I actually abandoned Plex for Emby simply because it is so focused on services to first world countries that it is constantly telling me to pay them for features that serve no purpose at all.
Firstly just some “free to skip over ranting”:
I watch my media on my TV so why would I want to plug in a tuner to have plex show me TV broadcasts on my TV? It’s kinda what the TV is built for, ya know! Also, cable comes with PVR so why would I NOT use the PVR that comes with the cable subscription just so I can instead use Plex as my PVR? … and then ONLY for FTA programs, not the stuff exclusive to Cable? That statement on the front page that if you have an antenna you no longer need to pay for cable is absolute bull as far as my logic tells me…
So what does plex pass offer?
Sync with mobiles for offline view. Create accounts for other people to view your media. Share your media with other people. Upload your photos to share with other people. Stop just watching what you want to watch and rather watch trailers before your movies first.
TLDR version of what Plex Pass offers: An insane monthly bill for everyone on a metered connection. The end.
All I wanted was the ability to stream my media from my living room to my tablet while I am taking a hot soak… or to stream something from my living room to my phone while I am sitting on my porch. … but no. when you are connected to your LAN via WiFi you need to pay a monthly fee or a lifetime subscription before you are allowed to stream something from your living room to just one room further in your house. Really? I have to PAY to watch something that is already in my house on a device that is ALSO in my house? Really? Hell, sometimes I am in the same room as my media but Plex demands I pay to be able to watch my media.
I came here today to request that LAN streaming NOT incur a huge phone bill since I don’t need to send my media from my NAS to the internet and then back to my phone. And if they are not forcing my LAN connection to send data over the internet back to my device, then why the heck are they forcing me to pay them to stream video a whole 3 feet from the NAS?
So I came here to ask them and the first thing I notice is: “We don’t want you to speak to us. Go to the forum and ask our users for help”. Then I noticed this post which just made me go: “What!? I have to pay them to show me content with ads in it!?”
And now I couldn’t care less about Plex any more. Keep it. My money is going to Emby now. Good bye and good riddance
Halleluya! Someone else who wants to use Plex to view movies on his Lan.
I was beginning to think I am the only person on the planet who knows that the N in LAN stands for Network.
If you want to stream data across your LAN you must have internet access or else please wait till you have internet access. Plex cannot work on a LAN without internet. who ever heard of a network without internet? It’s called Local Access Internet but spelled “LAN” by stupid people only.
This seems to be the Plex train of thought.
So my monthly data cap is reached and I can no longer play on the internet when I’m not working so I go sit down in front of my TV, turn on Plex and… nothing. without internet I can’t login to Plex and thus cannot watch the content that is on the NAS 1 foot from the TV I am trying to watch it on.
what a complete pile of garbage for anyone who doesn’t have access to enough bandwidth to share his movie collection with friends and family right across the entire planet… complete with ads no less.
Thank you ! Finally someone who remember what was Plex before all these online services “upgrades”. This is too much. Stop Plex, it’s enough. This is getting ridiculous especially when your core app still have recurrent troubles with subtitles compatibilities or mobile application issues.
And you know what really upset me the most ? Is that all of this discussion will serve nothing. Feature miss his shot, users are saying facts and we get these kind of response:
Seriously, they either won’t care about whether ads are shown to them or not and if they do the will come to you and you can explain to them. In the end, it is your people and not some strangers, right? And if they don’t come, they won’t die from watching some ads and either haven’t discovered the new library or they just don’t care.
What the F. Just because somebody don’t agree with this decision/feature involve that he’s renting or selling his Plex to strangers ? What are you ? A child ? My people like you said cares pretty much about ads and that’s the whole problem. They are using Plex because the first purpose to Plex is to deliver my OWN content (which do not contain ads). Why should it be my job to explain an unwanted feature added and enabled without my consent on my setup ? Adding and working on a feature like this is cleary not a good sign whatsoever of the business model of Plex now. It’s not because you don’t care that all users don’t care.
But Plex will continue to add these kind of services until they is nothing left to add. Meanwhile Jellyfin and other alternatives are working on their core app. At this rhythm, I don’t think users will be more patient, neither am I.
There are two kinds of media consumers:
Ad Consumers - that’s you - are so de-sensitized to advertising you’ll gleefully watch a first run Star Wars Movie on Ad-Supported TV. You just don’t care and you don’t get why other people do.
Ad Haters - that’s us (the noisy ones in this thread). We hate advertising SO MUCH we’ll do ANYTHING to watch media without it, up to and including downright theft, with a possibility of PRISON to avoid it. We are Plex’s first user base. We were happy.
Now, here it comes. Advertising in our sanctuary.
You know that old story about the camel, his nose, sticking it in the tent, then moving in with his in-laws?
Yea, that one.
Go enjoy your advertising and all this wonderful new media we’re all here for.
We’ll disable it, beetch about it for a while, then when it’s clear the nose is breathing all over our Couscous and there isn’t a thing we can do about it - things will quiet down.
Emby Sucks
Jellyfin Sucks
There’s no where for anybody to go.
It’s gonna be noisy for a while.
Get used to it - but don’t be amazed by it.
I get it. I’m actually closer to your boat than you think. I have a Mom in a nursing home that is a consumer of my stuff, but she also likes stuff I would never put on my server that she can find on the free Roku aps that support ad content. This is right up her alley.
As for me… I’ll browse the content, and if there’s something in there that looks interesting (that I don’t have the energy to seek out and download on my own), I’ll check it out.
Don’t get me wrong… I’m digging through my stuff first.
Just wanted to let you know on which side of the advertising fence you stand on and really hope you aren’t peeing every 7 minutes… I am, but if it’s not that waking me up, it’s just something else.
You are correct its not your job because you are incorrect, it’s not actually “on your setup.” Plex doesn’t need your consent (or mine) to add new features. That’s just ridiculous (whether you like the new feature or not.)
Online media sources in Plex are not new, nor do any of them have anything to do with your Plex Media Server. They are all client side.
Which is why, In my opinion, Online Media Sources & PMS should be separated. If these features are so good & Plex knows 100% that this is what the people want, It should be able to survive on its own as a standalone app (Paid for by Adverts) & not piggy bank on the back of PMS & its users that the majority of already pay for…
They are. One does not need a Plex Media Server to use Online Media Sources, only a Plex user account and a Plex client application which supports them.
I completely get the complaints about adding an ad-supported service to Plex. But this post confused me a bit. Plex doesn’t require a fee to stream within your home network. If you have a strange network, like a double-NAT where you’ve got your server hooked up to a bridge router and the bridge router is hooked up to another router that has internet access Plex will bounce your media to their server and back to get around network issues.
If you have a flat network with everything connected directly to one router (either ethernet or wifi), then you shouldn’t have that problem.
If you lose internet completely you’ll lose some Plex features, some clients need it to download the UI. But if your media is streaming to Plex servers and back there’s probably something going on with your network.
I can’t imagine the clients needed much of anything added, they’re just downloading content info and video from Plex instead of your server, the bloat’s all on Plex’s end.
The unfortunate part of all this for me is it makes it feel like the features I wanted, especially something like PsuedoTV, are never going to happen. Even something as simple as remembering audio/subtitle preferences in TV series would make a huge difference in how I watch my media.
@SE56 sent me a link that describes a “trick” or (as I think of it) “a setting” that needs to be configured in settings to make Plex work as intended. The reason why I said what I said was because my setup was as flat as can be (NAS runs Plex Server, Content resides on the NAS’s HDDs, Plex clients connect to the server on the NAS via the LAN)…
…and yet I still can’t stream to my phone/tablet (ever) and when there is no internet then my Apple TV won’t even show the UI (much less anything else) and my other devices are simply stuck on the dashboard but don’t even show my content at all. EVENTUALLY my content appears on the list but trying to actually WATCH anything, yeah, forget about it. Loading spinner plays into infinity and beyond…
My needs are very few: Play my content to my devices inside my house. The end. I have 0 need/interest in ANYTHING that is outside my LAN. all I need/ed was for Plex to play what it sees on my HDD to devices connected to the LAN. That is absolutely all I wanted from Plex… but without internet access I could just forget about it.
Apparently I can bypass the online requirement with some proper settings configuration so I’ll be trying that out and seeing if this works. I am not holding out any hope for my iPad or Galaxy actually streaming stuff across the LAN but I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised
so yeah, my previous comment simply meant: Without having internet one can’t play anything at all and without Plex Pass one can’t stream to mobile devices connected to the LAN. Only with a Plex Pass can I stream from my living room to my phone while I am chilling in the pool or soaking in the bathtub. I would have thought: “If my device can pick up my router then it should be able to use Plex. If it cannot directly connect to my router then I need to pay for Plex to stream my content over the internet”.
It’s a fair assumption, I think… but it seemed to be not the case. Had to pay to stream within the confines of my own home. No fancy network or double routers or anything, just Plex saying “Pay up or go away”.
I think I know better now:
If it’s mobile, pay up or go away. If it’s non mobile, configure your server to not authenticate you online. Job done.
You can “unlock” any mobile app for a one-time fee.
One-Time Purchase in the App
Users who don’t have a Plex Pass subscription—and aren’t interested in a subscription—can unlock Plex for iOS through a simple, one-time purchase.
The purchase is tied to your Apple ID. You can download and use on any iOS device, when using the Apple ID that made the original purchase. The purchase does not extend to a different Apple ID, nor does it extend to other app stores, such as Amazon or Google Play.
