We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
Well this is a good reason to finish my migration to Jellyfin I think.
I only use remote streaming a couple times per year, so paying for plex pass just for that seems a bit silly. Their online-only account auth is also super annoying if the internet is down.
Can’t say I have a huge issue with this - Plex isn’t FOSS and the infrastructure to make this happen isn’t free. Other options are available if you don’t want to pay the fee.
Why would you expect this to NOT be paid? It requires them to be running servers to stream the media through, I wouldn’t expect this to be a free feature.
I dislike Plex for several reasons, but asking for payment for stuff that costs them money is completely justified.
I gotta be honest, when I look at the problem pragmatically, it’ll be a lot easier to pay $20 a year than to switch to jellyfin and get all my users to figure out how to install clients and make it work for them.
I’m already at the point in my life where my primary concern is making things work smoothly, and if I need to throw money at something to make it work smoothly, the choice is a no brainer. (At least for some values of “money”)
How to kill a service speedrun any%
So then Photoprism is going to lock my photos and ask my mom for money to see them?
Its selfhosting, not freehosting for yet another asshole company.
They seem to be getting a lot of hate for this, but Plex is not FOSS… They have the roots but they currently have like 100 paid employees and are trying to make a business out of it. They have to do something to make money to pay people every month. My $75 10 years ago isn’t going to do much for that… The fact that they’ve made it this far without folding is impressive.
I absolutely love that Emby is such a third thought that they don’t even get a mention anymore. They fucked their loyal users over so much that they don’t even get mentioned anymore. Can’t wait for plex to suffer the same fate
I just want to make sure I read this correctly. It says that if you’re a Plex plass holder already that remote streaming changes won’t affect your service. This means that if I have the lifetime subscription and host my own server than users whom have not payed for Plex pass can continue to access this server without issue correct?
I stopped using Plex shortly after they started forcing logging in with your online Plex account to connect to LAN only based server. The writing was on the wall all those years ago. Who wants to be locked out of their media when the internet is offline, completely defeated the point of self hosting local infrastructure
Jellyfin, while lacking a bit when I first migrated, has continued improved over the years and it has been joyful to use. Plus Jellyfin supported hardware transcoding before Plex did, which was a gripe I had with Plex at the time.
I stream from my server remotely and share with Family without hassle. I dunno where Plex is trying to go, glad I bailed long ago
This is the best ad campaign Jellyfin could have asked for.
Why do people use this when Jellyfin exists?
The audacity of this company to increase prices when: A) downloads are locked behind the paywall but havent worked in years (probably close to a decade at this point) B) they focus all the development time on bringing bullshit to the platform (live tv, rentals, other streaming app searches, etc)
Requiring a subscription for remote access is actually fucking insane, they don’t have any bandwidth costs associated with that other than authentication so ???
This will drive people to Jellyfin, and watch how fast Plex drops into irrelevance when all the selfhosters move away. Plex is (now was) the #1 thing to that both myself and others in this community would recommend to someone looking to get into selfhosting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ not anymore, wonder how much the revenue will drop?
I’ve been using Plex many years. I abandoned it about 1-2 years ago when they began their enshittification journey. Now I see they are continuing to double down on being assholes.
They do not need any more resources to allow people to use what already exists. Most people run their own servers, and, they track all that by the way. Hence why people moved away from it.
Don’t give them your money. Let them rot. They fucked their user base who built them.
Well, looks like my decision to stick with Kodi and never bother with Plex is about to pay dividends.
