Adding extra tiers that only the people who already bought a Plex pass would buy? If you run a Plex server and haven’t got a Plex pass by now, you were never going to unless they did what they’re doing now, as it’s basically feature complete.

You don’t really seem to understand that businesses need revenue and profit to survive, publicly traded or private. You’d rather see Plex die than have their most hardcore users have to pay a tiny fee?

I really don’t give a shit if a corporation needs more revenue to satisfy their infinite growthTM.

Oh so they don’t deserve to be paid for their work, the only reason they’d be after money is for “infinite growthTM”?

What’s not fine is taking something away people used to get for free

I agree that’s never good, but what’s the alternative? Go out of business? Insert ads into your streaming of local content? Another way rip look at it is that they’ve been giving away their product for free due the last 10+ years that they should have been charging for.

I mention JellyFin because at some stage it will become a business and they’ll start charging too, or it will get left behind because it’s free. People can fork all they want, but businesses that provide services can’t do so for free for eternity.

Is there even anyone that runs a plex server who doesn’t have a lifetime plex pass these days? I’ve had one for 10+ years at this stage. I bought it to support the devs as they made this amazing software that I’ve used for probably hundreds of thousands of hours of streaming from my server. I paid like $100. I pay less than that much in 1 month to my ISP.

IMO it’s a fair change, because the product has always been worthy of being a paid product.

People are free to go elsewhere, but they’ll quickly realize that the one off plex pass price is cheap for what you get.

Nah. How would you get Uncle Bob to use tailscale on his PS5 to watch Jellyfin, for example?

“Shitty move by a corporation”? You mean requiring the person that’s using their flagship all encompassing flagship software product to pay a one off fee? A one off fee that seemingly most people who host a Plex server already bought?

Software costs money to make and maintain. You’re not entitled to it for free. Plex’s software is legitimately great and is the only software on the market that does what it does and makes it as easy as it is.

and evidently has no costs associated to the corp

As has been pointed out many times in here, this is wrong. Plex have hardware that is used when many, probably most, people stream remotely. Also developers cost money to employ. Developers make the software that is regularly updated. They deserve to be paid, don’t they?

It is pretty damn obvious how this will continue.

So you agree the same thing will happen to JellyFin then, right? So why even bother getting Jellyfin set up now when it will inevitably happen there too?

No Jellyfin app on AppleTV or PS5.

Insert virus on your server.

My next NAS might not be by Synology due to their recent announcement about supported hard drives,

Just on this - this was widely misrepresented just like this plex announcement is. Just so you are aware of the actual truth - the new + Synology NAS’s do not require Synology branded drives. They will still accept and work with all drives including WD, Iron Wolf, Seagate, etc.

All that is changing is that only the Synology branded drives will get some of the “smart health” monitoring features and easy firmware updating (of the hdd). Nothing else is changing. You will still be able to buy all of the new Synology devices and plug in whatever HDDs you want and they’ll work fine.

If the host is on a VPN then you need access to that VPN to be able to access Plex.

Set up Bazarr.

Yeah a VPN isn’t “necessary”, but it’s the most straightforward way. Unfortunately it’s not really at all feasible for many people who currently play from other peoples plex libraries.

The closest thing to justification I can figure is “all my clients are borderline illiterate as well and it upset them”.

And now OP is saying that he’s switching to Jellfin and thinks that all of his borderline illiterate “clients” will be ok with using a VPN to access Jellyfin, if their device even has Jellyfin lol.

Also the way that OP says “users” and “clients” makes it pretty clear that he is charging people for access to his library. He is ok with making money off Plex’s work, but hates the idea of Plex making money.

If they can’t do anything better than jellyfin which is fully free open source I don’t see why they should expect money.

Plex is much better than jellyfin, especially for the exact thing this whole outrage is about - remote streaming.

This mindset is bizarre.

“Everyone should get out now because at some stage in the future Plex might get greedy and ruin it all and charge us through the nose. Move to Jellyfin! They’ll definitely never ever do anything like Plex.”

I think you know where this is heading…

Not because I believe I need to, but because I want the developer to continue to work on it.

Strange how so many people don’t have this same attitude towards the developers of Plex.

What exactly is being paid for here then?

Software support and the company existing, mainly, which I dunno about you but I’m ok with.

Bob your uncle will absolutely not use Tailscale to stream from Jellyfin, so Bob your uncle will no longer have access to OPs library.

You have a plex pass though, so nothing changed for you - you just got all angry because you didn’t read the email properly.

Your users are going to be much worse off now than they were, and you will absolutely lose a bunch of them who don’t want to (or can’t) have to connect to a VPN every time they want to stream from your library.

It’s also fucking wild to me that people are defending a monetization model that is on self hosted hardware.

It’s wild to me that people who claim to be tech savvy don’t understand that Plex Server, the software, is what makes Plex what it is and as popular as it is. No other solution exists that is as easy as Plex and as secure as Plex. Jellyfin, Emby, Kodi, etc are nowhere near as simple to use and don’t have the breadth of app support that Plex does. Plex is basically on every device anyone owns. They sign in and they can stream from everyones libraries. No VPNs needed, no other hoops.

I paid like $100 for a lifetime Plex Pass like 10 years ago. The 2 dozen friends and family that share my server don’t pay a cent and this changes nothing.

What we call “JoUrNaLiStS” these days are nothing more than activists most of the time, as is evident by whoever wrote this article and whoever ok’d it for publication, especially without publishing the comments that they specifically reached out to Tesla’s board to get.

In this situation you can either believe:

a) Unsubstantiated rumours, with zero evidence supplied, zero sources, from a “JoUrNaLiSt” who tried to verify the story and then refused to acknowledge and publish the fact that the rumour was denied.

b) the board, who the rumour is about, flat out denying the rumour.

I choose to believe the one that isn’t just reporting rumours based on zero evidence that have been categorically denied. You choose the other option, which is up to you, but it makes your decision making skills look very dubious. You seem very much in the “guilty until proven innocent” category, because that’s essentially what you’re saying here - you’re asking someone to prove a negative, and even when they say they aren’t doing it you then don’t believe them?

Many would argue that Tesla’s stock price would go UP if this rumour was true, so saying that their stock price depends on them denying it is questionable.

We don’t want Murdoch back btw.

Where’s the crackdown on free speech by “MAGA” there?