this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing (poptalk.scrubbles.tech)
submitted 19 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) by scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
522 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/2333639

I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That's it folks. I've been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.

They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.

I'll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I've been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it's time to make it production ready.

Edit: I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying “Just buy a plex pass” are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.

And for the thousandth person who wants to say the same things to me:

  • YES I know I'm unaffected as a Plex Pass owner.
  • My users were immediately angry at it, which made me angry. Our users don't understand what plex pass is, and they shouldn't have to, that's why I had it. The fact that they were pinged even though it should have kept working is horribly sloppy
  • Plex is still removing functionality. I don't care that "People should pay their fair share". If Plex wants to put every new feature behind a paywall, that's completely okay. They are removing functionality.
    • "But they have cloud costs". Remote streaming is negligible to them. It's a dynamic DNS service. Plex client logs in, asks where server is, plex cloud responds with the IP and port of where server is located. That's it.
    • "Good luck finding another remote streaming" - Again, Plex just opens up an IP and port. Jellyfin also just opens up an IP and port (Hold on jellyfin folks I know, security, that's a separate conversation). All "remote streaming" is is their dynamic dns. Literal pennies to them. Know what actually is costing them money? Hosting all of that ad-supported "free" content that they're probably losing money on.

In short, I don't care how you justify it. Plex is doing something shitty. They're removing functionality that has been free for years. I'm not responding to any more of your comments repeating the same arguments over and over.

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[–] bktheman@awful.systems 5 points 26 minutes ago (3 children)

Thank you for posting this. I thought it was just me.

In my case, one user actually lost access entirely to my libraries, the updated app was trying to force him to buy a personal pass, even though I have a Plex pass.

I had him reset his app and clear cache, to no avail. I ended up having to REMOVE his access to my libraries, and then reshare them to him, before he could access them again.

He was quite upset at Plex during the entire process.

Then the next day, he got this same email, and was frustrated all over again thinking he was gonna have to fight it again.

Really terrible customer service here, very sloppy. Aside from the fact that this is a greedy cash grab, it's just being done poorly.

Jellyfin still isn't feature packed enough for me to switch to, unfortunately.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 2 points 19 minutes ago

What's missing from Jellyfin for you?

I'm going to migrate over soon personally. I canceled my plex pass instead of upgrading to lifetime a few months ago because I felt like Plex was going to go down enshittification alley soon. I haven't used Jellyfin much though, so not sure what to expect at this point. I don't have a lot of users luckily

[–] ricardofcf@lemmy.pt 1 points 8 minutes ago

I find the server part of Jellyfin to work pretty well and I love that it provides some features you would have to pay to get on Plex (skip intro/credits for instance). The clients on the other hand, specially for tvOS and the fact that you can't install it from the store on Samsung TVs, are really what's making it difficult for me to switch.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 18 minutes ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'm getting a lot of vitriol here from people saying "Well your users are idiots", or other angry things. No, my users are family members, and not everyone needs a degree in CS to be able to connect to a Plex server. A few of them are elderly. The email was misleading to them, on purpose. It threw many of them into a flurry. The whole thing was handled terribly by a company who keeps going out of their way to make it difficult for them already to simply watch my server.

I'd suggest trying Jellyfin out again. Personally I was in the same boat even just over a year ago, I wasn't impressed, but it's come a long way. It's absolutely not as polished as Plex, but if you can look past that I'm finding most of the features I need are there.

[–] secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 11 minutes ago

Oh no a paid, proprietary, piece of shit software does something shitty. Who could've ever saw this coming?!

I've said it for years anytime anyone mentioned running a Plex server. As soon as you install that on your server or your homelab it's no longer your server. Proprietary software is malware

[–] commander@lemmy.world 1 points 19 minutes ago

The more users on Jellyfin the better shot it has at getting more developer attention and users willing to contribute financially even if just occasional one off donation. How it goes with any open source application. More users, more developer interest, more feedback from users, subset of users willing to financially support the project

[–] rhacer@lemmy.world 8 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

This doesn't really affect my household. My wife, my daughter, and I all have lifetime PlexPasses.

That said, this level of enshitification has me wishing there were options (yes I know about Emby and Jellyfin and I've investigated both more than once) but they have me ensnared by PlexAmp and Sonos integration. I've been around since before anyone had even seen the letters MP3 strung together, and I have never had a music player as capable as PlexAmp.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

Plexamp is honestly amazing. I'm investigating finamp, but I know it won't be as nice. Them killing off the tidal integration did help the decision a bit though

[–] rhacer@lemmy.world 1 points 11 minutes ago

The tidal thing didn't bother me, as my music collection is relatively large. But yeah PlexAmp is truly an extraordinary bit of software.

[–] bedbeard@feddit.uk 2 points 53 minutes ago (1 children)

I strongly recommend symfonium on android. Plexamp is a really polished app but I found the handling of downloaded files quite poor, I don't think you can even search downloads when you're offline? (other bonus to symfonium is it supports jellyfin and sources, in case you were to ever fully move away from plex)

[–] rhacer@lemmy.world 1 points 9 minutes ago

I started looking at Symfonium some time ago, but something killed my interest. Maybe it's time to revisit it.

[–] PhAzE@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Your users are getting that because they have a plex account that they use to stream. They might stream from just you, but they could stream from any other shared server they're connect to. That's why they get this email.

If you have a plex pass and are a server owner, they can ignore this and keep streaming from you for free.

If they try to stream from a server owner who does not have plex pass, it won't work unless the user themselves have a plex watch pass, which let's them stream from any server that doesn't have plex pass.

Since you have plex pass, your users won't be impacted at all.

[–] Zacpod@lemmy.world 1 points 22 minutes ago

This. Only the server owner needs a plexpass.

[–] magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 hour ago (4 children)

People are saying switch to jellyfin, which I'm all for. But you're expecting a service which will make remote access easy like Plex ur kinda fucked.

I mean if have to set up wireguard or whatever for Jellyfin you could just do the same for Plex?

Again go to jellyfin either way, proprietary software can suck my gurl cawk, but either way you need a VPN or open ports.

[–] spicehoarder@lemm.ee 1 points 13 minutes ago
  1. better computer literacy is always better
  2. mas adoption -> more contributing -> more features like "share with friends"
[–] skoell13@feddit.org 7 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

You can use a VPS to make it accessible without VPN via the internet: https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup

[–] magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Oh yeah no you can rent out a vps and use it as a VPN/router appliance. I've done that before for other projects, just figured it seemed a lil overkill here.

[–] logos@sh.itjust.works 1 points 48 minutes ago (1 children)

Use Nginx or something similar. Easy and secure.

[–] magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 7 minutes ago

I prefer a VPN for this sorta thing because its a bit more hardened.

Nginx is a good reverse proxy for my publicly available hosts.

[–] rami@ani.social 1 points 57 minutes ago (1 children)

yeah we primarily watch on a Samsung TV through a PS5. I'm not seeing any alternatives for either device. I might be able to slap together a desktop from spare parts but I'm not sure I want to start maintaining a whole other computer.

Probably time to make a switch either way, what with them paywalling HDR and h.265

[–] gdog05@lemmy.world 1 points 51 minutes ago

Cloudflare tunnel and a domain name will stream Jellyfin to any device while delivering a decent amount of safety.

[–] TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 hour ago

I am very fortunate in that before Plex I found and used ps3 media server/universal media server. Because of that, it always felt odd paying just to stream my own content on my own hardware. I am certainly not against paying developers, but Plex always felt like paying for another service, not donating to an awesome Dev cause I love what they do. Another reason I stopped using Plex, I couldn't get anyone but myself to give a dam and use Plex, (suddenly, when NETFLIX gets The Last Air Bender, NOW my sibling wants to binge watch it. 🙁). Jellyfin has served me just fine so far, it fucks up only in the same situation plex did, when I try watching with someone else.

[–] veng@lemmy.world 27 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

My bad, this is all because I finally decided to purchase a lifetime pass.

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[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

In 2012 (ish), I bought a lifetime subscription for a flat $75. Over the next few years of using it, they got worse and worse with shit like this, so I switched to Emby for a bit, and then Jellyfin. I never shared with friends, tho, because I have no friends, so it was always just a pretty interface and convenience for me. Lately, I've just been opening the files directly in VLC, because Remmina is refusing to connect to my media server, and I can't be arsed to figure out why.

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