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349
Plex price gouging any users they have left (infosec.pub)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by lazynooblet@lazysoci.al to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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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.

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[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 79 points 2 months ago (11 children)

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.

[–] SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

If you're on Android TV (I guess Fire TV works as well), try out Wholphin. It's miles ahead of the official TV app. Also, Findroid works great on mobile.

[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 6 points 2 months ago

Wholphin

thank you for the suggestion, will try it out! I am using a Fire Stick

[–] Bongles@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago

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.

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[–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 68 points 2 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 33 points 2 months ago (21 children)

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.

[–] WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Haven't used it myself, but wouldn't something like Tailscale solve the remote access limitation?

[–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It does, but the limitation just doesn't make any sense.

[–] WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today 8 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] scottmeme@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 months ago

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.

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[–] whereitsat@lemmy.zip 30 points 2 months ago (8 children)

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?

[–] whereitsat@lemmy.zip 14 points 2 months ago

travelling salesmen who pirate all their media??

[–] inverted_deflector@startrek.website 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

To be fair there are plenty of users who rip their own media. But sentiment stands

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[–] TheDuke@europe.pub 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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

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[–] BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Chozo@fedia.io 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] homes@piefed.world 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

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…

[–] DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (8 children)

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.

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[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For now

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[–] kungen@feddit.nu 7 points 2 months ago (10 children)

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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[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] puppinstuff@lemmy.ca 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 27 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 10 points 2 months ago

They managed years without going to a subscription model. This is about shareholder needs not software upkeep.

[–] e461h@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 months ago

Jellyfin is always free, works great, and keeps getting better!

[–] sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Wait what. $750? I think I paid like $100 years ago. Damn.

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[–] kieron115@startrek.website 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You'll retain your existing lifetime pass, fwiw. This is just price gouging new customers.

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] BorgDrone@feddit.nl 8 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Plex works just fine without a subscription. What is the subscription even for?

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[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 months ago

Hey guess what software I don't need to use

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