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Plex increasing Lifetime Plex Pass cost to whopping $750 (9to5mac.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 327 points 5 months ago (38 children)

my lifetime pass for jellyfin cost me $0, pretty good value

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  • [–] 78 points 5 months ago (34 children)

    I didn't get into self-hosting until recently, and people recommended Jellyfin, so I don't even know what I'm missing with Plex, if anything. It feels like Jellyfin does everything I need.

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  • [–] 105 points 5 months ago (14 children)

    You’re missing getting to pay for it. Imagine how good it would feel to see $750 less in your bank account.

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  • [–] 52 points 5 months ago (13 children)

    I mean Plex definitely has a value add. Around here people will scoff but Plex is far easier to work with for non technical users.

    If you shared your library externally Plex was definitely easier it's just that they have started to extract value from that which does suck.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (10 children)

    Easier sure, but it comes at the expense of all traffic (even streaming to a device on your local network) going through their servers. If you have an internet outage or their servers go down, you can't even stream media locally with Plex. No such issues with Jellyfin.

    Edit: apparently my frustrations about this were based on something I set up incorrectly, so +1 point for Plex working locally without internet, -1 point for ease of use/setup if I had this wrong for years without knowing it or finding the fix on my own.

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  • [–] 28 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    You can totally stream locally without internet, I've done it several times. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that Plex doesn't do direct streams, especially locally?

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    I got that idea from the times when I couldn't stream to my TV in my home while my internet was down. Switched from Plex several years ago though

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I like shitting on Plex but you absolutely can stream entirely locally without internet.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    There is at least one TV application that doesn't support local streaming without first logging into Plex's servers. I have an LG tv and it'll hang at the loading screen, then error out if I don't have Internet connectivity. I love the TV but LG as a company sucks. I wouldn't buy it again.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    I won't doubt that. I've just had Plex for at least 6 years and never had the complete inability to stream directly when the internet is down. It has always fallen back to local streams in my experience (when I had Comcast, this was a frequent occurance and would have otherwise resulted in me returning to emby).

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    This is incorrect, bordering on outright FUD. Plex only uses their servers for the initial server discovery. When you sign into Plex, your device basically contacts the central plex discovery server and goes “hey, which servers do I have access to? And where are they located?” Plex’s server then passes that info back to the device, so the device can reach those servers directly. No actual content hits Plex’s servers by default. Hell, Plex wouldn’t want content hitting their servers by default, because it’s a truly astronomical amount of bandwidth that would be required on their end, for no real benefit.

    You can technically use their relay option to bounce the video stream off of their server, but they specifically say that it’s a last-ditch workaround for troubleshooting. Because their relay server is intentionally bandwidth-capped and will throttle your video quality. So the relay is only really meant to be used for troubleshooting and edge cases.

    “Aha! But you need to contact their server to get access even on LAN! So it will stop working when your internet goes out!” You can just configure the device to use a direct connection instead. This will allow you to connect directly to a server on your LAN. No need for their handshake server.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago*

    I tried to use it about 3 years ago on an apple tv. It tried finding the server on my LAN and never could do it reliably, so I found it more annoying.

    With Jellyfin/Swiftfin I do have to punch in the hostname or IP, but it works fine for me and the people in the house. The only annoyance is getting signed out every few months, but I'm not sure of that's a server or client issue on Apple TV and happens infrequently enough that I have not bothered to look up the reason.

    Edit: should have said that I used to use Plex before ~2012-2018, and with more ease that after the updates that dumbed down the interface. Maybe its changed and better now, but no reason for me to care.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    You're not alone. The first time I lost access to my locally-stored content when my internet went out, I searched for a solution. There is, one, but it's not obvious--or at least wasn't back when I encountered this problem. I don't know why it would be the default setup, I can't think of a good reason, only nefarious ones. It's one of the reasons I dumped Plex, in spite of having a life-time pass I paid $75 for, I stopped trusting them.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    You got the arr stack up too? Feels like magic when it's all setup

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    No, not yet. I took forever to manually rip what I have, which was a lot, and I'm still working my way through boxes of music (which I'm also hosting on Jellyfin). I'll figure out that step next.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    If you haven’t already, you may want to look into FileBot. It’s the only reason I was ever able to properly rip and rename all of my files so Plex/Jellyfin can automatically detect them.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago*

    You’re missing the early days when plex lifetime pass was ~$50usd and jellyfin wasn't a thing (that I know of). I believe Kodi was the only real competitor at the time, and it was much less friendly.

    Plex has slowly moved in a less user friendly direction, but still meets my needs and I’ve easily gotten over $750 in value from the…almost 20 years, wow…I’ve been using it.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I felt the same way with my Kodi installs, I had a pi in every room that used a shared library db so I could pause in one room and resume somewhere else, nfs shares for media, a config file and done.

    I bought a lifetime Plex pass a decade or so ago and shifted everything except my music to Jellyfin about a year ago. Now I'm looking into dispatcharr to round everything out.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    Dispatcharr is pretty neat for m3u streams.
    Working great with jellyfin

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Nice! I'm giving it a go with some dumb free m3u's now and so far it's been pretty great. I haven't tied it into Jellyfin or Plex yet but one I decide on a decent iptv provider it'll be happening.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago*

    Had some issues with streams not loading in Jellyfin.
    I needed to set up a user-agent and streaming-profile like this:
    User-Agent: Lavf/61.9.107
    Streaming profile:
    -> command: ffmpeg
    -> parameters: -http_persistent 0 -extension_picky 0 -i {streamUrl} -c:v copy -c:a copy -fflags +genpts+discardcorrupt -b:v 4M -maxrate 4M -bufsize 8M -f mpegts pipe:1

    This is (still depending on your m3u source) to avoid most of the transcoding or double transcoding of the streams :)

    The dispatcharr page is mostly self-explanatory but had some issues with the m3u and epg.
    Make sure to properly align your streams with the epg guide you are pulling.
    Do all (M3U and EPG XMLTV) through dispatcharr
    Provide these to Jellyfin:
    M3U: http://dispatcharr:9191/output/m3u/ActiveChannels
    XML EPG: http://dispatcharr:9191/output/epg/ActiveChannels?tvg_id_source=tvg_id

    (Notice: I am using docker. I also set up a group for channels so I can de-/activate channels however I please without deleting and recreating them constantly.)

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago* (4 children)

    Jellyfin is amazing for a lot of things, but it shouldn’t be available externally. There are a few critical security concerns that devs have openly stated will never be patched. And that makes it a non-starter for sharing with people who can’t figure out how to use a personal VPN connection. It may be fine for me and my household… But there’s no way I’m going to be able to walk my tech-illiterate grandmother through it over the phone.

    In contrast, Plex makes sharing server access very easy. Since they run a centralized server to handle all of the “which servers do I have access to, and where are they located” automatic discovery traffic, sharing content is as simple as sending an invite link. That centralization flies in the face of what Jennyfin stands for, so they won’t ever implement it. I even have a burner Plex account that already has access to my server, which I can use to sign into TVs when I don’t want to bother with the whole account setup process. Handy for things like parties, because I have a few “just hit play and drunk people will enjoy it” types of playlists ready to go.

    Basically, Jellyfin for yourself and your household. Plex for everyone else. Luckily, the two will happily run side-by-side without any issues.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago

    I'm not confident enough in my knowledge to ever open up my server externally, even after reading some methods that are allegedly safe (or relatively safe). I'd just rather not take the risk of me misunderstanding something or failing to keep current with vulnerabilities.

    I suppose I see the appeal if Plex handles that without hassle, but man... not for $750. Lol

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    This is a concern if you just port forward through a router. This isn't a problem if you simply use a reverse proxy, which is standard and normal and expected and not difficult at all.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    It’s a concern even with a reverse proxy. The reverse proxy encrypts your connection from A to B, but does nothing to stop the various security concerns that have been noted. Because those concerns don’t rely on intercepting unencrypted traffic. If you can reach Jellyfin’s main log in page, you can exploit it. Full stop.

    The only way a reverse proxy would stop someone from being able to exploit it is to include a separate login on your reverse proxy, meaning attackers wouldn’t even be able to hit Jellyfin’s landing page unless they know your proxy’s password. But notably, this breaks basically everything except for browsers. All of your smart TVs, mobile apps, etc would stop functioning, because they’d bounce off of that reverse proxy login page.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    I don't proxy the port, I proxy the routes needed for auth and interface. This isn't that hard.

    EDIT: ah I see what you're saying, you're talking about the app surface rather than the raw admin API. The risk is small enough with the remaining attack surface that I'm not particularly worried, though obviously I'd like it to be better.

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    • [–] 33 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    This is almost certainly a ploy to get an influx of buyers before the cutoff of July.

    They want to round up all the people that they think were considering a lifetime pass, but were holding out.

    I guarantee you when July comes they're going to reduce the cost to somewhere less than $750 and much closer to the current price due to "we listen to our customers" when really it was the plan all along.

    They're using the Decoy Effect and FOMO.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    Or maybe they want monthly/annual/whatever subscribers, not lifetime, and so they're making the lifetime pass prohibitively expensive. I have a lifetime pass I purchased a few years ago but after running Jellyfin alongside Plex for a few months, I don't think I could recommend Plex to anyone who simply wants to host their own media.

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    • [+] 59 points 5 months ago (17 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 34 points 5 months ago (16 children)

    They provide the apps, metadata servers, and relay service. It's a lifetime pass. IMO that's worth the price it used to be, $70 or whatever. The new price is just absurd, they want you to pay periodically for life because people spend more that way.

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  • [–] 15 points 5 months ago (15 children)

    Do they provide the metadata services though? Pretty sure that's still handled by imdb and such

    Been looking at jelly fin. I have a lifetime with Plex but it feels like they're headed for bankruptcy anyway.

    And seems the same. Only problem is that the docker server keeps crashing on my Synology unfortunately

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (11 children)

    They have a sorta proprietary metadata service that is presumably based on imdb, thetvdb, etc. but they also handle detection and collection of metadata regardless of where the information ultimately comes from. It's nothing that Jellyfin doesn't do though.

    I'm sticking with Plex since I have the lifetime pass too, but the writing's on the wall, I'm ready to switch to Jellyfin whenever Plex dies or ruins itself

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    That’s where I’m at. Ride my <$80 lifetime license till the wheels fall off and see where jellyfin is at that point.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    Exactly my sentiment too. I already paid for it, may as well use it until they make some move that makes the jump to Jellyfin worth it. Not to mention Jellyfin is still fresh on the scene and I personally think it still needs a few more years to make a more seamless changeover from Plex for me and everyone else I've granted access to.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Why not Emby?

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Because I’m simply not aware of it or all the other options since, as I mentioned, I have no imperative to leave plex at the moment.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    Me either (leaving Plex) but it’s beyond frustrating when everyone just yells “Jellyfin” without talking about other alternatives.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    If/when the day finally comes I’m assuming there will be resources of the options available, perhaps even a megathread here. Or I’ll just look into what’s out there myself. But I think it’s fair for the fediverse to be championing the biggest FOSS front runner. I do appreciate you putting another option on my radar.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Why not move to Emby?

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    The docker implementation on synology is pretty bad. I ran my setup on there for about a year before I got fed up. Ended up picking up a mini-pc and installing unraid on it, which has a much better way to run and manage docker containers. Only downside is having two machines now with the storage pool over the network. A bit more complications rather than direct attached storage.

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    • [–] 25 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    Jellyfin: free Cloudflared: free

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    Jellyfin behind Cloudflared is probably the best move ATM.

    It's not specifically against TOS, they do provide you some modest protection against infiltration.

    combine that with running it from a container with RO access to your media and you have a damn nice home solution.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    While Cloudflare tunnels do work, streaming Jellyfin through them is technically against their TOS and they could shut you down for doing so. Instead, I recommend setting up Pangolin with a cheap VPS. Although, it will cost ~$5 a month or so.

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    I have a static IP (didn't particularly want it but my ISP required it for port forwarding for some reason). I'm not currently hosting anything, at least not anything externally accessible, but when I did I had a tiny AWS instance configured as a reverse proxy to a separate reverse proxy VM in my house. It worked for me and if anything I hosted ever got compromised it escaped my notice.

    However, I think the advantage of using something like Cloudflare rather than the way I did it (and as it sounds like you might) is threat mitigation. Especially stuff like DDoS protection.

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    • [–] 70 points 5 months ago (23 children)

    I thought the last couple moves were the nail in the coffin, but this might be it 🤣

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  • [–] 63 points 5 months ago (18 children)

    Unless, like me, you got it for $49.

    Still, jellyfin.

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago (13 children)

    Exactly, got mine with an Nvidia shield purchase, still moved to Jellyfin like a year ago and never looked back

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (12 children)

    Was the conversion easy? Could you keep your watchlist and whatnot?

    I have… a lot of data.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    Um honestly I didn’t even try to port shit, I’ve only got about 12 TB of stuff anyways so it was easier to just start fresh

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Lucky you. I’ve got almost 750Tb the transition might be rough.

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    750TB!!!??? Good lord, how much did your RAID array(s) cost?

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

    Uhmmm so, yeah. It’s… a significant investment. Let’s say, I look for HDD sales constantly and I’m eating less these days to feed my habit.

    For the curious, I run on Synology hardware. Most of the drives are 20-24TB each.

    I have their 12 bay sever with two 12 expansions (36 total) and then another 8 bay server with two 5 expansions.

    I started with the 8, and when I quickly hit 18 total drives with redundancy… I realized this was going to be a lot more than I had initially planned for.

    These are also direct disc rips. No downloads. That’s actual discs in hand, ripping, saving, typing. It’s mostly from my amazing city library, the local video store, borrowing, and then the rest are purchases.

    And I’ll answer the next question, dual income no kids… and my partner shares my interest (or at least benefits!). They always know what to get me for a present.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    These are also direct disc rips. No downloads. That’s actual discs in hand, ripping, saving, typing. It’s mostly from my amazing city library, the local video store, borrowing, and then the rest are purchases.

    I’d suggest Handbrake, to at least re-encode those rips. IME file sizes can be reduced anywhere from 20-50% compared to direct disc rips.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    I do use handbrake. I should have been more specific. I just mean’t to say that it’s not like a bunch of low quality Pirate Bay downloads. That actual discs were used. So many discs. So many that I actually have a pile of dead readers because I used them to death.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Holy shit! That's downright impressive!

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I thought the last couple moves were the nail in the coffin, but this might be it 🤣

    I got it for 20 bucks! Good times!

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  • [–] 15 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    I think it is. A price hike this massive can only mean they‘re banking on panic buyers who think they can save hundreds of bucks if they buy it now. Meaning Plex probably knows it‘s over and they just want to make as much money as possible before filing bankruptcy or something. At least that‘s what it looks like to me.

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago

    My guess was almost this. They obviously want to cash in on the panic-buyers. But I don’t think it’s because they’re going under. I think the goal is to put the lifetime pass out of reach for most people, meaning they’ll default to the subscription instead. Because Plex wants people on subscriptions. They’re more reliable income, which the company can more accurately budget for. There’s a reason everything is moving towards SAAS, and Plex is doing the same. This is simply an attempt to push/lock everyone to the subscription model instead of the single purchase.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    I have to agree with this, I think they bet on more people subscribing as a result of their external connection subscription requirement, didn't and are panicing because they don't want to downscale enough to be able to be maintained.

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    • [–] 80 points 5 months ago

    Couldn't pay me to use that software lol

    Used Kodi and now using Jellyfin.

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    [–] 20 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Turns out, lifetime is difficult to budget for

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    • [–] 20 points 5 months ago

    To be clear, you still need your own HW and electricity, right?

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    [–] 18 points 5 months ago

    I saw this email and it just read as a desperate cash grab for a company that doesnt plan to be around in 3 more years. Pathetic.

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    [–] 17 points 5 months ago

    Yep, definitely heading for bankruptcy.

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    [–] 62 points 5 months ago* (5 children)

    It's still hilarious to me that Plex, a project forked from the XBMC (now Kodi) free open-source app for organizing and playing one's own entirely legally obtained video files, is a big streaming business thing that charges people money.

    It's like finding a tree in the forest that gives out infinite free apples, and then setting up an apple-selling table right next to it stocked with apples you obviously got from that tree.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago

    This happens all the time in FOSS

    Someone comes in, contributes a bit, then forks, then closes it off once they realize there’s a path to monetization.

    Plex is a particularly egregious example: the initial author forked xbmc to make a mac port. This led to a crazy amount of popularity very fast and they saw the path to monetization. They soon after created plex server separate from the client and went to the crazy step of rewriting everything GPL so they could fully close source.

    This is legally fine but ethically fucked; they had a derivative app that technically no longer shared code with kodi but there was the fact that design cues, data structures, etc were mostly inherited. Plex wouldn’t exist without kodi. And that’s totally fine, derivative works should be allowed and encouraged. But what’s fucked is that they made serious efforts to close source and give nothing back to the community that they were built from. Code? Nothing. When they got 40 million in VC? nothing.

    See also a bunch of players in 3d printing, notably Bambu at the moment. But they’ll keep getting away with it thanks to a combination of governments that are like “money is more important than fairness or progress” and idiotic consumers that are like “oh I have to spend 30 seconds longer figuring something out? Ugh fuck you im gonna buy what some YouTuber was paid $400 to recommend”

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    No… it’s like picking up those apples, shipping them across the country, and then charging customers a delivery fee. Which is perfectly reasonable because time and fuel cost money.

    Plex helps you (and others) stream from your library pretty brainlessly. Sure there are other options, but all of them are more complicated.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    This is it. People have always paid for convenience.

    Just look at console vs PC gaming.

    Steamdeck made Linux gaming mainstream because it's brainless. Backed by proton.

    But console has a vice grip on some communities / groups due to a long standing "plug and play" sales pitch. Now they're stuck because "my friends are there."

    My brother-in-law is a sysadmin and stuck on Playstation due to his friends. Doesn't even own a gaming PC because "he doesn't have the time to tinker."

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago*

    Technically, it’s like facilitating the shipping of those apples, but leaving the customer to ship.

    Plex server->client streams don’t go through Plex’s servers themselves, but directly from server to clients. P2P. AFAIK the only exception is when something goes wrong and it falls back to a Plex-hosted server as an intermediary, which should be rare.

    That’s still a pretty useful service though. Getting P2P reliable and easy isn’t trivial, and is one reason why open source projects haven’t really supplanted it yet.

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