I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says “we need you to donate please” would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
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Are you saying that you’re on your home network with your Plex server and it won’t let you play your mode is without paying? That’s not true if so. You must be outside the network.
Every non-Free Software will betray you eventually. It’s only a matter of time.
I thought free software was when you were the product and non-free software actually supported developers.
Or do you mean non-OSS?
Yeah, the wording is confusing. A long time ago, there was no paid software, there was only software where you got the source code and other software where e.g. it was pre-installed on some hardware and the manufacturer didn’t want to give the source code.
In that time, a whole movement started fighting for software freedom, so they called their software “free”.
In this thread:
- An OP that doesn’t understand how their network is working
- People rushing to suggest a solution that they fawn over because it’s open source. I have yet to see anyone recommend Emby.
- “Tailscale will solve all your problems!” Great - how do I make that work on an LG TV that’s 100 miles away?
3 - An OpenWRT router with Wireguard connecting to another router 1000 miles away will do the trick.
- Open source has high immunity to devs making changes at the expense of user for their benefit because anti-feature can be removed. Recommendating another proprietary alternative here would be like recommending to leave an abusive partner but then recommend someone with the same red flags they had.
- It’s also the most complex to set up, and for many people the threshold is “walking your tech-illiterate mother-in-law through side loading it over the phone, because she lives 100 miles away… She’s afraid to touch her computer for anything except email and Facebook. And then resetting her password every 30 days, because she keeps locking herself out of it.” Suddenly the “just fucking sign into Plex and it automatically discovers your server” option becomes a lot more appealing.
Jellyfin is the most complex to set up, right? (Just making sure I’m reading this correctly)
To set it up “correctly”, yes. It’ll require owning your own domain, being able to configure it properly (with either a static IP, or DDNS to point to your server at home), knowing how to automate https certificate refreshes, and a few other things. Plex just requires forwarding a port in your router.
I thought self hosting was about learning networking basics like DNS and setting up let’s encrypt.
So much whining in here about the most simple stuff being too complex.
Right.
Even though I could do those things, I just want something that works.
Plex (or even Emby) fits that request.
Plus they both have an AppleTV app for fee that doesn’t suck.
Welcome to “People rushing to suggest a solution that they fawn over because it’s open source.”
How do you personally 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt know that Jellyfin is the right solution? Why not a VPN, shared folder, and VLC? What about running a DNLA server?
I’ll add to #2 (IDK if it’s open source, though):
Give Stremio a try. Once you set it up (basically just add the Torrentio plug-in then whatever content catalogs you want), the workflow is much better and simpler than Plex.
You just browse it like Netflix: see something you want to watch, select it with your remote, then stream it immediately. No server to run, you don’t have to build libraries, you don’t even have download the content beforehand. Just select and watch. Could not be easier.
Is it torrenting in the background? Because, if it is, then you need a VPN and I don’t know how to set one up on my LG TV. Would you happen to have a guide?
If you live in an area where you need a VPN to keep your ISP off your ass, well you’re in luck because the Torrentio plug-in is compatible with Debrid services (Real-Debrid is a good one). They’re cheaper than a VPN (less than €3/mo) and get you direct downloads which ISPs don’t care about since you’re not distributing files like you would with a torrent client. What’s nice is that they work with any torrent—not just video—so you can download wherever you want at 1gbps speeds so long as the torrent has at least one seed.
Setup is easy. The only thing you need to do is install the Stremio app on your TV, then open it and install the Torrentio plug-in. From there you configure your preferences like preferred resolution, language, etc, enter your Debrid service credentials if you have them; after that you install additional plug-ins for the kind of content you want. I’d recommend starting off with the Streaming Catalogs (lists popular content from Netflix, Amazon, Disney HBO, etc.)and Trakt.tv plug-ins (recommends content based on your viewing habits). There’s also plug-ins for anime if that’s your thing. Once you install the plug-ins you like, the only thing left to do is pick something to watch and enjoy. :)
You can also download the Stremio app to your phone and configure everything from there if you don’t want to fumble with doing all of this with the TV remote. I’d recommend doing it this way so that all you have to do on the TV is fire up the Stremio app and enjoy.
If #3 is your use case, then yeah, pony up the fees. Or learn to code I guess.
So, like every other jellyfin fanboy, no real actual answer.
Why anyone still uses Plex for new setups is beyond me.
pretty much the only reason I still use Plex is because I like to be able to watch stuff during downtime at work and plex.tv isn’t blocked on the work network while my private domain is.
And no, using a hotspot off my phone on a personal computer isn’t an option, both because the security requirements of my job site prevent us from using personal devices in the main area where I work and because the building itself is a massive concrete structure that blocks most cell signals.
Someone else already said it and you’ve already swapped but I’ll say it in detail:
when setting the server connection up you selected “ServerName (long string of numbers)” and not “ServerName (your IP - SECURE)”
this routes your connection through the Plex servers and makes it not a local connection anymore. this is extremely easy to do and forget you’ve done because it barely impacts performance
In other words, it’s a dark pattern that tricks users into letting Plex MITM their connection.
It gets around port forwarding/firewall issues that most people don’t know how to deal with. But putting it behind a paywall kinda kills any chance of it being a benevolent feature.
Labeling it as “SECURE” (implying the other option is insecure) is enough to make it seem underhanded to me.
port forwarding/firewall issues that most people don’t know how to deal with
This sort of thing makes me want to tear my hair out when I hear “Why bother rolling out IPv6 when IPv4 just WORKS!?”
NAT, port forwarding and the problems they cause are seen as expected, just the way the internet works instead of the dirty hacks they actually are. Most people aren’t old enough to remember the time when everything connected to the internet had a routable IPv4 address.
Jellyfin is great, but in defense of Plex, they announced that remote streaming would require one of the two parties to have a Plex pass was coming back in March so I don’t know if it’s fair to say they are holding anything hostage.
If they’re calling it remote streaming when you’re on the same (local) network, that’s not exactly intuitive. I’d say OP’s phrasing was fair.
OP has a misconfigured server and isn’t connecting to their server over LAN.
But I keep hearing the value of Plex is that anyone can use it.
Yes anyone can use it even people who don’t know how to configure their server
The OP might disagree from what I’m seeing.
OP is also in the allegedly ultra rare camp of “successfully configured Jellyfin and lived to tell the tale.” Not what I’d expect of someone unable to configure Plex correctly. I’ve not set up a Plex server myself but my guess is it wasn’t clear that it was misconfigured - it did work previously, after all.
Well, with Plex constantly changing allowed abilities and such, it seems to me that this is the expected outcome.
I started down the Jellyfin path after they made that announcement. It’s super easy to install, and in many ways the UI is nicer than Plex. But I ran into challenges getting my server safely accessible for users outside my LAN. And I haven’t had the time to look into that further.
Would be great if there was a clean, easy way to set up the webserver portion so it’s as easy to share content entirely as Plex. But I get they are a volunteer project with a lot on their plate.
But I ran into challenges getting my server safely accessible for users outside my LAN
FWIW:
- vps + domain (optional?)
- connect vps to home server with wireguard (eg Tailscale)
- reverse proxy on the VPS forwarding to jellyfin (eg Caddy)
Obviously not as trivial or seamless as Plex. Also I wouldn’t try to complicate this setup by using docker for everything. But once its up you can basically host whatever you want on the WAN from your LAN.
Awesome, thanks for the tips!
I have had great success with tailscale in this regard.
The same tailscale that announced last week that they are going to start charging?
Took a quick look at the free tier,
- 3 users
- 100 devices
- Basically all tailscale features
That seems pretty reasonable to me. Main account and two accounts to share. With just friends and family, I doubt most people will reach the 100 device limit.
Creating a tailnet using a custom domain is considered for business use.
Well, that sucks for me. I was planning on using my domain name.
I’m willing to recommend Tailscale because I run headscale and it does basically everything a selfhoster needs. When the free version is passable, it’s harder to enshitify the commercial version.
Says personal is still free? Not seeing what you’re saying
That’s great until you try and get it working on your <insert person here that doesn’t live with you>’s TV via their streaming device.
The safe usage outside of my network has always been a sticking point as well. I run it locally but my Plex server is in used by several of my family and friends, as well as my wife who is not as tech savvy, so having her run jellyfin on everything is really not fair. Especially when we have young children. She doesn’t really have time to troubleshoot, she needs things to kind of work on command.
Yeah, there is no defence on enshittification, sorry. I have jellyfin now. Its also not remote which makes this a huge dick move too.
Wait its not remote? You’re on your local network?
OP has set it up wrong so it’s ALL going remote, even when he’s in the same house.
Remote, yes, they announced you need Plex pass one side or the other for it to work.
Local, no, that shouldn’t happen. Your device isn’t reaching your Plex server locally.
To work around the remote issue, you can VPN to your local network.
But you’re better off in the long haul with Jellyfin as you’re doing now.
Yeah no. That is local. But thanks for the suggestion. Jellyfin works well.
Its not a local connection if you’re getting this message. You might be in the same network, but for some reason it’s not connecting directly.
It isn’t hitting it locally is the issue. Not an uncommon problem with plex unfortunately, its going out to come back in, so the server and client see it as remote.
Without playback you wouldn’t even be able to see that in the dashboard, which just makes the direction Plex is going so much more problematic.
Like I said, better off using JF.
Plex has paywalled my server!
Skill issue tbh.
Exposing Jellyfin/ plex through routing or SNAT plus dyndns would be a cheap option.
As soon as one rents a VPS (to expose the selfhosted at home service through routing/ tunneling) it would cost at least 2€/ month?
Plex really needs to do a Tailscale style connection to your server. But instead they chose to keep their outdated method of funneling all of their traffic through their servers, and need to charge lots of money in order to pay for it.
Considering both Plex and Tailscale are going toward VC exits, Headscale and Jellyfin is the only FOSS way atm.
I just use nginx on a tiny Hetzner vps acting as a reverse proxy for my home server. I dunno what the point of Tailscale is here, maybe better latency and fewer network hops in some cases if a p2p connection is possible? But I’ve never had any bandwidth or latency issues doing this
If you are using wireguard from the VPS to your home server, it buys you nothing more. If you have mobile devices connecting directly to the home server, Tailscale will let them connect directly in most cases, which is nice.
The direct connection is cool, I just wonder if a P2P connection is actually any better than going through a data center. There’s gonna be intermediate servers right?
Do you need to have Tailscale set up on any network you want to use this on? Because I’m a fan of being able to just throw my domain or IP into any TV and log in
I had a plex pass and was still having tons of issues streaming to other devices such as Apple TV. So I switched everything over to jellyfin with news server and have everything scheduled through radarr and sonarr. Never going back.
If you were having troubles it’s because you did something wrong, though I don’t know how. Plex is literally the easiest and most straightforward media server to set up and get working out of all of them.
Damn. Thats a brutal report. Thanks for sharing. I was considering buying a plex pass due to the mobile apps fiasco, then came the remote thing and I thought nah. Now I’m happy i didnt
Yeah you’re better off.
I’ve never been a Plex user. Always been with Jellyfin. I’ve heard that plexamp is a killer app but finamp has always been sufficient for my pretty basic needs. But I have a question for you (meant in good faith). You say,
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
If Plex needs a sustainable business model, asking for donations isn’t enough. So what is the move for them? What do they do to both fulfill their need for a sustainable business and also not upset their userbase? (I’m not defending Plex or this move of taking your server hostage, in any way.)
I’m genuinely curious how, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, they should have played this or at a minimum, made better moves than they did.
Very glad you’re with jellyfin btw. You can check out some cool plugins at awesome-jellyfin.
Donations isn’t going to cover the hunger of a 40 million dollar VC round. Those investors want more than a return, they want plex profitable ASAP
Exactly. Plex could have been “profitable” in the sense that revenue covered infrastructure and paid a handful of full time employees, but that’s not what VC money needs.
Investors are like parasitic leeches to any business model. As soon as you add them, the business has to grow in order to satisfy the leeches who provide no benefit to the model other than to be attached to it. If you ignore the leech, they’ll drain all your lifeforce, so your only option is to satisfy them and feed them. Unfortunately, they are also ravenous creatures who are never satisfied. If you feed them a little, they’ll want more next time in an endless cycle.
Once you are infected by investors … eventually they will destroy whatever you created.
You have this semi-backwards. The VC isn’t really a leech because Plex pitches the venture fund with a well developed enshittification plan already in place. Assuming everyone is acting in good faith (i.e. the VC doesn’t just want to just shut it down and sell Plex for parts), Plex’s (enshittification) plan is the reason it makes sense for the venture fund to invest in the first place. Plex promises their plan is why the VC will make an outsized return on their investment and it is what the VC validates as part of their pre-investment due diligence. But that plan is created (and sometimes even put into operation) before any VC investment occurs.
Yes, you got this bang-on. Plex made the decision long ago.
And they likely made it because without VC funding they would have gone under, because people that use services like Plex tend to not want to pay to use said services.
There are a few ways Plex could have played this:
- By attrition. Stop the sale of plex pass, but leave those users and their access alone. New sign-ups get new rules about features/$.
- By using some of their revenue to paywall Premium features, keep a cut-down but functional version for non-paying plebs. It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing, even for streaming outside your network (which you could cap at X number of hours per month)
- Start making Plex features a-la-carte, meaning, $2/mth for HDR, 4$ for streaming, etc. Or bundles.
The point is there are lots of companies who do this right and don’t have such a blatant disregard for the user. In the long run, this will not help Plex, it will help other streaming service helpers who are actually willing to respect users.
I know you’re not defending Plex and I acknowledge that. However, I see a lot of “How are they supposed to make their money?” arguments here, hence my description above of just a few models Plex could have chosen instead of f**king the customer.
Yeah. “How are they supposed to make their money” is a question that I’m grappling with right now. OSS is hard enough with a straightforward MIT license but figuring out how to monetize in the OSS space (that doesn’t always reward nuance), adds a lot of complexity. I’m starting fresh, so I’m not changing anything on anyone… but getting a monetization strategy that is 100% perfect out of the gate is not likely so seeing this vs. a response like Pangolin’s is helpful.
That’s a good point, and it’s one that isn’t solved yet in the foss space.
There are some success stories like Blender, and other projects like Thunderbird and KDE who have recently made their model work through voluntary donations, albeit by hiring competent management of such donations. And there are lots and lots of projects somewhere in between.
The interesting questions to me aren’t so much about Plex, but the infrastructure behind all the tools we use: NTP on Linux, build tools, ffmpeg libraries, etc. Lots of other companies make products that make money, yet kick back nothing to these.
Would a royalty system work? I dont know.
So what is the move for them?
Plex has a two-pronged VOD service. They have ad-supported “live television” and they have content to rent.
I don’t know if that’s enough to sustain them but I don’t really care. I’ve been a PlexPass owner for over ten years. I have only asked that they resolve bugs and made requests for things like proper organization of classical music (which they’ve explicitly stated they will not consider).
You do bring to light something I hadn’t considered; that they see Plex as a business model. From my perspective, I want to buy a fully developed product with the expectation of bug fixes and security patches etc over time. I genuinely can not think of a single thing the developers have added to the service that I’ve used in the past ten years.
So, what kind of business model charges money to do things that don’t have an apparent impact on the user experience?
Plex has been one of my most used applications in the past decade. However, it has its limitations and they are actively imposing more limitations on the experience in favor of “a sustainable business model”.
The issue is that their sustainable business model is interrupting the users’ sustained use of a platform they’ve already paid for. I’ve had to go through all of my devices and disable all auto-updates to ensure I do not get the “New Plex Experience”.
What we should be asking is why “selling a product” is no longer a business model.
What we should be asking is why “selling a product” is no longer a business model.
Such a good question. Off the top of my head, I can think of two reasons: one cynical, one a little more practical.
Cynical first lol: Maxmize profits. Why charge once when you can charge monthly. I’ll move off this bc it’s a topic that’s been beaten to death, esp. here on Lemmy.
The more practical reason is probably because most software interacts pretty directly with the internet in some way. When we were just installing MSOffice98 with clippy, software didn’t need constant security updates, patches, etc. Remember when there was an update for MSOffice and you’d install Service Pack 1? That was one of the first patches I downloaded from the internet and it was a big deal back then. Now updates come out at least monthly, many times more often than that. I guess that means that you have multple product cycles occuring concurrently, which creates a financial model with a lot more unknowns… which in turn makes it harder to forecast what a product should cost, considering it would be the only revenue generated, per license for the life of the product.
I think selling a product is still a very viable business model, but you have to be a lot more accurate about revenue forcasting and product pricing. I guess it means you have a lot less room for error (from a business perspective).
This is not Microsoft. I haven’t updated my plex software in over six months and it runs fine. Still, yes, I would expect updates to any software I purchase as new patches are needed for OS updates, etc. That shouldn’t be more than two updates a year for a given OS - if at all.
Selling a product, generating revenue, using revenue to improve products or create new products is how we used to run businesses.
If they’re unable to maintain software updates with the revenue they get, then they should discontinue support of less popular products.
As I’ve stated on the plex forum, plex is no longer a media management and consumption platform. It’s a video on demand service. That’s their prerogative and that’s fine. The issue is that they’re discontinuing a product that people have purchased and use on a regular basis. I paid money for a product and that product can no longer be used if I change the device I use that product on. They should have left the existing product alone and released something wholly new.
What we should be asking is why “selling a product” is no longer a business model.
Because they’re not selling a product, they’re selling an ongoing service. They run the relay servers, and those cost money every month.
I bought a media management and consumption platform running on my own server using my own clients. For what reason do I need a relay service to watch content in my house on my server?
What media management and consumption platform did you buy?
No idea, you’re the one that bought it. I did the same thing for a few years and never bought a plex pass.
From my view, a sustainable business model is very different from the way things are done lately. I built and managed multiple successful businesses and making them sustainable is doable without fucking over your customers.
They could absolutely have done a lot better things to gain more income. The important base question here is “how much do they need?” Because software does not have huge ongoing costs but massive initial costs and lower sustaining costs. Of course, large changes or complete makeorvers will be intense but they are not needed in every company.
Once that is clear, they could have started with better public relations, engaging people about the need for a specific sum or recurring revenue. They could have gamified it by selling badges, additional functions, tiers, restrictions on new installations, etc. But they didnt. They chose to paywall existing functions. one. After. The. Other.
Dick move.
So yeah, building a business is no joke but thats not for me.
Saying software does not have huge ongoing costs shows you’ve never worked on any huge software system. My works ongoing costs for hosting/scaling/storing data are millions of dollars a year.
Really glad you replied. Thank you. Your points are really good ones. I want to build something (software) for myself and the community but also struggle with where to draw the line when it comes to making my product generate revenue too. It’s a thing we don’t really talk about when it comes to OSS. Maybe we should create a new category called SOSS, (sustainable oss) lol.
Some FOSS projects are supported by having a for-profit company offer turnkey packaging and support for those projects. Look at TrueNAS. They sell nice NAS hardware preconfigured with their software and the profits support the development.
Make sure your home server config isn’t mistaking this client as a remote user. Check your networking, etc
My networking is the same since i have plex (about 4 years). I now use jellyfin and it works well. But thanks for the suggestion.
This is just some glitch. They’ve not said anything about watching stuff locally becoming a pay thing.
yet
Much too convenient to be “just” a glitch. Anyway, jellyfin works fine. Has been a good ride mostly.
It’s a fork of open source software. If only “line go up” didn’t have to be the way things worked they could have stopped developing features no one wants just to squeeze out profit, and sustained without enshittifying. Maybe.
Yeah. I was a fan. I knew it would go down that road. When they paywalled remote clients i kinda smelled blood and started to try jellyfin. Best decision in hindsight.
