Selfhosted

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.

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.

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?

This was announced several months ago

As long as the library owner has a Plex Pass nothing changes for ANYONE who is streaming from that Plex Server.

That was announced 2 months ago?

I'll be honest, I thought Plex Pass was always a requirement for this 😅

I'm coming up on 5 years as a Plex pass owner, so my users and I will not be impacted by this change. In five more years if they asked me nicely to pay another $89 to support the service I would. Send me some stickers and put a badge on my server. I get a lot of use out of the software/service, as do my family members.

I will say, I am quite annoyed at the wording and audience of this email. Jellyfin is just not an option for me until there is excellent feature parity with Plex. I know they are a lot of Jellyfin fans here, in my opinion, Plex is a significantly better experience for me.

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.

It was only a matter of time. Plex is a Series C startup, employs 100+ people, and has taken substantial VC investment. Those investors are expecting exponential returns, and a "one-time lifetime payment" will never sustain that sort of growth

This email is talking to you as a user of other libraries not yours, not as a server owner.

"Alternatively, server owners can purchase a Plex Pass, which will grant you continued remote streaming of libraries that you have been given access to."

As communicated previously, Plex pass users also get the benefit of the "Remote watch pass."

Once you invite an MBA in you can never uninvite them…

Uninstalled. I don't mind as much for sharing my library but if I have to pay to stream MY OWN SERVERS CONTENT using your service, that's a hard pass. My homes all use jellyfin now

The beginning of enshittification.

Prices will keep climbing, functionality reduced in favor of service tiers, and of course ads, ads, and ads.

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.

I see some posts taking about jellyfin and tailscale and I find it interesting that it's not mentioned tailscale is a private company. Why are they not being held to the same standard as Plex? How long before it becomes enshittified? I saw they have a free plan but give it time until they realize the number of users in the free tier are large enough to monetize.

edit: I'm prepared to be down voted but mark this and see where it ends up at.

Edit2: and I'm not defending Plex. I agree it's a shitty move.

But it's included in a plex pass. I know a lot of people were saying, a while back, they were happy to purchase a lifetime pass, so as to support the software. I didn't actually realise you could share without the plex pass. I thought that was always a thing.

Jellyfin ia great! But syncplay breaks if you snease.

This will affect any server that does not already have a Plex Pass/ Lifetime Plex Pass. If your server does not have one, your remote users will have to pay. The service Plex provides is still worth it though, it largely just works on dozens of platforms and that shit isn't free to make.

Sharing a Jellyfin server with others remotely is still a lot more complicated than it needs to be to compete (no, it's not as simple as opening a port, and if you think so then you're either lucky or you aren't sharing with lots of folks). I run both and I would never try to share Jellyfin with non-technical people. Honestly, I wish Jellyfin would start offering an optional paid relay service to fund their development. They could use the revenue to improve their app ecosystem and still produce mostly open-source software. Homeassistant does this with Nabu Casa and it's great!

That being said, the new Plex Android app kinda sucks ass. If there was anything that would make me switch it wouldn't be having to pay for software, or services it'd be a garbage experience on my most common platform.