- cross-posted to:
- plex@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- plex@lemmy.ca
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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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.
It’s also fucking wild to me that people are defending a monetization model that is on self hosted hardware.
It’s wild to me that people who claim to be tech savvy don’t understand that Plex Server, the software, is what makes Plex what it is and as popular as it is. No other solution exists that is as easy as Plex and as secure as Plex. Jellyfin, Emby, Kodi, etc are nowhere near as simple to use and don’t have the breadth of app support that Plex does. Plex is basically on every device anyone owns. They sign in and they can stream from everyones libraries. No VPNs needed, no other hoops.
I paid like $100 for a lifetime Plex Pass like 10 years ago. The 2 dozen friends and family that share my server don’t pay a cent and this changes nothing.
This.
I just set up Plex for my mom on her bargain bin cheapo android TV. It had the plex app right there and it’ll play without transcoding.
Can’t do that with Jellyfin.
This place sucks at times as it becomes clear it’s just an echo chamber that we used to call the Donald for.
My users don’t like the UI of Jellyfin as it isn’t as polished as Plex. I do this for my users and although it costs me money, it does save them a whole lot more money and means they’re taken out of some capitalist systems which should be the goal no?
I also have the cost of a VPN too.
Edit: The comment I replied to was on -6 upvotes at the time of posting.
I use jellyfin, and jellyfin is not safe to expose to the internet.
They have a handful of vulnerability and security holes that have been open for like 5+ years now. And the old emby architecture is quite difficult to work with.
And they actively refuse to do anything about them because it would force clients to update. You could just just as well open an unsecured ftp server to your content
My users don’t like the UI of Jellyfin as it isn’t as polished as Plex.
The UIs are nearly identical, though.
No other solution exists that is as easy as Plex and as secure as Plex.
Entrenchment. This is a profoundly absurd statement.
I paid like $100 for a lifetime Plex Pass like 10 years ago.
You paid $100 to access software hosted on your own devices. That’s wonderful you think that’s a great idea. I’m sure the Plex devs love you and would kiss you right on the mouth.
They sign in and they can stream from everyones libraries. No VPNs needed, no other hoops.
Because you’re vendor locked in… lol.
I paid $100 to play Forza Horizon on my own device too - should that have been free?
This is a profoundly absurd statement.
That no other solution exists that is as easy and secure as Plex? That’s not just absurd, but profoundly absurd? What other solution is there that is?
Your entire argument seems to be that software should be free if it’s on your own device, which is a profoundly absurd statement. The only paid software should be on hardware you don’t own?
I paid $100 to play Forza Horizon on my own device too - should that have been free?
This is a complete false equivalence and I feel that you know that. The idea of a console is to expand it by buying new games. That’s not unexpected.
Your entire argument seems to be that software should be free
I am a software developer. The argument isn’t that software should be free. The argument is that this is an exceptionally poor business model and as a developer I’m disgusted that people are defending it. The VC which owns Plex and other VCs will use this “logic” that you have to move the goal posts further, and further, and further, and further until there’s no such thing as free software anymore. And I think that’s fucked up.
At the end of the day you’re paying twice to avoid buying IP. Just fucking buy the IP if you’re going to be stupid. Movies are like $12. At $250 you’re paying $2.10/mo in addition to your hosting costs.
Just go buy 20 movies for the same price. It’s so dumb.
This is a complete false equivalence and I feel that you know that. The idea of a console is to expand it by buying new games. That’s not unexpected.
It’s not though. The idea of self hosting isn’t to not have any software costs associated with it. Domain names aren’t free. VPNs (that you use to aquire content) aren’t free. Cloud backups aren’t free. Would you prefer everything was free? Absolutely. Do you sometimes have to pay to get the best software for the job? Absolutely, and Plex is that software.
I am a software developer.
Same here! That makes your argument even crazier to me! Someone demanding that your software should be free and should never be changed to be paid even if it means the company goes under is bananas.
The argument is that this is an exceptionally poor business model and as a developer I’m disgusted that people are defending it.
The business model of having the people that use their main product that requires the most development and time and resources, Plex Server, pay either a cheap one off fee (that regularly goes on sale for half price) or a monthly subscription fee in order to use it, is “exceptionally poor”? How so? Is it just that it was free? This business model has been around for eternity. Get people in the door and hooked by offering it for free, then start charging for it. It’s one of the actual best business models around, not “exceptionally poor” lol. You’re looking at it from the “I want it to be free forever” point of view, not the “We need it to be a viable business with revenue to be able to sustain it” point of view.
until there’s no such thing as free software anymore.
That will never happen, because people will always be making free software to put out there for people to try and to use - and many of them will then transition to PAID because it’s not sustainable otherwise. For software to thrive you often have to have full time developers working on it, and full time developers need to be paid.
At the end of the day you’re paying twice to avoid buying IP. Just fucking buy the IP if you’re going to be stupid. Movies are like $12. At $250 you’re paying $2.10/mo in addition to your hosting costs.
Just go buy 20 movies for the same price. It’s so dumb.
I paid ~$100 ~10 years ago for Plex Pass. It paid for itself instantly as I was simply supporting the developers of the software. As a software developer I have no problem doing that. I wasn’t forced to buy it, but I did.
I’m not quite sure where you got this $250 figure from though? What is that, the monthly remote pass x 12? Also most people running a plex server get far more than 20 movies a year lol. Pretty sure I got 20 movies last night.
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.
You have a plex pass though, so nothing changed for you - you just got all angry because you didn’t read the email properly.
Your users are going to be much worse off now than they were, and you will absolutely lose a bunch of them who don’t want to (or can’t) have to connect to a VPN every time they want to stream from your library.
you will absolutely lose a bunch of them
I always see this and I have to ask: why do you care?
They likely aren’t paid customers of yours, if they don’t follow your rules and the software you like to use, then they are free to use any other method of consuming media.
VPN
Have to agree with the other comment that asks why do you need to use a vpn. Fax
I always see this and I have to ask: why do you care?
Because OP is scared of losing their users because of their incorrect thinking that Plex was requiring them all to buy a remote streaming pass, so clearly OPs goal is to not lose their users, right?
OP asked, we’re answering. That’s kinda the whole point of this thing called Lemmy. We don’t care per se, we’re just telling OP our opinions and thoughts on their questions and proposed solutions.
Have to agree with the other comment that asks why do you need to use a vpn. Fax
If you don’t use a VPN you’re putting yourself at risk. There’s no real way around it with Jellyfin, as others have said.
I dunno man, I don’t care much, when Plex gets shitty enough I’ll jump. But paying for the ongoing maintenance of software isn’t some evil thing, even if I self host it.
But paying for the ongoing maintenance of software isn’t some evil thing, even if I self host it.
But that’s not what you’re paying for. You’re paying for access to that software…
I know. And some of that money, funds development, and some of that development includes security.
Lol “Your Friends at Plex”
get fucked, assholes, Jellyfin is better anyway
I fucking hate corporate speak.
Doesn’t jellyfin just not do this at all? Like if you want to stream remotely you need to figure out a vpn solution to do it?
You can stream remotely via jellyfin if you expose your server to the internet. VPN is safer but not the only option.
Yeah, no way. Jellyfins Backend is like an open barn door. And with the kind of content most of us here offer through either Jellyfin or Plex, I wouldn’t want to open up like that.
Anecdotal but I’ve run Jellyfin publicly without any issues for around 5 years. It even has its own domain name.
Completely unreasonable to need to walk people through this. It’s OK to say jellyfin can’t do remote access.
You’re 100% correct. I always find it funny how hardcore some people are with jellyfin vs Plex. I’ll probably end up getting downvotes on this but imo Plex is way simpler to setup and keep running, and as a lifetime pass owner, I’ve very rarely felt like my experience has been deteriorated by any of the changes that the jellyfin crowd freaks out about. Plus plexamp is honestly such a great music player. I’ll happily keep running Plex for the foreseeable future.
Oh no a paid, proprietary, piece of shit software does something shitty. Who could’ve ever saw this coming?!
I’ve said it for years anytime anyone mentioned running a Plex server. As soon as you install that on your server or your homelab it’s no longer your server. Proprietary software is malware
B-b-b-but my convenience!!!
Heloooooo Jellyfin!
I never got the idea of selfhosting but paying (except for enterprise-grade support or donations) anyway.
For a good while, Plex was the only game in town that did the job well, and they put the transcoding feature behind the paywall.
Given it wasn’t that expensive for a lifetime pass a number of years ago (I remember it was cheaper than a game anyway) and they still seemed relatively user-centric at the time, many people like me felt like they were supporting developers building something that was useful to us.
I still run my Plex server since it’s not really costing me not to, but I’ve been running Jellyfin too for a little while and it more or less can do the same job these days
I put my chips (£100) on Emby.
I haven’t regretted my purchase. I can’t sell anyone on much either, because Emby does all the same as other services, except they’ve kept adding features while Plex kept doing the Google thing and taking them away. CPU transcoding is free I believe, as is remote streaming up to 10 devices for each user… Idk I paid pretty early on, but lifetime license is where it’s at. Subscriptions just open your asshole for greedy CEOs to fuck you. Best to keep subscriptions voluntary, like donating on Github or Patreon
Emby was borne out of classic workplace toxicity, in that Jellyfin was becoming too corporate so a couple devs forked off to keep it clean.
I think you have that backwards. Jellyfin is a fork of emby
Indeed I did, I removed my speculative comments…
Yup, for the time it was worth it. I got about 7 years out of my “lifetime” plex pass, and I got it on sale. All in all, I won’t say the money was wasted.
It’s 100% a waste if anyone pays for that BS monthly streaming fee though.
Wait so you’ve got a lifetime plex pass already? Then literally nothing changes for you or anyone that is streaming from your server.
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.
I guess I haven’t noticed that. The non technically literate folk I know use smart TVs, or can download Jellyfin from an app store. Then they just use the URL when the app asks for it.
There’s no other configuring to do on their end.
They also need to run a VPN client.
Because you’re not putting bare jellyfin on the internet, right? You shouldn’t be doing that for most services in the first place, but doubly so for something that has a bunch of APIs that require no authentication: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415
Dropped this for jellyfin years ago
Jellyfin users have been warning about such things for a long time, but very few actually listened. Well, here we are, hope more people migrate now
Exhibit #46,853 for why freeware will inevitably fall out from under your feet and why you should exclusively use FOSS wherever possible.
Welcome to jellyfin!
I started on Plex and even considered a lifetime Plex pass, but I felt like it was more interested in showing their content than my content. It was a lot of effort just to show music and movies.
My family and I use jellyfin every day now, and a key thing is it starts off boring but it shows your music, your movies, your books, your photos.
For folks who migrate who were paying, consider a donation to projects you make heavy use of. They don’t usually have big companies behind them and can use the help.
Exactly how I’ve felt. I paid for a pass a long time ago, when they were actively making features for us server owners - but lately it’s been a good 80-90% of their crap content and very little for server owners. I’m not even upset about their content really, it’s just they blately have ignored everything else. It’s shifted, and so I have to as well.
Guess it’s time to start using jellyfin and contributing
JellyFin is fantastic software and I have no complaints.
yup same. First thing I install on a new device is jellyfin. For software that’s relatively young, it’s pretty awesome.
I am also a Plex pass person. Multiple times over in fact. I actually have a dedicated account for my server administrator that’s separate from the account I use to watch content. Both have Plex pass lifetime.
I’ve been familiar with this coming down the pipeline for a while and because I have Plex pass, I too, am unaffected, as are my users.
At the same time: here is a piece of software that I paid for. It’s “server” software, sure, but it’s just a software package. What it does isn’t really relevant. The fact is that it processes data stored on my systems, processing by my systems, using my hardware, and sends that data over the Internet, using the Internet connection I pay for separately, and delivers that data directly to the people I’ve designated as capable of doing so.
The only part of this process that Plex, the company, has any involvement in, is limited to: issuing an SSL certificate, managing user accounts and passwords, and brokering where to find data (pointers to my systems).
You can get a free SSL certificate from let’s encrypt. User accounts, authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA), is a function of pretty much everything that you remotely connect to, whether a Windows SMB/cifs share, your email, even logging into your own local computer regardless of OS… And honestly, brokering the connection isn’t dissimilar to how torrent trackers work, DNS or a goddamned IP address punched into a browser.
They’re offering shockingly little for what they’re asking, and the only thing that’s on the list that would be costly in the slightest is having a DNS name for the server (registration of the domain, DNS services, etc). And given the scale that they’re doing these things at, the individual costs per name is literally pennies per year.
This is not a good look at all.
I have domain names coming out of my ears. I’m tempted to buy one more and just offer to anyone that wants it, to have a subdomain name under that to run their Plex alternative on, so you can get a let’s encrypt SSL certificate, and stay safe on the Internet. I don’t want the feds snooping into what totally legal Linux ISOs are being shared.
I just don’t know how to program at all, so I have no idea how I would go about setting up a system for that. The concept would be to automate it, and have people create an account, then request a DNS name under one of my DNS domains, and have a setting if you want it to have an A record, AAAA record, or cname (if you have a ddns setup). Once the request is in, it would connect to be DNS provider and add the record for you.
The part I’d want to have as a check on the system is to make sure that you’re hosting jellyfin or something from the address you submit, to prevent people from using it for unrelated purposes; but even with that… Do I care of people do that? Probably not. I would limit how many addresses you can have per account.
You have had one of the more reasonable outlooks of this. I get that most of this stuff is fairly advanced for the average person who may be wanting to host, but anymore with letsencrypt, if you can port forward and spin up a container to run a plex server… you’re pretty close to just doing everything yourself. I don’t know why Plex feels the need to charge for “remote streaming” when from what I can tell, the most they’re doing is pointing a client at my server. As I said in other comments, it seems like a fancy dynamic DNS service, which is like, pennies for a multi year subscription. (Because it really doesn’t do much)
It really doesn’t do much and the cost is barely pennies per user when you operate at scale. The largest costs will be for the DNS resolver service and the domain registration, both of which you are already required to have, in order to have a functioning presence on the Internet. The cost of the issuing intermediate certificate is probably the largest single cost of the whole operation.
To be fair to Plex, they run some intermediary (caching) metadata servers to offload the demand their users put on services like the tvdb and IMDb. Honestly, is probably not required… But they do it. (I’ve seen their caching system fail more often than either site, so, it’s not all good), but even with that, you can put most of that load into your existing webhost, and it’s unlikely to make an impact on performance.
When you do this stuff at scale, the costs of simply having it set up, usually cover the costs of using it for thousands, if not tens of thousands of users.
Lot of words to say you don’t know how a business works or how much it costs…
I have a very good knowledge of business operations.
They already offered Plex pass to earn their income. Plex is an extremely price elastic product, given that alternatives like jellyfin exist. They are taking features away, and charging people if they don’t want to lose those features. That’s a really good way to piss off your existing userbase (or customer base). Better would be to offer something new, and charge for that. Keep existing products at the same cost, but have “better” products at a premium. You won’t get a huge number of people buying the extended product, but it will likely be more new paying users than how many you would get with the crap they’re doing now, and they wouldn’t lose any customers in the process.
When you understand the social and economic factors here, this is a super idiotic move. When you’re only looking at how many dollars you can extract from the customer base, this is a golden idea… I mean, it will fail, but it looks golden if you’re only looking at the money numbers.
I would question whether you know how a business works (or whether Plex does, for that matter).
As far as I’m concerned, Plex failed to read the room. They were already walking a fine line with the people in a legal grey area, which comprised a good amount of their customer base (those that are sharing media at least). There’s a nontrivial number of people who share media that are rather paranoid with reason. Nobody wants the RIAA/MPAA to have any reason to investigate what you are doing on the Internet. We all know how well that goes from the whole Napster thing. So now than a few are almost tinfoil hat level of paranoid. Many have already jumped ship to jellyfin or something similar. The rest are either unconcerned, not paying attention, or simply don’t care. I would argue that the numbers of people who run servers currently that host content using Plex, that are not looking at alternatives because of this, is pretty damned low.
Plex alienated the group that brought everyone into their umbrella. When the people who host media entirely abandon their product because of this shit, their client base vaporizes.
Can’t have a product or company with no clients. At least, not for long.
I’ll trust my MBA and decades of industry experience over an unreasoned gut feeling of everything should be free and developers shouldn’t get paid. And please cite the data indicating the number of users who host Plex servers that are not looking for alternatives is pretty damn low. A few folks in a fediverse echo chamber does not a user base make.
I think the most salient point here is it is indeed increasingly uncomfortable to put content in a plex server due to the increasing likelihood this telemetry makes it to MPAA/RIAA types and that will definitely be a self inflicted wound from a double barreled shit shotgun for Plex.
I have two pieces of paper from my time in post-secondary education. One says information technology, the other says business. I’ve worked in an IT field for well over 10 years in a B2B capacity. I’ve had to handle cost/benefit and ROI arguments with customers, and justify having them spend incredible amounts for their own good.
Are we done dick measuring about what we think we know?
Listen, we’re not going to agree on this. I couldn’t give any fewer shits if you do or not. Bluntly, I’m unbothered.
Good day to you sir.
YES JELLYFIN! Thank you Plex for enshitifying!
And how are you doing remote streaming from friends with Jellyfin?
My whole family streams from my brother’s server hundreds of km away…
My mom streams mine across an ocean.
I don’t see this talked about much anymore, but the day Plex added telemetry in 2017 was the day I became five-alarm desperate for an alternative. Had to wait a 2-3 years with Plex’s telemetry IP’s and domains blacklisted before Jellyfin was mature enough for me to make the change.
How Plex users can be comfortable with any telemetry is beyond me.
Not everyone cares that much. I don’t.
The more users on Jellyfin the better shot it has at getting more developer attention and users willing to contribute financially even if just occasional one off donation. How it goes with any open source application. More users, more developer interest, more feedback from users, subset of users willing to financially support the project
I’ve only ever used jellyfin and have no complaints.
I avoided plex and went with jellyfill because it’s free/libre software.
