- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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.
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Bro what
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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.
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But what infrastructure does this feature require? I’m direct connecting to my own personal server with perhaps credential handling and a handshake handled by Plex servers to connect. None of the media is passing through their servers - or it shouldn’t be if it is.
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In a nutshell, if your app isn’t able to make a direct connection to your Plex Media Server when you’re away from home, we can act as sort of a middle man and “relay” the stream from your server to your app. To accomplish this, your Plex Media Server establishes a secure connection to one of our Relay servers. Your app then also connects securely to the same Relay server and accesses the stream from your Plex Media Server. (In technical terms, the content is tunneled through.)
So, your Plex Media Server basically “relays” the media stream through our server so that your app can access it since the app can’t connect with your server directly.
Source: https://support.plex.tv/articles/216766168-accessing-a-server-through-relay/
It’s not a requirement to stream and it’s sort of dumb they are lumping this relay service as a part of the remote streaming. Remote streaming should be allowed for free - if you are not a subscriber. The relay should just be a paid service, which makes sense. But if it’s a direct connection to my server, it should be free.
That being said, I understand how Plex may have built some technical debt into this relay system. It might be hard for them to decouple the relay from the remote streaming. What they should have done is:
We are removing the relay service as a free service, but you can still do remote streaming with a direct connection.
And they should have built their architecture in a way that’s easy to decouple the two services.
Thanks for that - I wasn’t aware of the relay service, but completely agree that this is what they should be charging for and not the remote play feature in its entirety. I’ll probably drag it out for a while by refusing to update the app and server… Might be able to make it work with Tailscale as others have suggested.
In the past I’ve paid for a month or two when I wanted to download to my devices remotely (and I think that’s the singular feature that I’ve ever cared about in the Plex pass). But to take features away and then try and charge me for them is a bridge too far, I can’t support that bad behavior.
I paid for the lifetime membership ~6 years ago so I’m going to stick with it. Plus I just use it for my own home. It’s not like I’m serving a bunch of other clients. But I’ll switch to Jellyfin if the lifetime membership ever gets taken away.
I’ve been meaning to set up a homeserver with plex recently but will defnitely go for jellyfin now that I read this thread.
Judging by the rest of the thread I’m going to get downvoted for this, but what the hell:
I’m sure I’ll switch to Jellyfin eventually but I tried it out a few weeks ago to see what all the hype was about and it just… wasn’t great. It was difficult to setup, with way too many overly-complicated settings, and then it refused to play one of the two test files I tried. Like it or not there’s a reason that Plex is the dominant player in the game, and a large part of that reason is that it verges on plug-and-play for simplicity of both setup and use.
Yes, it sucks that they’re removing remote streaming for free users, but I imagine there’s a significant chunk of users who don’t know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies for their streams (which happens entirely in the background), and those aren’t going to be cheap to run. Maybe putting them behind a paywall will provide the resources to make them faster.
I did buy a lifetime pass last time they announced a price hike; it’s honestly paid for itself many times over, and I’ve been encouraging other users I know to do the same before this next one, because yes, it is a significant hike this time around. That said, while I wouldn’t pay monthly for it, I do still feel like the lifetime pass is tremendous value for such a polished product. It’s a shame they’ve had to do it at all, but I don’t begrudge them for it.
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!
Hellooooo jellyfin!
Only use open source software
They do not have chromecast support. (Atleat the last time i checked) Thats a deal breaker for me, would love to use it.
… I’m using Chromecast and Google TV, though Chromecast isn’t very good, really, and Google TV stared showing commercials every now and then since a while ago, so that too will be on its way out.
But yeah, they’re supported
IIRC it has it. Not if you’re behind VPN or a tunnel. Only over HTTPS.
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Wireguard so you are always seen as being on the local network. This bit of assholery is easily defeated.
Or morally better than breaking TOS, use a FOOS alternative like Jellyfin.
I used to use Plex, then one day my internet was down and since Plex couldn’t phone home, it wouldn’t let me log in to watch media ON MY LAN.
So yeah it’s inherently broken. That’s before you even consider the licensing.
i’m not sure why it would do this, i’ve never had any issues with watching plex while the internet is down (in fact that was one of my original uses for it, to have movies and tv in a building without internet). I don’t have it turned on but I do know you can go into server settings -> network and set a list of IPs/subnets that can access without any authorization at all. That lets you use plex without even having a plex account afaik.
I can watch it without Internet
As a result I imagine more users will look at other offerings such as Jellyfin.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
https://jellyfin.org/I’m surprised by the resistance to Jellyfin in this thread. If you are using Plex, you’re already savvy enough to use bittorrent and probably the *arrs. If you can configure that stuff, Jellyfin is absolutely something you can handle. If you like Docker, there’s good projects out there. If you’re like me and you don’t understand Docker, use Swizzin community edition. If you can install Ubuntu or Debian, and run the Swizzin script, you’re in business.
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I think I represent a huge portion of Plex users; I am tech savvy enough to follow a simple walkthrough on YouTube to get my server setup. But the arrs, jellyfin, and docker both look like graduate level chemistry to me.
Plex has been around for ages and they have put money into making things easier for users like me to understand with events such as Pro Week and directly paying content creators to dumb things down for me.
I’ve got to admit that I’ve never used Plex (I’m a cantankerous open software fanatic), but how do you get your media on there? You’re hosting your own server so presumably you’re downloading the media somehow. Are you doing it manually? If so, you can do the same with Jellyfin. Is it automated with some tool built into Plex?
I’m ripping it with makemkv, actually. I have a fairly large blu ray collection that is slowly going onto my DAS.
Me too. Docker isn’t hard if you use a compose file. It’s easy to read syntax.
Linux server.io has great documentation for their images.
I have Jellyfin and Plex running from the same virtual machine pointing at the same media. If it wasn’t for the one crappy TV I have in my house with no Jellyfin client, Plex would be gone.
Docker isn’t hard if you use a compose file. It’s easy to read syntax.
This is giving me “yaml isn’t hard to use if you use a compose file!” It is, actually. It’s easy for you because you understand the technology. The vast majority of people do not.
I keep a Jellyfin instance running as a hedge. Here’s the thing with Plex (and actually a lot of companies set up similarly): those “lifetime” memberships are a trap. Think about it: Plex gets your money ONCE but they have ongoing expenses. Sooner or later, they’ll have spent every single cent made by a lifetime membership unless they either get more folks OR squeeze everyone a bit more.
Once they started adding their own shows and making strange UI decisions, I could sense the end was coming. A move like this brings it up fast. Jellyfin is not nearly as good as Plex in a lot of ways, but it’s really Open Source.
Anyway, a lot of rambling, but in short: when there is a “lifetime” subscription, watch out!
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 .
Plex Media Server- Settings : Network : List of IP Addresses and Networks that are allowed with Auth : 192.168.4.0/24, e.g.
I’m seeing a lot of negativity but I think they offer a great service and deserve to be paid for their work. I bought a lifetime pass many years ago and I almost feel guilty how much value I have received over that time.
You need an internet connection to connect to a offline LAN Plex server… Just so unessessery, otherwise it doesn’t find your server (I was quite confused on that one, when that started happening) Plus having to pay for multiple user accounts, all just seemed like it was heading towards user extortion. It also lacked hardware transcoding at that point in time, which isn’t a huge issue, but did make it harder to run if you had a client that didn’t support a specific codec.
While jellyfin requires zero internet to be functional and login, supported hardware transcoding before plex and has multiple user accounts usage out of the box, at zero cost.
One does not need an internet connection for offline use. Check this if you’re having issues.
One does not need to pay for multiple user accounts. As per this update, they are actually removing the one-time fee for non family member mobile apps. Now it’s all free, provided the server owner has a Plex Pass.
Plex has been supporting hardware transcoding since 2017.
To be clear, I’m not saying Jellyfin is bad. I think it’s great to have competition and I understand plenty of people like it.
ur getting what u paid for, why the guilt
I feel like I’m getting more than what I paid for. I understand it was a legal contractual exchange. I’m merely commenting on the value I’ve received relative to what I paid. Especially given the continued improvements over time.
