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Plex increasing Lifetime Plex Pass cost to whopping $750 (9to5mac.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 106 points 5 months ago (14 children)

You’re missing getting to pay for it. Imagine how good it would feel to see $750 less in your bank account.

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  • [–] 57 points 5 months ago (13 children)

    I mean Plex definitely has a value add. Around here people will scoff but Plex is far easier to work with for non technical users.

    If you shared your library externally Plex was definitely easier it's just that they have started to extract value from that which does suck.

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  • [–] -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (10 children)

    Easier sure, but it comes at the expense of all traffic (even streaming to a device on your local network) going through their servers. If you have an internet outage or their servers go down, you can't even stream media locally with Plex. No such issues with Jellyfin.

    Edit: apparently my frustrations about this were based on something I set up incorrectly, so +1 point for Plex working locally without internet, -1 point for ease of use/setup if I had this wrong for years without knowing it or finding the fix on my own.

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  • [–] 27 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    You can totally stream locally without internet, I've done it several times. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that Plex doesn't do direct streams, especially locally?

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    I got that idea from the times when I couldn't stream to my TV in my home while my internet was down. Switched from Plex several years ago though

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  • [–] 16 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I like shitting on Plex but you absolutely can stream entirely locally without internet.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    There is at least one TV application that doesn't support local streaming without first logging into Plex's servers. I have an LG tv and it'll hang at the loading screen, then error out if I don't have Internet connectivity. I love the TV but LG as a company sucks. I wouldn't buy it again.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    I won't doubt that. I've just had Plex for at least 6 years and never had the complete inability to stream directly when the internet is down. It has always fallen back to local streams in my experience (when I had Comcast, this was a frequent occurance and would have otherwise resulted in me returning to emby).

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  • [–] 20 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    This is incorrect, bordering on outright FUD. Plex only uses their servers for the initial server discovery. When you sign into Plex, your device basically contacts the central plex discovery server and goes “hey, which servers do I have access to? And where are they located?” Plex’s server then passes that info back to the device, so the device can reach those servers directly. No actual content hits Plex’s servers by default. Hell, Plex wouldn’t want content hitting their servers by default, because it’s a truly astronomical amount of bandwidth that would be required on their end, for no real benefit.

    You can technically use their relay option to bounce the video stream off of their server, but they specifically say that it’s a last-ditch workaround for troubleshooting. Because their relay server is intentionally bandwidth-capped and will throttle your video quality. So the relay is only really meant to be used for troubleshooting and edge cases.

    “Aha! But you need to contact their server to get access even on LAN! So it will stop working when your internet goes out!” You can just configure the device to use a direct connection instead. This will allow you to connect directly to a server on your LAN. No need for their handshake server.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago*

    I tried to use it about 3 years ago on an apple tv. It tried finding the server on my LAN and never could do it reliably, so I found it more annoying.

    With Jellyfin/Swiftfin I do have to punch in the hostname or IP, but it works fine for me and the people in the house. The only annoyance is getting signed out every few months, but I'm not sure of that's a server or client issue on Apple TV and happens infrequently enough that I have not bothered to look up the reason.

    Edit: should have said that I used to use Plex before ~2012-2018, and with more ease that after the updates that dumbed down the interface. Maybe its changed and better now, but no reason for me to care.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    You're not alone. The first time I lost access to my locally-stored content when my internet went out, I searched for a solution. There is, one, but it's not obvious--or at least wasn't back when I encountered this problem. I don't know why it would be the default setup, I can't think of a good reason, only nefarious ones. It's one of the reasons I dumped Plex, in spite of having a life-time pass I paid $75 for, I stopped trusting them.

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