- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
Plex has announced a massive price increase on the service’s Lifetime Plex Pass. On July 1, the lifetime subscription option will go from $249.99 to $749.99, an increase of 200%. The price hike will only apply to new subscribers, with no changes to monthly or annual subscription pricing.
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How much longer before the yearly/monthly goes up this much.
as soon as they think the market will bear it
How much longer until all the current lifetime subscribers have to pay up to the current price to keep it?
Yeah eventually they will figure out to nullify the old cheap lifetime subscriptions.
Yeah - they know that you are using the service a lot. They know that you are willing to pay. But they are not getting ongoing revenue from you. That is something no MBA manager CEO dude can accept. They will come for lifetime users
I’m just waiting for them to decide all the lifetime members need to pay monthly and kill off the lifetime memberships. Probably by having a ‘new’ version that for some made up reason can only function
on the blood of the unbornon monthly subscriptions. Where the only real change will be a different UI that’s missing features which they will tout as “cleaner”.
My Jellyfin server goes, “Burrrrrrr!”
Honestly, I made the switch about 6 months ago and haven’t looked back once. The Jellyfin native Android TV app is a bit lacking, but I recently installed Wholpin and find it much better!
My only other gripe is that Plex allows you to set subtitle and audio language preferences per library while JF only allows one preference for the whole server. This is annoying for those of us enjoying foreign language films, where I often end up having to play with the settings every time I want to watch a foreign feature.
I’ve also heard that some people miss the syndication of Plex, where you have one account connected to many servers. I only connect to my own, so don’t know much about this.
Wait wait wait so… you pay THEM to let YOU share YOUR media? Wha?
An absolutely insane number of self hosting options require a subscription for now fucking reasoning.
Not a one time buy which would at least make sense. No no! Its a monthly fee AND half the time they require a Internet connection and checkin. Just to SELF HOST.
its fucking baffling.
Not a one time buy which would at least make sense. No no! Its a monthly fee AND half the time they require a Internet connection and checkin. Just to SELF HOST.
Yeah, the DRM has to make sure your subscription is up to date. For the service you provide all the hardware for. The service you will personally have to install and maintain.
That’s just gonna drive lazy people to learn how to use something open source like Jellyfin.
Lazy ones will just keep paying monthly. Industrious ones might move to jellyfin. The main thing this will do is
separate a few fools from their moneyget people to stop buying lifetime passes.
Literally 10x the price I paid for mine
Early adopter club 🙌🙌
Early rejector club. Jellyfin gang.
I have underwear older then jellyfin. Plex was the only option for some time
Edit: Alright, alright, it wasn’t the only option, but it was the cleanest/easiest way to make a home server feel like a streaming service that I knew of at the time
It was?
I started streaming video in around 2001. Over SMB. Using VLC as the client.
Then I switched to using iTunes as a server.
Then came XMPP/Kodi.
And eventually, Jellyfin.
Every few years, I’ve tried Plex, and it’s never done quite what I wanted, and required security/privacy compromises. About the only thing it has going for it is that the client and the server will run on just about anything.
XMPP
I think you mean XBMC.
I do indeed :D
Although I still use XMPP.
Y’all half a step from star wars over telnet over here if you’re using xmpp to steam movies.
As I said in a different comment, I think “only one of its kind” was probably a better fit, at least in terms of collected features and sharing capabilities
I was using MythTV long before Plex came around.
I guess what I should have said was “only one of its kind”. As far as I knew, it was the only one that did all the metadata stuff to give it the “streaming service” feel. Being able to share my library to others outside my home without hassle was also big
That was before the streaming services or most of the current VPN recommendations existed and Myth was mainly competing with TiVo. So, you could set up a front end remotely, but it would have been painful.
They’ve always done metadata collection though. What Plex added was the connection so you don’t need to set up a VPN for remote access.
XBMBC (later Kodi) gang present!
And plex still does some things better.
I have underwear older then jellyfin.
There were and are plenty of alternatives to Plex. Plex was never, “the only option”.
What about Emby?
The scary part and the reason I never paid is because I think they will shut down plex soon. No one is paying for streaming services anymore and those giants will start coming down on the gov to do something about it. EU is coming down pretty hard on IPTV and torrent sites already.
The EU shouldn’t because most of those streaming services are American. So it’s only good for us if people pirate. It offsets some of the tariffs Trump has levied.
And it’s those services’ own fault. They offered a decent value for money for years. Now they keep wanting more and more. Rising fees, content disappearing to other platforms but still asking for more money. Adding ads and then asking for money to remove them. Eventually people are sick of it and go like 🖕
Plex announces that it is tired of having all of these customers buying their software
I don’t know why anyone would pay that instead of using Jellyfin. I’ve had my server up for years now and it works great.
Last I looked, jellyfin auth and public facing security were less than ideal.
How far has that come in the last few years? I have plenty of people using my Plex and it’s been secure. I had heard a public facing Jellyfin wasn’t super secure.
Honestly, 95% of the reason I use Plex is so I don’t have to manage user passwords and troubleshoot issues for my friends and family. I just grant access.
I moved from the default jellyfin login method to using Authentik as the identity provider. Now its part of my homelab setup where all services have SSO, and I don’t have to create/manage an account for each person for each service.
Does that break Jellyfin apps on smart TVs or media devices?
A lot of people seem to have concerns with how Jellyfin handles access control and some have stated that the developers marked some major issues as “won’t fix”. Is there somewhere I can catch up on that?
LDAP works fine, OIDC not so much, only the web client would work.
There are still talks around making OIDC a first class citizen and IIRC it is planned as per the feature page but I guess the major core upgrade around the DB took a lot of attention the last 6-12 months.
But in the meantime I’ve just spun up an LDAP outpost for my Authentik that my Jellyfin connects to. It breaks MFA but otherwise it works. It may be a bit confusing for users that they log in at jellyfin.site.com but anything user-related like updating password is at authentik.site.com and requires an extra login.
I only need my server to work locally so I haven’t messed with that part personally. But I’ve read that setting up tailscale is straightforward and works fine. There are many other solutions to the problem. I would definitely invest a lot of effort before paying for Plex.
Great; how do I setup Tailscale on my mother’s Roku TV?
https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar300m/
Configure one of these to sit between the TV and your mother’s network and pass all the tv traffic through an exit node on your jellyfin network.
Most smart TVs have a tailscale app you can install directly on device. Roku is an exception to that.
Nope. How do I do it on the TV directly?
I bring this up every time someone parrots off the Lemmy line of “Jellyfin” because that’s all you all know. Not what’s best for the use case, just ram Jellyfin in there shortcoming and all.
Unfortunately, that’s probably not gonna happen without some new hardware.
You could setup a wire guard at the router (can you setup tail scale on a router? idk). If she’s renting the ISP router, replacing that could save a 100+ a year, depending on how much the isp is scamming her for it.
or you could repurpose a minipc/nuc from bay and set up a jellyfin streaming box with tailscale.
If you have the extra hardware, you could also setup a local server with her jellyfin and use wiregaurd/tailscale to remotely connect to it and run backup/sync during off-hours.
So, no answer because I can’t. I’m not replicating buying hardware for all of the people who are on my plex account to move them to some free software because all y’all who shout “Jellyfin” do so because you do t want to pay for anything.
Why doesn’t anyone ever mention Emby? Oh, right, because you have to support the project and no one wants to do that.
Plex isn’t in the right here, but yelling Jellyfin ever. Single. Time. Is like using a hammer to tighten a screw; it’s not always the right tool for the job and tall look like morons for just blindly parroting what others say.
Bro, if you want to use Emby, nobody is stopping you. Jellyfin is the popular solution because it is open source. Emby isn’t a project, it’s a product just like plex is a product. Both Emby and Plex started as free methods to host your media and converted to a paid closed source solution. Jellyfin is a fork of Emby from before they moved to closed source and remains free and open to this day.
No one is stopping you from recommending it either.
Are you OK? I didn’t realize my comment was so inflammatory. I just love Jellyfin and don’t appreciate Plex’s actions over the years. You love Emby. That’s cool! Use what works for you.
Byeeeeee
You could also set up a reverse proxy in front of your Jellyfin and hook a domain up to it. That way you don’t have to worry about the client at all.
Still have that nasty vulnerability where people can delete your data remotely.
The data for me is shared read-only to the Jellyfin container, so that’s not a problem.
Can you explain more about that vulnerability? It would necessitate a pretty serious privilege escalation to be possible.
I haven’t checked in on Jellyfin for a while now, but don’t they still have issues with hardware transcoding support?
Not to mention the lack of software clients on other platforms for just playback that Plex has been established on for years and even multiple device generations like with PlayStation, Roku, Fire Stick, etc.?
Also you have to configure your own reverse proxy / Tailscale set up to securely access a content library remotely, right - as opposed Plex’s relatively simpler remote access configuration?
What kinds of issues? I put an Intel Arc in my server and it’s working fine AFAICT.
Surprise, surprise, a paid product with salaried developers has more features than a volunteer project!
More people using Jellyfin, more people who will contribute, through code or donations. It’s worth a downside to swap over.
Hopefully that gets better - I run both side by side pointed at the same folders so the exact same media is available in both. I offer all my friends the choice and list every alternate app I know of, inevitably they all prefer Plex.
Because default settings arent always ideal…
Some goes for the TV they use and whatever codec they can digest.What defaults are you talking about? If you meant to reply to my other comment, I’m talking about hardware transcoding codec support settings on the server, it has nothing to do with what codec is chosen for a client - that decision is made separately. Once the codec the client needs is chosen, the hardware transcoding setting only changes whether they codec is decoded using CPU or GPU/quicksync by the server - it has no effect on codec selection. The only reason you would disable hardware transcoding for a codec that your server is capable of hardware transcoding is if your hardware is faulty or produces undesirable output for that codec when using hardware transcoding - most people don’t do this, it’s a fairly uncommon edge case. And disabling it won’t stop clients from accessing that codec, it just means that your server will CPU transcode it if requested instead of using hardware acceleration - so again it has nothing to do with client support or TVs because all it does is switch your server between hardware and software encoding / decoding. The only sane default for that setting is to hardware accelerate codecs that your PC is capable of hardware accelerating if hardware acceleration is enabled. There’s no reason not to automatically detect hardware capabilities like Plex does, instead of the current “default” where you enable hardware transcoding and then have to figure out what your hardware supports to be hardware accelerated.
Like even if they copy pasted the quicksync codec support table from Wikipedia into the server hardware acceleration settings that would be miles better because then you wouldn’t have to look up that information separately. Or, hear me out, just show next to each option which ones your computer is capable of hardware decoding vs CPU decoding.
Especially given the new “lifetime” price. More people will switch to Jellyfin. Plex lifetime might be shorter.
More people using Jellyfin, more people who will contribute, through code or donations.
Doubt.
What about Emby? Why is that never mentioned?
Because Emby is a closed source application and Lemmy is an open source platform with community member who prefer open source solutions to closed source. Your out here screaming at Linux bros “why not choose apple??”
Ok. And sometimes closed source applications work better.
I guarantee that you’re using closed source software So let’s not throw stones.
I didn’t suggest I wasn’t using closed source software or even that one was better than the other. I said you are in a community of open source enthusiasts scratching your head as to why nobody recommends a paid closed source application that has a history of turning it’s back on the FOSS community. I’m trying to give you a hint and you’re trying to die on a very strange hill.
I have not personally experienced any issues with hardware transcoding. My server is an old Dell Optiplex and I use clients on Linux, Android, Roku and Shield.
Yes you are correct about remote access and if that was a priority for me, I would happily learn that part instead of paying for Plex.
Especially on non-GPU systems, Jellyfin is slower at transcoding than Plex. I don’t know the internals, but I have both running in the sam machine, and Plex is always noticeably more responsive. Not by a huge margin, but still it is.
I have zero experience with those two products but when it comes to transcoding there are various toggles that affect the quality and speed.
It looks also like commercial products generally optimize for speed while open source tends to be more concerned about quality.
Of course this could be completely wrong in this case but that’s the general tendency I noticed. Do they allow to change settings?
How much do you donate to jellyfin? If I sum up my 20 bucks per year for the next 50 years, I end up with 1000 bucks. If I wanted to pay today, I’d donate even more to jellyfin. (Neglecting inflation)
It’s essentially a one time fee for an indefinite service of handling the vpn side of the setup.
I use Jellyfin on my local network and plex externally because I don’t know how to route specific traffic with openvpn on my phone and can’t be bothered switching it off and on when streaming things 😅
I’m not sure how it’s sustainable, and am surprised they still offer the life pass at all though.
I guess a lot of people buy it who don’t need it?
I still probably wouldn’t pay the current price for it though, I got it about a decade ago lol.
Oh also plexamp has a better UX than jellyfin for music, but I don’t think that alone would justify the current price.
Tailscale is the answer to easily and remotely access jellyfin and your server. Its easy to setup and very secure.
Dude seriously it’s so much easier than anything else. For a personal media server with remote access, jellyfin + tailscale on an old computer you may have laying around plugged into your router is all you need
Yep, exactly what I’ve been telling people. And then they complain that tvs dont have the ability to have the tailscale app on them. So, then buy a cheap android box, even an Onn 4K from Walmart would work for like 25 bucks and install tailscale and jellyfin on it.
True again. That’s what I run upstairs and downstairs on my TVs. If I’m not mistaken, you should be able to use RPis for the same sort of thing if you really really didn’t wanna touch any Google stuff, which I would understand.
I also totally get people having slightly different uses for their media servers, like maybe they share their collection with friends and family members who aren’t as tech literate/don’t wanna use a Google TV when they already stream everything else on their PS5 for example. For those purposes, it has especially made sense historically to go with Plex.
Well, my android boxes have degoogled roms on them so no google dependencies or requirements.
Yeah, I mean it all depends on what a person wants. I just immediately went with Jellyfin and tailscale from the beginning and couldnt be happier.
I didn’t find it that easy to set up 😅
but I’m sure I would find it easier if I was more motivated e.g. saving $750 by setting it up 😅
It really is easy to set up though lol. I didn’t know anything about self hosting about 2 years ago. There’s so many guides and tutorials to use to help set it up too.
You’re not wrong. I would just rather learn Headscale or nginx or any other option than pay that Plex subscription. But I’m sure there are people out there who have extremely valuable time and wouldn’t hesitate to fork over 750.
ah yeah, I paid $50, not $750 😂
I don’t believe plex pass acts as a vpn.
yeah but it removes the need for one in most use cases
It kinda does when streaming remotely, if you don’t have any open ports it gets routed through Plex’s servers
It’s not literally a VPN no but it does route data
What about Emby?
I haven’t looked at Emby in a long time. Last I checked, it wasn’t as capable or feature rich as Jellyfin or Plex
Not as feature rich as plex, sure. Emby be Jellyfin? Emby wins by a country mile.
If it works for you, great!
I wonder if instead of Jellyfin + Tailscale, people should be doing Jellyfin + Netbird.
Netbird offers a reverse proxy, so you can easily expose Jellyfin to the public Internet and not have to jump through hoops for friends and family…
https://docs.netbird.io/manage/reverse-proxy
At least, in theory… I haven’t tried this setup yet, but I’m thinking about it…
I bought my parent’s an Android TV, just so they could install Tailscale on it. Unfortunately, Android TV keeps killing Tailscale or doesn’t launch it on boot. They’re old, so they can’t really troubleshoot VPN issues.
tailscale also offers a reverse proxy through their “funnel” - https://tailscale.com/docs/features/tailscale-funnel
but I’ve been looking at netbird and might switch, so who knows what i’ll be using a year from now
Headscale doesn’t though and I’d be willing to bet the self hosted jellyfin types are more likely to also be using headscale than tailscale.
I use Jellyfin with Wireguard, Caddy, and Fail2Ban https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup
Would be nice if Plex showed their numbers; what they pay in licensing, maintenance etc and profit
Honestly if you’re a smaller server, or anywhere decent at tinkering Jellyfin is the better product at this point
I tried switching and I’ll try again. But getting https reverse proxy was a lot of moving parts that I never got working.
The instructions were a long chain of learning:
Install ngnx for reverse proxy
Ngnx only available as docker
Install docker
Docker not working because I don’t understand it.
Install podman
Give up and go back to 3d printing where I have a backlog of stuff that actually needs to be done.
Caddy is way easier than all the other reverse proxies, it handles certificates automatically
Nginx does not require docker…
I think it’s the other way around. Jellyfin recommends docker.
Just for the record, I’d generally suggest not using docker for nginx unless you are more comfortable with docker images than installing software (and keeping it up to date) on bare metal.
I installed Jellyfin “barebones” on my machine, without Docker, and it works great.
No need to Dockerize everything all the time.
Just install tailscale and run everything behind it. Too easy to set up
Can a random person (my mother in law and other non techie family) connect to my tailscaled jellyfin using a Roku or AppleTV? I thought tailscale needs a wireguard client.
Spoiler: They can’t. There is no Roku Tailscale app. AppleTV recently got VPN support.
Everyone loves to yell “Jellyfin” without realizing all of the shortcomings because it’s free.
I’m willing to work past a lot of shortcomings when the alternative is $750. Plus anything learning how to overcome those shortcomings will have benefits beyond just setting up jellyfin.
Ok; how do you load Tailscale on a Roku streaming box?
Tailscale was suggested above as an easier alternative to setting up a reverse proxy. If tailscale isn’t a good option, then I would push forward with getting a reverse proxy setup.
Well, I have no shortcomings with it, so yeah I yell Jellyfin. We have both of our tvs on cheap android boxes with it and tailscale installed and our phones with it installed to remotely access. A few extra steps to set it up? Yes, but extremely worth it and easy to access and use once it is set up. Worth the cost savings in the end? Yes. Jellyfin also does everything we need including more that we dont and also has a ton of amazing plugin support to add alot of cool features. Oh, yeah its open-source. So, yeah I think Jellyfin offers alot to be yelled about.
Ok; how do I setup Tailscale on a Roku streamer?
You would have to set up tailscale on the actual server first. Then, for the app on another device, such as the Roku streamer, does it have the Playstore or app store to install apps? If so then you would download the tailscale app and connect it to your newly setup tailscale account. If it doesn’t then as I have mentioned, you could buy a cheap android box, such as the Onn 4K at Walmart for like 25-30 bucks or spend a little more for a better android box and install it on that. Its a few extra steps but way worth it in the end.
It does. People often throw this out there as if it fits all situations, but it doesn’t. Plex is handling the proxying for you which is what makes it so easy.
A better comparison, if running your own reverse proxy was too complicated, would be to use something like Cloudflare Tunnels. However that’s still extra steps, they dont want you media streaming on their free plan, and you still have the issue of Jellyfin not being the most secure code that you really want to open up to the whole internet. That’s why a one size fits all answer is difficult.
This is why I dropped jellyfin immediately. How do I explain / get these extra steps working for family? People should have gotten the lifetime when it was cheap, and I’m surprised they even offer it anymore - some companies are dropping it, i.e Tesla FSD.
Use a reverse proxy and hook a domain up to it. Then you just say to grandma “media is now at jellyfin.mydomain.com and not app.plex.tv”
The thing that Plex does for you is reverse proxying so you don’t have to. You can set that up for Jellyfin yourself.
Well they can if those tvs allow the tailscale app to be installed. If not then Walmart sells very cheap ONN 4K boxes for like 20 bucks and then the tailscale and jellyfin apps can be installed on that.
I can kind of understand why they don’t want users buying a lifetime pass. It means they will not get any further funding from that person. It’s worth the tradeoff when you are smaller and need funding, but kind of a hinderance once you are more established.
Either way, I’m glad I purchased the lifetime pass when it was much cheaper years ago.
Yeah Lifetime Passes are unsustainable for a service. The only reason they exist is to attract some early adopters, keep them and if lucky enough have them bring more customers.
The only viable path forward is to discontinue the purchase of new lifetime licenses, or make them exponentially expensive.
At this point, I think we all can see the critical tipping point of enshittification writing on the wall for Plex.
I know everyone says Jellyfin, but given how easy Plex still handles hardware transcoding on many common current standard NAS configurations as well as the somewhat non-standard network configurations needed to otherwise easily yet securely access content remotely from external locations, not to mention the decent UX and deep integration across all client platforms whether web, iOS, Android, Smart TV, and even things like PlayStation and Xbox hardware, but do others here have some any thoughts on how to jump ship to get 1:1 features here at some point?
Many people have been on Plex for more than a decade and have seen it slowly try to reposition its business model to one that is leaning toward something more akin to a streaming subscription rather than a simple personal content library software… but I still have yet to feel the need to switch… at least not yet.
I was an early adopter to Plex, came over from Boxee when it was a thing and bought a very inexpensive lifetime pass.
I jumped ship about a year ago to jellyfin. I use tailscale and just help people set it up. After initial setup, it’s a toggle and start jellyfin and it functions pretty close to Plex. My users use the Onn box or Nvidia shield. Almost nothing has to transcode. I had issues with poorly encoded mp4 files but mkv streams flawlessly without transcode. Transcode itself is limited by graphics chip.
One note, I don’t add people to my tailscale, each user has their own tailnet and then I join it to mine by inviting them to my server. This gets around the 3 user limit.
Overall, some annoyance and pain but not bad and people went along with my plan and now it’s just normal.
My thing was, it’s my server. If they want what I have then buy an Onn or whatever and spend 15 minutes setting things up. Or don’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How does it work on TVs? You start Tailscale on the TV, and have to toggle it every time you use Jellyfin?
You dont have to toggle it on. It can be set to be on at every boot automatically. We turn our android boxes off and when we turn them back on, tailscale is already connected and Jellyfin stays open and is on screen when turning the box on. As far as tvs go, if the app is available then it would be the same.
Oh, that’s great. But just to be clear, when it’s toggled on, that means all traffic on that device is getting routed back through the host Tailscale client (not just Plex), right?
No, all other traffic would only be re-routed if you use the mullvad add-on in your tailscale account, which is the vpn add-on. Tailscale by itself is to only allow you to connect to any services behind tailscale. So, tailscale gives your server an ip address. With tailscale and jellyfin on another device you would enter the tailscale ip of your server into jellyfin with your credentials and connect to it that way.
That’s great, I didn’t know it was per service. Definitely going to set up Jellyfin now. Thank you!
Yep, tailscale will allow you to connect to any services you have on the tailscaled server from another device, such as Jellyfin, Navidrome, *arr apps, etc. Any other traffic on another device will be regular unrouted traffic unless you add the Mullvad add-on in your tailnet. Its a few extra steps to set up but worth it IMO.
These days the user limit is at 6 users. That could be large enough for a family, though not quite sufficient if you want to share with a whole bunch of friends .
Laugh while you can monkey boy! But in 2037 when its $75000 for a lifetime pass, I’ll be the one laughing then!
If you just live long enough this is an amazing deal! A steal I tell you!
If you don’t see it that way you are timid and weak and don’t have the confidence to survive another 6 or 7 decades!
Posted this link earlier and it got deleted with no mod log. Anyone able to explain so I can avoid future issues?
I got a Plex Lifetime Pass mainly for Plexamp + Tidal, but then they removed the Tidal integration. Roon lifetime pass is similar to what Plex is now, which is basically the only other option for this that exists right now.