Plex is starting to enforce its new rules, which prevent users from remotely accessing a personal media server without a subscription fee.
If anyone needs it: https://jellyfin.org/
Tbf Plex lifetime is often on sale and relatively cheap. For me Plex is a paid Software the free part was always more of a demo.
🥾👅
Anybody still using Plex kind of deserves what they get at this point. They’ve been announcing these anti-consumer “features” for a while now.
Two years ago, when I found out that you need damn subscription, to watch YOUR stuff with transcoding on your device in local network, from your local server - I complained on reddit and a lot of people was disagree with me for harsh position.
They_got_what they_focking_deserve.png
Pure rent seeking. It’s not the only example. So many products have artificial defects deliberately added by the manufacturer so that they can then charge you to disable the defect.
Years ago now, they pushed an offer for lifetime subscription onto my server. I clicked it, went through to their website and bought it, paid, the subscription activated and worked.
The next day they emailed to say actually i wasn’t eligible for the offer, they cancelled it and refunded me and said it would actually cost $30 more.
I installed Jellyfin that same day, it was pretty buggy back then but was definitely the right decision.
They deliver a working piece of software to you. They employ people to maintain it and add new features. They ask a price for this work.
How is this rent seeking?
Lies. Local streaming never required a plex pass. Its for remote streaming only, but keep pushing that false narrative.
Welcoming the incoming dowvotes for correcting your comment just like the many similar comments and posts I’ve seen on Reddit, but this is purely a configuration issue.
Transcoding on local network is allowed without a subscription. If you are running your own DNS server (like pihole or unbound) you need to configure an internal “plex.direct” record. You also need to uncheck an option to “treat your WAN IP as internal” option which corrects double NAT issues.
I have yet to see a need to move away from Plex. I paid for the cheap lifetime sub over a decade ago at this point and everyone I invite to my server has no complaints and has not had to pay Plex a dime. I don’t use their plex.tv proxy, I direct connect to my own IP and leave their remote proxy option off in the server and everything works great.
I will check out Jellyfin at some point if Plex makes things more difficult in time, but for now these articles are literally just rage bait in the homelab ecosystem. They enacted this back in April of 2025 already!
The alternatives are not as easy use
People don’t deserve to be mistreated but it is surprising that folks haven’t abandoned it if they’re so actively anti consumer.
Agree to disagree. When they actively and willingly go for the product that’s screwing them over.
Do you think that applies to you as well? That you deserve bad things to happen to you because of your consumer choices?
I kind of understand why someone would honestly. Jellyfin subtitles are still a hot mess for a lot of formats unfortunately. Also, while plex has tried really hard to ruin their UI, I’ve still had more trouble explaining where to find things in Jellyfin. And if you’re sharing your collection with friends or family members there’s a lot more technical stuff involved.
So I can see why the balance might still tip toward paying plex still for some people.
Luckily I bought a lifetime license ages ago before the first price hike so this doesn’t affect me yet. So I’m just riding out the decline, running them in parallel until plex completely breaks. slowly transitioning the family as they get annoyed with broken features. Plexamp is quickly taking care of that 😅
I’ve never used jellyfin, but do they also host proxy servers? AFAIK plex does and its costing them money, hence the need for paywalling this. You can still use tailscale and reverse proxy to allow remote streaming
Jellyfin does not host anything. With this change free Plex users behind a reverse proxy (or VPN) and Jellyfin users behind a reverse proxy (or VPN) work the same for remote access.
The only difference is that Plex no longer provides expensive services for free, while Jellyfin never provided them.
This is my understanding and I’m surprised with the negative reaction. I think jellyfin is the better alternative being FOSS but this is not the reason.
You can still use tailscale and reverse proxy to allow remote streaming
I used to use Plex and when I discovered there was paid remote streaming function - that goes through their servers - my reactions were “Haha, no”* and checking whether my existing WireGuard setup would do it instead.
Whaddya know, remote streaming using Plex and PlexAmp at no cost.
*Not because I begrudge them recouping costs, but because it’s designed that way to justify charging for it, gives them whatever information they want from my viewing, and it’s not self-hosting if there’s any third party cloud/account component to it.
Years ago I decided to go with Emby over Plex only because at the time plex didnt support kodi integration and I enjoyed using that at the time for my front-end user experience. Within 6 months they started supporting it and I was upset since I did want to go with plex. Lately I feel like I made the perfect decision. It’s gotta be close to 10 years now and I paid one $100 lifetime fee for Emby and still use it everyday along with some family and friends I gave access to. Also gotta remember I dont believe jellyfin was even an option at that time. I tried it not to long ago and although it was fine, I actually think I liked emby a little more.
As for the remote access, how do they block it? Do they not allow you to setup your own remote connection that does not involve plex? Thats how I do it, I do not use emby connect to make it easier to go through them I just setup my own domain, use ddns, and configure the ports I want exposed and thats it. If plex doesnt allow that then thats already crazy, if they do and even thats now blocked then thats even crazier.
Emby may be simpler, and i heard about plex having a music AI feature that I was actually jealous of, but overall it just works and not paying anything in forever will always be my preferred method over awful monthly subscriptions anyday.
I bought the Emby lifetime license about 2 years ago when the plex remote streaming stuff first started getting talked about. It coincided with my server refresh so it ended up working out. I have been really happy with Emby so far.
One thing to note is that music streaming on remote devices is WAY better on plex, Emby behaves more like a mapped network drive running over the internet to a local music player that then forgets your position on pause or when you move away from the remote app/device whereas Plex is actually functional as a modern music player. I keep a local copy of my music library on my phone anyways and okay through Gonemad so it is a non-issue for me but Emby should work better than it does in that case.
Plex also allows/provides “live” tv (with ads) which can be nice if you are into that, and there is the “free” streaming library too which Emby doesn’t offer. I’ll keep plex around for those features but non-of my stuff is/will be hosted on Plex.
Yeah, as a big music fan I have always been disappointed in Embys music functionality. I followed the discussions around this on there site and I was a bit disappointed by the response. They were getting the same feedback around how bad it is and it should be revamped or even have a dedicated app just for music and they just dismissed it basically saying we’ll it can be something we may do later on but dont hold your breath and that they believe it works fine the way it is and dont agree it will help.
Luckily I really didnt care to use it for music anyway. I already had a Subsonic (now Navidrome) server for that. It would have been nice for a few things, but ultimately it was fine. The cool part is the android app Symfonium is the best music app I have ever used and it connects to all the servers to pull data. I obviously still use navidrome, but I could just pull from emby as well with it.
Plex centralizes authentication at plex.tv
When a user wants to connect to a ‘private’ plex server, they must first sign into their plex.tv account, which then provides the auth token needed to login to the users server (even if both the client and server are on the same lan)
With this system, Plex can monitor and control every single connection to every plex server; limiting access to whatever they want. Even your own local content.
Yeah hell to the naww. They’re also probably tracking all your viewing habits and monetizing that data, they’d be foolish not to with that kind of access.
Dam thats what I thought. Emby has something similar but doesnt force you to use it so I don’t.
Emby has what they call ‘Emby Connect’ which is entirely optional and is basically a glorified DNS service.
It doesn’t proxy connections, it just passes on the hostname to the client. The server is still required to setup port forwarding or other routing like tailscale or a proxy on a vps.
Emby Connect will let you sign into your local server using your emby.media credentials, but unlike Plex it’s completely optional and only works once explicitly linked to the local user of an Emby server.
Are there legal ways today to have your own media server serving new TV shows? I see the point if you’re sailing the high seas, but curios if there’s other uses for one (for videos)
It’s probably a TOS violation but you can combine it with pinchflat to strip ads and sponsored content from YouTube. It’s not a general YouTube app though, rather you use it to preserve channels you’re interested in.
You can also use Jellyfin to serve legally purchased music from bandcamp etc, or movies and TV shows ripped from Blurays and DVDs.
I have a couple of USB Hauppauge TV receivers in our HTPC which I use with NextPVR. I cut the ads from the recordings then bang them into Jellyfin
Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin and all legal, and each have ways to serve liveTV alongside your own locally stored content, and DVR that liveTV if you want. You’d just have to purchase a liveTV subscription from your local provider (or go the Pirate route ofc).
I forgot that live TV is a thing. I thought the primary use was to serve VOD
Bought a lifetime Plex pass a few years ago so this doesn’t affect me. It’s honestly worth the cost especially over time.
I also bought a lifetime Plex pass a few years ago, but I’ve migrated to Jellyfin because Plex is no longer a trustworthy project.
Same. That’s for me a red flag that a company took the enshittification path and things will get progressively worse.
Plus I would rather support an open source project that benefits the whole community than a greedy company who is trying to milk their customers.
I ultimately want to ditch Plex, but as an existing lifetime member, it currently handles everything so smoothly for my users that I don’t see enough benefits in switching. Particularly on the music streaming side (PlexAmp), I think the experience is the most polished one I’ve seen.
My hope is that by the time the lifetime Plex Pass experience has become enshittified, Jellyfin will be more ready than it is today, and I’ll make a switch then.
I ran Jellyfin and plex for a while, using Jellyfin instead of plex at every oppurtunity. Then Jellyfin broke, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it in an evening, and I just went back to using Plex, which had continued working. It isn’t great, sure, but it’s fine. I think Jellyfin would need to be Immich levels of cool, or plex would actually need to be unusable for me to switch.
I’m in the same boat, I have a Plex pass, I have my reverse proxy setup, Plex just works ™ and when it stops, Jellyfin is already installed and ready to go.
Welcome to JF
Imagine, you software get massively used for piracy, and then you decide to ask for licence for the use of thir software, host on server you do not control. I suspect this will not be result they expected
To anyone saying they’re happy since they already have a lifetime Plex pass, do you really think they won’t come for you too?
I paid 79€ almost a decade ago. I got more than my moneys worth. Even the current lifetime (on sale) is less than a year of Netflix. More expensive than piracy + Jellyfin ofc if that’s your benchmark 😀
I have a Jellyfin instance running anyway, I’ll switch to that if Plex enshittifies.
if Plex enshittifies.
Anyone want to break the news?
So far the enshittification has not hit lifetime Plex pass subscribers
Which part has enshittified?
The only change I can see that when I scroll down on my Plex front page, there’s a bunch of stuff that’s not on my NAS. Some of them actually interesting, like this full ass category of old school kungfu movies:
You are entirely entitled to do whatever you want, but for me I go into a towering rage when something I own is taken over for someone else’s ads.
Introducing “Plex pass plus”! With no advertisements!
I should not have paid for it.
Have the lifetime since like 2012, every time a post like this surfaces I wonder if the contents of it are finally going to force my hand to use jellyfin instead
Bought a lifetime pass, switched to Jellyfin after way too much Tidal promotion on my server.
This is a "slippery slope’ argument and thus a fallacy.
Let users decide how they want to run their own stuff. Right now if you have Plex pass this isn’t an issue. If it becomes an issue, then you’re in the exact same position you’d be in today if you decided to move away from Plex now.
I moved away from Plex years ago, but I don’t blame users for sticking with it, it still has a lot of advantages over jellyfin.
If it becomes an issue, then you’re in the exact same position you’d be in today if you decided to move away from Plex now.
I disagree. Right now you got time to do the research, plan the move and test it out with a demo setup. You do not know if you got the time if Plex decides to screw their lifetime users.
Yes this is hypothetical.
The steaks are very high. I could lose access to my media library for 1-2 evenings (the time it would take me to switch to Jellyfin).
Plex are trying to start a beef
It’s entirely hypothetical. Jellyfin could also close source tomorrow, hypothetically (It happened with Emby so there’s precedent).
No, you have not understood anything. Assuming Jellyfin would go closed source, (ignoring the GPL license and so on) you would not notice anything. Your server and service would be unchanged by this.
Emby is the best example, the community will fork it and you server lives on. Even if not, then the server and software is still yours.
Jellyfin can’t go closed source as it’s a fork of Emby from before it was closed source, licensed under the GPL. They don’t own that code so they can’t change that license, thus the whole project is GPL. In addirion, Jellyfin isn’t being developed by just one company (it’s all volunteers), so every new contribution is also GPL licensed, owned by each contributor. The only way Jellyfin could go closed source would be to cut out the Emby backend and for every single contributor ever to agree to change the license, or have their code cut out. In short it’s not happening, and if somehow it did the project would just get forked regardless for everyone to switch to (the community did it once already!).
But they haven’t yet
Oh I’m fully aware I’m just to lazy to set up jellyfin and navidrome quite yet.
Imagine being so addicted to having every nanosecond of your waking life filled with noise and colors that this announcement means anything.
What does that even mean
Seems pretty simple to parse, what is causing you an issue? What is not clear?
I don’t understand what your reasoning is for making that statement.
Said the needle to the arm. You’re all addicts.
You ok man?
Sorry, I didn’t read your reply, I was streaming every movie, album, book, and magazine in existence to every location in the universe at all times. Even when I blink I have 16K screens inside my eyelids.
This is normal behavior in 2025. If you cut off my terabit stream, I will writhe on the ground and scream.
I am not in any way addicted to digital hoarding or continuously upgrading systems that have already exceeded the capacity of any normal person to watch a movie since 20 years.
Did you just make up an imaginary person to hate?
I never shared my server anyway, but a lot of the other design decisions they’ve made over the last couple years drove me to Jellyfin. My issue though is I cannot figure out how to set it up properly like I had Plex setup with genres, sort by added to server, lists, etc. I can’t tell if I’m missing something obvious, or Jellyfin just lacks those features and I need to get a plugin or something. Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just hoping someone has experienced similar and might point me in the right direction.
Don’t know all the answers but the home screen has the “Recently Added” rows if you scroll down.
And you can go to plex settings and disable all the love channels, discover, friend activity, etc that everyone complains about. Make it a simple plex server again.
I display my movies and music in the order they were added by default, but I do recall a lot of historical problems with that functionality. It has not been a problem for me the last year or two, I would say, but I do remember it being a problem.
There’s still lots of room for improvement, to be damn sure. But can’t beat the feeling of freedom, you ask me.
I’m just thankful that the app doesn’t run like garbage due to all the bloat like Plex does. That and I really like the fact it auto checks for subtitle files and plays them. Overall I am glad I moved I just wish there were a couple more features.
can’t wait for this to start. then maybe I won’t have to hear about it from the jellyfin shills every week.
But then how will you know how much they love the smell of their own farts?
Don’t worry, they’ll still let you know.
Imagine hosting a software on your own hardware and still choosing the one that makes you dependent on the whims of a corporation lmao
*only for external streaming.
You can cut it off from the internet and stream in your house locally for free still.
End from any external streaming perspective, they are hosting a repository with your connection and port info, so your external friends can connect without you needing to manually configure or update their settings when you make a local change. Plus they are hosting stream relays for those that are unable to make a direct connection. To me, seems fair they’d ask for payment for that service.
When I first set up my server this year it was a VERY easy decision between this and jellyfin. Why would I ever go with the corporate, closed source option?
In my case, I was not able to make jellyfin work: transcoding issues, lagging, client disconnection or unresponsive… Plex worked flawlessly out of the box with the same hardware and the same library.
From time to time I try Jellyfin again, but things never change …
Would you like help/guidance on your next attempt? It definitely works, but possibly not on corporate devices like Roku and such - I never did have a lot of luck with those, other than I think I had Jellyfin casting to a couple of Chromecasts we have kicking around. Not when the internet was out, of course, cause why would they keep working if Google can’t get their data on the spot?
Thank you, but it won’t be necessary. I think my issues are hardware -related, or simply my NAS is under too much load from other applications 😅 Other than that I should try with the Chromecast as you suggested, maybe the problem was the shitty client application…
If I don’t succeed I’m still good with Plex, and I have a raspberry hanging around for an emergency Kodi.
I just wish Plex on my TV didn’t have this bug where it can’t play the correct audio track when Direct Play is enabled. So annoying.
