this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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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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[–] Buske@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago

Another company fucked by executives.

[–] cortex7979@lemm.ee 32 points 1 week ago (12 children)

jellyfin + tailscale is all you need. It's so damn good and easy

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[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Well, looks like my decision to stick with Kodi and never bother with Plex is about to pay dividends.

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[–] Presi300@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago (9 children)

How to kill a service speedrun any%

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[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Wireguard so you are always seen as being on the local network. This bit of assholery is easily defeated.

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[–] RhondaSandTits@lemmy.sdf.org 30 points 1 week ago (6 children)

The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience

How stupid do they think we are?

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 30 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Why do people use this when Jellyfin exists?

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 1 week ago (11 children)

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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[–] jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.dev 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

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?

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[–] TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I moved on to jellyfin after I found out the hard way Plex servers need to authenticate for use. I'm sure by now there are ways to set up offline authentication but I already didn't like the idea of paying monthly to stream my own content from my own machine. It just didn't make sence to me. Jellyfin isn't perfect, or as flashy as Plex, but it works, looks fine, and its free, not counting a much deserved donation to the devs .

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[–] Xartle@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They seem to be getting a lot of hate for this, but Plex is not FOSS... They have the roots but they currently have like 100 paid employees and are trying to make a business out of it. They have to do something to make money to pay people every month. My $75 10 years ago isn't going to do much for that... The fact that they've made it this far without folding is impressive.

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[–] b3an@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I’ve been using Plex many years. I abandoned it about 1-2 years ago when they began their enshittification journey. Now I see they are continuing to double down on being assholes.

They do not need any more resources to allow people to use what already exists. Most people run their own servers, and, they track all that by the way. Hence why people moved away from it.

Don’t give them your money. Let them rot. They fucked their user base who built them.

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[–] Uncut_Lemon@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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 infrastructure

Jellyfin, 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

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[–] TedZanzibar@feddit.uk 25 points 1 week ago (12 children)

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.

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[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (11 children)

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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[–] mcbang2000@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (3 children)

sometimes good software is worth paying for

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[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago

I feel like it’s just a matter of time, until they pull the rug from under lifetime subs.

But in any case, this is probably it for me. I’m not completely happy with jellyfin performance on my server, but the price hike puts me outside of what i’m willing to spend for this service. I already host it myself, and i can tunnel it myself too, if i ever decide to run it outside of my home network

[–] Tempus_Fugit@midwest.social 22 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Subscriptions are a non-starter for me

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[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 week ago

Yeah, my lifetime Jellyfin subscription wasn’t quite that much, thankfully. 😆

[–] randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

I just want to make sure I read this correctly. It says that if you're 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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[–] kokesh@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago

Time to move to Jellyfin for the rest of their users?

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Well this is a good reason to finish my migration to Jellyfin I think.

I only use remote streaming a couple times per year, so paying for plex pass just for that seems a bit silly. Their online-only account auth is also super annoying if the internet is down.

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[–] cantankerous_cashew@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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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[–] tane@lemm.ee 20 points 1 week ago (16 children)

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

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[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 18 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Why would anyone even used Plex since we have jellyfin?

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[–] LoopingRiver@lemm.ee 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

So I have a lifetime Plex pass, but my friend (who is remote) does not. Does this change mean they have the have a Plex pass to connect to my device remotely?

Edit: thanks for the info! After I posted I continued reading and realized that question was already answered! Appreciate the help!

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