cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/2333639
I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That’s it folks. I’ve been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.
They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.
I’ll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I’ve been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it’s time to make it production ready.
Edit: I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying “Just buy a plex pass” are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.
And for the thousandth person who wants to say the same things to me:
- YES I know I’m unaffected as a Plex Pass owner.
- My users were immediately angry at it, which made me angry. Our users don’t understand what plex pass is, and they shouldn’t have to, that’s why I had it. The fact that they were pinged even though it should have kept working is horribly sloppy
- Plex is still removing functionality. I don’t care that “People should pay their fair share”. If Plex wants to put every new feature behind a paywall, that’s completely okay. They are removing functionality.
- “But they have cloud costs”. Remote streaming is negligible to them. It’s a dynamic DNS service. Plex client logs in, asks where server is, plex cloud responds with the IP and port of where server is located. That’s it.
- “Good luck finding another remote streaming” - Again, Plex just opens up an IP and port. Jellyfin also just opens up an IP and port (Hold on jellyfin folks I know, security, that’s a separate conversation). All “remote streaming” is is their dynamic dns. Literal pennies to them. Know what actually is costing them money? Hosting all of that ad-supported “free” content that they’re probably losing money on.
In short, I don’t care how you justify it. Plex is doing something shitty. They’re removing functionality that has been free for years. I’m not responding to any more of your comments repeating the same arguments over and over.
I don’t know if you’re trying to exclaim that it doesn’t cover it, or that it’s a fair thing.
I’m a Plex pass holder on my server - and my user does not have a plex pass. From what I’m reading they need to pay a subscription to access my (Plex pass) server.
That isn’t true. A Plex pass from the server owner will cover access for all users
Yeah if you already have a lifetime pass then essentially nothing changes. They also did the right thing about giving people a pretty good heads up to purchase a lifetime pass before they raised the price.
Your users may have gotten the notice (my family didn’t) but they can ignore it if the server owner has a lifetime pass.
What do you want me to say? I hold a plex pass. I’m the server owner. My users are receiving that email.
Yes, they’re being advertised to. In theory this is because they might be clients for non-Pass servers in addition to yours. In practice, Plex could easily verify Plex client accounts that don’t run a server or have access to non-Pass servers and skip sending this marketing email to those accounts. What they’re doing is trying to convince your users they need to pay a sub fee (even though they don’t), because it’s free money in Plex’s pocket if the users do click the thing and say “welp, still cheaper than netflix”
Any users of your plex-pass verified server do not need to pay anything to keep streaming it. You had to pay a lot more for the lifetime or subscription to enable it, but by doing so any users you share with don’t need to pay a dime. You reading this press release and seeing your users get emails and assuming that your users now need to pay for something isn’t you being stupid, it’s the intended result of their deliberately confusing messaging. One user shrugging and saying “guess it’s $7/mo now” is free money for the company.
Their email and even their “Plex: Free vs Paid” page is confusing. However, the “Requirements for Remote Playback of Personal Media“ is more clear.
Yes, that is correct. It’s because the people that read the email only, or read the email and click one (1) link, are likely to be less familiar with Plex as a platform than the server owner. Plex the company would very much like people to pay them $7 a month forever for literally nothing.
If that’s the case, then best case they’re being incredbily scummy and my users are getting lied to. Of which, I won’t just let them pay monthly for something they don’t need.
It’s scummy advertising, yes. Designed to prey on a Plex server operator’s likely-less-tech-literate users.
And that should be enough right there to get all server owners to drop Plex
but it’s not, because “i got it so cheap for $60 ten years ago / $90 five years ago / $120 yesterday” and “securely opening a port and enabling OAuth for jellyfin takes more than one click”.
The “lifetime” Plex Pass was a genius marketing move, because people are permanently inertia-locked into the cost they sunk. For nearly a decade now the refrain is “I just have a Plex pass. I bought it for $30 less than its current cost and it works great for me, sucks that it’s now $90/$120/$240 but IMO it’s worth it :)”. Don’t forget that making you pay $60 or $90 or $120 or $240 to use your own GPU for hardware encoding was always a scumware tactic, even if they put up a $15/mo subscription next to that one-time cost so that the one-time cost looks like “a good deal”.
I know I’m one of them, and at the time and even now I supported it. They were adding features, they did plexamp! It was great, and I was happy to help pay for development. Now though? Nothing worthwhile added in years, and just more ways to nickle and dime. Not to mention the ad-riddled free “content” they’re shoving in front of my users. Nope, I’m done. My lifetime plex pass ended up being about $10 per year that I used it, and I’ll say I’m content with that.
It costs them money to distribute the codec. It’s not scumware. Otherwise they would have to make install/setup of plex a 2 step process… and updates would be annoying as shit.
They need you to pay so they can push codecs with their updates/install.
I’m fine with the one time payment. I donate to shit I use regardless.
They likely streamed from some other Plex server in the past, and that’s why they’re getting the email. The email specifically states that if the server owner has a plex pass, you don’t need one.
I got the email earlier today and it couldn’t be clearer:
I know for a fact that minimum one of them has not, the second email I would be extremely surprised if they had.
Read the email again. The key word in their marketing slop is “alternatively”. You have a Plex Pass and are the server admin. Your users need to do nothing.
Unfortunately, that does mean I have to respond to messages from all my users asking what that email means and convince them they can just ignore it.
A second “nice” part of this change is that iOS users no longer have to buy the Plex app on the App Store to stream longer than a minute. The app is only like 5 bucks one time, but it was a barrier when trying to convince stubborn people to just fucking TRY my Plex server.