Submitted 11 months 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.
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 don’t use either but have wanted to get into them. What’s jellyfin missing?
I haven’t used jellyfin, only Plex. I hear they are similar in features, with Plex pulling ahead both in features and polish, as well as the variety of apps that can access it.
Jellyfins main problem, for me, is its lack of easy remote access. Lots of configuring to do to make it work safely, or safe but clunky to use with a VPN.
What features are you looking for? Jellyfin plays movies just fine, what else do you need?
Remote access, primarily.
And not with a VPN, but properly exposed to the Internet. I’m learning now that it can be done, just has to be done carefully. It’s on my list of things to look into.
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.
Yeah it “works” on LG TVs but only if I don’t use SSL, possibly due to the (perfectly valid) LetsEncrypt certificate in my case.
That’s not a huge deal for my LAN access but it’s still pretty dumb. It would be nice if more devices properly supported it.
That’s good to hear. I honestly haven’t tried it yet, I need to. The problem is exposing it to the Internet without a VPN.
Clients don’t concern me, from what I understand it works on Roku and you can stream from your phone to a Chromecast, that’s all my users need.
I refuse to use any TVs built in smart features 🤷♂️
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.
Yeah, odd response from this community. Entirely unexpected.
I plan on looking into it again, if nothing else than to have a backup when Plex finally does completely crap the bed.
Which I agree, this is pretty close, but I’m not there yet.
I’m glad you posted this because I thought I was alone too, I searched for and didn’t find anyone with this problem. Almost made a post here, but decided I didn’t want the abuse haha.
What’s missing from Jellyfin for you?
I’m going to migrate over soon personally. I canceled my plex pass instead of upgrading to lifetime a few months ago because I felt like Plex was going to go down enshittification alley soon. I haven’t used Jellyfin much though, so not sure what to expect at this point. I don’t have a lot of users luckily
Public exposure to the Internet without needing tailscale or a VPN. I keep hearing mixed opinions on whether it’s recommended or not.
I’m not afraid of configuring it, reverse proxy and all that. I just want it to be secure, and I keep getting mixed signals.
For now I’ll keep dealing with Plex, but eventually I’m sure I’ll need to figure out a solution using jellyfin.
Your users are getting that because they have a plex account that they use to stream. They might stream from just you, but they could stream from any other shared server they’re connect to. That’s why they get this email.
If you have a plex pass and are a server owner, they can ignore this and keep streaming from you for free.
If they try to stream from a server owner who does not have plex pass, it won’t work u less the user themselves have a plex watch pass, whoch let’s them stream from any server that doesn’t have plex pass.
Since you have plex pass, your users won’t be impacted at all.
It’s a very confusing and poorly worded email. My users were equally confused. Not everyone is techy or even deeply aware of how Plex even works. Nor should they be expected to.
The message was designed to confuse and extract money from people who don’t know better. It’s trashy and they should be ashamed.
That said, I’m still using Plex for the time being.
How would you have worded it differently? Since the email needs to be sent because the person is losing a feature (they might not use it because they only stream from you, but they might stream from someone else, so they should be made aware of it)
This. Only the server owner needs a plexpass.
I am very fortunate in that before Plex I found and used ps3 media server/universal media server. Because of that, it always felt odd paying just to stream my own content on my own hardware. I am certainly not against paying developers, but Plex always felt like paying for another service, not donating to an awesome Dev cause I love what they do. Another reason I stopped using Plex, I couldn’t get anyone but myself to give a dam and use Plex, (suddenly, when NETFLIX gets The Last Air Bender, NOW my sibling wants to binge watch it. 🙁). Jellyfin has served me just fine so far, it fucks up only in the same situation plex did, when I try watching with someone else.
This doesn’t really affect my household. My wife, my daughter, and I all have lifetime PlexPasses.
That said, this level of enshitification has me wishing there were options (yes I know about Emby and Jellyfin and I’ve investigated both more than once) but they have me ensnared by PlexAmp and Sonos integration. I’ve been around since before anyone had even seen the letters MP3 strung together, and I have never had a music player as capable as PlexAmp.
Plexamp is honestly amazing. I’m investigating finamp, but I know it won’t be as nice. Them killing off the tidal integration did help the decision a bit though
The tidal thing didn’t bother me, as my music collection is relatively large. But yeah PlexAmp is truly an extraordinary bit of software.
I strongly recommend symfonium on android. Plexamp is a really polished app but I found the handling of downloaded files quite poor, I don’t think you can even search downloads when you’re offline? (other bonus to symfonium is it supports jellyfin and sources, in case you were to ever fully move away from plex)
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 use tailscale for accessing my home network remotely, it was a super easy setup
Unfortunately most smart TVs lack a Tailscale app, so it’s not always possible.
I’ve been thinking of messing with the FOSS tailscale implementations
Wouldn’t that count as a VPN, albeit one run on someone else’s machine?
No I understand the benefits of open source software but this isn’t just a feature you can code in. Without portfords to the server, a VPN, or a reverse proxy, jellyfin would have to start hosting a service.
Is it technically feasible? I guess but seems like its both out of scope and not in the interest of the developers since the last thing they want probably want to get caught in is hosting streaming relays for everyone free of charge.
I prefer a VPN for this sorta thing because its a bit more hardened.
Nginx is a good reverse proxy for my publicly available hosts.
yeah we primarily watch on a Samsung TV through a PS5. I’m not seeing any alternatives for either device. I might be able to slap together a desktop from spare parts but I’m not sure I want to start maintaining a whole other computer.
Probably time to make a switch either way, what with them paywalling HDR and h.265
A cheap streaming stick might work
Cloudflare tunnel and a domain name will stream Jellyfin to any device while delivering a decent amount of safety.
You can use a VPS to make it accessible without VPN via the internet: codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup
Then you are vulnerable to all the security holes jellyfin has left open for years
Oh yeah no you can rent out a vps and use it as a VPN/router appliance. I’ve done that before for other project, just figured it seemed a lil overkill here.
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.
Old school is still the most sacred path.
If you consider paying a monthly fee for something that was free yesterday then I guess I’m wrong, go ahead and pay the subscription
LOL
Hope for the best, plan for the worst,
or don’t plan, you do you!
My bad, this is all because I finally decided to purchase a lifetime pass.
Same
Old guy here. Never fall for the lifetime pass deal.
For me, it’s worked out for plex. What it offered at the time was more than worth the price and I’ve felt a little bad about it being a once and done payment.
That being said they’ve hurt some of the good will with the changes they’ve made, but also I imagine they’re struggling to find a sustainable path for development.
Plex has worked well for me for many years with the lifetime pass. Got it 10 years ago so it translates back to about 8 euro per year.
That’s not a bad deal.
Malwarebytes has worked out for me so far. I don’t think they offer it anymore though…
This only applies if you AND the server owner don’t have a pass: …plex.tv/…/requirements-for-remote-playback-of-pe…
No, as long as the Server owner has a Plex Pass the people on the other side don’t need to do anything… its only if the Server owner doesn’t have a Plex Pass then remote users would need one
That is correct and echoes what I said
I see some posts taking about jellyfin and tailscale and I find it interesting that it’s not mentioned tailscale is a private company. Why are they not being held to the same standard as Plex? How long before it becomes enshittified? I saw they have a free plan but give it time until they realize the number of users in the free tier are large enough to monetize.
Tailscale and Netbird are foss software so they can always be forked. There are also. alternatives like Wireguard and Hyperspace. (Never tried hyperspace)
What are you talking about? This is a post about Plex. Nobody is gonna think about bringing up Tailscale for criticism. Tailscale gets plenty of skepticism in the self hosted community, whenever I see someone recomend Tailscale I usually see someone bring up that it can be a victim of enshitification. It doesn’t get hate (yet) because they haven’t fallen to enshitification (again, yet). But the main reason is probably because you dont NEED Tailscale for Jellyfin. When it does shit the bed, use headscale, netbird, wireguard, or any other vpn if you are really are so apposed to Tailscale.
I’m very much with you.
Never understood why Plex, a once open source fork of XBMC, was seen as a positive thing when they switched to the closed source, SaaS model.
I also don’t understand the love for Tailscale when Wireguard exists.
But, anyway, the same people who are rezcting shocked to Plex can be shocked when Tailscale does the same.
They’ll probably hop on Discord to vent their frustrations before there, too, they find themselves spurred by a company with no clear plan on monetization finding out that offering hosted services at a yearly loss can only exist for so long.
Open source isn’t just about idealogy, it’s about longevity for software that can’t be clearly monetized - harken back to “amazing” services like Keybase that worked great for a few years until their VCs started asking for return of investment.
Use the shit that was made for you, not to exploit you. And if that shit isn’t up to your standard, learn to contribute, or just enjoy the corporate graveyard in which you choose to live.
(so sorry for the pseudo-unhinged rant, but between the recent Win11, Discord controversies - and now, this - I’m just fed up with all the shocked_pikachu.jpg posts I’m seeing on Lemmy)
Every for profit company will eventually go to shit, that’s a given, it’s only a matter of time. You use their services till they benefit you and when they go to shit you switch to the next best option.
I have definitely seen worries about tailscale in other threads related to a recent VC funding round, I suppose they haven’t aggressively started the enshittification journey (yet), and it is also a bonus that most of tailscale is open source, e.g. headscale exists.
If tailscale started reducing the free service # of devices/users to push people towards their paid ‘personal plus’ plan then maybe we’d see a similar backlash. I say this as a tailscale user myself.
Some points as someone who does not use Tailscale:
TL;DR: This isn’t a binary “corporate versus non-corporate”.
Everything you said is true.
Also of note, tailscale is making a shit load off money off corporate America. Every one of us who are deciding engineers that dips our toes in goes holy fuck that’s cool and immediately pushes to implement it in a professional capacity.
And, when Tailscale reduces its free offering, it’ll be time to move to Headscale (or elsewhere).
We (most) are not advocating leaving Plex because it is not FOSS. We’re advocating leaving them because they are changing the terms in ways that have repeatedly suggested that it is circling the drain and feasting on its current userbase in a very Google/Apple/Microsoft way.
We’re not getting anything out of people leaving Plex. There’s no stock here, the community is not so small that it needs all the people from Plex. It’s a humanitarian effort, probably a neurodivergent one, but still humanitarian.
Thank you for the detailed reply, appreciate it.
Tail scale already has a bunch of limitations for unpaid users but it’s only an extra step to set up wireguard in a container.
Their free tier has always been about the same IRRC. ACL’s are basic only. Limited, but still generous users and devices.
If the drop device counts on free or eliminate ACL’s we’d also advocate leaving them.
I’m not a plex/jellyfin user, but I have a server and did try setting up Wireguard (as well as headscale). Could not get either of them to work. I use containers pretty often, so no issues there, but debugging networking issues is just above my pay grade. Tailscale just worked in like 5 clicks. It was stupid easy. If the alternatives get any easier to use, I would love to switch over to FOSS.
The client is open source and can be administered using the open source Headscale server. I use it with Keycloak as an auth gateway.
Tailscale hasn’t removed features yet. When they do, I’m sure there will be a similar outrage.
Deuces at the ready
I have never used Tailscale. I have also Jever seen anyone in the wild recommend it and explain what exactly the use-case is beyond plain, old, reliable, open source WireGuard.
So yeah, agreed.
Also I have been hosting Jellyfin publicly accessible for years with zero issues, so idk… I also dint k ow what the “you have to use Tailscale for jellyfin” people are doing with TVs/Firesticks/… in hotels, airbnbs,…
Can you point me in the direction of doing this in jellyfin? I keep finding guides and things for tailscale and whatnot but I too would like to just be able to install jellyfin on something and connect to my server.
LOL, there are at least a half dozen open source alternatives for Plex.
It was announced some time ago. I started using Tailscale because of that
What was the appeal of Plex anyway?
The wife / parent appeal of simplicity.
Otherwise just use JellyFin.
I’m done with Plex - They won’t get my recommendations. My holdoff buying PlexPass were the little bugs that always mattered - Pausing for more than a few minutes HARD locked up the stream, the stream had to re-init to load subtitles, and then the MAJOR issue with “What files is Plex NOT seeing” and other indexing issues. I paid for my Android app, happily. But now, telling me I can’t stream my own media, after paying for the app? Y’all can F right off with that. I’ll be finally setting up Jellyfin ASAP.
The beginning of enshittification.
Prices will keep climbing, functionality reduced in favor of service tiers, and of course ads, ads, and ads.
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 $89 to support the service I would. Send me some stickers and put a badge on my server. I get a lot of use out of the software/service, as do my family members.
I will say, I am quite annoyed at the wording and audience of this email. Jellyfin is just not an option for me until there is excellent feature parity with Plex. I know they are a lot of Jellyfin fans here, in my opinion, Plex is a significantly better experience for me.
I’ve used it briefly in the past but with all the streaming services popping up and prices going up I thought it will be a matter of time for Plex to follow suit. So I moved to Jellyfin and never looked back. I kept account (ok I forgot about it) but when I saw that email today in my mailbox I just logged in and deleted it.
Wonder how long before those 2.99 a month figures will last. I give it a year before there’s no seperate remote streaming package and the only remaining one is >10$. The main appeal of Plex was not paying. It’s used by pirates. The goal is content for free. It’s no longer free. I don’t care at all if random people can use my Plex server. If they are unwilling to adapt to a new platform, then I guess they’ll resubscribe to Netflix. Most of them never unsubscribed from Netflix to begin with.
This was the end for me. Used Plex for almost a decade. I’m off to Jellyfin. It’s actually almost no change whatsoever to integrate it into my home setup.
Indeed, no need to have Plex anymore. Will probably set up a family VPN and we can all stream directly from my harddrives, bandwidth is not an issue anyway.
I’ve only ever used jellyfin and have no complaints.
I avoided plex and went with jellyfill because it’s free/libre software.
Once you invite an MBA in you can never uninvite them…
Fuck them, glad I switched to Jellyfin years ago.
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!
Can I still watch from my pc to my tv locally through the Plex app?
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.
Guess it’s time to start using jellyfin and contributing
I switched to Jellyfin recently and I mostly prefer it over Plex, except for lack of organization tools and the goddamn roulette wheel that is seeking. Why is it that seeking defaults to 30 second intervals, requires a click to confirm, and occasionally just jumps to some random point near the beginning of the file? Great software overall, but it’s wild to me that this basic playback functionality is so hit or miss.
OP couldn’t comprehend an email, and when everyone tried to reassure them that nothing for them has changed they doubled down. The closest thing to justification I can figure is “all my clients are borderline illiterate as well and it upset them”.
How in the world could you be upset that a product you already paid for is not providing that specific feature for free anymore. They’ve even made the phone software free!
commander@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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
anonproxy00@lemm.ee 11 months ago
i love jellyfin. been very good to me so far!