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.
Hahahahahahahha
I do wonder if this is a last ditch effort cash grab before they go under or a “we really thought we’d be acquired by now so now we have to plan ahead” move.
who is this for?
those unicorn users who make 150k++ a year and pirate all their media and then wanna share it with their friends that they don’t have?
To be fair there are plenty of users who rip their own media. But sentiment stands
Sure if plenty means less then 10. Most people just stream from one of the providers.
travelling salesmen who pirate all their media??
I like jellyfin
Plex works just fine without a subscription. What is the subscription even for?
If you host a server and have a lifetime pass, you’ll be able to share your collection with anyone. It will allow hardware encoding so less lag on your users end. You can also locally download content on your devices to watch offline.
So no useful features for me.
I don’t want to share my media with anyone and see no reason to stream from outside my house, it’s not like I can take my home cinema with me. Also, why would you want to re-encode and lower the quality?
I really would like to use Jellyfin, but the remote access is quite useful to me personally. My immediate family lives far away and they can access my library remotely quite easily. They just want to watch their requested shows and don’t need 4k HDR 7.2 surround sound for their cooking shows.
I guess I could set up tailscale or some other vpn access to my network but I don’t feel like explaining that to parents and siblings. Even my partner, who lives with me, has little patience for all things electronic. They’re an Apple user and I’m aware enough not to constantly pester them with my ideals and preferences. Plex works on our Apple TV and is easy so it’s the best solution right now. Am I in the minority? Probably, but different strokes for different folks.
TLDR: Jellyfin is awesome, but Plex currently makes more sense for my needs.
Well in your case you don’t need the subscription at all, apart from some minor things the subscription won’t do anything for you.
But I do all the things you’re not doing. I share my server with dozens of friends/family so I need remote streaming. I can watch shows on my own server no matter where I am (at work or when visiting relatives, or even on the phone on the train). And if you streaming on the phone or with bad internet in general it might sometimes be a good idea to reduce quality to save bandwidth.
Downloads for Offline Viewing (jellyfin has this for free) and Remote Access (stream videos while outside of your home network, you can just use tailwind with jellyfin for free)
What is this ‘offline’ thing I keep hearing about?
You can download episodes/movies to your device for offline playback. Not groundbreaking, you could just copy the files to your device manually, but if you do it via the plex app it will sync your watch progress once you connect again.
You can also use it to bulk-download shows from other people’s libraries.
Why would I need to copy the files to my media player when it can just stream from my NAS directly, regardless of internet connection.
I used it when I travel abroad and want to watch something, like when you’re on a plane or train with shitty internet or roaming charges.
Well if you don’t leave the house I’m sure that’s fine. Some people use it to watch stuff when they’re away, or if they have a job that lets them play something while they work.
Even now - at the peak point of the Memory/SSD price bubble - about 1/3 of that lifetime pass buys you enough dedicated hardware to do it yourself for at least the next decade, probably more.
i just need a video player on my tv that pulls shit from my computer why do people think that’s worth SUBSCRIPTIONS
You don’t need a subscription for that.
Emby has been working well for me
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.
Jellyfin
They managed years without going to a subscription model. This is about shareholder needs not software upkeep.
But Plex’s subscription plan is also priced like shit. Netflix is like 2$/month, Debrid is 3$ while plex is 10$ for me.
netflix is $20/month, so what you’re saying is that plex is cheap (I have no idea what plex offers but I don’t pay for either)
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.
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.
Jellyfin has largely the same, although I’ve never used Plex so maybe I’m wrong on that. It’s a pain for the host to setup and get going with jellyfin for multiple users with auth (speaking from experience), but it’s a do once have forever setup.
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.
Yeah I changed to Wholphin recently, and it’s pretty cool — though you may need to tweak a couple of things depending on your TV
Moonfin is also pretty great on Android TV too imo
This is a new one for me. Looks pretty sleek.
Wholphin
thank you for the suggestion, will try it out! I am using a Fire Stick
How am I just learning about wholfin now? They need to add that to the third party clients list because at a glance that’s easily top 3 best looking jellyfin clients
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.
Yeah but I hear they recently decided to raise their pricing by like 30%.
Joke being 30% of 0 is still 0
Monthly rates remain unchanged. The sales of lifetime passes at this point was pretty rare anyway.
I see this as nothing more than an opportunity for those hate and don’t use plex to complain over something that doesn’t 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.
Puritanical worldview
Feels like you’re maybe blowing this out of proportion just a little
Can I have the number of your copium dealer?
It’s so nice when people just say “block me“
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
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.
Hey guess what software I don’t need to use
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…
How about when they “accidentally” sent that email to all your users saying that they NEED to buy Plex Pass to continue to use remote streaming? Or when they had that “bug” in the app shortly after that, where remote streaming would give an error message saying that need to buy Plex Pass to stream your content?
Maybe they don’t solicit from you, but they use dark tactics to trick your users, and that’s not acceptable in my opinion.
Show me these emails. I never received them.
Show me proof of your accusations, or stop making them.
You should have gotten it on May 1 2025, subject line “Remote streaming changes you need to know”. I got it and I wasn’t even using Plex any more, let alone with other users.
This isn’t proof. This is bullshit, pretending to be proof, and fooling only the most stupid people. But, at least, you already admit that you lied about what it said can’t you even keep your lies straight?
I asked for proof, not the “word“ of some angry and highly biased Internet rando
That’s like Donald Trump claiming he passed all of those mental health exams just because he said so
Provide proof, or stop making these absurd arguments
That did happen, lots of confusion with the users. Don’t know why you are calling those other people liars.
I didn’t call anyone a liar. You just said that.
But I do find it odd so many people claiming something happened, yet nobody can provide a shred of evidence
I think you’ve lost track of who you’re replying to.
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.
I have been following the development of Jellyfin for years. I’ve deployed a couple of servers just for testing with my users. I am very, very, very interested in the development and future development of Jellyfin. I’ve even contributed money to the project.
But I’ve been a Plex user for nearly 20 years. I administer multiple servers with more than a couple of dozen users, and I can say this: Plex offers users a far superior experience compared to Jellyfin.
That said— I fully support support the Jellyfin project in creating an open source replacement for Plex. I really do. And I’ll switch to it as soon as it’s good enough to meet my needs and the needs of my users.
But that’s gonna be a few years from now. Plex didn’t get as awesome as it is immediately. It took 20 years to get there. Jellyfin isn’t gonna get there overnight. I closely track it progress, and as soon as I can switch to it, I will.
