Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
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It's against CloudFlare ToS to use CF tunnels for media streaming like this. You can risk it ig but I have important stuff like domain registrations on CloudFlare so I'm personally not willing to risk getting banned.
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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 stopped using Plex shortly after they started forcing logging in with your online Plex account to connect to LAN only based server. The writing was on the wall all those years ago.
Who wants to be locked out of their media when the internet is offline, completely defeated the point of self hosting local infrastructureJellyfin, while lacking a bit when I first migrated, has continued improved over the years and it has been joyful to use.
Plus Jellyfin supported hardware transcoding before Plex did, which was a gripe I had with Plex at the time.I stream from my server remotely and share with Family without hassle.
I dunno where Plex is trying to go, glad I bailed long ago -
It's the setup which doesn't pass the "wife" test. The more setup friction, the lower the likelihood that average users will bother. It requires a very easy setup experience to retain the average user. Even us technical people have limited time in the day. If I get a similar experience out of both Plex and Jellyfin, I'm going with the software which is easier to set up. Most of us are at that point in our lives where we'll pay for convenience.
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. -
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.
How to kill a service speedrun any%
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I'm seeing a lot of negativity but I think they offer a great service and deserve to be paid for their work. I bought a lifetime pass many years ago and I almost feel guilty how much value I have received over that time.
ur getting what u paid for, why the guilt
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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 just want to make sure I read this correctly. It says that if your a Plex plass holder already that remote streaming changes won't affect your service. This means that if I have the lifetime subscription and host my own server than users whom have not payed for Plex pass can continue to access this server without issue correct?
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Correct, they could do without, which is why I rely on Plex's transcoded downloads to cram a cross-country flight's worth of stuff onto their iPads.
Good suggestion though.
Or you just get a smaller version to begin with and save your hard drive space and your compute time.
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Yup, that's why people who can afford it should do ate to the jellyfin project
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I'm seeing a lot of negativity but I think they offer a great service and deserve to be paid for their work. I bought a lifetime pass many years ago and I almost feel guilty how much value I have received over that time.
You need an internet connection to connect to a offline LAN Plex server... Just so unessessery, otherwise it doesn't find your server (I was quite confused on that one, when that started happening)
Plus having to pay for multiple user accounts, all just seemed like it was heading towards user extortion.
It also lacked hardware transcoding at that point in time, which isn't a huge issue, but did make it harder to run if you had a client that didn't support a specific codec.While jellyfin requires zero internet to be functional and login, supported hardware transcoding before plex and has multiple user accounts usage out of the box, at zero cost.
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You need an internet connection to connect to a offline LAN Plex server... Just so unessessery, otherwise it doesn't find your server (I was quite confused on that one, when that started happening)
Plus having to pay for multiple user accounts, all just seemed like it was heading towards user extortion.
It also lacked hardware transcoding at that point in time, which isn't a huge issue, but did make it harder to run if you had a client that didn't support a specific codec.While jellyfin requires zero internet to be functional and login, supported hardware transcoding before plex and has multiple user accounts usage out of the box, at zero cost.
You need an internet connection to connect to a offline LAN Plex server
Not true.
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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 absolutely love that Emby is such a third thought that they don’t even get a mention anymore. They fucked their loyal users over so much that they don’t even get mentioned anymore. Can’t wait for plex to suffer the same fate
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How to kill a service speedrun any%
Lol jellyfin
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The audacity of this company to increase prices when:
A) downloads are locked behind the paywall but havent worked in years (probably close to a decade at this point)
B) they focus all the development time on bringing bullshit to the platform (live tv, rentals, other streaming app searches, etc)Requiring a subscription for remote access is actually fucking insane, they don't have any bandwidth costs associated with that other than authentication so ???
This will drive people to Jellyfin, and watch how fast Plex drops into irrelevance when all the selfhosters move away. Plex is (now was) the #1 thing to that both myself and others in this community would recommend to someone looking to get into selfhosting. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ not anymore, wonder how much the revenue will drop?
I could only get my downloads to work adding some conf line to my unbound DNS settings I saw on reddit.
Jellyfin is on my list.
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Lol jellyfin
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I absolutely love that Emby is such a third thought that they don’t even get a mention anymore. They fucked their loyal users over so much that they don’t even get mentioned anymore. Can’t wait for plex to suffer the same fate
Yes, I used to respond ever plex user try emby/jellyfin, not really knowing the difference
Looked into it and, it's going to turn out like plex again! Fuck them! Jellyfin all the way.
This always ends up happenning when you choose non copyleft software
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Because of the Wife Factor. Getting people to convert requires getting past a lot of social inertia. It requires you to first convince them that the convenience of streaming services isn’t actually worth paying for. Then it requires an elegant onboarding experience. Lastly, Plex simply makes remote access easy. Sure, you could fiddle with reverse proxies for Jellyfin. But that’s easy to mess up. Instead, it’s much smoother to simply sign into Plex.
I can talk my tech-illiterate “My google chrome desktop icon got moved, and now I don’t know how to check my email” mother-in-law through Plex’s sign-up process over the phone. In fact, I did. It’s familiar enough that anyone who has signed up for a streaming service can figure it out. I can’t do that with Jellyfin, because their eyes glaze over as soon as you start talking about custom server URLs or IP addresses. Hell, my MIL’s TV doesn’t even have a native Jellyfin app available on the App Store. If I wanted to install it for her, I would need to sideload it.
Jellyfin does a lot of things right. But by design, the setup process will never be as elegant as Plex’s, because that elegant system requires a centralized server to actually handle it. And centralized servers are exactly what Jellyfin was built to rebel against.
To be clear, I run both concurrently; Jellyfin for myself, and Plex for friends/family. I got the lifetime Plex Pass license a decade ago, and it has more than paid for itself since then. But it sounds like a bunch of my friends and family may end up switching to Jellyfin if they don’t want to deal with the PlexPass subscription.
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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 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")
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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")
Jellyfin works in the browser just like Plex.
And for now you can do that, but that's not the first, and not the last update trying to prevent people selling access to their server.
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Plex actually does have streaming services. The ones we've never asked for. And live tv.
But the blog post from Plex was specifically talking about charging for remotely accessing your own files. So your point is irrelevant to the discussion.
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Forget the Auth, use VPN profiles as access controls. Give them to trusted folks and you're gold.
