Important 2025 Plex Updates
www.plex.tv
Update 4/30/25Since publishing this post we have changed how remote streaming works for personal media libraries, and it is no...

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/27204525

We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.

    • LoreSoong@startrek.websiteEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      Probably foolish to believe but i havent switched to jellyfin because im worried its not as secure as plex. plex also has a convienent app on most tvs phones and streaming boxes. Am i giving up on any of these when switching?

        • SanicHegehog@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          I do this. Personally I have no need to expose my network to devices I don’t own, so I just have a WireGuard instance that serves as my gateway. If your needs differ- such as exposing things on your network to friends with their own devices, setting up a gateway of some sort may be more appropriate.

        • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          16 days ago

          Also WebOS, running Jellyfin at home and watching on my LG TV and my Android phone just fine.

          I’ve used Plex for about a decade now and I’ve just recently had enough. Jellyfin surpasses Plex now.

          Plex is slow AF on the same TV where Jellyfin just flies. Plex is doing some fuckery. Even the TV’s screensaver is laggy when Plex is the foreground app on my TV, so Plex seems like it’s doing something weird in the background. Like a while-true loop just eating cycles or some shit.

          What made me finally lose it is twofold.

          1. The performance of Plex is dogshit. Laggy UI everywhere you click. Every single interaction is sluggish as hell. Jellyfin is snappy on the same TV. (Android not affected, only WebOS that I’ve seen.)
          2. Plex on WebOS cannot select the correct audio track for media with multiple audio tracks. I select my language, it plays English. I select any language but English, it plays English.
          3. Bonus reason: The Plex forums are dead. Not a single Plex employee answers the threads with these issues anymore. People have been reporting the audio track bug for like between 5 and 10 years, bro. Nothing being done about it. Several reports. Nothing. No reply.
          4. Bonus reason 2: the recent enshittification described here. Open source software trumps this corporate shite all day.

          I told Plex in the forums, I’m done. I’m moving to Jellyfin and I’m not going back to Plex later on to try again. I was this close 🤏 to being a lifetime Plex customer if these things were fixed, but it only got worse and worse.

          So… BYE!

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      33·
      1 year ago

      This is not enshittification. They are making this pay feature because it costs them to maintain it and keep it from becoming shit. They’ve been extremely upset front on how they are going about it and why. If you think Jellyfin is better, that’s fine but don’t act like a service feature costing money instead of being free is somehow making it shittier. People need to get paid for their work. Especially on high demand features that require a lot of upkeep.

      • Peasley@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        I dont agree that streaming files between my own devices is much of a service feature, especially since transcoding is done locally. That’s the feature, previously free, now being paywalled. That’s the first part of enshitification, however justified it may appear to be.

        Jellyfin does this entirely self-hosted, for free, and is open-source.

        Plex has lots of cool features but they are paywalling the wrong one here IMO