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Plex has confirmed that it will require a Remote Watch Pass or Plex Pass for remote streaming on its TV apps. The change is going into effect for the Roku app first, followed by all other TV apps and third-party clients in 2026.

Earlier this year, Plex increased its pricing for Plex Pass and stopped supporting all options for free remote streaming in the Plex apps, such as adding a custom server connection in the app settings. The company said at the time, "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." That's also when Plex introduced the Remote Watch Pass as a less expensive way to enable remote streaming again.

Plex is now rolling out the remote watch changes to its Roku TV app. If you have Plex Pass, or the owner of the server you're streaming from has Plex Pass, you don't need to do anything. Otherwise, if you are streaming on a different network from the server's home network, you need Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass.

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[-] ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 day ago

Fuuuuuck plex

For the past like 5-7 years I’ve said consistently that the second plex took VC money the writing was on the wall and that they would eventually and consistently take actions hostile towards their consumers and doing what they can to both move to SaaS and alienate lifetime pass users as well as distance themselves from their core purpose of sharing collections of pirated media hidden behind the thinly veneered “for tobacco use only” bullshit of “actually you can just rip your own physical media”

Every time I post, whether it’s banning the ability to serve on hetzner, putting ads all over the app and starting to collect data, increasing monetization, etc and talk about how it’s inherently going to continue getting worse plex users inevitably come out of the woodwork to be like “well this is overblown, plex is so good it’s worth getting fucked, jellyfin is slightly harder since it’s not backed by 40 million dollars of devil money that demands endless growth until the product is ruined”

As long as those people who are willing to get walked all over exist, that demand a slightly easier existence over one that serves them, every product and service will continue to get worse and worse while a small group of people get fat off of endless subscriptions

[-] BoblinTheGoblin@hexbear.net 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Unfortunately Jellyfin still has issues, I was trying the latest version earlier, a movie I was watching started skipping on jellyfin, worked fine on Plex. I also looked at moving over watching stuff with friends to jellyfin, we tried the syncplay feature, it kept stuttering and stopping (auto match was off, as default), and we just gave up after a minute or two and just went back to Plex.

I want to like jellyfin, and the latest releases have improved a lot of the performance issues I used to have, but man is it hard to love moving to it. Sure foss and there's lots of cool plugins, but everything else has just been a worse experience for me.

[-] ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 19 hours ago

Yeah, like I said, you have to do some work with FOSS.

Check logs, reach out to support forums, etc.

Alternatively have something that is more likely to “just work” at the cost of data collection and profiling and increasingly restrictive software licensing designed to drive you towards service delivery license models (eg monthly payments), at a minimum

is plex more mature? Yes of course, it has had injections of over 40 million dollars of devil money plus whatever they’ve raised from you. Jellyfin would likely catch up significantly with such funding, but remember that such funding always comes with obligations that compromise the product and fuck over the community that actually cares about usability and core features (see: Reddit, MySpace, Facebook, amazon, Google and every Google product, Netflix, etc etc etc etc etc)

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[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 4 points 20 hours ago

I was wondering how long before they dropped that other shoe.

I bought Plexpass when it was $70. Got my money out of it. The centralized login, ssl, caching and proxy are probably worth paying something for.

That said, I've mostly walked away from them over privacy concerns and an utter refusal to add community-requested features while removing actively used features.

[-] laurelraven@lemmy.zip 47 points 1 day ago

This makes me glad I went with Jellyfin for my home server

[-] FlembleFabber@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago

Me too buddy, me too. Not gonna lie it took quite a lot of effort to get everything setup and stuff but reading news like this now gives me a cozy warm feeling

[-] LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago

I’m curious on what more setup you’ve done? Mine has been pretty easy, but I haven’t done too much other than just watch stuff

[-] FlembleFabber@sh.itjust.works 2 points 16 hours ago

I didn't get remote control to work how I wanted, I can do it only using a VPN on my home network which is fine. Other than that I had some issues getting it to recognise all my shows and download the metadata. But I like the customization and potential to add extra add ons and stuff

[-] rami@ani.social 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I have the sevre side stuff all set up as far as I know but I've not been able to get the Roku app to connect. I should note the tv is literally on the other side of the wall from my computer, they're on the same network.

[-] brax@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago

I regret buying a Plex pass years ago when the project was still pretty good. I wanted to support the devs, but now I hope that they continue to develop this shit app so they don't move on to ruin things like Jellyfin.

[-] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 98 points 1 day ago

Oh fuck off, dipshits. You chose this route despite the community that built you.

[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

They make more money off of FAST then they do self hosting own media. Of course they are going to care less and less about the self hosters.

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[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 87 points 1 day ago

Switched to Jellyfin after more than a decade with Plex. Prettey.. prettey.. pretty good.

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[-] PhAzE@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

I'm sticking with plex personally. I have a lifetime plex pass already so no one else needs a pass to stream from my server. Aka, this changes nothing for me or my users.

[-] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 day ago

for now. I feel like it's only a matter of time before they say those lifetime passes are expired, or that the product has changes so much it's not valid, etc. they've proven they don't really care about the user base anymore, it's all about the money for them now unfortunately.

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[-] brax@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago

This is total "fuck you, got mine" energy. You're part of the problem. As somebody else who owns a Plex pass, I'm done with their bullshit. I downloaded Plex as a way to serve my content to my devices. These morons lost their way a while ago and became a dump, and clearly it's not getting any better.

Hopefully this latest big-brain move of theirs drives more users off their shit platform to one that's better.

But you have a Plex pass, so I'm sure it won't affect you when the money disappears and the company folds lol.

[-] rabidhamster@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I mean, if you already have a lifetime pass, it's not like you're giving them anymore money or supporting them from here on out. Not sure how that's "fuck you, got mine." Who exactly is being fucked here? It would make more sense if Plex had a limited number of passes that people hoarded early on like boomers with property. In this case the financial side of things is already a done deal, and doesn't somehow deprive others of a resource.

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[-] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 day ago

Jeeeeeeelifin, jellifin. jeeeeely jellifin...

[-] DannyMac@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 day ago

Bye, bye Plex!

What a shocking chapter of "Plex and the Quest for Investiblity!"

[-] swearengen@sopuli.xyz 31 points 1 day ago

Switched my users to Jellyfin this spring when Plex first announced this move, pretty seamless transition.

I actually prefer Jellyfin and it's UI compared to the new one Plex rolled out on Roku, what a mess that is to navigate now.

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[-] bonenode@piefed.social 42 points 1 day ago

Cue all the users with lifetime passes not seeing that this is slowly becoming a problem...

[-] turdas@suppo.fi 39 points 1 day ago

Abandoning streaming services only to become a serf of another commercial subscription service seems like such a bizarre move that I really don't understand how Plex users even exist.

[-] kieron115@startrek.website 6 points 1 day ago

I bought a lifetime pass for 100 bucks about 10 years ago, and have had 10 years of not having to give a shit about these announcements. I've saved well over 100 bucks on streaming services in that time. Worth it 1000%.

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[-] excursion22@piefed.ca 9 points 1 day ago

I have a lifetime pass and switched to Jellyfin years ago. Plex shoving their streaming content down my throat while putting my local libraries in the most tedious spots to access in the menus was a very quick turn off.

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[-] deforestgump@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago

Jellyfin. All day, every day

[-] northernlights@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago

Argh that was so useful in hotels. I'd take a little roku stick and poof.

[-] Asweet@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

I tried setting up Jellyfin a while ago, but ran into a lot of difficulties with TV show matching. Plex is a lot better at grabbing a pack of loosely organized files and understanding episode structure without renaming or moving files, which is great for continuing to seed files that are in the library.

I haven’t seen anyone discuss this, so maybe I’m doing something wrong? If not, this is the one major blocker that I have before rolling it out Jellyfin as an alternative to the people I’ve shared my plex server with.

Really want that in place because the writing seems to be on the wall (in flashing neon) about the direction Plex is going

[-] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Plex is a lot better at grabbing a pack of loosely organized files and understanding episode structure without renaming or moving files, which is great for continuing to seed files that are in the library.

You may want to look into the *arr suite. Sonarr for managing TV show downloads, Radarr for managing movie downloads, Jellyseerr for managing media requests, Prowlarr for managing torrent/usenet indexers (search engines), Cleanuparr for automatic download management, and Huntarr for automatic downloads.

I haven’t seen anyone discuss this, so maybe I’m doing something wrong?

The go-to these days is to use hardlinks, which will allow you to have the files show up in two places at once. Sort of like a shortcut, but it actually shows the true file instead of simply pointing to a different file location. One stays in your torrent’s location for seeding, and a second hardlink is created in your media folder, with proper naming structure for Plex/Jellyfin to find. The *arr suite automates that process. It tracks your downloads, and automatically creates Plex/Jellyfin file names in the corresponding library folders when the download is completed.

It’s the best in every sense:

  • You can continue seeding.
  • You don’t need to keep multiple copies of the same file, because the hardlink in your library folder is pointing to the same file as the torrent. So it doesn’t take up twice as much space on your drive.
  • You get proper naming conventions for your media discovery.
  • You don’t need to manually manage your library.

The big downside to hardlinks is that they can’t be used across drives or partitions. The hardlink can only point to a file on the same drive. So if your torrent download folder is on a different drive than your library folders, you can’t use hardlinks.

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this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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