Actually seeing as how hetzner is only way to get hardware transcoding affordably (sub 40€ price tag) it’s the same we are losing features because they are banning hetzner and no other hosting provider has igpu without dishing out 100€+ a month most often way more some not at all which some just can’t afford, where they also can’t afford to buy the hardware straight up for home hosting meaning plex pass hardware acceleration is being made unavailable, swapping an OS is free and you can stay where you are for same price, swapping provider is not
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No, it’s not. It’s the same as you still have those features and having to modify your deployment to utilize them. Plex has not, in any way, removed those features from your Plex Pass subscription. They have inconvenienced you, to be sure. But every single advertised feature available to you today will still be available to you on 10/12 (or 12/10, depending on how you represent dates in your region).
While I agree, I still see an issue with them making my two full price lifelong subscription obsolete in my use cases.
You don’t need hardware transcoding if your workload is low enough.
My system actually doesn’t support hardware transcoding to start with. That’s one reason I’m not asking for a Plex Pass refund because of that removal. Use the right clients and you don’t need much horsepower at all. This is certainly going to be a bit of a challenge when you are sharing your server with others, but you also don’t have to share with them or you can get them a cleint to use if they don’t have one.
I haven’t looked at pricing recently for this, but have you considered co-location provider instead of a VPS? Ship them an Intel NUC for your server and you have your own dedicated system with hardware transcoding.
Kimsufi has i7-4790K servers that support QuickSync starting at $30/mo.
On 100mbps bandwidth? 
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“we are no longer providing services in your neighborhood, but you are welcome to move” is not acceptable in these circumstances, im not sure why you’re pretending that they are
Yea unfortunately…
You are intentionally misunderstanding what I’m saying. Telling folks to pack up and leave because you don’t like their neighborhood is unreasonable, therefore legitimate customers are rightfully pissed off. (As they should be)
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Hardware transcoding isn’t about workload, it’s faster better and higher quality when transcoding compared to cpu which my first post in this has already mentioned you’re being disingenuous
Sure plex “allowing” me to keep the feature unlocked but unusable unless I win the lottery, loopholes are fun eh
Well, they are telling you that the warehouse you buy from is no longer supported. A warehouse that has some shady characters selling from that warehouse. Plex don’t actually supply that warehouse, you just decided to use that warehouse to store that offering.
Does it suck for legitimate users of that warehouse - absolutely.
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100 Mbps is never unfortunate LOL, well not for us. I got excited when we were able to migrate from 3 Mbps we had for years to 25 Mbps (and now 80 Mbps) down. Upstream we are lucky to have 15 Mbps (well, our ISP tell us that) 
The same ISP that bans various IP ranges (as do all our ISPs locally)
Although I feel for those not selling PlexShares who are affected, hosting companies are companies and not neighborhoods. If Hetzer was not fielding abuse complaints from Plex this is a business issue, not a neighborhood issue.
Plex is trying to build a brand and make money off of streaming/advertising channels and it’s hard to get people to watch your ads when your viewers can pay someone they found on Reddit to download the same content without commercials for a nominal amount and stream it that way.
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Well they are already laying off people what’s next ?
I agree the pre-set settings in Plex for their transcoder implementation may not be the best from an encoder’s perspective, but transcoding by hardware is going to be lower-quality really. It operates within the confines of how the codec is implemented in silicon for acceleration. Software-based will be better because it can be whatever it needs to be for the type of material. The codec is a piece of a software and a general purpose CPU can execute it with any options available as part of the codec, and the codec can be updated to newer versions supporting new features down the line. These limitations are why hardware accelerated encoding on older GPU/iGPUs was not recommended for best quality. Since then the GPUs have gotten better to where the difference is not perceptible by most viewers.
The reason people want hardware accelerated encoding is because they want to run multiple streams of transcoding to clients with reduced power/heat generation. Something that cannot be accomplished in software without higher general computational power. So not sure how you are stating with a straight face that this “isn’t about workload”.
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No, I’m not. Claiming that folks are being relegated to a corner of the Internet is in no way accurate.
I’m not directly responding to you in what follows.
Look, I’m not arguing that this action is good or bad. I’m suggesting that folks leave off the hyperbole when talking about it. There’s enough wrong with this that it’s not necessary. Talk about how it’s going to inconvenience you. Talk about potential solutions or less targetable hosting providers.
Just stop with the over-the-top statements. Your Plex Pass has not been invalidated. Your account hasn’t been banned.
Move to another hosting provider if it makes sense. Or move on to another media server platform if it suits you. Heck, report Plex to your local competition authority if it feels as though your rights have been impinged. (I don’t personally think you have a leg to stand on there.)
I get it. You liked your hosting provider. You won’t be able to use them any longer. You’re angry about it and you want to express that anger. You’ve been inconvenienced. Just remember there is a legitimate reason behind this action; you were unfortunate collateral damage, not targets. It matters.
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There’s no lottery, and no loophole being exploited. Just a cause and effect. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I think it’s very unfortunate that non-ToS abusers are being caught up in this.
Well, there is a circular argument.
Falling revenue stream/unable to reach revenue stream goal.
Post Covid, restructuring occurs (some would argue a good thing along with a refocus).
Plex look for ways to increase revenue stream by isolating ‘cheats’.
Outrage.
Sadly, some users get caught up in the hamfisted approach. Those legitimate users either move to another software offering, migrate their server or find a way around the IP ban.
Tossing a one liner into a thread really does nothing though 
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Well there is always KODI just have to use both
