Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
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What paid content? I have a Plex lifetime pass and I can't recall ever being asked to pay for anything? I can remember them dumping free TV channels in there at some point, but I simply switched that off and it's not come back.
Hmm, it's been a while, maybe I'm misremembering. There were definitely some categories of Plex content not from my library that kept reappearing on the home page of my server, despite trying to get rid of them a few times. Maybe they weren't actually paid, I just assumed they'd only be pushing something if it was going to bring them more revenue.
The other thing that made me want to jump ship extremely fast was when they started sharing your recently watched items with other users, without asking.
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Alternately I could keep using plex.
I mean, I bought the Lifetime Plexpass when it was on sale years back, so I have little reason to change my own setup, but I still have even less reason to stan them at Jellyfin's expense.
Seriously, one is a paid service executing rug-pulls, and the other is a free and open-source project. This level of nit-picking at Jellyfin is a shit stance to take.
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Well, it was $75 CDN when i bought in 2012, it's $150-170 CDN now, and going up to $249 USD which converts to $358 CDN, so I'm assumong they'll round down to $350 or up to $360 CDN.
The conversion from USD to CDN kills it for us sadly. It's just such a huge jump this time. More than double on this bump.
Canada can just become the 51st state and solve that /s
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The fact that people still try to do bullshit like Nat on IPv6 is completely crazy. It's like they've never heard of the idea of a stateful firewall and just want to recreate bad old patterns again, combine with the fact that many internet service providers still don't allow you to host anything from your home connection. We need to fix all of that of an IPv6 first Network. Ipv4 is several layers of exhausted by now so it should be considered deprecated but for some reason isn't
People insist that IPv6 is complicated, but then refuse to learn it or think outside their IPv4-brain
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All these comments mentioning jellyfish and I haven’t see a single mention of emby. Is it considered bad or something? Because I switched over to it and I am liking it a lot better than plex so far
I use Emby with the lifetime premier (their 'premium' version).
Works great, but honestly I would just point people to Jellyfin unless Emby provides something specific you need. I just use it because it's what I've had for years.
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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.
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OK, but why is it a for profit company in the first place?
And why does open source Software like xz, ffmpeg, etc still work without being for profit?
Fucking liberal.
You know nothing very proudly
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I agree, but having looked down this road, finding a quality external player that users will understand and is inexpensive is ... not easy.
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Did you notice what you said there each major version. Plex has been rolling releases for years. Maybe they should have done Plex 1 2 etc. yes software has been that way forever but you would pay for a version and then a year later pay for another one. Now people expect to pay once and get upgrades forever.
Sure, I'm not saying Plex has to do a single-payment model. Just that it's a think that's been done successfully (and for longer than Plex has existed). Everyone's pushing subscription models so hard that it's easy to think "this is the only possible way that anything can work".
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I wonder how much money Plex still makes through their lifetime purchases. Is it that they were struggling and then made bad business decisions with the aim on increasing revenue (ad supported video on demand)? Or was it the other way around?
In the 80s new systems usually came with new OSs, which required porting software it. Thus a lifetime license was practically limited.
I wouldn't be as opposed to a subscription model if it was cheaper and they focused on their actual core product, not all the other fluff around. 5€/m is a bit much given they don't pay for my bandwidth.
I have no idea how well it works in reality, but I can imagine the Lifetime Pass being a good business model for them: only the most enthusiastic user will pay for 3 years up front (lifetime currently costs 3x the yearly). So when they get a Lifetime pass they're getting 3 years paid up front and an evangelist who will probably tell their friends about Plex. If that Lifetime subscriber gets even one person to sign up for a yearly sub who otherwise wouldn't have, then Plex came out ahead.
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All these comments mentioning jellyfish and I haven’t see a single mention of emby. Is it considered bad or something? Because I switched over to it and I am liking it a lot better than plex so far
I greatly prefer Emby to Jellyfin.
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Yes? Is that odd to you? If jellyfin supported it then that would be one less reason against switching which would be a good thing, wouldn't you think? If you advocate for using jellyfin then shouldn't you want such basic features to be supported for those who want to use them?
Even though I still use Plex full time, I very much want Jellyfin to succeed (I run it and offer it to everyone I share with), and so I want Jellyfin to be usable for people of all skill levels. I can't get my parents to use an app that requires them to know anything about file sizes or codec compatibility or converting anything. That is why Plex is as successful as they are.
If you're satisfied with Jellyfin lacking certain features, that's your perogative. But I don't think it's that hard to empathize with someone wanting more feature parity, especially if the motivation is to make Jellyfin accessible to more people and increase adoption.
I didn't say I'm satisfied. I just think this comment-section about Plex's rug-pull isn't the place for such niche criticism of Jellyfin.
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If you want to keep using plex and remote it’s important to you, they usually have pretty good deals on pass from time to time.
I don’t regret my lifetime pass - I still feel like it’s a pretty solid app and service all things considered- but if I didn’t have the pass already I would be a bit pissed as well ngl.I still use Plex because they offer the product I bought, an easy way to stream content on my devices. Others have technical or philosophical issues, which I totally understand. Plex is the easiest option for my situation as of now.
Nothing lasts forever so it's good to realistic about the future. If I start having technical issues, it's Jellyfin. If Plex doubles down on subscriptions, it's Jellyfin.
If you're like me, a lifetime Plex Pass holder, I would experiment with Nginx Reverse Proxy now so you understand how it works. I have Overseerr running through a reverse proxy now.
I think it's a matter of when, not if, Plex will make a business decision that pushes me off their platform. It's a company focused on profit and that's fine. And it would be good to be prepared for the future.
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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 don’t like it, but it’s a pragmatic decision.
Hosting for a simple website can be as little as a few bucks a month. That’s easy for any project to absorb, even if they are open-source with no one pulling a paycheque.
Streaming requires high-performance, high-bandwidth machines that cost anywhere from several dozen dollars to several hundred dollars a month. You build a resilient high-availability network, and you could easily be looking at several tens of thousands of dollars a month.
That isn’t easy to absorb, even for a for-profit company with clearly-defined revenue streams.
Some people want everything for free, but free doesn’t pay the bills.
Full disclosure: I don’t use the streaming feature. I prefer to grab actual copies to drop onto my NAS. I also don’t share to friends and family, as I am the only one I know of who uses Plex.
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Same here except we’ve also started living somewhere with managed internet and we don’t have the ability for port forwarding or upnp anymore. Plex relay is the only reason I can still stream to my phone or my family and jellyfin has no equivalent.
This is incredibly common in smaller countries that are double natting inside their ISPs. This used to be very common in the US before the FCC blocked apartments from contracting with ISPs. Unfortunately for many of us this is coming back rapidly since the current FCC has reversed that rule and landlords can force you on a specific ISP and equipment again.
I can go way out of my way to make this work anyway with a lot of router on a stick style garbage out to a cloud host somewhere and retrain my entire family to connect a jellyfin app to my server or I can keep using plex and not work that hard
You can use Cloudflare Tunnel as well.
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Well I'm a Luddite so I'm probably exposing myself to miners or something
Better than exposing yourself to minors
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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.
So basically.. this is a blatant cash grab, and a nearly 200% one depending on the level of service you pay/paid for. Wonder how long it will be before the lifetime pass is discontinued and everyone gets forcibly moved over to a monthly subscription model
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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.
remote streaming rarely works for me so I won't be losing anything.
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You can use Cloudflare Tunnel as well.
Which starts at $20/mo. Meanwhile I bought plex pass for $50 over 12 years ago. Even with the new pricing plex pass is cheaper than cloudflare tunnel
