I spent two years promoting the PLEX broadcast paradigm but have since given up. It’s not worth my time to explain why it’s necessary to spend an app charge of $5 in order to view more than 1 minute of video. I’m happy to spend the money (I paid $100 for my PLEX service,) but not every friend/viewer is interested in getting nickle-and-dimed for each app they load on their mobile device.
How about granting unlimited viewing time to the Users & Friends registered to the given server? I paid $100 for the PLEX service. Should I pay more?
Trust me, I love the PLEX product, but I’m not going to insist that my friends pay for the mobile app.
I pay monthly (haven’t tried lifetime) and we use this at a commercial school location with multiple friends and managed user account. (I emailed PLEX for approval of this). One thing I found is that the one time app charge is for that device, not for the server itself. Did you pay only $5 or did you pay for a lifetime subscription?
@wvbyrne said:
I don’t like telling others to open up their wallet to see the events I filmed. It’s embarrassing.
You could always creating a YouTube channel for free, and your users could view your filmed events without the need to create an account or buy an app.
@hthighway said:
You could always creating a YouTube channel for free, and your users could view your filmed events without the need to create an account or buy an app.
Thanks, but free availability of the clips isn’t the issue. For example, I can easily deliver the clips from my servers with a pleasing HTML-5 experience. But I’d prefer the PLEX garden.
@ParkerReno said:
Are you using the Plex home feature? Users in your home (up to 15, I believe) get free app access.
I have a few familiar members as Users, but the others are Friends, basically team parents. I shoot the sporting events for my son’s team. Would prefer to keep the team parents as Friends and not Users on my account.
I feel that shared users having to pay $5 to purchase the mobile isn’t a big deal at all
Your expectations of what’s acceptable is irrelevant. I cannot dictate how potential PLEX viewers should feel about paying $5 for an app. I understand it’s a small fee, but if the viewer is not interested dropping $ for mobile apps, then it’s PLEX that loses in the scenario I described. And I would have no reason to continue evangelizing the PLEX experience. Not only have I spent the $100, but I’ve also invested plenty of time in the technology. And I’m not interested in walking away from PLEX.
Your recommendation to move away from PLEX onto YouTube may unfortunately be a necessity.
why doesn’t one create a throw-away Google account for the purposes of Google Drive. With a shared folder in Google Drive, one can share access to the folder with the media content in it. If you are using PLEX for illegal purposes, then stop trying to punch PLEX for something they don’t promote. There’s plenty of options out there for sharing media or files. Try BitTorrent’s Resilio if you need to share media if you don’t want to pay. hashtag FREELOADER
@hthighway said:
Plex isn’t really designed to be a hub for the occasional or one-off viewer.
This. 10x this.
@wvbyrne
Though Plex has come a long way in allowing for sharing, it’s sole purpose in life when first created was to organize your own stuff for you to view.
Sharing came later.
As much as I’ve been frustrated with the Plex company over the past year or two about some things, a one time app fee of $5 per OS type/account is not unreasonable for what Plex is intended for.
You as a pass holder already get every app/test app free as part of the PlexPass.
Asking for all your friends seems a bit unreasonable to me, and from the other replies, a general consensus.
Offer your friends the list of available free viewing options (Web, and I think, OpenPHT, may be others.)
I agree the Plex garden can be nice, but the land it grows on is not free.
@lr1950 said:
If you are using PLEX for illegal purposes, then stop trying to punch PLEX for something they don’t promote.
The videos are mine shot with a Sony 4k AX53. The footage edited and ripped to 29.97 1080P. @ 15 mbps. The videos are then deployed to my licensed instance of PLEX running on an Ubuntu VM. I paid for the Lifetime membership. So I’m not doing anything illegal nor refusing to pay PLEX for its distribution offerings. I appreciate your concerns.
@JamminR said:
I agree the Plex garden can be nice, but the land it grows on is not free.
And I had no problem paying the monthly, eventually becoming Lifetime. I’d consider offsetting the app charge for the content that streamed from my server. Then we’d have additional viewers that will use the app and possibly spread a positive word for PLEX.
Plex isn’t really designed to be a hub for the occasional or one-off viewer.
I’ve been providing edited videos of sports games for about 5 years now. Two seasons, LAX and football. That’s not a one-off audience.
Thanks for the list of alternative viewers. But it’s the mobile app that is ironically the killer app for my situation.
@hthighway said:
If they, your users, have been using that long, I would think that they wouldn’t mind inventing $5 in a killer app that they have used for years
The videos have been available via other delivery mechanisms that provide either an inferior navigation experience, or suffer from bitrate limitations. They viewers are apparently satisfied using these mechanisms, but the PLEX garden is the better experience that I’d prefer to support. And as mentioned above, I’d consider paying a subscription surcharge (per Friend) to remove the 1 minute playback limitation.
I’ll go ahead and say this now (with 98% certainty) - it’s not going to happen.
Plex “home” was their answer to a mass group of people wanting additional accounts and parental controls with no purchase required.
I understand what you’re asking for, really, I do, but I, and many of the others here apparently, disagree that the one time fee per user/OS is an unacceptable cost.
I recommend continuing pointing your users to the free method of viewing your server if they do not want to pay for the “enhanced for their specific device OS” app. Load the the web browser - open https://plex.tv/web - login if credentials aren’t cached and click the ‘launch’ button, else, select your server from the drop down.
That for now, and for the past few years, allows for viewing more than a minute.
