Submitted 1 day ago by scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech to selfhosted@lemmy.world
https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/pictrs/image/4e4e5a49-2af2-46fe-82cf-a0e15e3fb8f9.png
cross-posted from: 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.
Enshittification marches on.
I bought Plex Pass when it was $75 for the lifetime option.
I prefer Jellyfin, but sharing is harder for family members with it because I can’t get them to just log in without existing credentials (Google Account, Apple ID, etc). Trying to convince me 67 year old mother-in-law to enter a URL, username, and password into an app with a remote is like asking my child to eat broccoli.
For now, I’ll keep running dual stack with both. If Plex pulls lifetime passes, even though it’ll be a PITA, I’ll convert everyone to Jellyfin despite the pain.
One other sad thing of Jellyfin is that you can’t access multiple server at once with a unified view
What’s Plex’s use case? Why not just mpv locally?
It’s useful to have one of your friends host a home server and share all the movies with your friends. Then you can watch from the smart tv
Ditched this crapware for Jellyfin several years ago. Glad I did. It’s been great.
Use jellyfin, it’s much better. Also do not kill Elon Musk and Donald Trump, as much as they may deserve death.
2nd amendment is the only check and balance left and the idiots need to realize this within a month before it’s too late.
Martial law and gestapo raids were just legalised against anyone.
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
I hope more people realise this.
If it’s not Open Source, I don’t want it
B-b-b-but my convenience!!!
The worst part for me was reading that they monitor everything you do, and what you streams and who looks at your stuff.
Wtf
Dropped this for jellyfin years ago
What’s the jellyfin experience like nowadays?
It is still more spartan than plex, more of a media library serving framework only. However even people who aren’t particularly well adjusted to tech (like my 75 yo mom), don’t seem to have an issue using it once it is set-up, and younger people with marginal tech expertise seem to be able to set up a server, and clients, with a little time on google. People complain about it not working on a lot of smart TV OSs, but I have not run into this, at least with the most popular ones, Roku, WebOS, TVOS, Google tv, Samsung, Vizio, however I have not tried it with an Apple TV. The biggest complaints I have personally received are mostly secondary features like polished library management interfaces.
Same. Plex is wack
I’ve had them side by side in preparation for this day.
Us jigglers tend to prefer jelly
I never got the idea of selfhosting but paying (except for enterprise-grade support or donations) anyway.
You know all the certs and security and port stuff you need to do? Plex does that. You just download the app, point it at your folders of media, and you’re all set both at your home and beyond it. There is no self hosted solution that is that turnkey. I really don’t understand how so many people don’t see the appeal of that. It makes quasi-selfhosting possible for people with far less technical knowledge than those of us here.
I run into you again! This time I get to wholeheartedly agree with you! You are spot on and nailed it.
I use Plex for exactly the reasons you said because when I set it up I didn’t know anything about self hosting a media server and I wanted to share with family in other locations. I keep it because it’s so easy for my older, less tech savvy family members to access so I don’t have to be their support person for it.
I’d consider Jellyfin if the end user access was more plug and play.
The biggest thing about this is I don’t get why OP is so annoyed. If you have a Plex Pass you’re not impacted, you can still share and your users can still access your library for free, they can’t share with you without a Plex Pass but who cares.
I LOVE Jellyfin but can only imagine the amount of work I’d have to do if I tried to get my parents and in-laws successfully using it. We all just split the cost of lifetime Plex pass the last time it was on sale.
You know all the certs and security and port stuff you need to do? Plex does that. You just download the app, point it at your folders with media, and you’re all set both at your home and beyond it.
I am just gonna read your comment until here, Plex does shit if you are CGNATED, and as it is 2025 I suppose most users are, I still needed to expose through IPv6 with a reverse proxy, using a VPS or a VPN to access my Plex Server, so yeah, Plex hasn’t helped me at all since many years ago with the noob friendly approach they have.
Any time you rely on another company to handle your data, you are beholden to their whims, end of story. Don’t like what they’re doing? Too bad. Give up the convenience and host it yourself, or continue to be a slave to their corporate interests.
Downvote without explanation. Nice!
Completely agree, and I think it’s fair for them to make it a paid feature. It’s kind of like using wireguard yourself to create a whole network vs Tailscale.
Outside of portforwarding plex ports on your router though? But yeah plex does provide a service and it is asinine the pushback this is getting.
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
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.
I put my chips (£100) on Emby, a Jellyfin fork. I don’t know much about specifics, but I believe 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 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
I’m pretty happy with Emby, which also lets me easily do remote streaming.
In the case of plex, it’s not 100% selfhosted. There’s a dependence on plexs public infrastructure for user management/authentication. They also help bypass NAT by proxying connections through their servers so you don’t have to setup port forwarding and can even easily escape double NAT situations.
I can understand paying for that convenience, but cost keeps rising while previously free features continue to get locked behind paywalls.
Tbh, having users required to authenticate with plex.tv was enough for me to look elsewhere. The biggest reason to self host for me is to remove dependency on public services.
The central user management is not a feature, it’s a hook to force people to pay for self-hosted software.
100% my experience as well. The external authentication requirement is what made my choose Jellyfin a couple years ago.
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).
I will say, I really want someone* to make a Jellyfin aggregator so you can use multiple servers at once.
*Not me.
When they monitor what you watch and how you share it with, it’s enshittified. Fuck Plex. I used to be a lifetime drum thumper. Stopped a few years ago.
Plex doesn’t care about you, your comfort, ease. It wants your money and it wants to monitor and control what you do with your own data.
Fuck. That.
You can selfhost for free however you want but software developers have the right to ask for money to use their software. I selfhost about 60tb of media and have paid for Plex monthly for about 10 years now. They are still so far above the competition for ease-of-use that I wouldn’t even consider switching at this point, even to save $7/month.
They have the right to ask, but I don’t have to pay. I’ve been playing with Jellyfin for about a month now, and I have to say, it’s just as easy as Plex is. The only thing I had to do myself was make my own users. In fact, I tried Jellyfin a few years ago and was unimpressed - now all I see is Plex making stuff to make advertisers happy while Jellyfin is adding stuff to make it’s users happy, to the point where I think Jellyfin has surpassed Plex.
Eh, I find Emby pretty close to on-par at this point.
Take HomeAssistant for example: you’re free to use it self-hosted, but as soon as you want to expose it securely through the Internet, there’s need from infrastructure that has costs, both materials and labor. In HomeAssistant’s case, it’s NabuCasa that does it, costs money, and helps fund the work of Home Assistant developers.
Having things free (libre) and open source is a blessing, but we have become entitled to have work of very specialized people for free. That’s not always feasible.
Another example, Zabbix, is totally open source and free, they only charge for support and training if you ask for them. It has worked for them for many years, but if they start to struggle with funding, I’d understand if they charged for it.
Home Assistant doesn’t require to pay for anything at any point in time for any reason. If you want to expose your instance to the web, they have all the documents on how to do it yourself. There’s absolutely nothing “hidden” behind a paywall. The only reason to say is if you want Nabu Casa to handle exposing your instance to the internet and various cloud services like Google Assistant/Alexa. The reason to pay Nabu Casa is if you don’t have the technical know how (or lazy like me) and to help fund Home Assistant (which I want).
That’s all to say that Plex and Home Assistant are not similar in their pay scheme. It’d be more akin if Jellyfin started charging users to allow a one click way to stream outside the home with no obligation to.
Immich has a weird “buy a licence” model which literally does nothing.
Immich, I believe, is linked to Futo. And Futo has a license model that’s basically “if you like this app, and want to support the development, consider buying a license.”
Sounds like it might be similar with Immich.
Better than “donate to this project”, since a license seems more like the user is getting something out of it, even if it’s basically a glorified donation 😂
I never even saw that, while running my own instance lol
Instantly bought the server license. Support your favorite FOSS, people.
“On 21 May 2008, XBMC developer Elan Feingold forked the source code of XBMC and started a new project called Plex”
GPL v2 source.
They’ve long been suspected of being greedy lil GPL violaters.
Another reason donating to FOSS is better than paying for proprietary software. Proprietary software devs get to run around stealing whatever code they like from the open-source community and never suffer any consequence because they don’t make their source available. I can think of a select few proprietary projects that have the balls to be source-available.
If you want to intentionally create a system that lets you evade accountability for stealing code, “fine”, but I have zero respect for you or your product, and I’m certainly not paying you a dime. I’ll put my money toward the developers who work to better the world instead of the rat fucks who steal from them to make money and pollute the software ecosystem with proprietary trash.
Lol “Your Friends at Plex”
get fucked, assholes, Jellyfin is better anyway
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.
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.
I used a reverse proxy just fine.
Not necessarily a VPN but you’re 100% on your own for security. When i used to run Emby, I had a white-list IPs but this doesn’t work great since most ISPs rotate IPs over time and if you’re on wireless it could change all the time.
I use a non-rooted docker, reverse proxy, and cloudfare domain. I know Jellyfin has some API security issues but I’m still unconvinced that any of them can be used to escalate to any level that would threaten my server (or even my instance of Jellyfin).
No. You have to expose your server to the internet in some way bit you don’t have to set up some sort of VPN. There are plenty of people who will tell you how awful of an idea it is but if you make smart choices it’s not a big deal.
Incorrect.
Jellyfin is better anyway
I wish this were true, but as a multi-year Plex-to-Jellyfin migrant, I have to point out that Plex was the better software.
I still choose to run Jellyfin for other reasons (don’t like the commercial path Plex is taking, among others), but I still do miss the better reliability and larger feature set in the Plex software stack.
I fucking hate corporate speak.
not a plex user but someone burried the lede here… to me, this is the neon sign that says GTFO:
we noticed that you’ve accessed libraries in the past
what business of yours is it to notice my private comings and goings?! what other actionable intel do y’all keep in your logs?! bye!
External servers are shared with you, they can just check which owners have libraries shared with them. That’s not some nefarious logging, its information they need to offer that function
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 love jellyfin. been very good to me so far!
Thank you for posting this. I thought it was just me.
In my case, one user actually lost access entirely to my libraries, the updated app was trying to force him to buy a personal pass, even though I have a Plex pass.
I had him reset his app and clear cache, to no avail. I ended up having to REMOVE his access to my libraries, and then reshare them to him, before he could access them again.
He was quite upset at Plex during the entire process.
Then the next day, he got this same email, and was frustrated all over again thinking he was gonna have to fight it again.
Really terrible customer service here, very sloppy. Aside from the fact that this is a greedy cash grab, it’s just being done poorly.
Jellyfin still isn’t feature packed enough for me to switch to, unfortunately.
I’m glad I’m not the only one. I’m getting a lot of vitriol here from people saying “Well your users are idiots”, or other angry things. No, my users are family members, and not everyone needs a degree in CS to be able to connect to a Plex server. A few of them are elderly. The email was misleading to them, on purpose. It threw many of them into a flurry. The whole thing was handled terribly by a company who keeps going out of their way to make it difficult for them already to simply watch my server.
I’d suggest trying Jellyfin out again. Personally I was in the same boat even just over a year ago, I wasn’t impressed, but it’s come a long way. It’s absolutely not as polished as Plex, but if you can look past that I’m finding most of the features I need are there.
I find the server part of Jellyfin to work pretty well and I love that it provides some features you would have to pay to get on Plex (skip intro/credits for instance). The clients on the other hand, specially for tvOS and the fact that you can’t install it from the store on Samsung TVs, are really what’s making it difficult for me to switch.
Guess it’s time to start using jellyfin and contributing
Trying to monetize the piracy of your users. That’s a bold business strategy.
Look, I know a lot of people could be using the sharing feature to share material that is in the public domain or that they own the copyright to, but let’s be honest: most of that sharing would be considered an “unlicensed public performance” by the MAFIAA.
thats closed software 101 now, hook us then make us pay if only there was something that was always free forever
I’ve only ever used jellyfin and have no complaints.
I avoided plex and went with jellyfill because it’s free/libre software.
My bad, this is all because I finally decided to purchase a lifetime pass.
I love Plex and will continue using it. I bought a lifetime Plex Pass years ago for and have no regrets. My Plex Pass means none of my watchers have to worry about paying anything.
Welcome to jellyfin!
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.
I don’t use Plex. I have never used Plex. But based on the one time I tried, this doesn’t surprise me even a little bit.
Years ago I installed it on my NAS, it was a one click download package. I installed it and hit the button to set it up. And then it prompted me to make a cloud account.
Why do I need a cloud account? I am logging into my local server and I am not sharing anything with anybody nor am I subscribing to any cloud services. I have no need of a cloud account. But, the way they built the thing, you need a cloud account to log into your local system.
I did not create a cloud account. I uninstalled it. I concluded that a company that claims to care about user privacy, but requires cloud integration in an area that absolutely does not require cloud anything, does not actually give a shit about privacy. I Googled and found that the requirement for a cloud account was, at the time, a fairly new thing. Lots of people didn’t like it. I concluded that this company was beginning to enshittify, although this was years ago and none of us had heard that word yet. But either way, it was obvious that the company was moving in a not customer-friendly direction and I did not want to be along for the ride.
My choice has been proven right several times over the years since. And yes, every time they remove a feature, or make some other customer unfriendly decision, I retell this story.
The moral here is that a company either cares about its customers or it doesn’t, and it’s usually pretty easy to tell which one fairly quickly. When one bad decision is made, and not corrected, others will follow.
Synology is the latest example of that. For anyone not paying attention, they have recently announced that their 2025 series units will only work with Synology branded hard drives, which are of course more expensive than standard Seagate or Western Digital drives (which work just fine). But if you look, the bread crumbs are there and form a trail. Over the last few years they have removed features, for example the device is no longer can decode h.265 surveillance video, and the units will no longer display SMART data for ‘unsupported’ drives. I say no longer because they used to, but an update changed that so they no longer do.
Bottom line though is don’t do business with companies that don’t respect you.
Fuck them, glad I switched to Jellyfin years ago.
People use Plex?
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.
Exhibit #46,853 for why freeware will inevitably fall out from under your feet and why you should exclusively use FOSS wherever possible.
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.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 59 minutes ago
So let me get this straight: you own the content, you host the content on your machine, you pay the electricity and internet and plex says it can’t afford to let you share it to others without a subscription fee?
I mean making plex a one time fee if it’s good turnkey solution is fine but subscription…