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.
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.
Why would anyone even used Plex since we have jellyfin?
Well, looks like my decision to stick with Kodi and never bother with Plex is about to pay dividends.
I moved on to jellyfin after I found out the hard way Plex servers need to authenticate for use. I’m sure by now there are ways to set up offline authentication but I already didn’t like the idea of paying monthly to stream my own content from my own machine. It just didn’t make sence to me. Jellyfin isn’t perfect, or as flashy as Plex, but it works, looks fine, and its free, not counting a much deserved donation to the devs .
Yeah, my lifetime Jellyfin subscription wasn’t quite that much, thankfully. 😆
So basically… this is a blatant cash grab, and a nearly 200% one depending on the level of service you pay/paid for. Wonder how long it will be before the lifetime pass is discontinued and everyone gets forcibly moved over to a monthly subscription model
Man, my Jellyfin subscription just rose in price too.
I’ve been meaning to set up a homeserver with plex recently but will defnitely go for jellyfin now that I read this thread.
sometimes good software is worth paying for
I don’t like it, but it’s a pragmatic decision.
Hosting for a simple website can be as little as a few bucks a month. That’s easy for any project to absorb, even if they are open-source with no one pulling a paycheque.
Streaming requires high-performance, high-bandwidth machines that cost anywhere from several dozen dollars to several hundred dollars a month. You build a resilient high-availability network, and you could easily be looking at several tens of thousands of dollars a month.
That isn’t easy to absorb, even for a for-profit company with clearly-defined revenue streams.
Some people want everything for free, but free doesn’t pay the bills.
Full disclosure: I don’t use the streaming feature. I prefer to grab actual copies to drop onto my NAS. I also don’t share to friends and family, as I am the only one I know of who uses Plex.
As a plex pass lifetime user, this doesn’t change anything for me.
I am, however, blown away that the price went from $75 CDN to $350 CDN over the last 10 years!! That’s just insane!
remote streaming rarely works for me so I won’t be losing anything.
If you don’t like the price there’s always jellyfin.
Got to say that I have been very happy with it.
All these comments mentioning jellyfish and I haven’t see a single mention of emby. Is it considered bad or something? Because I switched over to it and I am liking it a lot better than plex so far
