So I just received offer for PLEX pass lifetime for less than 75$. Very cheap, but I’m now confused what do I really get or substantial improvement by buying this?
Here is some of the PLEX pass feature that I’m aware of:
PLEX cloud. I would love to buy the pass for this feature but I read that this is going to go away soon…
synching. I roll my own solution that will smart sync my stuff now which work the best for me. Can’t share this with public . so I’m not interested in using PLEX sync, especially when I read many people having sync issues.
trailer. Meh. I don’t go to PLEX to watch trailers.
advance music and picture feature. Unfortunately past problem made me move my collection to google music, photo and Spotify. I’m not using PLEX for music and photo.
I’m using nvidia shield TV and 99% of the playback has always been direct play and direct stream.
What else? Any substantial improvement or product that worth 75$?
Well, YMMV.
I found it worth the money to use OTA tuner for recording and live tv guide.
Also I am in the habit of supporting endeavours I consider worth while and as alternatives for mass market greedheads. Supporting Plex, if it helps make it better is a win win.
If its too much $$ no one will fault you. As you said you roll your own so good on yah.
Pay once and never have to worry about another bill coming in from Plex. At $75 I’m jealous, I picked up the lifetime pass 5yrs or so ago and it was a lot more than $75.
In the past I used to roll my own but have grown tired of the necessary upkeep on my end and the time associated with doing so. For the few bucks they are asking it just made sense for me to hand that workload over to someone else so I can focus on other things and enjoy my media content served up by Plex.
Oh and let’s not forget the 20% Western Digital discount code they provide with each lifetime membership. Depending on what you purchase that could very well cover the Plex lifetime cost.
But make sure you are certain on what you are going to purchase with the discount code because it is a single use. I used mine on a purchase that I returned and am now on the hunt for anyone that happens to have a WD discount code they will not be using.
I would love ota live TV but I have moved to Japan and while PLEX says it Support Japan I have yet to see a successful story how I can watch live TV on PLEX in Japan.
To be clear, the discount is not automatic with a subscription. As part of Plex Pass, we offer discounts from partners when they have a promotion. Every person with a Plex Pass has access to these (one per promotion). Sometimes they are US only, some are US an EU. There are different partners and different discounts, it just depends on what our partners want to do. If you sign up when there are no discounts, then you have to wait for the next one.
Edit - Plex is also adding new feature. There may not be something that catches your eye now, but maybe something in the future will, and by having the Lifetime Plex Pass, you will get those too. Another cost saver is the ability to activate the mobile apps. With Plex Home, your users also get that ability. At $5 per activation, that can add up and also help payback your investment.
You’ll be supporting the Plex team and you won’t be locked out of any future features that may be plex pass only. I had the same dilemma with Plex, Emby, and Kodi (donated to all); the free feature-set covered so much that looking at the comparison chart, there wasn’t much to gain by upgrading. Currently the biggest plex pass features for me are multiple users, gpu acceleration (not using yet, but interested for remote users), and dvr.
I suspect this will be a very unpopular post, but…
To be perfectly honest, don’t do it, they’re not in a place right now where they respect their customers, I suspect they’re just trying to put in heavy hitting features to sell out the product to a big company.
Top feature requests go unanswered for years. (message of the day?) Not even a no. Just silence.
Every other version update breaks some functionality, rolling back is problematic, sometimes difficult. People post the exact problem in the forums (precise web header missing a space) , no one cared, no one reads the forums, it was broken for six months, then fixed, then broken for 2 more releases, then fixed again. I get the project is probably a merge nightmare, but they’re not supporting us so who cares?
sync has never worked well and doesn’t work at all from release to release. Want to sync a few hundred songs? Forget it.
They force updates down your throat (client and server) that change the core functionality so much you have to actively stay alert to keep your family seeing the content intended for them. I have podcasts with NSFW content littered on my kids accounts, the server merge is massive useless reorganization headache.
They’re nixing watch it later, which means all the Youtube plugins based on that will stop working which was one of the major draws for my needs.
I’m tired of dealing with it, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone else deal with it, they need to get more in tune with their customers difficulties .
Thank you guys for the suggestions.
I have decided not to purchase the cheap 74.99$ plex pass lifetime.
The thing that made me do this is:
On recent announcement, plex team decided to retire some features and focus on core features such as improving media playback. It’s great to see this. However the way they communicate with the current customers doesn’t seem to look professional and mature. All this years I have the feeling that plex looks like a fun project done by people in their weekends. It looks great, but we can’t expect them to take things seriously, this kind of thing that I get from the way they treat problems that people have.
I don’t know, maybe it’s the way they announce things, or the way they support currently paying customers, or the way they make decisions as company making buggy releases all this time. It is great when it’s not buggy, but rarely they show enterprise level professional act or attitude towards customer problem. They just don’t convey professionalism or confidence…? I’m one of the early plex adopter going way back to years ago. Each time plex made a new release my feeling change from being excited for what cool feature I will get into suspicious feeling of “what do you break this time”
I believe that when you have premium products and expect people to pay monthly or lifetime whatever, you have to make clear distinction,things that people will objectively agrees, like having SLA, or sets of defined goals and road map influenced by your paying customers etc. The current plex staff attitude doesn’t convey any of that towards current problems nor future improvement. It’s all feels like a donation kind of thing… We pay monthly or lifetime and plex will do whatever they want. It’s great when they fix our problem with mew release (by a chance) but that’s it, and most of the time when they don’t fix your problem you are out of luck… It’s a patience game between waiting until plex get their act together or you roll your own solution or moving on to emby etc. It’s not clear the future plex road map, but is certainly clear they focus much more on things that most people don’t seem care, it’s as if they try to build product not based on what people want, but based on things that we don’t know.
So all of things that have happened made me think plex maybe just trying things as they go as a company and trying to set an environment to be bought by other companies. For example :They try to develop podcasts and focus so much despite most people wondering why, or who uses it. Or many other things in an attempt to show to potential buyers that plex can have side revenue from news and podcasts and some random cool ■■■■■
…So… it almost looks like things don’t matter, paying customers don’t matter, buggy releases don’t matter, media playback experience, UI UX don’t matter because their end game most likely isn’t aligned with the interest of their paying customers.
Well, this turns out to be a long post.
I don’t have problems with paying lifetime or even monthly subscription but until I get that confidence, professionalism and that plex is moving based on customer-first attitude, this all looks like a great software that could have donation, not a monthly fee.
Well I’m glad they focus back on core stuff such as media playback experience etc. It is at least look like plex is starting(?) to listening…
No one should convince anyone to get plex pass lifetime.
If you have not already convinced yourself, then it is probably not right for you anyway.
Plex isn’t perfect, far from it, but it also does do a lot things fairly well, or good enough, most of the time, that it’s worth it for a lot of people.
Honestly, I’m considering asking for a refund of my ‘lifetime’ Plex pass.
I’ve not reached that point yet, but, sadly to say, Plex feature set is no longer the product I purchased 5+ years ago with features being removed.
I could and have looked past certain features being added I didn’t ask for, but when you remove core functionality I use frequently/almost daily, it’s upsetting.
Good luck with that.
There have been a few posts recently stating they have been point blank refused.
There is seemingly now a blanket statement in reply that if you have had your lifetime pass for ‘X period’ of time it’s not happening.(I think it was stated as ‘X period’ being a year, I don’t recall exactly.)
That said it’s worth a try.
The removal of the 5 dollar cost is a good reason to pay the lifetime fee. I would perhaps suggest a few more up front perks…it is difficult to gauge the upgrades value when little to no information exists on what it offers since the discounts vary.
Get a partnership going with Netflix, or some other comparable service that offers offline viewing via download. Have Netflix use the Plex system to provide offline viewing of content (store the content on the server). That IMO would be a huge draw. Just an idea to put out there…
This won’t happen. Other steaming service is very different beast and different business model. They will provide offline viewing through their own apps that will still have DRM but they will never ever do that with plex apps. Hell will be frozen first before that.
In fact just the point that we rip our own bluray s to put into plex servers are so bad in the eyes of hulu, netflix etc.
But you are right, it’s difficult to gauge 'is it worth it ’ when the current value is based on hopes that in the future plex will build premium service, as opposed to selling it based on current information and things that is clear.
That’s great when they’re supporting development of features I use.
As of late, they are not, and even worse, they’re taking some key ones away.
To each their own. Plex hasn’t seemed customer focused for quite some time.
Perhaps that will change, but, I don’t expect it to.
Fair enough. I choose to support development for a service I use a lot, but their development plan and roadmap is none of my concern, really. Yeah, they’re killing features that only got used by an handful of people because they’re time consuming to maintain… I can appreciate that. As a dev I wish IE would just die, it’s holding the whole internet back.
Plex do develop new things I use, though; I welcome the new subtitle features.
Also currently being worked on: android player improvements. Sync improvements. New audio player.
…so it’s a bit harsh to say they’re not customer focussed just because you may fall in the 2% who had their toys taken away. They’re sorry, but that’s unfortunately how it’s gotta be. Some ■■■■ has to die and your $75 doesn’t change that.
So yeah. Buy it. Don’t buy it. But whining that they’re not doing anything for customers sounds like your mind is already made up.
Well maybe @JamminR has earned that right, or has simply seen the light. Personally I have been a follower of his helpful informative posts for a long time. If it has taken the him circa 3500 posts to finally see that light then more power to him. Until the last few days maybe a couple of weeks there has hardly ever been any negativity in his posts.
Either way it’s taken him 7 years to “already have made his mind up.” Talk about rash decisions.
I think I thought I was replying to @raditokyo - but just because he’s been a paid up member and got 7 years’ service doesn’t mean he’s right.
It’s not like they’re raking in the coin to put towards active development, and ‘key’ features is subjective. When a product can no longer sustain those features it’s sad, but they’ve got to die. This is still going to be a fairly niche application that would probably barely pay the incomes of two people.
…and it’s not even about being customer focused, it’s about business sustainability. If you’ve got features that have very very minimal use and cost you a ton to maintain it’s just not feasible.
Going back to the OP: Don’t buy it. If you can’t see the value, you can’t see the value.
For me, working passthrough, organisation, some transcoding and a bunch of other minor automation features made it well worth the price. If it suddenly didn’t do half the stuff I want I wouldn’t feel hard done by. If it folded tomorrow, I wouldn’t feel ripped off. I’ve had my value, and ongoing value is a bonus.
