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.
That was announced 2 months ago?
And? Does that make it alright? 😆
No but the fact that software is reasonable to charge for does.
Don’t you understand it’s a feature that doesn’t require any of there servers. It uses your internet. They could charge for other things but this one, no.
But they develop the software and need to fund that regardless of technical reasons.
Ok, they can still do that for better features and not just for something that can be done for free. They also went public and made a lot ofoney which now the investors also want. Not my problem.
There are other options if you want something entirely free. I’m actually surprised that feature was ever free.
Because you port forward and share your device to the internet and not use their server. It’s obvious why it was free lol. Why are you suprised? And there were thousands of alternatives to plex that needed pay so it was obvious why they would make a free feature a free feature.
I never got the idea of selfhosting but paying (except for enterprise-grade support or donations) anyway.
With Plex, you’re getting the easy ability to grant access to users. You get a single pane that can search across multiple Plex instances, and NAT traversal/port forwarding. Jellyfin makes you figure that out yourself.
It’s not exactly difficult if you use Tailscale or really any VPN. So I really don’t see the value for the cost; if you’re even considering self hosting a Plex server/instance, there’s a list of basic knowledge you should have or learn (like what you mentioned).
Its not difficult for technical people like you or me, but my friend who just wants to watch their favorite show on my Plex on their TV won’t know how to traffic engineer the traffic over a Tailscale network to my network. My mom won’t be installing Tailscale on her laptop and phone.
As long as the technical person does all of the setup on their end, the non technical person only has to enter a domain and port in their jellyfin client.
If you want to be on the hook for all IT requests from folks you share with, this is a fine approach. There are people out there who honestly don’t have a problem with that and more power to them. I doubt they are the majority, and a lot of selfhosters completely ignore this aspect of software. There is a reason non-free services exist beyond just “capitalism bad.” I mean, capitalism indeed bad, but your time is worth something.
