcement. It's super easy to install, and in many ways the UI is nicer than Plex. But I ran into challenges getting my server safely accessible for users outside my LAN. And I haven't had the time to look into that further.
Would be great if there was a clean, easy way to set up the webserver portion so it's as easy to share content entirely as Plex. But I get they are a volunteer project with a lot on their plate.
I have had great success with tailscale in this regard.
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From my view, a sustainable business model is very different from the way things are done lately. I built and managed multiple successful businesses and making them sustainable is doable without fucking over your customers.
They could absolutely have done a lot better things to gain more income. The important base question here is "how much do they need?" Because software does not have huge ongoing costs but massive initial costs and lower sustaining costs. Of course, large changes or complete makeorvers will be intense but they are not needed in every company.
Once that is clear, they could have started with better public relations, engaging people about the need for a specific sum or recurring revenue. They could have gamified it by selling badges, additional functions, tiers, restrictions on new installations, etc. But they didnt. They chose to paywall existing functions. one. After. The. Other.
Dick move.
So yeah, building a business is no joke but thats not for me.
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.
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I had a plex pass and was still having tons of issues streaming to other devices such as Apple TV. So I switched everything over to jellyfin with news server and have everything scheduled through radarr and sonarr. Never going back.
Damn. Thats a brutal report. Thanks for sharing. I was considering buying a plex pass due to the mobile apps fiasco, then came the remote thing and I thought nah. Now I'm happy i didnt
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Yeah, there is no defence on enshittification, sorry. I have jellyfin now. Its also not remote which makes this a huge dick move too.
Wait its not remote? You're on your local network?
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Damn. Thats a brutal report. Thanks for sharing. I was considering buying a plex pass due to the mobile apps fiasco, then came the remote thing and I thought nah. Now I'm happy i didnt
Yeah you’re better off.
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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 has paywalled my server!
Skill issue tbh.
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Yeah no. That is local. But thanks for the suggestion. Jellyfin works well.
It isn't hitting it locally is the issue. Not an uncommon problem with plex unfortunately, its going out to come back in, so the server and client see it as remote.
Without playback you wouldn't even be able to see that in the dashboard, which just makes the direction Plex is going so much more problematic.
Like I said, better off using JF.
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I've never been a Plex user. Always been with Jellyfin. I've heard that plexamp is a killer app but finamp has always been sufficient for my pretty basic needs. But I have a question for you (meant in good faith). You say,
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.
If Plex needs a sustainable business model, asking for donations isn't enough. So what is the move for them? What do they do to both fulfill their need for a sustainable business and also not upset their userbase? (I'm not defending Plex or this move of taking your server hostage, in any way.)
I'm genuinely curious how, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, they should have played this or at a minimum, made better moves than they did.
Very glad you're with jellyfin btw. You can check out some cool plugins at awesome-jellyfin.
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.
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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?
