Plex is starting to enforce its new rules, which prevent users from remotely accessing a personal media server without a subscription fee.
If anyone needs it: https://jellyfin.org/
Imagine hosting a software on your own hardware and still choosing the one that makes you dependent on the whims of a corporation lmao
*only for external streaming.
You can cut it off from the internet and stream in your house locally for free still.
End from any external streaming perspective, they are hosting a repository with your connection and port info, so your external friends can connect without you needing to manually configure or update their settings when you make a local change. Plus they are hosting stream relays for those that are unable to make a direct connection. To me, seems fair they’d ask for payment for that service.
To anyone saying they’re happy since they already have a lifetime Plex pass, do you really think they won’t come for you too?
I paid 79€ almost a decade ago. I got more than my moneys worth. Even the current lifetime (on sale) is less than a year of Netflix. More expensive than piracy + Jellyfin ofc if that’s your benchmark 😀
I have a Jellyfin instance running anyway, I’ll switch to that if Plex enshittifies.
if Plex enshittifies.
Anyone want to break the news?
So far the enshittification has not hit lifetime Plex pass subscribers
Which part has enshittified?
The only change I can see that when I scroll down on my Plex front page, there’s a bunch of stuff that’s not on my NAS. Some of them actually interesting, like this full ass category of old school kungfu movies:
You are entirely entitled to do whatever you want, but for me I go into a towering rage when something I own is taken over for someone else’s ads.
Introducing “Plex pass plus”! With no advertisements!
This is a "slippery slope’ argument and thus a fallacy.
Let users decide how they want to run their own stuff. Right now if you have Plex pass this isn’t an issue. If it becomes an issue, then you’re in the exact same position you’d be in today if you decided to move away from Plex now.
I moved away from Plex years ago, but I don’t blame users for sticking with it, it still has a lot of advantages over jellyfin.
EDIT: Y’all are trippin’ over yourselves to complain about what other people choose to deploy on their own hardware.
Bought a lifetime pass, switched to Jellyfin after way too much Tidal promotion on my server.
Have the lifetime since like 2012, every time a post like this surfaces I wonder if the contents of it are finally going to force my hand to use jellyfin instead
But they haven’t yet
Oh I’m fully aware I’m just to lazy to set up jellyfin and navidrome quite yet.
I should not have paid for it.
(looks up from his floaty chair in his Jellyfin pool while sipping his fruity bittorrent cocktail) C’MON IN FOLKS THE WATER’S FINE!
(sits in his Lamborghini Plex while a beautiful blonde gives him a handy) I’m fine, mate. Maybe later.
Anybody still using Plex kind of deserves what they get at this point. They’ve been announcing these anti-consumer “features” for a while now.
Two years ago, when I found out that you need damn subscription, to watch YOUR stuff with transcoding on your device in local network, from your local server - I complained on reddit and a lot of people was disagree with me for harsh position.
They_got_what they_focking_deserve.png
Pure rent seeking. It’s not the only example. So many products have artificial defects deliberately added by the manufacturer so that they can then charge you to disable the defect.
Years ago now, they pushed an offer for lifetime subscription onto my server. I clicked it, went through to their website and bought it, paid, the subscription activated and worked.
The next day they emailed to say actually i wasn’t eligible for the offer, they cancelled it and refunded me and said it would actually cost $30 more.
I installed Jellyfin that same day, it was pretty buggy back then but was definitely the right decision.
They deliver a working piece of software to you. They employ people to maintain it and add new features. They ask a price for this work.
How is this rent seeking?
Welcoming the incoming dowvotes for correcting your comment just like the many similar comments and posts I’ve seen on Reddit, but this is purely a configuration issue.
Transcoding on local network is allowed without a subscription. If you are running your own DNS server (like pihole or unbound) you need to configure an internal “plex.direct” record. You also need to uncheck an option to “treat your WAN IP as internal” option which corrects double NAT issues.
I have yet to see a need to move away from Plex. I paid for the cheap lifetime sub over a decade ago at this point and everyone I invite to my server has no complaints and has not had to pay Plex a dime. I don’t use their plex.tv proxy, I direct connect to my own IP and leave their remote proxy option off in the server and everything works great.
I will check out Jellyfin at some point if Plex makes things more difficult in time, but for now these articles are literally just rage bait in the homelab ecosystem. They enacted this back in April of 2025 already!
I never checked to see what was actually in the logs but when i was running Plex, it constantly tried to send a lot of log data to its masters. That alone was enough to budge me up and get Jellyfin. Jellyfin isn’t as polished but it works perfectly fine for me.
Lies. Local streaming never required a plex pass. Its for remote streaming only, but keep pushing that false narrative.
People don’t deserve to be mistreated but it is surprising that folks haven’t abandoned it if they’re so actively anti consumer.
Agree to disagree. When they actively and willingly go for the product that’s screwing them over.
Do you think that applies to you as well? That you deserve bad things to happen to you because of your consumer choices?
I kind of understand why someone would honestly. Jellyfin subtitles are still a hot mess for a lot of formats unfortunately. Also, while plex has tried really hard to ruin their UI, I’ve still had more trouble explaining where to find things in Jellyfin. And if you’re sharing your collection with friends or family members there’s a lot more technical stuff involved.
So I can see why the balance might still tip toward paying plex still for some people.
Luckily I bought a lifetime license ages ago before the first price hike so this doesn’t affect me yet. So I’m just riding out the decline, running them in parallel until plex completely breaks. slowly transitioning the family as they get annoyed with broken features. Plexamp is quickly taking care of that 😅
The alternatives are not as easy use
Am I the only one who thinks jellyfin is not only superior to pure, but also way more intuitive to setup? I still don’t understand how plexs routing works, and why I need a central account in order to connect to my own server.
Is it more intuitive to set up for remote streaming to friends…? That’s the use case here and as far as I know the answer is a big “no”.
I got Jellyfin set up and available for streaming in less than two hours. Plex kept demanding that my friend buy a pass to download something, so I was like, nah. Jellyfin works flawlessly and is (in my opinion) a far superior option. I constantly had issues with Plex.
If you have a static IP it’s super easy. If you don’t, it’s less easy, but you should configure Plex the same way if you don’t want to use their proxy, which lowers the speed anyway.
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Vs “just install Plex on any NAS from its built in appstore” that’s like 42 steps too many for the regular user.
pretty easy with tailscale
Explain how you connect your in-laws roku to Jellyfin with tailscale.
forgot most of you here are americans, roku isn’t a thing in my country. everyone who i share to uses a pc, htpc, phone or tablet for that
Roku is also a thing in Europe.
Though I also gave up trying to set up Tailscale for people and just exposed Jellyfin (behind a reverse proxy).
Guess what I didn’t have to setup with plex? That’s right, a reverse proxy.
didn’t have to
Now you do have to, unless you pay for Plex and its convenience.
A VPS with a reverse proxy connected to your tailnet and a dyndns domain. It would be cheaper than Plex premium, you can use the vps for other stuff, and you have 100% certainty it will never ever show ads.
If you want to try it I think you should be able to do it With a Raspberry pi or equivalent on their network running Tailscale, use iptables to forward all inbound traffic on the Jellyfin port from that device to your Jellyfin server which is also running tailscale. Connect their Roku using the pi as the address for Jellyfin. I’ve not tried this with Jellyfin but I had something similar working with a Minecraft server
Step one: get your in-laws a cheap Apple TV from whatever site you use for used electronics. Or even a new one.
Step one: you buy it and send it to me if you’re so bent on people running Jellyfin.
I’m only bent on people running software on shit hardware. Roku is bottom barrel crap along with cheap TV sticks.
Lol
Edit: honestly, I could start itemizing why this person’s response is terrible, but all it feels like it deserves is “lol”.
well hello Mr. cranky 😅
Probably not the only one, but configuring your server for outside access is way easier with Plex.
Since I mainly use these services for streaming my music collection (long time cd collector), I declare that Plexamp is simply superior to jellyfin. It is really awesome and feature-rich and jellyfin does not even come close to Plexamp regarding music in my opinion.
Have you checked out the Finamp app? It’s to Jellyfin what Plexamp is to Plex. It’s much better for music that Jellyfin proper.
Yeah, it‘s okay. But PlexAmp just plays in a different league.
Have you checked out the Finamp app?
Yes, and it’s nowhere close to PlexAmp. Have you ever used PlexAmp?
Yea, I come from Plex. Why do you ask?
Then you’d know that FinAmp doesn’t have a quarter of the features of Plexamp.
Love jellyfin, super easy to install on my proxmox server. Its been running for nearly a year now, no problems. ❤️
Same. The setup was super easy.
took all of 5 minutes to convert plex-on-pi to jellyfin-on-pi. Probably harder to rename the host than install… fstab’s already set up and errything
I never shared my server anyway, but a lot of the other design decisions they’ve made over the last couple years drove me to Jellyfin. My issue though is I cannot figure out how to set it up properly like I had Plex setup with genres, sort by added to server, lists, etc. I can’t tell if I’m missing something obvious, or Jellyfin just lacks those features and I need to get a plugin or something. Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just hoping someone has experienced similar and might point me in the right direction.
I display my movies and music in the order they were added by default, but I do recall a lot of historical problems with that functionality. It has not been a problem for me the last year or two, I would say, but I do remember it being a problem.
There’s still lots of room for improvement, to be damn sure. But can’t beat the feeling of freedom, you ask me.
I’m just thankful that the app doesn’t run like garbage due to all the bloat like Plex does. That and I really like the fact it auto checks for subtitle files and plays them. Overall I am glad I moved I just wish there were a couple more features.
Don’t know all the answers but the home screen has the “Recently Added” rows if you scroll down.
And you can go to plex settings and disable all the love channels, discover, friend activity, etc that everyone complains about. Make it a simple plex server again.
Jellyfin users, how is the transcoding situation? I have a mix of AV1 and H265 and I need to get smooth playback to my living room Apple TV for families’ sake.
All dependent on the hardware you run the server on. Give it a good GPU and you’re off to the races
Just as long as you’re fine with your media server absolutely eating power all the time
Stop encoding in av1 and get a low power older intel chip around 10th gen or so with quick sync. Unless you have like 5+ users watching 4k media at the same time this will handle transcoding absolutely fine while using far less power than a dedicated gpu
I don’t encode in AV1, I use HEVC. But while your argument is not unreasonable, it misses the component of file size and amount of disk space required.
HEVC (x265) takes half the space of x264. While it does require a more modern GPU, it can be run on lower powered Intel CPUs with an integrated GPU just fine, so long as the CPU is new enough. Though it can only handle 2-3 streams on a CPU like the Intel chips in a ZimaBoard. So you need to choose wisely.
Person you responded to said av1, I didn’t mean to imply you did. HEVC is good balance and quicksync will handle it as you’ve said. 10th gen stuff will handle 4-5 at the expense of more power (but less than like a typical gpu build).
Last statement you made is critical - usage dictates build
HEVC (x265) takes half the space of x264
In some scenarios, it can. Generally I’d say it’s about a 20-30% reduction in size.
I guess it’s a platter vs energy cost thing. For me it’s way cheaper to buy more storage for my little puck PC that can handle ~4 streams at 1080p and sips power.
Infuse player with jellyfin or direct nfs/samba if in same network
Infuse is not free. I love it and use it on my Apple Devices, but just wanted to have this as an FYI.
I’m moving to jellyfin because of my customzation obsession after using Plex for YEARS (bought lifetime as a kid in college), but I’m still going to donate to the Jellyfin team if I love the software they made. I’m so new to self hosting and it’s awesome how much free stuff is out there, but how do they maintain it for free?
Is the argument that we shouldn’t have to pay money to use software or that Plex / software is changing things after taking money? This is the one area that confuses me the most. Free as a selling point but like, are we just not supposed to send money or am I dumb for doing so?
Not really. The argument is not that everything should be free. I think, I was trying to make a point that Infuse is a third party application that is not free to use (unlike jellyfin).
If you’re ok with Plex, then you’ll be ok with Jellyfin
And we also have metadata manager, so you don’t have to rename your TV show files every time!
I can’t speak for client capabilities on Apple devices, but what’s your server hardware? CPU or GPU transcoding?
I have an AMD GPU in my server and have no issues transcoding AV1 and H265 for my lesser capable clients.
You can also setup Jellyfin in parallel to Plex and give it a whirl.
You can also setup Jellyfin in parallel to Plex and give it a whirl.
Usually. When Plex leaked that they were selling user data, I was running Plex server on an Nvidia Shield, a unique build of Plex that ran as a core service of the Android device. There ain’t no Jellyfin analogue of that monstrosity.
I have my library serving from an old work M1 Max MacBook because it has a lot of GPU oomph. GPU transcoding is available when needed.
Running Jellyfin off of a Dell Optiplex 3060 and encoding all of my media in AV1. I’m able to stream my movies just fine via the Apple TV.
Welcome to JF
Imagine, you software get massively used for piracy, and then you decide to ask for licence for the use of thir software, host on server you do not control. I suspect this will not be result they expected
I ultimately want to ditch Plex, but as an existing lifetime member, it currently handles everything so smoothly for my users that I don’t see enough benefits in switching. Particularly on the music streaming side (PlexAmp), I think the experience is the most polished one I’ve seen.
My hope is that by the time the lifetime Plex Pass experience has become enshittified, Jellyfin will be more ready than it is today, and I’ll make a switch then.
I ran Jellyfin and plex for a while, using Jellyfin instead of plex at every oppurtunity. Then Jellyfin broke, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it in an evening, and I just went back to using Plex, which had continued working. It isn’t great, sure, but it’s fine. I think Jellyfin would need to be Immich levels of cool, or plex would actually need to be unusable for me to switch.
I’m in the same boat, I have a Plex pass, I have my reverse proxy setup, Plex just works ™ and when it stops, Jellyfin is already installed and ready to go.
I’ve never used jellyfin, but do they also host proxy servers? AFAIK plex does and its costing them money, hence the need for paywalling this. You can still use tailscale and reverse proxy to allow remote streaming
You can still use tailscale and reverse proxy to allow remote streaming
I used to use Plex and when I discovered there was paid remote streaming function - that goes through their servers - my reactions were “Haha, no”* and checking whether my existing WireGuard setup would do it instead.
Whaddya know, remote streaming using Plex and PlexAmp at no cost.
*Not because I begrudge them recouping costs, but because it’s designed that way to justify charging for it, gives them whatever information they want from my viewing, and it’s not self-hosting if there’s any third party cloud/account component to it.
Jellyfin does not host anything. With this change free Plex users behind a reverse proxy (or VPN) and Jellyfin users behind a reverse proxy (or VPN) work the same for remote access.
The only difference is that Plex no longer provides expensive services for free, while Jellyfin never provided them.
This is my understanding and I’m surprised with the negative reaction. I think jellyfin is the better alternative being FOSS but this is not the reason.
The only reason I went with plex was easy remote access. Now with the state on reverse proxies and tailscale tunnels we happily ditched it.
just pay for a lifetime pass…
I did in like 2007 how is that relevant to what I posted?
I’m almost certain you changed your comment.
however, I fail to see the relevancy of proxies and tunnels to the content of the original post.
You’d be wrong both times, have a good weekend though
Any recommendations for Linux distros for a Jellyfin server?
Debian and Ubuntu have the most docs and guides If you know what you’re doing nixos or ucore would be pretty unbreakable Paid for product I love Unraid
Trash guides is pretty good for getting started https://trash-guides.info/
I have my jellyfin container running in podman on Alpine Linux.
I just downloaded the .deb (unless it was an AppImage) and it ran without further tweaking.
Can I avoid updating to a version to avoid this enforcement?
I just wish Plex on my TV didn’t have this bug where it can’t play the correct audio track when Direct Play is enabled. So annoying.
