Depends if all 3 of you want to be homeless or not lol. That deadbeat is buying all the groceries, so now what?
It’s easy to say “charge the free loaders” however the free loaders are probably the ones paying the bills now via streaming ads etc etc. I have no hard proof, but I’d bet they make a lot more money off free accounts than they do off Plex pass people (even the monthly subscribers). Heck, half the monthly people probably don’t realize they didn’t need it and could have just paid $5 once for app access.
I’d also argue that although the forums will erupt with hate, if they went absolutely nuclear and just stopped supporting lifetime and required a subscription they still would only lose 5% of the lifetime members. Remember, the loudest voices are usually the smallest groups. At the end of the day, what this software does for people, daily, it’s extremely undervalued. Name another software product you have been using for 5/10/15 years? Office? Photoshop? The list is small and all of them charge a lot more. Just don’t say WinRAR to counter my argument, you know and I know we shouldn’t be using that free trial anymore either hahaha.
Those who had pitchforks over the privacy policy would like a word. Like, when it comes to certain topics such as privacy, I imagine those who vocalize their concerns actual matter.
Everyone knows lifetime was doom to fail long term (myself as having it 10+ years). My view - I think we need a new subscription specifically for lifetime pass holders - which is discounted.
Those who do not wish to sub then would be meet with either of these limitations:
Prevent access to new features (or updates) after a certain point in time for existing holders
Relaunch the product as a new version and offer a reasonable upgrade path.
The end of the day - their a company - that needs to make money - I would rather pay a small sub and see the following improvements:
Focus back on being the best video/audio media server it can be (photo’s was never really good IMO - and their are better opensource alternatives - but if they got their house in order - THEN why not)
Fix long-term bugs / implement highly requested features
Focus less on adding features “no one” is asking for that doesn’t make sense (out side of monetization)
If they don’t get money from users - then they will just find other ways to force monetization.
This right here is a problem for most corporations because they’ve only applied this rule to only new subscribers but F everyone and anyone who’s ever been with them for 20+ years.
Now, IF Plex wants to reward those who have been by their side, through all the good and bad, then it would best serve them to take into consideration the accounts that have been registered the longest as Plex Pass holders.
I just don’t know how that will go over with their very corporate leadership nowadays.
I said “usually” and honestly I don’t think this one would be as big an issue as you think, especially if they didn’t go full nuclear and made some sort of compromise.
Regardless, I am here to stay as long as Plex is around and running smoothly. Emby and Jellyfin are at best 5+ Years behind Plex and don’t seem to be changing much as of the last year, I run all 3.
You are saying this like you shelled out $10K. I’m not going to say $120 is chump change, but over the last 5/10 years you are essentially now using the software for free, it cost you like 20 coffees to buy it.
This topic/conversation is still better than listening to the people claim injury and injustice when a bug strikes because they spent $120 10 years ago though. I guess I just see this one differently because of what Plex has done for my family over the last 12 years or so. It’s literally been used daily for 12 years. No other software has done that for me ever.
My remark was in relation to reality and no, I’m not at all saying I spent 10k on this product but I can say and have with my internet service with Comcast. THEY don’t give out discounts for long lasting “valued” customers.
It’s why I even think that Senior Citizen Discounts should be abolished. Why should anyone’s age dictate whether or not a discount should be applied!
In theory I get this point, unfortunately the world retirement system is broke and unless you want to work until you are 98 those discounts matter when you are on social security or whatever your country of origin does. But this is a MUCH deeper conversation that I’d love to have not here hahaha
I am curious why you do it like that when you can run more than one server with your Plex Pass benefits. You may have a very specific need to keep users separate which I can understand, but is there some other benefit to separate accounts which I am overlooking?
There’s no benefit to running different accounts I just haven’t had a need to change it
I started a free server on one of my Windows machines but then later started my Plex pass server on my NAS. I didn’t have a lot of custom metadata at the time and migrating a server from Windows to Linux didn’t seem like a lot of fun so I just started over using the new account
I don’t really need the Windows server anymore but I keep it as a backup pulling files from my backup NAS in case I have a database or drive meltdown on the primary
