this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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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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[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 days ago (2 children)

"your friends"

dude my friends don't charge me for shit

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[–] [email protected] 122 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (25 children)

Seems like it was only a matter of time.

20% more will jump to Jellyfin. The other 80% will entrench and talk even more about how great Plex is. I mean Jesus, $250 to watch pirated movies. lol wtf It's also fucking wild to me that people are defending a monetization model that is on self hosted hardware. Like, I gotta pay for my server and then a license to avoid buying DVDs. Fuck it, at this point just buy the fucking movie.

Ya'll are brain dead. Plex loves you tho.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago (17 children)

Yup, read through this thread and it becomes clearer and clearer. and trust me, I've been a long time hold out, I've been through this many times - but this is the first time I've seen functionality removed from Plex to be put behind a paywall. And doing a price hike at the same time. Absolutely shitty. I've already migrated off.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 days ago (8 children)

Jellyfin. Tailscale. Bob's your uncle.

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[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 days ago

Every time one of these gets posted I say "wait what? That was free before??"

This is the kind of feature I think is reasonable to charge for. As were the others people were complaining about. Plex lifetime pass is a one time fee.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago (7 children)

It seems like multiple things are being conflated here and I'm not sure what the reality is because I've never used Plex.

Some people claim this has something to do with Plex needing to pay for NAT traversal infrastructure. Okay, that seems sort of silly but at least there's the excuse that their servers are involved in the streaming somehow.

But their wording is very broad, just calling it "remote streaming." That led me to this article on the Plex support website, which walks people through setting up port forwarding in order to enable "remote streaming"! So that excuse doesn't really seem to hold water. What exactly is being paid for here then? How do they define what "local streaming" is?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Exactly my point. There's some due hard people here saying that remote streaming is only possible because of plex's servers, but that's just not true. They act as fancy DNS or proxying, they lust point to your local server. That's all. Regular DNS or even an IP and port are all it takes to get remote streaming up

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I have a lifetime Plex Pass, but I stopped using Plex a couple months ago after finally diving into Jellyfin. Even ignoring everything else, just the performance difference made the change worth it. Everything from UI responsiveness on smart TV apps to library scans on the server.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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