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Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April (www.plex.tv)

submitted 2 days ago by Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Ahoy mateys, it's time to setup Jellyfin if you prefer not to pay for the privilege of self-hosting your own content.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/27204525

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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[-] Talaraine@fedia.io 1 points 3 hours ago

I thought it was pretty commonplace for people to just set up a vpn on their router and act like they're on their own network. I guess I'm an idiot, but I'm actually surprised people were paying for this in the first place.

[-] Grostleton@lemm.ee 12 points 1 day ago

Lol, OK Plex, cya.

They're honestly lucky I was willing to pay the $2.99 or whatever it was to be able to access MY server, using MY internet and cell data, to access MY media files from MY phone. Plenty fair a price for a nice app, might've paid a few bucks more but they can screw off trying to charge a monthly fee for... nothing in particular in my usage case.

Literally just set up Jellyfin w/ Tailscale which took all of 10 minutes and works just as well. GG no re 🖕

[-] EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 day ago

Was a little worried from the headline that it was being moved to another subscription tier.

I've owned a Plex Pass Lifetime subscription since it's basically been available. I've honestly forgotten Remote Streaming was a free service at this point.

[-] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 93 points 2 days ago

Yet again, FOSS showing why it's always the way to go vs proprietary tech. So glad I started my self-hosting journey with Jellyfin!

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[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 67 points 1 day ago

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.

What "resources" do you need, exactly, to allow my friends to stream from my server?

[-] Pika@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

mr crabs money meme with mr crabs and an announcer outside of the krusty crab

for real though, such a dumb decision on plex's part lol

[-] Carrot@lemmy.today 21 points 1 day ago

Developers to keep things up to date and secure. Which I wouldn't mind paying for, but instead they spend it all on making Plex a social media that emails your friends a list of shows you watch? I can tell you right now that other than "watch together" no one is using the Plex social features on purpose

[-] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 15 hours ago

Pretty sure they’re also sunsetting watch together lol

[-] Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 14 points 1 day ago

As long as you have Plex pass it's all good and nothing changes. That said, this was exactly my reaction. Plex expends exactly zero fucking resources for my server, so wtf is this shit supposed to mean?

[-] kieron115@startrek.website 29 points 1 day ago

I'm pretty sure that's corporate speak for "we need to drive plex pass subscriptions more so we need to lock more feature behind it."

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[-] cujo@sh.itjust.works 102 points 2 days ago

Just gonna... Drop this here...

[-] im_not_here@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 1 day ago

In my experience Jellyfin doesn't find or handle subtitles nearly as well, and I can't watch modern movies without subtitles.

[-] cujo@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

I have never had an issue with subtitles on Jellyfin, and my wife has turned our household into an always-on subtitles household. Are you making use of the Open Subtitles plugin?

[-] Syun@retrolemmy.com 13 points 1 day ago

It's pleasantly surprising that they aren't deep sixing the lifetime pass.

Yet.

[-] ilega_dh@feddit.nl 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah this is definitely coming at some point. What are we gonna do? Stop paying?

[-] taiidan@slrpnk.net 34 points 1 day ago

Fuck around with proprietary software and find out.

[-] Pika@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago

I really don't see how anyone in their hierarchy thought this was a good idea.

There are at least 3 other competitors that moreorless work better than plex already does, without even having a subscription.

I'm amazed they decided to go this route, especially when migrating is as simple as uninstall plex, install competitor of choice(like jellyfin), and then just specify media locations.

the only real annoying part is remaking user accounts and losing watch progress/history, but there is usually a migration tool for that

[-] deeply_moving_queef@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 day ago

The key difference is client app support for various platforms. Jellyfin is far behind Plex on that front, and I say this as a user and advocate for Jellyfin. That’s a huge hurdle for migrating even just family and friends users.

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[-] metaStatic@kbin.earth 47 points 2 days ago

They would charge you to watch your own DVDs if they could

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[-] Zebra@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

So I've currently got a yearly Plex Pass, because I didn't want to get locked into Plex or feel any pressure to stay if they went down the dunny, but have been putting off migrating to JellyFin. For anybody who has, how did you find the process?

My media isn't named the most sensibly. I just keep whatever name it came with for the most part. I also liked how Plex just handled the authentication and remote streaming for me - at no stage did I have to open up a port on my router, setup a reverse proxy, etc. Can I migrate my watch history?

I'm fairly new to this. Any migration advice or thoughts would be appreciated!

E: only me, though I stream things externally while out of the house fairly regularly. I'm tech literate enough to follow a readme and read docs, but that's about it. I don't need to worry about other, less tech savvy, users streaming my library

[-] rustyricotta@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

I switched to jellyfish last year. Though I didn't try to get watch history over. Jellyfin should handle your file structure very similarly to Plex, so if what you have now works, it should work on jellyfin.

If it's only you and you're only using phones and laptops outside, then you can just skip reverse proxy and all that and just VPN into your system. Wireguard, tailscale, or zerotier are good options with simple easy setups.

I think you should just give jellyfin a try. You can run it at the same time as Plex, so you can just play around with it and see how you like it.

[-] Zebra@lemmy.nz 1 points 16 hours ago

Thanks rusty for the helpful answer! I'm going to have a look at downloading it and setting it up later tonight. I've heard a lot of good things about tailscale, so I might look for some newbie tailscale guides. When it comes to that kinda stuff, my biggest worry is that I might miss a step or not set it up right and then I've ended up exposing everything to the unfiltered internet and then my PC ends up in a botnet

[-] k0e3@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 day ago

I'm probably gonna set up Jellyfin this weekend. Any tips for a first timer?

[-] nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 day ago

If setting up official docker container looks hard, check out linuxserver.io's docker container for Jellyfin. Even HWA is very easy.

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[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago

Take it slow.
Don't ditch Plex just yet but slowly transition the move.
Test it with your usual browser. If playback doesnt work, test with another browser or the phone app.

[-] 007ace@lemm.ee 7 points 1 day ago

Set up docker. I ran an installation on Linux and on Windows for a few years but having it running from docker using external drives for library is a game changer. Always up to date. User files and settings Safed on a seperate folder so you can transfer it to a different os any time. Fantastic.

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[-] randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

Does anyone have any helpful guides on setting up jellyfin with a certificate so they can privately host it while also keeping it secure and up to date? I think if using docker it would make sense to use compose and configure traeffic proxy and use let's encrypt for certificates.

Plex takes care of this for you with their cert and authentication systems. I feel like if user management and secure authentication is easy to set up then that is the primary reason to leave Plex. If I can just hand out accounts to anyone whom I would like to access my instance with ease then my family members could easily access it.

If one was to host from the home, using something like tailscale to host it online with forwarding a port would also be ideal.

[-] Xanza@lemm.ee 1 points 22 hours ago

Does anyone have any helpful guides on setting up jellyfin with a certificate so they can privately host it while also keeping it secure and up to date?

You can expose jellyfin via a reverse_proxy like caddy2, godoxy, ssl-proxy, or you can use something like lego to directly manage your certificates without the proxy. Lego is great because it works with dozens of dns providers, even cloudflare.

[-] crazyminner@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Look into a thing called Caddy. It can do a few things but it makes certificates super easy. You will likely need to buy a domain tho. They can be cheap if you don't care what its called.

[-] randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 23 hours ago

Cool. I was just looking to see if someone had a guide because I'm trying to understand the pitfalls of doing it this way and I'm curious if anyone else has opened up Jellyfin to the world.

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 28 points 2 days ago

Still don’t get why people use Plex over Jellyfin

[-] EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

For me?

Remote Play (I've never been able to get it to consistently work on every device with Jellyfin)
PlexAmp is awesome
LiveTV
IPTV
Way better clients
Numerous small little issues.

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[-] brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 day ago

In my own house, or just myself. Jellyfin is fine. I haven't spent as much time on it though compared to Plex.

Plex has its own user auth, I don't need to manage that. My friends and family don't have to hit me up for password resets.

It has apps on pretty much every device.

Users can just log in. They don't need to know what server to type in.

[-] Honse@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 23 hours ago

Just gonna drop this link here for anyone who's interested in a 3rd party Jellyfin user management application. This fixes the issues related to inviting users and allowing them to reset their own passwords. Would obviously prefer all of this built into jellyfin, but solutions do exist for those determined enough.

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[-] Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 18 points 1 day ago

This headline is misleading. If the owner of the server has Plex pass than the users can use remote streaming as normal. If the owner does not have Plex pass, then the users need Plex pass to use that server remotely

Imo a stupid move by Plex, but as a lifetime Plex pass holder, no one that uses mine will have to worry so I'm relatively unbothered.

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[-] Vaggumon@lemm.ee 23 points 2 days ago

Glad I moved to JellyFin years ago.