Selfhosted

Can I still watch for free from my pc to my tv locally through the Plex app?

I don't use Plex. I have never used Plex. But based on the one time I tried, this doesn't surprise me even a little bit.

Years ago I installed it on my NAS, it was a one click download package. I installed it and hit the button to set it up. And then it prompted me to make a cloud account.

Why do I need a cloud account? I am logging into my local server and I am not sharing anything with anybody nor am I subscribing to any cloud services. I have no need of a cloud account. But, the way they built the thing, you need a cloud account to log into your local system.

I did not create a cloud account. I uninstalled it. I concluded that a company that claims to care about user privacy, but requires cloud integration in an area that absolutely does not require cloud anything, does not actually give a shit about privacy. I Googled and found that the requirement for a cloud account was, at the time, a fairly new thing. Lots of people didn't like it. I concluded that this company was beginning to enshittify, although this was years ago and none of us had heard that word yet. But either way, it was obvious that the company was moving in a not customer-friendly direction and I did not want to be along for the ride.

My choice has been proven right several times over the years since. And yes, every time they remove a feature, or make some other customer unfriendly decision, I retell this story.

The moral here is that a company either cares about its customers or it doesn't, and it's usually pretty easy to tell which one fairly quickly. When one bad decision is made, and not corrected, others will follow.

Synology is the latest example of that. For anyone not paying attention, they have recently announced that their 2025 series units will only work with Synology branded hard drives, which are of course more expensive than standard Seagate or Western Digital drives (which work just fine). But if you look, the bread crumbs are there and form a trail. Over the last few years they have removed features, for example the device is no longer can decode h.265 surveillance video, and the units will no longer display SMART data for 'unsupported' drives. I say no longer because they used to, but an update changed that so they no longer do.

Bottom line though is don't do business with companies that don't respect you.

Guess it’s time to start using jellyfin and contributing

I switched to Jellyfin recently and I mostly prefer it over Plex, except for lack of organization tools and the goddamn roulette wheel that is seeking. Why is it that seeking defaults to 30 second intervals, requires a click to confirm, and occasionally just jumps to some random point near the beginning of the file? Great software overall, but it's wild to me that this basic playback functionality is so hit or miss.

OP couldn't comprehend an email, and when everyone tried to reassure them that nothing for them has changed they doubled down. The closest thing to justification I can figure is "all my clients are borderline illiterate as well and it upset them".

How in the world could you be upset that a product you already paid for is not providing that specific feature for free anymore. They've even made the phone software free!

Playon, Evernote, Lastpass, there have been plenty of examples.

Whenever a company starts charging for previously free features, it's time to GTFO, even if you're on their pay side.

I've got lifetime Plexpass, but I can read the writing on the wall. It's only a matter of time before they enshittify my product or stop providing updates. They'll sunset Plex and start Plex+ or some shit, give em a year or so.

Get your Jellyfin installed and working, they can work beside each other. Tailscale if it's just you, reverse proxy if you have the fam on in.