Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
Personal Media and Beyond You’re going to be hearing a lot from us this year—we’ve got a ton of exciting...
We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
I'm surprised by the resistance to Jellyfin in this thread. If you are using Plex, you're already savvy enough to use bittorrent and probably the *arrs. If you can configure that stuff, Jellyfin is absolutely something you can handle. If you like Docker, there's good projects out there. If you're like me and you don't understand Docker, use Swizzin community edition. If you can install Ubuntu or Debian, and run the Swizzin script, you're in business.
Wireguard so you are always seen as being on the local network. This bit of assholery is easily defeated.
Another company fucked by executives.
I already pay for plex pass but I'm going to start looking into jelly fin out of principle. I will not support the enshitification of a service I use and this is how it starts. Soon they will have tiered subscriptions and then the cheap one will be taken away and the cheapest paid one will be stuffed with ads then all tiers will be stuffed with ads then they will jack up prices again or charge more for sharing with family or block it all together to force your family to get their own sub and the circle of enshitification will be complete.
Judging by the rest of the thread I'm going to get downvoted for this, but what the hell:
I'm sure I'll switch to Jellyfin eventually but I tried it out a few weeks ago to see what all the hype was about and it just... wasn't great. It was difficult to setup, with way too many overly-complicated settings, and then it refused to play one of the two test files I tried. Like it or not there's a reason that Plex is the dominant player in the game, and a large part of that reason is that it verges on plug-and-play for simplicity of both setup and use.
Yes, it sucks that they're removing remote streaming for free users, but I imagine there's a significant chunk of users who don't know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies for their streams (which happens entirely in the background), and those aren't going to be cheap to run. Maybe putting them behind a paywall will provide the resources to make them faster.
I did buy a lifetime pass last time they announced a price hike; it's honestly paid for itself many times over, and I've been encouraging other users I know to do the same before this next one, because yes, it is a significant hike this time around. That said, while I wouldn't pay monthly for it, I do still feel like the lifetime pass is tremendous value for such a polished product. It's a shame they've had to do it at all, but I don't begrudge them for it.
They seem to be getting a lot of hate for this, but Plex is not FOSS... They have the roots but they currently have like 100 paid employees and are trying to make a business out of it. They have to do something to make money to pay people every month. My $75 10 years ago isn't going to do much for that... The fact that they've made it this far without folding is impressive.
I gotta be honest, when I look at the problem pragmatically, it'll be a lot easier to pay $20 a year than to switch to jellyfin and get all my users to figure out how to install clients and make it work for them.
I'm already at the point in my life where my primary concern is making things work smoothly, and if I need to throw money at something to make it work smoothly, the choice is a no brainer. (At least for some values of "money")
This is the best ad campaign Jellyfin could have asked for.
I stopped using Plex shortly after they started forcing logging in with your online Plex account to connect to LAN only based server. The writing was on the wall all those years ago. Who wants to be locked out of their media when the internet is offline, completely defeated the point of self hosting local infrastructure
Jellyfin, while lacking a bit when I first migrated, has continued improved over the years and it has been joyful to use. Plus Jellyfin supported hardware transcoding before Plex did, which was a gripe I had with Plex at the time.
I stream from my server remotely and share with Family without hassle. I dunno where Plex is trying to go, glad I bailed long ago
I just want to make sure I read this correctly. It says that if you're a Plex plass holder already that remote streaming changes won't affect your service. This means that if I have the lifetime subscription and host my own server than users whom have not payed for Plex pass can continue to access this server without issue correct?
Historically, that's how they usually rolled out features requiring a Plexpass - It usually depended on the server owner owning Plexpass. This move, however, makes me think they'll probably change that for shared to others via E-mail.
Correct
@Tinks @randomaside what i don't understand is, what processing/compute are they using on their end? My server is transcoding it and I'm connecting directly to it.
Thanks
Yeah. The day they start making something subscription that isn't included in the lifetime pass is the day they get their office burned down by a lot of angry people.
Why do people use this when Jellyfin exists?
Because of the Wife Factor. Getting people to convert requires getting past a lot of social inertia. It requires you to first convince them that the convenience of streaming services isn’t actually worth paying for. Then it requires an elegant onboarding experience. Lastly, Plex simply makes remote access easy. Sure, you could fiddle with reverse proxies for Jellyfin. But that’s easy to mess up. Instead, it’s much smoother to simply sign into Plex.
I can talk my tech-illiterate “My google chrome desktop icon got moved, and now I don’t know how to check my email” mother-in-law through Plex’s sign-up process over the phone. In fact, I did. It’s familiar enough that anyone who has signed up for a streaming service can figure it out. I can’t do that with Jellyfin, because their eyes glaze over as soon as you start talking about custom server URLs or IP addresses. Hell, my MIL’s TV doesn’t even have a native Jellyfin app available on the App Store. If I wanted to install it for her, I would need to sideload it.
Jellyfin does a lot of things right. But by design, the setup process will never be as elegant as Plex’s, because that elegant system requires a centralized server to actually handle it. And centralized servers are exactly what Jellyfin was built to rebel against.
To be clear, I run both concurrently; Jellyfin for myself, and Plex for friends/family. I got the lifetime Plex Pass license a decade ago, and it has more than paid for itself since then. But it sounds like a bunch of my friends and family may end up switching to Jellyfin if they don’t want to deal with the PlexPass subscription.
Setting jellyfin up is for the technically inclined, i'll agree there, but once deployed I don't really see where Plex fundamentally excels over Jellyfin when it comes to "the wife factor"?
You open the app, app shows library, you click on desired media item, desired media item plays. What am i missing?
I think its a great idea to run the two concurrently. I didn’t see the point but given how plex is evolving i think its time to start getting familiar with jellyfin.
100% agree with the reverse proxy set up, it's not hard but it is intimidating at first and just fyi, reverse proxy set up is a ton easier if you're using swag with the drag, drop, run for a ton of apps including SSL certificate renewal.
https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2020-08-21-introducing-swag
With that reverse proxy and SSL set up, no problems with the wife test or parent test and jellyfin for me at least.
I took a dive into linux and jellyfin and im too stupid for it.
The audacity of this company to increase prices when:
A) downloads are locked behind the paywall but havent worked in years (probably close to a decade at this point)
B) they focus all the development time on bringing bullshit to the platform (live tv, rentals, other streaming app searches, etc)
Requiring a subscription for remote access is actually fucking insane, they don't have any bandwidth costs associated with that other than authentication so ???
This will drive people to Jellyfin, and watch how fast Plex drops into irrelevance when all the selfhosters move away. Plex is (now was) the #1 thing to that both myself and others in this community would recommend to someone looking to get into selfhosting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ not anymore, wonder how much the revenue will drop?
Requiring a subscription for remote access is actually fucking insane, they don't have any bandwidth costs associated with that other than authentication so ???
They have provided a free relay service for years that makes it possible to access a server even if there are things in the way like CGNAT. That service had a low bandwidth limit but undoubtedly cost them money, so yes. But yes, they should have just moved that feature entirely to Plex pass (there is already a higher bandwidth limit for Plex pass users)
Final thought: there's also a fair chance (I'd rate it at almost 70%) that they presented this to us because they knew it would piss people off. Then, in a week or so, they will post a "we're sorry, is this better?" with the changes they're ACTUALLY going to make. A ploy to make us blindly agree to whatever they want because "at least it's better than what they wanted originally" 🙄🙄
I could only get my downloads to work adding some conf line to my unbound DNS settings I saw on reddit.
Jellyfin is on my list.
I’ve been using Plex many years. I abandoned it about 1-2 years ago when they began their enshittification journey. Now I see they are continuing to double down on being assholes.
They do not need any more resources to allow people to use what already exists. Most people run their own servers, and, they track all that by the way. Hence why people moved away from it.
Don’t give them your money. Let them rot. They fucked their user base who built them.
This always baffled me when I had a friend who showed me his Plex server years ago.
So you're using a service which makes it easy for you to host and access everything wherever you are, pulls in all the metadata for shows and movies and you're not worried about them tracking all of that?
When I finally set my own up I used Jellyfin from the start, I prefer as little tracking as possible but thats just me
Well, looks like my decision to stick with Kodi and never bother with Plex is about to pay dividends.
NAS + Tailscale + Kodi is the easiest to setup for me. Works really good.
I used Kodi for years (back before and during the XMBC - > Kodi shift) before moving to Plex, it was great (a pain for a good config, but once your clients have remote access and use a shared database its insane how good it can be) but Plex was touted for so long I figured I'd give it a try when I saw a good sale. I've been using it for the past 8 years or so but may go back to Kodi or Jellyfin.
Kodi and Plex do different things, both of them organize your media and give you a pretty interface to access it, but Kodi is a program running locally and Plex is a webservice that you can access remotely. Jellyfin is the open source program that does the same thing as Plex, i.e. a media server manager that can be accessed remotely through a web interface.
The equivalent to Plex is Jellyfin I think, Plex can be used as a media server for Kodi.
Alright, so I have had Jellyfin installed for years now, but my primary issue is that most devices myself or my users use lack official, readily-available clients. For example, the Samsung TV app is a developer mode install. Last I looked, nobody has put a build into the store.
I really want to use Jellyfin, but I feel like my users simply can't. I'm interested in others' experiences here that could help.
I run an Android TV box on my Smart TV, because I don't trust them on the internet.
I mean, except for Tizen OS isn't most available? You can find the client for Android, Android TV, Windows, Linux (Flatpak), macos, apple ios, and more.
https://jellyfin.org/downloads/clients/I can speak from my experience with an Apple TV, the application "Infuse" works amazing with a jellyfin server. Though the application is essentially $1 month subscription, but works across all your apple devices, if you have any. I think it's worth it.
Additionally, the official app for Android TV worked pretty well when I last tried it on an Nvidia Shield
I had the same experience with my parents. They have a Samsung TV and the Jellyfin experience was awful.
I ended up getting them a little N100 mini pc and installed Bazzite and the Jellyfin app from Flathub. You can configure it so it knows it’s on a TV, and responds to keyboard controls. I got them a remote from a company called Pepper Jobs that gives keyboard input and now they have a great experience with it. Even my mom, who’s a big technophobe, loves it.
My dad also has an LG TV in his workshop that doesn’t have a working Jellyfin app (cause it’s ten years old), and he uses the Jellyfin app for his Xbox on that one.
I love Jellyfin, but I always find something that I have a problem with when trying it, for example it has weak searching, tagging, and TV show identification compared to Plex.
I tried using it even as recent as yesterday for some searching and tagging, but it's searching, tagging, and even TV show identification has problems and is weak in comparison to Plex. I couldn't mass-tag certain videos which was annoying for me, I had to do it one-by-one and it ended up taking a long time, that was frustrating. Also, tags don't show up in searches anymore because it hurts performance apparently. With that said, maybe Plex has the same limitation, but it doesn't mean that Jellyfin has to. They are open-source, and they can be better than Plex, and in many ways they already are, but I keep running into pain points with how I want to use it, and it does feel a bit unfortunate. With that said, I'm a developer too, so I know it's not always that simple. It's just in some ways it feels less "complete" than Plex.
I'm still really pleased with Jellyfin though, and especially the future potential of it.
I use Jellyfin client on my new Samsung TV via a Google TV dongle (ONN tv, $25 at Walmart). Seems to work well.
My only complaint is the stream volume has been very low after a recent update. Downsampling helps but seems like it shouldn' t be necessary.
The only major pain point I had with Jellyfin was getting it on my Samsung TV yes. It is absolutely not a good recommendation for people with Samsungs unless they're willing to get their hands very dirty. Now, once I got the app side loaded on there, it works perfectly well, but the process sucked ass.
I've never had an issue with the apps. It's on my Chromecast and my android phone, and I typically stream to the TV from my phone.
My only issue is that they require a real cert (which is good tbh) and I am having trouble getting letsencrypt working due to my isp blocking port 80 and me dragging my feet getting DNS working
Yeah.
Jellyfin is spectacular for LAN usage on two computers. Once you start using devices (because, you know, that is what people tend to plug into their TVs...) or going on travel, it rapidly becomes apparent that it just isn't a competitor.
Hell, a quick google suggests jellyfin STILL doesn't have caching of media for offline viewing. Plex's works maybe 40% of the time but... 40% is still higher than 0%.
I have a lifetime pass for Plex and encourage anyone who even kind of cares to get one next time it is on sale (or shortly before the scheduled price hike). I have tried Jellyfin a few times over the years and... it is basically exactly what I hate with FOSS "alternatives". It isn't an alternative in the slightest but people insist on talking it up because they want it to be and that just makes people less willing to try genuinely good alternatives.
To put it bluntly, Plex is an "offline netflix" as it were. Jellyfin is a much better version of smbstation and all the other stuff we used to stream porn to our playstations back in the day.
I've been testing out jellyfin for the last couple months but it doesn't really fill the void of this specific feature that's being locked behind a pay wall. If anyone has good recommendations for securely and reliably hosting jellyfin behind SSL and auth with email password resets where I don't have to worry about it as much as Plex.
I use jellyfin locally but for a handful of remote clients I have I may well block off their access they're not going to be able to figure out my hand spun services and wall of text.
I would go for a reverse proxy to get ssl running.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/networking/#running-jellyfin-behind-a-reverse-proxyHandling users with forgotten passwords is, sadly, a manual chore for the administrator.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/users/adding-managing-users#profileAuthentik + jellyfin SSO plugin?
I haven't tried it out personally, but I use authentik, for that you can just create a password policy, then add a new stage for identification (just make sure to add the email field), and an email stage, then create a flow.
More work on your end than paying someone else obviously.
Before now I was on the sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to teach my extended family how to use Jellyfin instead of plex but after this I'm already mid-way through setting up a Jellyfin docker container on my server and I only found out an hour ago
Jellyfin is still way behind Plex in general performance but I keep a VM of it running and updated, for when the day comes that Plex is absolutely worthless.
Which at this rate, is, well, we're getting there.
Jellyfin depends on proprietary Microsoft .NET, even on Linux.
It's still better than Plex and Emby, which are fully proprietary, and have no source code. But I will stick with sshfs with kodi, and nginx plus mpv for now.
I moved on to jellyfin after I found out the hard way Plex servers need to authenticate for use. I'm sure by now there are ways to set up offline authentication but I already didn't like the idea of paying monthly to stream my own content from my own machine. It just didn't make sence to me. Jellyfin isn't perfect, or as flashy as Plex, but it works, looks fine, and its free, not counting a much deserved donation to the devs .
Plex Media Server- Settings : Network : List of IP Addresses and Networks that are allowed with Auth : 192.168.4.0/24, e.g.
Why would anyone even used Plex since we have jellyfin?
For working subtitles
Jellyfin subtitles now work flawlessly and you can finally select colors compatible with HDR.
Migrated to Jellyfin a few months ago and I haven't looked back.
It was there first and you can share it with friends more easily. For Plex you just register with the central server and share your username with your friends or w/e. Jellyfin has nothing like that.
And now, that feature costs $240. Suddenly, jumping through hoops to configure Jellyfin's external SSO plugin becomes a lot more rewarding.
Plexamp is (or at least was) pretty awesome. It requires plex and plex pass for its full features. Jellyfin doesn't have anything remotely comparable (though you could always just run Lyrion).
the PS4/PS5 app was one of my deciding factors when I used it
I'm not pirating a bunch of shows just to pay Plex for the privilege of watching it.
As a plex pass lifetime user, this doesn't change anything for me.
I am, however, blown away that the price went from $75 CDN to $350 CDN over the last 10 years!! That's just insane!
I'm not sure where you're getting that from, the article literally states the price hasn't changed in 10 years, and still hasn't, but it finally will on the 29th of April.
This tracks with my experience as it's probably been 10 years since I bought the lifetime pass and here in the UK it's often on sale for basically the same price (about £75 if I recall).
Well, it was $75 CDN when i bought in 2012, it's $150-170 CDN now, and going up to $249 USD which converts to $358 CDN, so I'm assumong they'll round down to $350 or up to $360 CDN.
The conversion from USD to CDN kills it for us sadly. It's just such a huge jump this time. More than double on this bump.
They have sales, and it's not really worth paying the "MSRP" price. My wife got Plex Pass for $80 back in 2023, and I got it late last year for $90.
If you don't like the price there's always jellyfin.
Got to say that I have been very happy with it.
Jellyfin is just so much better, imo. Much cleaner, less stuff that I don’t actually need.
I'm a plex pass lifetime owner, but I don’t regret switching to Jellyfin one bit.
Yeah I switched 2-3 years ago because so many features were paywalled and on jellyfin I can at least use plugins
I switched when I had an internet outage and couldn’t log into Plex locally to watch my own media. Very happy with Jellyfin since then.
Does Jellyfin do remote streaming?
Yes. You'll have to set up a reverse proxy, I use nginx, and get yourself domain, I use duck DNS, and get a SSL certificate from let's encrypt if your wanting to steam to something like a Chromecast or Roku.
It's not all that hard honestly and there's a good guide here for general home media, including both Plex and jellyfin
If you can set it up? Yup.
Behind CGNAT? Maybe you need to set up a relay or something to circumvent it.
I've been meaning to set up a homeserver with plex recently but will defnitely go for jellyfin now that I read this thread.
Yeah, my lifetime Jellyfin subscription wasn’t quite that much, thankfully. 😆
As a result I imagine more users will look at other offerings such as Jellyfin.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
https://jellyfin.org/This might be what it takes to at least get me to install it.
Do they live well together with the same shared media library?
Also, are there audiobook clients for Jellyfin?
I've heard rumors that they do play well together, but that's people running it in docker with a "read-only" flag set for the content folder, with metadata saved in the config folder
I've used the Jellyfin app to listen to audio books, but for my purposes, it's easier to run the separate client/server Audiobookshelf.
I've had Jellyfin and Plex running using the same media directory for a couple years now. I think I had to make a couple small changes for things like seasons of a TV show to show up correctly, but nothing incredibly difficult. Definitely worth setting up and playing with periodically so when you do finally get sick of Plex, you're ready to just switch.
Only thing I use Plex for exclusively now is when I'm flying, Plex has the Netflix style download option and Jellyfin just downloads the video file. I like Plex's way better just from personal preference.
Of you use docker plex and jellyfin arent gonna be messing with your media unless you delete/modify them within the respective clients (but then again thats what *arr is for)
I didn't enjoy using Jellyfin for audiobooks, on my android I use the Jellyfin client to download the book I wanna listen to and then I use AudioAnchor for listening to it.
They too put a whole lot behind their subscription though
https://emby.media/support/articles/Premiere-Feature-Matrix.html
So basically.. this is a blatant cash grab, and a nearly 200% one depending on the level of service you pay/paid for. Wonder how long it will be before the lifetime pass is discontinued and everyone gets forcibly moved over to a monthly subscription model
Every service is doing this as expenses and interest rates go up. Its the driving force of enshittification. All the VCs want internet startups to finally turn a profit.
I have a lifetime plex pass so this does not really affect me but I expect the trend of degrading experience to continue. I would have switched to Jellyfin a long time ago but I am dreading contacting everyone I share with and getting them migrated.
Same boat here. I chose Plex because the apps were everywhere. Smart TV's, phones, web...
I can switch, no problem. I don't want to have to teach my parents a new app. OMFG!
This is also true of Jellyfin, though. I have apps on my Windows PC, my Android phone, multiple Nvidia Shield boxes on my TVs, plus the web interface if I need it.
I switched over from Plex several years ago, and while it takes a bit more time to configure, compatibility for clients seems just as good for Jellyfin as it is for Plex.
Most importantly, Jellyfin is strictly client/server, no "cloud" bullshit and no remote account is required; I don't want Plex phoning home with a list of the media on my file server.
its actually the sole reason why i ended up paying for plex myself. its not because on ME that i ended up using plex, its moreso everyone else that I want to give my server access to with the least amount of hurdles that made me ultimately go that route.
Same here except we’ve also started living somewhere with managed internet and we don’t have the ability for port forwarding or upnp anymore. Plex relay is the only reason I can still stream to my phone or my family and jellyfin has no equivalent.
This is incredibly common in smaller countries that are double natting inside their ISPs. This used to be very common in the US before the FCC blocked apartments from contracting with ISPs. Unfortunately for many of us this is coming back rapidly since the current FCC has reversed that rule and landlords can force you on a specific ISP and equipment again.
I can go way out of my way to make this work anyway with a lot of router on a stick style garbage out to a cloud host somewhere and retrain my entire family to connect a jellyfin app to my server or I can keep using plex and not work that hard
You can use Cloudflare Tunnel as well.
Any Kodi users here?
I've been using Kodi to pull movies from my NAS for years.
Glad I bought the Plex Pass like 13 years ago. While I understand everyone seems to think everything should be free, I'm sure your boss wishes you worked for free too, but the world doesn't work that way.
I'm OK supporting products I use , and Plex is an example of this for me. It was a well spend $75 in 2013
Nah. Cool that you think that, though. The moment they started charging for what was a free service, they lost me. I have gigabit internet. The only reason i used their service to begin with was ease of use.
Hot take but maybe everything doesn't need to be an infinitely expanding business. Just imagine for a second that it's fine for something to just break even, pay for the few mainteners salaries and not expand the business at all ever. I know that I just uttered the cardinal evil under capitalism but fucking seriously. The primary userbase of plex is pirates. The whole incentive is not having to pay for a streaming service. Charging money for it is just torpedoing your entire userbase. The entire appeal of Plex was it not charging money.
I don’t know when or how, but it seems in my lifetime we went from that. Having corporations that just did something well and left it at that to this idiotic grow or die mentality that seems to be fueled by investor ROI.
So, you've got option. You can just roll your own, or go to jellyfin.
I'm one of the first people to complain about the incessant need to grow 20% a year to appease shareholders and how unsustainable that is. But I also realize as I said, stuff cost money and "just breaking even" will also grow in cost every year with everything else, so... Even in that perfect world you were describing, there would be an increase in cost applied to that project.
Much like I am sure you expect at the very least a cost of living raise each year. I'm also guessing you're glad your paycheck to bills ratio isn't what it was 20y ago. (or I can say, that for me that is true). I'm pretty happy my discretionary money is more now than it was then. I bet those developers also want that same thing.
I fucking hope to god they don't go full enshittification and decide to revoke the lifetime licenses.
I keep expecting something, the lifetime pass has more/less paid for itself.
That being said, they do still offer the lifetime pass, so clearly they see it as worth it.
Your view unfortunately doesn't show you how shitty the unpaid experience has become. XBMC used to be a good product. Since becoming Plex, now we have:
- no local hardware accel
- no HDR
- panels that look like local videos that trick you into switching to a paid app
- rearranged home screen after some updates
- no downloads on remote devices
- and now I'll lose the ability to share streaming with my kid, who lives many cities away
If this were clear from the outset , no one would be upset. But pulling back features Plex at one time promised "forever" (remote streaming), is complete rug-pull bullshit.
You can enjoy that warm and fuzzy reverse-fomo feeling now, but you should know that they'll start limiting your paid experience eventually.
what? all of these work on plex for me:
-server hardware accel transcoding (are you talking about something else?)
-HDR playback works fine for me...
-I can download just fine from a browser or the plex app, when remote
Hot take here but not wrong
No, it's still wrong.
We have ways to do NAT traversal and hole punching on consumer routers. Failing that, UPnP and port forwarding exist. Or, god forbid, IPv6.
In the rare case that literally none of those are an option, they would have to use TURN to relay between an intermediary. That is a reasonable case to ask the user to pay for their bandwidth usage, but they don't have to be greedy fuckers by making everyone pay for it.
This is enshittification and corporate greed. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yeah, this doesn't seem like that big of a deal for most people here. They kept the price down as long as possible. I spent $119 just before the 'rona hit and I think it's been well worth it.
Same here. I don't like some of the recent decisions, but I remember the time I looked at the value and thought "yeah, this is working, valuable, and I can get behind it", and bought the lifetime pass.
And I used the hell out of it! I don't regret supporting the developers at all.
But features like plugins disappear, rolled to in-house teams. They work better, but cost more to maintain.
It's ambitious, and gives developers plenty of work, but I feel the new redesign bit more than they can chew and overran budgets. They may be trying to balance budgets.
I mean, I'm with you, it is nice to support something you use, financially. But you made a one time payment 12 years ago. Your money is certainly not there anymore, they used it and paid something with it. I don't know, it just sounds like a really weird take reading your post. But maybe its me whose weird, I would prefer one time payment over subscriptions too.
Lots of businesses have and do exist without a subscription model. I'm fond of the Paprika Recipe Manager, for example, which asks a one-time payment for each major version. All commercial software worked this way in the 80s.
I looked at and look at it as an investment. 13 years ago it could have been a good decision or a bad one.
The idea behind a lifetime membership is a means to spark fund raising, and I thought then "I use this a lot, it works for me I'm gonna pay for it".
You're right the guy who paid $5 once for a month of Plex Pass is way more valuable than the one who paid $75 (or $120 full price). The only people more valuable to the company than the $5 guy are the ones who use the app for free.
What did you pay for exactly?
What are you asking? I bought a lifetime subscription to Plex pass.
OK, but why is it a for profit company in the first place?
And why does open source Software like xz, ffmpeg, etc still work without being for profit?
Fucking liberal.
They don't. Most people get paid by companies to work on that stuff. For example red hat pays for a lot of OS development.
You know nothing very proudly
sometimes good software is worth paying for
Big facts. Even the FOSS software, I buy the premium or donate a bit to it. It only feels right. I couldn't imagine making something millions of people count on and not throw them SOMETHING. Especially when its such a good experience.
Yes. I have a lifetime Plex pass, and I donated to Jellyfin as well. Looking forward to the day I can uninstall Plex and no longer worry about them potentially giving my data to Media companies so they can sue for piracy
Yup, that's why people who can afford it should do ate to the jellyfin project
Man, my Jellyfin subscription just rose in price too.
/s
All these comments mentioning jellyfish and I haven’t see a single mention of emby. Is it considered bad or something? Because I switched over to it and I am liking it a lot better than plex so far
I believe emby went proprietary, and jellyfin is the fork that stayed open source. Naturally Lemmy prefers the FOSS one 😅
Yup, that's why I was on NextCloud, why I avoid MongoDB like the plague, and why I'm here on Lemmy (I justified Reddit because of their open API).
So yeah, that tracks.
Jellyfin is a fork of Emby, so they share much of their codebase.
If you're leaving Plex because it's subscribeware, Emby is also subscribeware.
I greatly prefer Emby to Jellyfin.
I use Emby with the lifetime premier (their 'premium' version).
Works great, but honestly I would just point people to Jellyfin unless Emby provides something specific you need. I just use it because it's what I've had for years.
Emby subscription costs a lot even if you just want to use it on a home server. It can work without subscription but will display a warning before playback. Jellyfin is free.
Its quite annoying how licensing is tied to devices. I can't even sign in after reinstalling my OS.
Interesting. Thanks for the warning I’ll make note of this one
I like Emby a lot. It's my backup for Plex. I even give them money as development isn't free (frequently)
It looks like as long as the host has a Plex pass, this doesn't change much. It is a regression of service, which sucks, but there are viable alternatives for those unable or unwilling to pay. And honestly, jellyfin is the clear winner in that case and always has been.
Now, if they start to charge my friends and family for access to my media after I have already paid them for their lifetime subscription, then I'll grab a pitchfork with the crowd.
Also, why not run both and be ready? The resources required are minimal if you're running via docker, just some extra RAM and a negligible amount of compute for overhead on library maintenance tasks.
Same. I'm not switching to Jellyfin yet either - mostly because of my boomer parents - but this is getting close to the tipping point for me
I run both on my unraid NAS. I use plex for streaming to my phone over cell data. I use jellyfin for streaming to my laptops and TV.
Plex tends to break every once and a while though. Not often, but it happens enough that I'm replacing it with just having my music on a DAP that is synced with Syncthing.
I also use the comic viewer function of jellyfin.
So I have a lifetime Plex pass, but my friend (who is remote) does not. Does this change mean they have the have a Plex pass to connect to my device remotely?
Edit: thanks for the info! After I posted I continued reading and realized that question was already answered! Appreciate the help!
Option 1: Remote playback with a Plex Pass
Upgrading to any Plex Pass subscription is a great option for server owners, as it ensures all users accessing the Plex Media Server can stream remotely, without an additional charge. Even if you don’t run your own Plex Media Server, a Plex Pass subscription will not only allow you to stream remotely from any server to which you have access, but also lets you make use of other Plex Pass functionality like Skip Intro and Skip Credits.
From reading the article, sounds like you're situation won't change.
No. You're good.
From what I saw, they will be able to remotely stream from your PMS (if you don’t have Plex Pass) for a fee of $2/month or $20/year.
So then Photoprism is going to lock my photos and ask my mom for money to see them?
Its selfhosting, not freehosting for yet another asshole company.
So glad i switched to jellyfin half a year ago
Same. My wife also just asked me to get a bunch of audio books too...so looks like I have to set up that now
The default Jellyfin client isn't great for audiobooks.
For Apple iOS you might wanna look at https://github.com/LeoKlaus/plappa
For Android I would look at https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf
Personally I just download the audiobooks from Jellyfin and play it in https://f-droid.org/packages/com.prangesoftwaresolutions.audioanchor/https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/i-threw-away-audibles-app-and-now-i-self-host-my-audiobooks/
Check out this arstechnica article on AudioBookshelf. Should cover most of what you need to get started.
Time to move to Jellyfin for the rest of their users?
I can understand new features being behind a fee, but this is putting old, old capabilities behind a paywall. Hmmm...
This with a recent decision to remove watch together sort of eliminates the whole reason I would have tried Plex so many years ago.
I'm a fan of Plex (it's worked for me) and understand the Jellyfin crowd too. I'm worried about who is calling the shots at the moment. They aren't aligning with their users.
Old capabilities that don't even work as well as free alternatives because AMD transcoding support has been """experimental""" for years.
I can understand new features being behind a fee, but this is putting old, old capabilities behind a paywall. Hmmm...
I am a Trakt user, was an Evernote user and I am (thankfully) a Plex Pass user...
What service are we missing that has done the same? We should make a list if there is not one already.
The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience
How stupid do they think we are?
Wait, why do you say this? I’m no Plex shill, this is disappointing news to hear and is the strongest push toward Jellyfin I’ve had yet. But they’re certainly a business with employees they need to pay, and their app has an objectively large feature set that needs to be maintained. Their employees deserve raises and benefits, and if costs are rising at the grocery store, they’re probably rising for businesses too. Why are we stupid to believe their financial burden is growing?
Very, apparently.
They use UPnP and NAT-PMP1 to have clients directly stream the media from users' own self-hosted servers. It costs them almost nothing in bandwidth to do that.
Here, I fixed it:
The reality is that we need more
resourcesmoney tocontinue putting forth the best personal media experienceincrease our profit margins.
I dumped Plex years ago even though I paid for it. Too many issues with it. Constantly losing movie folders, unable to stream to the device I wanted to watch on, wrong codec, wrong sound, etc, etc. I gave up. I’m sure it worked fine for most, but it got to be a pain. Switched to Jellyfin and a DDNS address and have had zero problems since. And it’s free.
With Plex every time I try to sync new content I put in the folders it says I'm unauthorized and have to close the server and reopen it.
Haven't bothered to trouble shoot it yet as it's annoying but not annoying enough.
I feel like it’s just a matter of time, until they pull the rug from under lifetime subs.
But in any case, this is probably it for me. I’m not completely happy with jellyfin performance on my server, but the price hike puts me outside of what i’m willing to spend for this service. I already host it myself, and i can tunnel it myself too, if i ever decide to run it outside of my home network
How exciting, I'm getting a kick up the arse to change platforms! Seems to be the theme of 2025!
Subscriptions are a non-starter for me
I've paid for the lifetime subscription for Plex...Still only using Jellyfin
I can justify a one time purchase, but never recurring payments.
If I didn't already have my lifetime pass, I'd use Jellyfin as my primary media server platform instead of Plex.
One of these days though, I'm sure Plex will make a mistake serious enough that it impacts me, and I'll end up switching to Jellyfin as my main media server platform.
I'm in the exact same boat. I have a Jellyfin server configured and ready to go whenever something happens to really piss me off. This nearly was it until I saw that my lifetime Plex pass I bought 10 years ago will make it still be free for my family.
"A subscription"
Its the same Plex pass subscription for people who don't want to read a clickbait article.
That is not really covering the topic for everyone, this only covers the article for ppl who are paying already for the pass.
Not seeing how this is clickbait. The title sums it up on point.
"a subscription" is ambiguous as to whether it's being locked behind the existing Plex Pass or some new/additional subscription model. The title could have more accurately stated that remote streaming is becoming a Plex Pass feature. As is, Plex Pass users (many of whom bought the lifetime pass years ago,) can't tell from the title whether this is a new subscription cost or if they're completely unaffected.
"Clickbait" might be a little harsh, but I get where they're coming from.
Huh, I was somewhat excited about the elimination of the playback limit for mobile apps (we are in 2025 ffs!) and then re-read that this will be only applicable for the subpar preview version once it is released... Which doesn't fucking has the watch together feature lmao.
The only good news in a nutshell is that I am still a Plex Pass Lifetime User, so in a nutshell I don't get good news lol.
Well that's the beginning of the end for them.
I'm about half-way off the platform already (and I'm a lifetime subscriber)
The only thing I go back for is Roku use (better app), PlexAmp (better app) and offline viewing. I don't have to go off JF for those, but it's a lot better on Plex.
But it's not so much better than I can't protest.
I used Plexamp before and found the switch to Finamp pretty painless. Can't speak for other music apps though.
Finamp lets you listen to music and add songs to a playlist.
I'm missing the crossfade tracks option massively.
I'm missing the AI DJ's, but i could let them go in the name of privacy.
I kinda miss the visualization.
I really miss Plex's free SSL, server locator and user management.
What a load of BS.
Would Tailscale/ZeroTier work as a workaround for this or do you think Plex would also put that behind a paywall?
Tailscale would definitely work for this as long as you use your home network as an exit node
" When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge"
So as a plex pass holder it shouldn't affect any of my (current?) users? Am I reading this right?
edit: Seems I'm good.
I had my pitchfork out and ticket to Jellyfinville in-hand. I read the blog post and saw this myself. I'm wondering if it's a matter of time before they want to screw over my family though
You wonder? What else is going to happen, it now stays the same forever? Just a question of when.
I still remember sticking files on an apache server and openly sharing that with friends. Not had a need to do that lately but I can always start doing it again if necessary.
I’m inferring from the language of the post that OP is against this policy change, but I’m not sure I follow the argument. Why is it problematic that Plex is asking for money?
Not OP but nobody likes price hikes and locking once-free features behind a paywall without adding anything to the features is pretty wack
If the server you are stealing movies from has a pass you still don't need to pay
They could have worded this better
So I have a lifetime pass. But my family members have their own accounts. Will they be able to watch from their house to my server now or will they need to pay? Cause if that’s so guess I’m switching to jellyfin and teaching them how to work it.
To stream remotely starting on April 29, 2025, you will need a Remote Watch Pass or Plex Pass subscription on your account or the admin of the Plex Media Server from which you stream will need a Plex Pass subscription on their account.
Everyone using your server should be fine.
Yea, no change for lifetime pass holders. Anyone connecting in remotely can still stream like normal.
On one hand, it looks like this only applies to streaming from a remote server where neither the server owner or the user has Plex pass, so lifetime holders or committed server operators with a subscription can continue to provide access to all our non paying friends. It isn't explicit whether non-paying users people who port forward / do reverse proxying themselves are affected but it sounds like they are, which is utter BS since direct connections hardly cost Plex anything.
It is however nice that they're trading this for getting rid of the mobile unlock BS - it was always awkward explaining to friends that they could watch anywhere except on their phone unless they paid $5.
On the other hand, one notable side effect is that all non-lan streaming will now be associated with a paying server owner or a paying user, which makes it impossible to use Plex to share pirated media without a user on either end giving up PII / payment information. I have a gut feeling that this is an extension of the previous piracy crackdown on OVH(?) hosted servers meant to ensure they have the identity of all users who may be engaged in selling access.
Overall, yeah another reason to move to JF. I paid for lifetime more than a decade ago so I'm going to keep using Plex until my non-paying friends start to have issues, but I really hope this pushes more investment into JF apps. I really need a good android TV app that supports server transcoding (IIUC findroid's beta TV builds are direct stream only).
remote streaming rarely works for me so I won't be losing anything.
Jellyfin needs to partner with someone people can pay a very low and reasonable and/or one-time fee to enable remote streaming without the fuss of setting up either dangerous port-forwarding or the complexity of reverse proxies (paying for a domain-name, the set-up itself including certificates, keeping it updated for security purposes).
And no a VPN is not a solution, the difficulty for non-technical users in setting up a VPN (if it's even possible, on smart-tvs it's almost always not, and I don't think devices like AppleTV and other streaming boxes often support them) is too high and it's an unwanted annoyance even for technical users.
I'm not talking about streaming video's through someone else's servers or using their bandwidth. I'm talking about the connection phase of clients and servers where Plex acts like an enhanced dynamic DNS service with authentication. They have an agent on the local media server which sends to the remote web service of the third party the IP address, the port configured for use, the account or server name, etc. When a client tries to connect they go to this remote web service with the servername/username info, the web service authenticates them then gives them the current IP address and any other information necessary. It then sends some data to the local Jellyfin server about the connecting client to enable that connection and then the local media Jellyfin server and the client talk directly and stream directly.
Importantly the cost of running this authentication and IP address tracking scheme would be minimal per Jellyfin server. You could charge $5/year for up to 20 unique remote clients and come out ahead with a slight profit which could be put back into Jellyfin development and things like their own hosting costs for code, etc. Even better if they offer lifetime for this at $60-$80 they'd get a decent chunk of cash up-front to use for development (with reasonable use restrictions per account so someone hosting stuff in Hetzner or whatever and serving 300 people with 400 devices will need to pay more because they're clearly doing this for profit and can afford to throw some more money at Jellyfin).
Until Jellyfin offers something that JUST WORKS like that it's not going to be a replacement for Plex, whatever other improvements they offer to users it's still a burden for the server runner to set up remote streaming in a way that isn't either incredibly dangerous (port forwarding) OR either involves paying money to third parties AND/OR the trouble of running your own reverse proxy and/or involves walking users through complicated set-up process for each device that you have to repeat if you change anything major like your domain name when using a VPN.
Umm AppleTV has a Tailscale app and it's dead simple to set up, so I would argue that it is a solution.
That's what I do. Jellyfin + Tailscale + Apple TV box. It works like a charm.
Authelia maybe?
Bro what
Can't wait to see a 40 minutes rant on LTT where he will feel betrayed and teach everyone how to use jellyfin
I don’t like it, but it’s a pragmatic decision.
Hosting for a simple website can be as little as a few bucks a month. That’s easy for any project to absorb, even if they are open-source with no one pulling a paycheque.
Streaming requires high-performance, high-bandwidth machines that cost anywhere from several dozen dollars to several hundred dollars a month. You build a resilient high-availability network, and you could easily be looking at several tens of thousands of dollars a month.
That isn’t easy to absorb, even for a for-profit company with clearly-defined revenue streams.
Some people want everything for free, but free doesn’t pay the bills.
Full disclosure: I don’t use the streaming feature. I prefer to grab actual copies to drop onto my NAS. I also don’t share to friends and family, as I am the only one I know of who uses Plex.
The thing that's going to be locked behind the subscription is your ability to watch those files on your NAS through Plex when you're not in the same network as the Plex server. That's streaming.
If you only use Plex while at home, you will indeed be unaffected
Streaming requires high-performance, high-bandwidth machines that cost anywhere from several dozen dollars to several hundred dollars a month. You build a resilient high-availability network, and you could easily be looking at several tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Are you under the impression that Plex uploads the movie files to their servers and then transcodes them there, or something?
And the hard work happens on your own hardware. All Plex's servers are doing is acting as a signaling server, but no media or routed through Plex's servers.
All those resources and costs are borne by the person hosting the video, NOT Plex.
they need none of that stuff. It's your own pc that handles the heavy stuff. From their end, the only point is to allow you to stream videos from behind one or more NATs
That high performance, high bandwidth streaming machine is in my house, not Plex's, though. I already pay for the maintenence, power and the bandwidth of that machine, not Plex.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS: For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.
I guess that's something.
Gonna be a long slow explanation to my family and friends how to switch to jellyfin. Hopefully there's an app ecosystem there as well. I was lucky to get a lifetime pass way back in 2009 when I did some work for them. It's very different now.
Anyone know if they're referring to Plex "Home" users or anyone you've granted access to here? I used to just hand out my credentials with my admin account pass code protected but now I make people create their own accounts and just grant them access.
Why do you need to explain to your family and friends how to switch to Jellyfin, if you have a lifetime pass and therefore aren't impacted at all by this announcement?
Just because I and my family benefit now, doesn't mean it'll stay that way. Also again, I don't want to support or platform an app that charges others, who are not me, to share their own collection.
If they want to charge for the Plex TV or Plex Movies they host, and leave the app free of cost for a person's own personal collection to be shared. That's fine.
I have no confidence that'll happen though.
If you have plex pass lifetime already, your family can still streams fully from your server. Nothing changes here.
Yes, that's great for me and mine, but not for others. I don't like to support or platform/promote applications that require a subscription for any access at all.
The problem is Plex aren't Netflix in my usecase. I'm sharing my library with my friends.
Now if they'd like to charge for the content they host. Great more power to 'em, but I feel icky with a payment or subscription model that charges to deliver my collection to my friends and family.
So, like I said. I'll likely start migrating to jellyfin and start the conversation with people in how to get the jellyfin app on whatever device they have.
This sucks ass. I'm a lifetime Plex Pass holder, so this doesn't affect me yet, but who's to say they won't fuck over lifetime users sooner rather than later?
Honestly, this made me consider setting up Jellyfin. What the fuck?
I'm seeing a lot of negativity but I think they offer a great service and deserve to be paid for their work. I bought a lifetime pass many years ago and I almost feel guilty how much value I have received over that time.
You need an internet connection to connect to a offline LAN Plex server... Just so unessessery, otherwise it doesn't find your server (I was quite confused on that one, when that started happening) Plus having to pay for multiple user accounts, all just seemed like it was heading towards user extortion. It also lacked hardware transcoding at that point in time, which isn't a huge issue, but did make it harder to run if you had a client that didn't support a specific codec.
While jellyfin requires zero internet to be functional and login, supported hardware transcoding before plex and has multiple user accounts usage out of the box, at zero cost.
You need an internet connection to connect to a offline LAN Plex server
Not true.
One does not need an internet connection for offline use. Check this if you're having issues.
One does not need to pay for multiple user accounts. As per this update, they are actually removing the one-time fee for non family member mobile apps. Now it's all free, provided the server owner has a Plex Pass.
Plex has been supporting hardware transcoding since 2017.
To be clear, I'm not saying Jellyfin is bad. I think it's great to have competition and I understand plenty of people like it.
ur getting what u paid for, why the guilt
I feel like I'm getting more than what I paid for. I understand it was a legal contractual exchange. I'm merely commenting on the value I've received relative to what I paid. Especially given the continued improvements over time.
I really need to stop being lazy and swap to Jellyfin....
If you want to keep using plex and remote it’s important to you, they usually have pretty good deals on pass from time to time. I don’t regret my lifetime pass - I still feel like it’s a pretty solid app and service all things considered- but if I didn’t have the pass already I would be a bit pissed as well ngl.
I still use Plex because they offer the product I bought, an easy way to stream content on my devices. Others have technical or philosophical issues, which I totally understand. Plex is the easiest option for my situation as of now. It is working great for me and my family.
Nothing lasts forever so it's good to realistic about the future. If I start having technical issues, it's Jellyfin. If Plex doubles down on subscriptions, it's Jellyfin.
If you're like me, a lifetime Plex Pass holder, I would experiment with Nginx Reverse Proxy now so you understand how it works. I have Overseerr running through a reverse proxy now.
I think it's a matter of when, not if, Plex will make a business decision that pushes me off their platform. It's a company focused on profit and that's fine. And it would be good to be prepared for the future.
Jellyfin FTW!
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS:
For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.I was worrying about this change because my Plex server provides free streaming for several of my friends and family and I didn't want them to have to start paying for it. The whole point was to get them away from Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.
But this sounds like, since I'm already a Plex Pass subscriber, my remote viewers will still be able to access my stuff for free. Do I have that right? Because if so, this change is just business as usual for me.
Plex borking itself a year ago for me is the best thing that could've happened. Long live jellyfin
And that’s why open source is best.
Glad I went Emby.
same, my lifetime license is paying off right about now tbh
Hypothetically, if I have tailscale setup, would that be a viable workaround since everything looks local on my tailnet?
100%. This is just due to the cost of hitting their servers in case you can't reach your network
I thought that was already true
Would this affect self hosters?
If you are currently a Plex user i highly suggest at least putting together an exit strategy. I am in the process of it but it's rough. In fact, i think Plex might be the last thing i replace with a FOSS solution.
Never used it. Started with Kodi and moved to Jellyfin when I learned of it forking from Emby.
Wait why did in think this was already the case?
I'm pretty sure what was already the case was that you needed Plex pass to use the Plex hosted relay for when port forwarding failed when behind Nat. This seems to apply to all remote streaming, including when you're directly connected through port forwarding or a reverse proxy and not costing Plex anything to transfer your traffic.
Well that's disappointing
Well that fuckin sucks dick.
So it looks like the server will need plex pass in order to stream to users, or the user can pay about $2/mo to stream from servers without plex pass. I feel like this is fine, doesn't really come across as greedy or egregious.
I've set up plex, overseer, sonaar, and radaar in such a way that my family and friends can request and watch videos on my server. I use plex because it's the easiest for my less than tech savvy family to use, as it's just an app on their TV.
I have never paid a cent for Plex while Plex has allowed me and my family to save hundreds in subscription fees, so I'm feeling rather ambivalent about this new requirement for me to get plex pass in order to stream to the small horde of people I serve. I was considering getting plex pass to unlock hardware acceleration for transcoding anyway.
I've considered Jellyfin, but plex has a ton of features that allow for scripting that keeps me from having to manually do maintenance. Not to mention how hard it would be to get people like my father to use Jellyfin on his TV, last I checked there isn't even TV app available for most platforms.
Fuck this. What the absolute fuck lmao they just decided to kneecap their entire business model.
I was even going to get a lifetime subscription later this year when they usually put the price down. Not anymore
If this is enough to push you away from Plex but you’ve tried Jellyfin and it didn’t quite do it for you, try https://emby.media/
It is the software Jellyfin is forked from and bridges the gap between the freedom of Jellyfin and the polished look and function of Plex.
I went from Emby to Jellyfin as they started their enshittification journey. I don't really notice it being less polished.
I’m not aware of any enshittification with Emby, unless you know something I don’t. Emby sort of “just works” which is why it’s a more direct replacement to Plex than Jellyfin is.
As for Jellyfin, I check in on it every now and then and they’ve made a lot of progress but the features and polish aren’t there. I hear good things about the Jellyfin web component, butif you want a good experience with Jellyfin apps on mobile or whatever TVOS you’re running, you have to use third party apps because the official ones are still woefully barebones. I still hear a lot of griping about issues with subtitles, and HEVC playback.
Did Jellyfin ever even figure out proper Intro Skip? That was a big pain point for me for the longest time, as the only way to accomplish it was a third party plugin and the only option was to skip all intros, you didn’t get a button. I remember reading somewhere they added some kind of framework that would allow proper intro skipping going forward, but that the official function was not ready.
Absolutely not, fuck Emby with a branding iron, they're far shittier than Plex's decisions.
At least Plex started out as a for-profit company and has never misrepresented themselves as anything but. Unlike Emby.
fuck Emby with a branding iron
Nah, as far as I’m aware Emby hasn’t started their own streaming service and pivoted away from their self-hosted oriented position, or shoving a bunch of bloat into their server software. They haven’t shoehorned a bunch of unwanted social features into it either. If you were fine paying for Plex five years ago, you’ll be fine with Emby.
How is the general perception of emby? They're closed source and US based.
They're not just closed source, they started as the open source project response to Plex. It was promised that they would be open source forever. They lied, slammed the source door shut a few years later and pivoted to a paywall.
There was no discussion with the community or contributors, no alternatives explored, no surveys or polls.
Just a "Sorry we're going closed source" blog post, Jellyfin was forked from them in vengeance.
Emby remains in the position Plex used to, pre-enshittification. They’re closed source and have a PlexPass style license, but if you miss the value you got with old-Plex, Emby fills that spot.
For context, Emby used to be open sourced but offered the Emby Premiere subscription for some added features, and the open source half allowed people to just bypass the paywall, so they closed sourced it. Jellyfin is a Fork of Emby pre-closed sourcing.