I bought Plex pass years ago for £79. The new price of $749.99 is INSANE.
No wonder all the cool people are using Jellyfin.
Lifetime single pay subscriptions don’t make financial sense at all for a company. As much as I hate subscriptions, it’s the only way to get long term support, which software needs.
But Plex’s subscription plan is also priced like shit. Netflix is like 2$/month, Debrid is 3$ while plex is 10$ for me.
Where in the world do you get Netflix for $2?
India
India, Bangladesh, plenty of Asian countries. I was using a vpn to pay for netflex through Bangladesh. A $25 plan in the US was $3.23 there. Its all a scam.
If Jellyfin can fill most Plex features for most people, maybe it’s not that they need to charge money to survive. Maybe it’s that their product value proposition has eroded.
Certainly, but open source projects rely too heavily on the goodwill of volunteers who still need to feed their families. Hopefully Jellyfin’s incoming users contribute to the project.
Been on jellyfin since day one. Works fine, UI is great and gets the job done. TV UI maybe not top notch, buy usable. Mobile UI just fine and usable.
Also, exposed on the internet (reverse proxy, OIDC, https the works) for years now with zero issues whatsoever as well .
There are a few users always throwing thrash on jellyfin, maybe pissed off users that paid for Plex, or Plex shills that like to denigrate jellyfin, I don’t know.
Just ignore them.
Jellyfin is perfectly usable, yes you need to setup port forward, VPN or whatever, but it’s exactly our target audience so move along and stop bitching, Plex shills.
Stay with Plex, use jellyfin, whatever fit your bill.
Anyway plex does not fit my concept of self hosting to be free from cloud lock ins.
If you’re on Android TV (I guess Fire TV works as well), try out Wholefin. It’s miles ahead of the official TV app. Also, Findroid works great on mobile.
I happened to setup jellyfin when i had first heard about it while I was already hosting plex, so when plex decided to charge for remote streaming years later I was already halfway there.
jellyfin: hey here i am you can have me for free. i even run on your own server.
You know that even if you paid that ridiculous amount, it still wouldn’t be the last time they try to get money out of you, either.
After 16 years of having a lifetime pass (and nearly 20 years of administering multiple Plex servers), I know this to be false. And, unless you have one yourself, you could not possibly know. Especially because, with a lifetime pass, there’s no other way that could possibly ask for money from a user. It’s literally impossible.
But, if I’m wrong, show proof of your lifetime pass, and the solicitous emails you received subsequently. I know you can’t.
If you’re going to speak from such obvious ignorance, it should be easy to admit when you’re wrong
Most Lemmy users, however, never find such a thing so easy…
For now
We’ll see.
I’m not immune to changing my tune. But only with good reason. And this isn’t it
I think it’s more that they’re implying the company is likely to get worse in the future and start trying shit, not ehat they’ve already experienced. The price now being nearly 10x what it once was is a pretty big red flag, after all.
I won’t argue with your cynicism, but increasing the price on something that almost nobody ever purchased anyway really isn’t a red flag at all
Especially when all other costs remain unchanged
If Plex starts some crazy Fuckery, I’ll be right on board with you.
As another decade-long lifetime Plex pass holder and watching the generally downward spiral of Plex development, I’m right there with you. I don’t agree with a lot of the direction they’re going in, but they have never once tried to upsell me after getting the lifetime pass.
The system works, it’s a lot easier/more available for viewers than JellyFin, and until those things change I don’t see much reason to get out the pitchforks. However if they do, mine’s ready.
Hey guess what software I don’t need to use
I tried Plex once, before I knew about jellyfin. I just wanted an open-source self-hostable media server with my own media.
When I tried it, after installing Plex, I was presented with a login for a Plex hosted account. Iirc that was optional and I skipped it, after that came the nags for Plex pass. Piss off. That’s exactly the opposite of what I wanted out of something like jellyfin.
My breaking point was to pay for transcoding.
Paid for the android app which allowed HWA but then I wanted to watch it on my chromecast TV. Welp gotta pay or bust.
So I bust, went through the early adopter pain (early 11th gen Intel Xe gpu, no actual knowledge of linux or docker, little experience with linux and docker) and set it up.
Working great since then.
Currently restreaming japanese IPTV with jellyfin via an m3u stream at work (and through a mobile VPN router)
Not the most stable stream but sufficient
Oh yeah and apparently you can’t stream remotely without a subscription either? If it were a feature they had to spend time on I’d still not want to use it, but I’d understand at least.
From the application’s point of view, there is no difference between internet and intranet access. I just saw that downloading the media you already own, using your own infrastructure, requires an even more expensive subscription.
How tf did people stick around with this shit for so long.
Haven’t used it myself, but wouldn’t something like Tailscale solve the remote access limitation?
It does, but the limitation just doesn’t make any sense.
The same reason most foss projects are barren. Plex focuses on ease of use and giving people what they want. Users mostly don’t care about the sub. It’s easy to use and works.
Meanwhile jellyfin doesn’t have a remote first interface that isn’t absolute dog shit and I need to set up a reverse proxy and potentially idp to get the ability for my family to log in.
This shit isn’t hard. The answer to the community is, make the product better, and start bundling shit in. But I’m sure I’ve already offended some nerd who thinks this is all just so easy and requires no work to tell me I just need to learn Linux better. And that putting in a reverse proxy by default will make maintenance a pain and I just have to put portainer and LE to fix it.
The shit y’all are bitching about is the problem.
This shit isn’t hard
Well it certainly would be hard for me, as I don’t know anything about the UX needed for these features, and very little about networking in general, and probably close to zero about the networking concepts required to make something like you describe work.
But it sounds like you know a lot, jellyfin is a project that is 100% volunteer developed. Maybe you could contribute your expertise either via code or by providing a concrete action plan to the jellyfin team?
Be the change you want to see and all that.
This is peak Linux nerd shit.
No. I payed $200 and Plex is better. My needs have been perfectly met for the past 10l5 years and foreseeable future.
Second, fuck off with this attitude. I came here answering a question how, ‘ohhhh it’s so fucking complicated why normies might want to pay’ with 2 concrete use cases and you immediately go off with that nerd bullshit that I need to contribute more.
I had 3 prs hit main in Apache last week. Fuck off, your nerd shit isn’t helping adoption asshole.
Bro flexes Apache contributions and still can’t paste 10 lines to make a reverse proxy
No my time is just more valuable to me and I have money 🤷♂️
Love offending the nerds with no familyies hunched over a desk all day 🤣
Good old case of “mad cuz bad”
Tipster is that you?
Most FOSS projects are barren? Huh
I’m here to say it’s all very easy and requires no work.
Seriously, you literally just install Jellyfin (or run it in Docker), set up nginx with certbot and make a port forward on your router. Zero maintenance at all.
Any LLM can give you a complete step-by-step guide that takes 10 minutes to follow if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I cannot understate how bad of an idea it is to expose something to the Internet when you don’t know what you’re doing.
Jellyfin is not designed to be exposed directly. They have a number of outstanding security issues. You should really use a VPN to access your local network instead.
I expose plenty of services. I like to live life dangerously 😎
ADHD linux zealots will argue anything, no matter how stupid, if you dare hold any comparison to a commercial product. It’s literally built into their ADHD brains need to argue and be right.
They will sit there and argue insane shit and pretend like most people have a desktop sitting in their living room much less setting up an entire *arr stack with reverse proxy. And then scream at you when you say that sounds like work I don’t have to do for less than a hamburger meal.
It’s easy bro, just learn docker, get it set up so that services boot at launch, and I’m sure nothing will never break or need to be updated again.
Meme material.
You are absolutely right about all of that, I did it exactly like that, had ChatGPT tell me what to do and done. I am not an IT person, but I still like messing with tech. But that’s more than 95% of people are willing to do, and that’s why people use plex. Takes literally a minute to set up and it just runs. That’s why people choose Apple. Simple and easy, little to no maintenance. That doesn’t make it a great product, but an accessible one, and that’s what counts for most people
Was any justification provided for a nearly 10x price increase!?
Glad I started with Jellyfin
It’s because lifetime licenses aren’t sustainable. I’m surprised they still offer it.
Plex is an actual company that has an office and employees, so they have recurring costs every month. A lot of people already have lifetime licenses that they’re not likely to receive any more revenue from. It’s likely they’re increasing the price to help recoup costs or convince people to subscribe to a monthly subscription rather than get a lifetime license.
Nah, they increased the cost to drive people to the monthly subscription. I’m guessing in a year or two they’ll announce the lifetime subs have been revoked and everyone needs a monthly sub.
Not saying you’re wrong, but I wonder how many people that were willing to pay 250 dollars for lifetime would actually pay more than 3 years of subscription.
I believe most lifetime buyers do it for FOMO. They pay it believing that they won’t ever need to worry about it again and that they’re making a good or safe deal… but most of them won’t be using Plex that much anyway.
With this price hike Plex is basically killing the lifetime option. Sure, they might get more subscribers at first, but in the other hand they will also lose a lot of impulse buyers that will hardly pay them 250 dollars in monthly subscriptions at the long run. At least, that’s what I think…
Exactly.
Companies often offer lifetime to early adopters knowing that it will become unaffordable eventually, because it’s a way to drive big revenue in the short term and because it entices users to the platform - and popularity is needed for growth.
As the months and years go by you are still providing service, now for nothing, and eventually start to go into the negative profit for those lifetime customers. They knew this would be the case going in, but they don’t want to offer lifetime anymore knowing that it will lose them money in the long term.
Plex isn’t “early adopter” anymore l, they’ve succeeded in building their userbase and market dominance so they’ve decided it’s now time for the squeeze.
They could have ditched lifetime entirely (and I’m sure they considered it) but instead they just jacked it to a crazy price where nobody wants to pay it and will go monthly instead.
Are Plex being greedy? Sure. And I have never and will never pay for Plex at any price. But they are doing what they do for calculated reasons.
If you don’t own something, eventually Capitalism will weaponise it against your soul. FOSS is owned in common, and self hosting is your own. Never understood why people liked plex.
Never understood why people liked plex.
Accessibility mostly… Plex’ centralized account system allows for your average person to set up and account, accept the invite to my library, and they are done. The lift required to get those same people to use Jellyfin would prompt them to never use it again.
Which honestly is my eventual end game anyway… Once Plex pulls the lifetime pass out from under me I plan to turn my media library internally with Jellyfin and a HTPC.
Imma use the lifetime pass forever lol. Shits wild.
I’m still using it because I already have a lifetime license. I’m just using it for music and local TV though. I use the DVR feature with a HDHomeRun tuner to record the local news and a few other shows.
I think Jellyfin has some music apps, but last I checked they’re still not as good as Plexamp.
Navidrome and symfonium(paid) have been amazing to me for the last year. I’ll never go back.
Tried it once, it’s features and quality were so lacking I stuck with Jellyfin. I’d charge Plex $4999.99 monthly to let their software stay in my devices.
Gouge?
You spotted my deliberate mistake. Have a star ⭐
Monthly rates remain unchanged. The sales of lifetime passes at this point was pretty rare anyway. This affects practically nobody.
I see this as nothing more than an opportunity for those who hate and don’t use plex to complain over something that doesn’t and never will affect them.
But I suppose there’s nothing strange here about people complaining about a valuable paid service when a far inferior alternative is free.
Edit: ITT- jellyfin evangelists who will downvote anyone who disagrees with them and their Puritanical worldview
I don’t even know what plex is but my god your comment smacks of brandbrained cope
What a nasty and horrible attitude.
Admitting your ignorance before making an ignorant comment does not imbue honor or value to it.
It will be a pleasure to block you
You know someone is cool when they take the time to tell you that they’re blocking you.
I might remind you that something doesn’t have to effect you to complain about it, it’s called empathy
Complaining about something that affects practically nobody isn’t empathy; It’s simply, ignorantly, screaming into the dark. Especially when that empathy is so selectively one-sided.
That said, empathy is a good thing, and I do not wish to discourage it. I certainly value empathy far more than either plex or jellyfin
Isn’t jellyfin full of security vulnerabilities? (Not to defend Plex, just a thought. This is why I don’t have a video streaming server at all.)
And plex is entirely secure?
What was it again with security and closed source vs OSS?Is the plex relay for remote access really secure?
Or has just nobody bothered checking it?And plex is entirely secure?
I never said that. I don’t run a media server at all because every streaming software has its own flaws.
You can avoid most security issues (with any sort of server) by not exposing it publicly. Use a VPN like Tailscale to connect remotely. If you share the server with friends or family, share it with them over Tailscale and use an ACL to configure which services they can access on your server.
Eh, that’s too much hassle just for streaming video. I’ll use good old torrents downloaded directly to my computer.
