I bought Plex pass years ago for £79. The new price of $749.99 is INSANE.
No wonder all the cool people are using Jellyfin.
Been on jellyfin since day one. Works fine, UI is great and gets the job done. TV UI maybe not top notch, buy usable. Mobile UI just fine and usable.
Also, exposed on the internet (reverse proxy, OIDC, https the works) for years now with zero issues whatsoever as well .
There are a few users always throwing thrash on jellyfin, maybe pissed off users that paid for Plex, or Plex shills that like to denigrate jellyfin, I don’t know.
Just ignore them.
Jellyfin is perfectly usable, yes you need to setup port forward, VPN or whatever, but it’s exactly our target audience so move along and stop bitching, Plex shills.
Stay with Plex, use jellyfin, whatever fit your bill.
Anyway plex does not fit my concept of self hosting to be free from cloud lock ins.
How am I just learning about wholfin now? They need to add that to the third party clients list on the main site because at a glance that’s easily top 3 best looking jellyfin clients
Yeah, easily the best one I’ve used on TV; that’s for sure. I found it randomly on some forum a few months ago.
Wholphin
thank you for the suggestion, will try it out! I am using a Fire Stick
Moonfin is also pretty great on Android TV too imo
This is a new one for me. Looks pretty sleek.
Yeah I changed to Wholphin recently, and it’s pretty cool — though you may need to tweak a couple of things depending on your TV
I happened to setup jellyfin when i had first heard about it while I was already hosting plex, so when plex decided to charge for remote streaming years later I was already halfway there.
I don’t see anyone “throwing trash” on Jellyfin, only pointing out that there are some downsides. Just as it also has some advantages over Plex.
Plex is undoubtedly on a downward trajectory, and I’m glad Jellyfin exists. But it does not yet have feature parity with Plex, and if you use it for music there’s simply nothing better than Plexamp. You waive away the requirements to remotely stream on Jellyfin, but the fact that you suggest simply opening up ports highlights that one of Plex’s strengths is it’s ability to remotely stream without jeopardizing your network security.
I run both concurrently, Plex for the remote streaming, OTA DVR, better living room apps, and (by far the biggest feature for me) for Plexamp. Jellyfin for proof of concept.
I’m not a Plex shill, and am preparing for a day that Jellyfin is the better answer. But for me and my users, that day hasn’t yet arrived.
I fully respect your comment, and I don’t doubt there are good reasons behind Plex. I choose to use jellyfin because I was put off by the corporate product resell approach of Plex that goes against my self host idea, so I never used Plex and cannot say anything bad about it.
But I find annoying and even suspicious that every time there is a Plex or jellyfin discussion a few voices always denigrate jellyfin like it’s a no good choice for lack of features or dubious security and such.
Yes guys (not talking to you in specific) I understand that jellyfin lacks those features, many people don’t care, and who do care they already know.
It’s like saying Immich is bad because you don’t need to own storage or hardware for Google Photos. I know that. But it’s not a valid point of discussion when talking about open source self hosted software.
Also, you don’t need to open any ports. Just use tailscale. If you’re a bit more technically savvy, set up a reverse proxy. It’s honestly not that hard. Tailscale is just an app that you install. Why is everyone acting like it’s complicated? Am I missing something?
But it’s not a valid point of discussion when talking about open source self hosted software.
But we’re not talking about open source self hosted software. We’re in a piracy community. And I’m certainly not saying that Jellyfin is “bad” (as you suggest), only trying to paint a picture why Plex still has a place in my stack.
Yes, exposing Jellyfin safely isn’t too difficult, but it isn’t trivial either. Plex’s strength has traditionally been (and still is, if decreasingly) its relay making remote streaming trivial. And if you intend to share with non-technical users, it has to be.
Plex’s strengths is it’s ability to remotely stream without jeopardizing your network security.
Doesn’t the Plex proxy stream cap at 2 MB/s ?
So unless you are fine with such a low bitrate, opening a port with Plex is also required, be it done manually or with UPNP. (Disregarding VPNs here)
Or am I missing some other way to stream content with Plex?
That’s not been my experience, except for my MIL who somehow keeps resetting her client quality settings to 720 making my server transcode. My ISP is also really shitty so I’m honestly not sure the bandwidth numbers leaving my server.
From Plex’s site on the relay service:
Connections are limited to 2 Mbps maximum for streams (this applies to both Plex Pass and Remote Watch Pass subscribers)
I believe you. I’m just saying that quality of streaming remotely hasn’t been an issue for me (other than my MIL being a boomer and messing up her settings.)
Gotcha!
I tried Plex once, before I knew about jellyfin. I just wanted an open-source self-hostable media server with my own media.
When I tried it, after installing Plex, I was presented with a login for a Plex hosted account. Iirc that was optional and I skipped it, after that came the nags for Plex pass. Piss off. That’s exactly the opposite of what I wanted out of something like jellyfin.
Oh yeah and apparently you can’t stream remotely without a subscription either? If it were a feature they had to spend time on I’d still not want to use it, but I’d understand at least.
From the application’s point of view, there is no difference between internet and intranet access. I just saw that downloading the media you already own, using your own infrastructure, requires an even more expensive subscription.
How tf did people stick around with this shit for so long.
If the owner of the Plex server has lifetime and other users that don’t have Plex pass at all and want to watch it remotely, they just need to be part of your home.
They don’t even need to be a part of your home. The server owner just needs to have a Plex Pass. None of my users are in my home group and can still stream remotely since I got a Lifetime pass back when they were, I think, $99.
Haven’t used it myself, but wouldn’t something like Tailscale solve the remote access limitation?
It does, but the limitation just doesn’t make any sense.
Much like USA Mobile carriers treating hotspot data differently than the phone’s own data, under the ancient premise that phones use less data than PCs - something that hasn’t been true for well over a decade.
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The same reason most foss projects are barren. Plex focuses on ease of use and giving people what they want. Users mostly don’t care about the sub. It’s easy to use and works.
Meanwhile jellyfin doesn’t have a remote first interface that isn’t absolute dog shit and I need to set up a reverse proxy and potentially idp to get the ability for my family to log in.
This shit isn’t hard. The answer to the community is, make the product better, and start bundling shit in. But I’m sure I’ve already offended some nerd who thinks this is all just so easy and requires no work to tell me I just need to learn Linux better. And that putting in a reverse proxy by default will make maintenance a pain and I just have to put portainer and LE to fix it.
The shit y’all are bitching about is the problem.
Most FOSS projects are barren? Huh
I’m here to say it’s all very easy and requires no work.
Seriously, you literally just install Jellyfin (or run it in Docker), set up nginx with certbot and make a port forward on your router. Zero maintenance at all.
Any LLM can give you a complete step-by-step guide that takes 10 minutes to follow if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I cannot understate how bad of an idea it is to expose something to the Internet when you don’t know what you’re doing.
Jellyfin is not designed to be exposed directly. They have a number of outstanding security issues. You should really use a VPN to access your local network instead.
I expose plenty of services. I like to live life dangerously 😎
ADHD linux zealots will argue anything, no matter how stupid, if you dare hold any comparison to a commercial product. It’s literally built into their ADHD brains need to argue and be right.
They will sit there and argue insane shit and pretend like most people have a desktop sitting in their living room much less setting up an entire *arr stack with reverse proxy. And then scream at you when you say that sounds like work I don’t have to do for less than a hamburger meal.
It’s easy bro, just learn docker, get it set up so that services boot at launch, and I’m sure nothing will never break or need to be updated again.
yup people forget about convenience. its why I’ve been building retrovibed for the last year. that *arr + plex/jellyfin + vpn + reverse proxy nonsense is insane. yes you can do it… but seriously who the fuck wants to manage that many moving parts.
You are absolutely right about all of that, I did it exactly like that, had ChatGPT tell me what to do and done. I am not an IT person, but I still like messing with tech. But that’s more than 95% of people are willing to do, and that’s why people use plex. Takes literally a minute to set up and it just runs. That’s why people choose Apple. Simple and easy, little to no maintenance. That doesn’t make it a great product, but an accessible one, and that’s what counts for most people
Meme material.
My breaking point was to pay for transcoding.
Paid for the android app which allowed HWA but then I wanted to watch it on my chromecast TV. Welp gotta pay or bust.
So I bust, went through the early adopter pain (early 11th gen Intel Xe gpu, no actual knowledge of linux or docker, little experience with linux and docker) and set it up.
Working great since then.
Currently restreaming japanese IPTV with jellyfin via an m3u stream at work (and through a mobile VPN router)
Not the most stable stream but sufficient
Oooh. Can you give some more details about how you did that? I have a Japanese friend coming to visit for about 2 months and she might want to watch TV during the day.
Something something akariko something netgenx on google.
My stack is including dispatcharr for managing m3u streams (and fallback sources) and jellyfin to watch it.
When I first used Plex, it didn’t even have accounts. I don’t even understand what the account is for.
Was any justification provided for a nearly 10x price increase!?
Glad I started with Jellyfin
It’s because lifetime licenses aren’t sustainable. I’m surprised they still offer it.
Plex is an actual company that has an office and employees, so they have recurring costs every month. A lot of people already have lifetime licenses that they’re not likely to receive any more revenue from. It’s likely they’re increasing the price to help recoup costs or convince people to subscribe to a monthly subscription rather than get a lifetime license.
Nah, they increased the cost to drive people to the monthly subscription. I’m guessing in a year or two they’ll announce the lifetime subs have been revoked and everyone needs a monthly sub.
Not saying you’re wrong, but I wonder how many people that were willing to pay 250 dollars for lifetime would actually pay more than 3 years of subscription.
I believe most lifetime buyers do it for FOMO. They pay it believing that they won’t ever need to worry about it again and that they’re making a good or safe deal… but most of them won’t be using Plex that much anyway.
With this price hike Plex is basically killing the lifetime option. Sure, they might get more subscribers at first, but in the other hand they will also lose a lot of impulse buyers that will hardly pay them 250 dollars in monthly subscriptions at the long run. At least, that’s what I think…
Why do they have an office and employees? It’s a damn ffmpeg wrapper.
They’re already charging comparible amounts as Netflix but they don’t do half the things that Netflix does. $750 at $10/month is over 6 years. That’s more than double what is reasonable. If I pay for 3 years of software development, shouldn’t I be allowed to keep the software?
Anyways, I use Jellyfin and donate to their development.
EDIT: meant years not months
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who is this for?
those unicorn users who make 150k++ a year and pirate all their media and then wanna share it with their friends that they don’t have?
travelling salesmen who pirate all their media??
I don’t think there is an actual target for this price. But I bet my left testicle it’s to push for subscription passes instead of a single purchase.
Edit: fuck it, take the right one as well
Wouldn’t they hurt use Jellyfin? Lol The only “value” that Plex seems to have to offer these days are the weird tv services things they keep trying to push
I know someone with a Plex who won’t switch to Jellyfin because it’s too complicated, but now is looking for other platforms. I hate to tell them… they’re all complicated.
Jellyfin is complicated? It’s easier to get going than Plex IMO. It might be slightly trickier to access it outside of your home network but even that’s not all that hard, just set up tailscale
It’s been a while since I used Plex, but is it really that much less complicated than Jellyfin? When I switched, it seemed like roughly the same amount of complication, but that was a long time ago.
No lol. The basic setup is: you point it to your libraries, it does the rest. Just like Plex.
Connecting remotely is maybe slightly trickier since you have to open it up to the internet, or just run tailscale.
You know that even if you paid that ridiculous amount, it still wouldn’t be the last time they try to get money out of you, either.
After 16 years of having a lifetime pass (and nearly 20 years of administering multiple Plex servers), I know this to be false. And, unless you have one yourself, you could not possibly know. Especially because, with a lifetime pass, there’s no other way that could possibly ask for money from a user. It’s literally impossible.
But, if I’m wrong, show proof of your lifetime pass, and the solicitous emails you received subsequently. I know you can’t.
If you’re going to speak from such obvious ignorance, it should be easy to admit when you’re wrong
Most Lemmy users, however, never find such a thing so easy…
I think it’s more that they’re implying the company is likely to get worse in the future and start trying shit, not what they’ve already experienced. The price now being nearly 10x what it once was is a pretty big red flag, after all.
I won’t argue with your cynicism, but increasing the price on something that almost nobody ever purchased anyway really isn’t a red flag at all
Especially when all other costs remain unchanged
If Plex starts some crazy Fuckery, I’ll be right on board with you.
As another decade-long lifetime Plex pass holder and watching the generally downward spiral of Plex development, I’m right there with you. I don’t agree with a lot of the direction they’re going in, but they have never once tried to upsell me after getting the lifetime pass.
The system works, it’s a lot easier/more available for viewers than JellyFin, and until those things change I don’t see much reason to get out the pitchforks. However if they do, mine’s ready.
I have been following the development of Jellyfin for years. I’ve deployed a couple of servers just for testing with my users. I am very, very, very interested in the development and future development of Jellyfin. I’ve even contributed money to the project.
But I’ve been a Plex user for nearly 20 years. I administer multiple servers with more than a couple of dozen users, and I can say this: Plex offers users a far superior experience compared to Jellyfin.
That said— I fully support support the Jellyfin project in creating an open source replacement for Plex. I really do. And I’ll switch to it as soon as it’s good enough to meet my needs and the needs of my users.
But that’s gonna be a few years from now. Plex didn’t get as awesome as it is immediately. It took 20 years to get there. Jellyfin isn’t gonna get there overnight. I closely track it progress, and as soon as I can switch to it, I will.
The Plex user interface is super cluttered with stuff that isn’t your media by default. I hate it.
Most interfaces for most apps are cluttered by default. It’s very easy to tweak and customize.
lol
Have lifetime Plex Pass. Here’s them trying to get money from me:
I don’t see any of that. Because I didn’t go looking for it.
I mean, you went to their “On Demand Rental” section, what did you expect to find there?
I’m not even seeing that option, btw:
For now
We’ll see.
I’m not immune to changing my tune. But only with good reason. And this isn’t it
How about when they “accidentally” sent that email to all your users saying that they NEED to buy Plex Pass to continue to use remote streaming? Or when they had that “bug” in the app shortly after that, where remote streaming would give an error message saying that need to buy Plex Pass to stream your content?
Maybe they don’t solicit from you, but they use dark tactics to trick your users, and that’s not acceptable in my opinion.
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You should have gotten it on May 1 2025, subject line “Remote streaming changes you need to know”. I got it and I wasn’t even using Plex any more, let alone with other users.
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That did happen, lots of confusion with the users. Don’t know why you are calling those other people liars.
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I think you’ve lost track of who you’re replying to.
I do wonder if this is a last ditch effort cash grab before they go under or a “we really thought we’d be acquired by now so now we have to plan ahead” move.
I imagine most of their revenue comes from the ad supported “channels” they provide, which non-technical people are tricked into using since they have a technical friend or relative who set them up with Plex 10 years ago. With the Fox acquisition of Roku, the merging of Tubi and Roku Channel would be huge and probably cause Plex to lose streaming licenses of certain properties which will end up as lower revenue.
jellyfin: hey here i am you can have me for free. i even run on your own server.
Yeah but I hear they recently decided to raise their pricing by like 30%.
Joke being 30% of 0 is still 0
Lifetime single pay subscriptions don’t make financial sense at all for a company. As much as I hate subscriptions, it’s the only way to get long term support, which software needs.
If Jellyfin can fill most Plex features for most people, maybe it’s not that they need to charge money to survive. Maybe it’s that their product value proposition has eroded.
Certainly, but open source projects rely too heavily on the goodwill of volunteers who still need to feed their families. Hopefully Jellyfin’s incoming users contribute to the project.
Don’t worry. My family isn’t going hungry. Enjoy your media.
They managed years without going to a subscription model. This is about shareholder needs not software upkeep.
But Plex’s subscription plan is also priced like shit. Netflix is like 2$/month, Debrid is 3$ while plex is 10$ for me.
Where in the world do you get Netflix for $2?
India, Bangladesh, plenty of Asian countries. I was using a vpn to pay for netflex through Bangladesh. A $25 plan in the US was $3.23 there. Its all a scam.
India
netflix is $20/month, so what you’re saying is that plex is cheap (I have no idea what plex offers but I don’t pay for either)
Two dollars/month
Jellyfin
Jellyfin is always free, works great, and keeps getting better!
I like jellyfin
Even now - at the peak point of the Memory/SSD price bubble - about 1/3 of that lifetime pass buys you enough dedicated hardware to do it yourself for at least the next decade, probably more.
Wait what. $750? I think I paid like $100 years ago. Damn.
Same. It was my Xmas gift to myself. If not, I’d learn Jellyfin.
I paid 75 for mine and 150 for work.
Now I run both and use JF for myself and local and Plex for friends and family.
When Plex finishes fucking us over my friends and family can decide wether they want to deal with tailscale or go without.
You should learn anyway. I switched and I have no plans of looking back. Jellyfin is basically everything Plex would have been if they continued as they were installed of trying to become some stupid streaming service mess that they are turning into
Hey guess what software I don’t need to use
If you don’t own something, eventually Capitalism will weaponise it against your soul. FOSS is owned in common, and self hosting is your own. Never understood why people liked plex.
Never understood why people liked plex.
Accessibility mostly… Plex’ centralized account system allows for your average person to set up and account, accept the invite to my library, and they are done. The lift required to get those same people to use Jellyfin would prompt them to never use it again.
Which honestly is my eventual end game anyway… Once Plex pulls the lifetime pass out from under me I plan to turn my media library internally with Jellyfin and a HTPC.
Jellyfin has largely the same, although I’ve never used Plex so maybe I’m wrong on that. It’s a pain for the host to setup and get going with jellyfin for multiple users with auth (speaking from experience), but it’s a do once have forever setup.
I bought one ages ago, but I left for Jellyfin when I ditched Windows. I hated the direction Plex has been going for years - if I wanted a content streaming service, I would have signed up for one… I just wanted a good way to stream stuff from my media server to my other stuff.
Jellyfin is basically what plex would have been if they didn’t lobotomize themselves.
