Plex is only going to get worse from here on out. This is just the beginning. Best to jump ship while you can
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First Watch Together is removed and now they pull this crap. Done with Plex. Thanks for helping users discover Emby and Jellyfin!
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Enjoy being a corporate bootlicker 
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I, too, wish to pretend inflation isnât a thing, and the prices Plex charged ten years ago have no reason to increase now.
So if inflation adds to personal financial issues, how is me spending even more money on a Plex a subscription helping me? Lmao, economics must be hard for you 
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What I think is most interesting here is that any argument for âRemote access costs Plex money, so it makes sense to charge for it!â is that⊠Itâs not really that true? Yes, Plex manages certs and the like, but they have to provide that whether you view your content remotely or not. The certs are used to establish a secure connection between a client and a server, no matter where in the world that server is.
So if every single Plex user stopped viewing their content remotely, Plex would still have to handle exactly as much encryption/cert traffic to direct your clients to the local server as it would over the internet. So to claim that this is necessary to offload their costs to the people that use it is just not true.
However, I know exactly what the reason for this is: To counter people that sell their server access, against Plexâs TOS. See, without this, anyone can spin up a brand new instance of the server with the same metadata, with a new account, and invite everyone to their server and charge for it. Plex may eventually track down that the server is selling access and ban the account, but this user can spin up a brand new one within seconds and be back in business.
By forcing these TOS-breaking servers to either fork over for a (now VERY expensive Plex Pass) every time they are banned, they can reap some money back, or even make such servers economically negative. Additionally, by having the userâs payment information/registration, they can go after repeat offenders permanently, or even legally (we got your CC info!).
Alternatively, the users of these pay servers would have to personally pay Plex 2/month in addition to the x/month they pay to the server host. If the users are not aware that paying for Plex is bad, they may start to wonder why they have to pay 2 people to watch Plex, rather than the one.
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From what Iâve seen in the forum they are doing a lot of development work that will assist the self hosted owner:
- They recently released the HEVC encoding engine.
- They are working on re-writing the transcoding engine to upgrade to ffmpeg 6.1 going from a bastardised version of ffmpeg 2 that has been patch to 3, then 4.4. This opens the future for AV1 encoding and ffmpeg 7.x at some point
- Completly rewriting the client apps so that they are on a common code base to enable the easier implementation of future features and upgrades.
My partner has a lifetime pass, Iâm in his Plex Home, we both have our own servers. I didnât see Plex Home mentioned anywhere in the post, so if I understand correctly:
- heâll be able to watch from either server at home or remotely
- Iâll be able to watch from either server while at home
- but if I want to watch something on my server remotely Iâll now have to pay?
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Far too many people in this thread seem to have an undue sense of entitlement. Nobody owes you free software. Lots of us have made use of Plex for over a decade completely free of charge, itâs not unreasonable for them to want to fund ongoing development.
If you donât want to pay, donât use it, simple. Iâm buying a lifetime pass, the current price is phenomenal value in my opinion.
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Now jellyfin is the new alternative.
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Not sure why youâre seeking validation for your purchase. Bravo for spending money I guess?
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I donât disagree for the most part. But itâs not that plex hasnât been making money though. So itâs not like this is new that plex has moved toward a payment model. I think what I canât fault people for is this change was unsolicited for them. Itâs plex incâs right to do so as itâs their software but still a financial change users didnât ask for. Regardless of the reason change isnât always positive even if it can be a net positive later. Câest la vie
For those wanting to jump ship to jellyfin if you want and are capable you do you. But what plex offers in ease of setup and certs, and security in authentication and likely limited protection from DDoS through their authentication servers redirection youâll find a host of new problems to contend with. Nothing is perfect.
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Just to be sure, because itâs not super clearâŠ
I have a lifetime Plex Pass as a server administrator. I share my server with friends who donât have a Plex Pass and watch content on their TV. Will they have to pay for a Plex Watch subscription to view content, or do they get free playback since I have a lifetime Plex Pass?
This is a wild thread. While in the thread about âwatch togetherâ everyone agreed, that that is a bad move. In this thread a lot of fans are defending a company for steeply increasing prices, removing free feature and removing a feature âwatch togetherâ completely without a real reason. And the argument for plex fans basically is, they need the money to improve and maintain the service.
I am using plex since forever (please plex staff look it up and share with the world) and over the years they maintained the software and added quality of life improvement. Which is what I want from a software that streams my media from my hardware using my bandwith. Non of the plex newer âfeaturesâ improve my watching experience.
It is pretty obvious that they want to squeeze as much money out of the user as possible with the least amount of effort.
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If you as server admin have plex pass lifetime nothing changes. Everyone can watch from your server remotely.
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If youâre a plex pass lifetime holder you umbrella them under your plex pass provided they are watching content remotely from your server.
Is there a thread regarding the transcoder re-write, Iâd be interested in following this.
I think the hope is plex with enough money will give us features we need rather than features they need to grow as a company. The unnecessary features like socials and free content arenât bad it actually does bring content for user.. you know the people we pms admins aim to provide our content to. But itâs extra stuff that that doesnât need to involve us. Itâs not bad, it just isnât why we use the software.
What Iâd like to see from plex is more things for self hosting. Photos app, amp, are good examples of things we gained. These are the things we like to see. And I hope more will come.
In the case of losing watch together yeah losing features to self hosting isnât something I personally like to see.
The remote option is a paygate but doesnât inherently prevent users from using a VPN like WireGuard or Tailscale to appear as local, but it does lower the amount of users that can access without a) the knowledge of how to a tunnel via a vpn client and b) itâs limited to only 15 people no one that invited outside home users I think. c) If the pms user doesnât have plex pass but some users do it fragments your users from who can watch via remote and those who needs the vpn solution if the pms admin doesnât have plex pass.
If they actively try to prevent vpn use now thatâs another line people would be angry with.
Iâve long been considering jumping ship, and this is just the final straw for me.
I used to have a Plex pass just to support the software, because I never cared about any of the extra features, but the core software has just been getting worse and worse over the years so I just couldnât justify it anymore, as any loyalty to it I had left is long gone. What I am willing to pay for is improvements, but all I ever got was bloat, bugs and lost features.
Plex has been straddling the line for me for years now of working just well enough to stick with it due to the hassle of switching, but this change is too much â demanding I pay money to share content between my own devices, involving zero hardware belonging to Plex (I donât use relay servers, all my connections are direct), itâs an immediate deal breaker. Even if this were to be rolled back, all trust is gone.
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