cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/2333639
I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That's it folks. I've been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.
They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.
I'll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I've been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it's time to make it production ready.
Edit: I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying “Just buy a plex pass” are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.
And for the thousandth person who wants to say the same things to me:
- YES I know I'm unaffected as a Plex Pass owner.
- My users were immediately angry at it, which made me angry. Our users don't understand what plex pass is, and they shouldn't have to, that's why I had it. The fact that they were pinged even though it should have kept working is horribly sloppy
- Plex is still removing functionality. I don't care that "People should pay their fair share". If Plex wants to put every new feature behind a paywall, that's completely okay. They are removing functionality.
- "But they have cloud costs". Remote streaming is negligible to them. It's a dynamic DNS service. Plex client logs in, asks where server is, plex cloud responds with the IP and port of where server is located. That's it.
- "Good luck finding another remote streaming" - Again, Plex just opens up an IP and port. Jellyfin also just opens up an IP and port (Hold on jellyfin folks I know, security, that's a separate conversation). All "remote streaming" is is their dynamic dns. Literal pennies to them. Know what actually is costing them money? Hosting all of that ad-supported "free" content that they're probably losing money on.
In short, I don't care how you justify it. Plex is doing something shitty. They're removing functionality that has been free for years. I'm not responding to any more of your comments repeating the same arguments over and over.
what's with h265 that's everyone's acting like it's some massive hurdle that you should have to pay to be able to use files with that encoding? that's one of the things Plex has paywalled already and it's becoming harder and harder to find good quality content that isn't in that format.
https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/10/30/h-265-hevc-license-pricing-updated-for-low-cost-devices/
Lot of companies don't want to pay it themselves... and lots of people don't see the point when there's a list of perfectly capable codecs that are free... including AV1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_codecs
Ultimately as a software developer making money... if you don't license the codecs that you're using properly (when using a non-FOSS codec) you are liable for damages at that point for violating the terms of the license for the codec. It IS a cost. And across millions of users that costs adds up.