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.
They can just adjust their pricing like that without a warning before hand? Who do they think they are?
Sad to see Plex becoming another target of enshittification.
why would someone enjoy paying for what was free?!
Right? Absolutely ludicrous. I can't get over how they can be so arrogant to think they deserve money for that. It's core functionality that existed before they forked off of emby. They didn't even write that code. Then they have no infrastructure for it, because it transcodes and streams from my server over my network. Any infrastructure they have in that process is nothing I wanted (looking at the auth that for some reason needs to phone home).
No, this is too far, I'm officially leaving Plex.
Incorrect.
They are not charging for local streaming on your network. They are just charging for remote streaming, something that wasn't part of emby, does use their servers and network bandwidth, and chews up a huge amount of development time.
For comparison, do let us all know which media server youre jumping to that supports secure and seamless remote streaming across a wide variety of devices and ecosystems
Just buy a lifetime Plex Pass and pay for the software you use. If you had years ago this wouldn't be a problem and you literally would not notice that money being gone at this point.
$150 to perpetually operate a media server with free software updates is a ridiculous deal.
I'm sorry, what? How does me hosting my content on my server connected to the Internet with a connection I pay for, to a remote client that I own and also connected to the Internet that I pay for, "use their servers and network bandwidth"? How is basic remote streaming functionality that existed for the entire time I've used it "chew up a huge amount of development time"?
Their development time - the things they're bleeding self-hosted users to fund through this change - is entirely focused on their AVOD-hosting, SVOD-hub garbage that every other streaming startup is doing.
If youre using something like a VPN to connect to your local network you wouldn't need to pay. What you're basically paying to support is the ability to connect to your server from anywhere in the world in a secure manner.
This means they're managing the routing and security elements (on their hardware), which isn't offered by any open source software. The only software I know comes close would be syncthing where people host routing servers.