Plex has announced a massive price increase on the service’s Lifetime Plex Pass. On July 1, the lifetime subscription option will go from $249.99 to $749.99, an increase of 200%. The price hike will only apply to new subscribers, with no changes to monthly or annual subscription pricing.
My Jellyfin server goes, “Burrrrrrr!”
Honestly, I made the switch about 6 months ago and haven’t looked back once. The Jellyfin native Android TV app is a bit lacking, but I recently installed Wholpin and find it much better!
My only other gripe is that Plex allows you to set subtitle and audio language preferences per library while JF only allows one preference for the whole server. This is annoying for those of us enjoying foreign language films, where I often end up having to play with the settings every time I want to watch a foreign feature.
I’ve also heard that some people miss the syndication of Plex, where you have one account connected to many servers. I only connect to my own, so don’t know much about this.
Ooohh. Language preference per library would be so nice. Not having to fuck with languages on anime would be so convenient.
There is a syndicated Jellyfin project. Not tried it.
Wait wait wait so… you pay THEM to let YOU share YOUR media? Wha?
An absolutely insane number of self hosting options require a subscription for now fucking reasoning.
Not a one time buy which would at least make sense. No no! Its a monthly fee AND half the time they require a Internet connection and checkin. Just to SELF HOST.
its fucking baffling.
Not a one time buy which would at least make sense. No no! Its a monthly fee AND half the time they require a Internet connection and checkin. Just to SELF HOST.
Yeah, the DRM has to make sure your subscription is up to date. For the service you provide all the hardware for. The service you will personally have to install and maintain.
Not really. What Plex is selling is a relay service, so you can connect to your home media remotely, just like you can do with Tailscale etc. the second thing they are selling is user management, easily share media library with other people. Both of these are hard to set up for many people in Jellyfin
Plex announces that it is tired of having all of these customers buying their software
That’s just gonna drive lazy people to learn how to use something open source like Jellyfin.
Lazy ones will just keep paying monthly. Industrious ones might move to jellyfin. The main thing this will do is
separate a few fools from their moneyget people to stop buying lifetime passes.It’s safe to say they want people to be stuck paying monthly so they can have more consistent income i guess.
At least when paying monthly it’s easier to see the worth in swapping to Jellyfin (because you aren’t trying to maximize the 1k you dropped for lifetime).
How much longer before the yearly/monthly goes up this much.
as soon as they think the market will bear it
How much longer until all the current lifetime subscribers have to pay up to the current price to keep it?
Yeah - they know that you are using the service a lot. They know that you are willing to pay. But they are not getting ongoing revenue from you. That is something no MBA manager CEO dude can accept. They will come for lifetime users
Yeah eventually they will figure out to nullify the old cheap lifetime subscriptions.
I’m just waiting for them to decide all the lifetime members need to pay monthly and kill off the lifetime memberships. Probably by having a ‘new’ version that for some made up reason can only function
on the blood of the unbornon monthly subscriptions. Where the only real change will be a different UI that’s missing features which they will tout as “cleaner”.
Jellyfin guys
Laugh while you can monkey boy! But in 2037 when its $75000 for a lifetime pass, I’ll be the one laughing then!
If you just live long enough this is an amazing deal! A steal I tell you!
If you don’t see it that way you are timid and weak and don’t have the confidence to survive another 6 or 7 decades!
I wonder if instead of Jellyfin + Tailscale, people should be doing Jellyfin + Netbird.
Netbird offers a reverse proxy, so you can easily expose Jellyfin to the public Internet and not have to jump through hoops for friends and family…
https://docs.netbird.io/manage/reverse-proxy
At least, in theory… I haven’t tried this setup yet, but I’m thinking about it…
I bought my parent’s an Android TV, just so they could install Tailscale on it. Unfortunately, Android TV keeps killing Tailscale or doesn’t launch it on boot. They’re old, so they can’t really troubleshoot VPN issues.
I use Jellyfin with Wireguard, Caddy, and Fail2Ban https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup
tailscale also offers a reverse proxy through their “funnel” - https://tailscale.com/docs/features/tailscale-funnel
but I’ve been looking at netbird and might switch, so who knows what i’ll be using a year from now
Headscale doesn’t though and I’d be willing to bet the self hosted jellyfin types are more likely to also be using headscale than tailscale.
Would be nice if Plex showed their numbers; what they pay in licensing, maintenance etc and profit
Ok cool, now let me stream to my own network locally without the internet…
you had one fucking job, Plex!
I use Infuse for that. Works great.
I really should get around to kicking my setup over to jellyfin and navidrome.
Yes you should. I run both and absolutely love them.
Massive price hike causes massive customer hike to Jellyfin lol
Posted this link earlier and it got deleted with no mod log. Anyone able to explain so I can avoid future issues?
I already have lifetime but there have been increasingly more and more yellow/orange flags recently.
For you jellyfin folk: Is there a good solution to being able to cache/download episodes/movies ahead of time for “offline mode” with any of the android clients yet? Last time I checked that was a pain point and most solutions boiled down to “just download the file and use VLC”. At which point… why am I running a media server when I can just mount a samba share at home?
My sole problem with jellyfin is the ease of use for remote access. I can’t explain to my 60 year old mom, or 80 year old grandma how to set up a VPN.
I’ve said this exact same thing in the past, and been shouted down by the Jellyfin crowd. There is a lot of apologia in the FOSS community, and Jellyfin is one of the worst offenders. It has several known security exploits, and should never be accessible outside of your LAN. But every time I mention it, I inevitably get some chud responding with “lol I’ve had my port forwarded for years and been fine” as if that is a valid security audit.
And this means your only real option for remote access is a VPN. But that makes sharing with friends/family extremely difficult.
Especially if those family/friends also want to run their own servers, because Jellyfin doesn’t have a centralized “here are all of your servers” home page.
It also means you end up playing administrator to all of the “I forgot my password for the ninth time this week, can you reset it for me” inane requests.
Plex does all of those things really well. Want to share with a friend? Just send them an invite link, and they can access it with their own account. Want to access multiple servers, because you have a few friends who also run theirs? Easy, they can send invite links to you, and you’ll access them all directly through the home page. Family member forgot their password? They can click the button and follow the prompts to reset it themselves.
Especially true on reddit, the Plex hate is real - yes they’re raising lifetime pass, but it’s not valuable to them for you to buy it. That’s why it’s raised until you only want to use the subscription.
It’s especially weird when we mostly agree with them on Plex’ path to hell. But when we ask critical questions or point out a weakness of Jellyfin, they act like we drove over their dog. Or they downplay your concern and deflect
It also means you end up playing administrator to all of the “I forgot my password for the ninth time this week, can you reset it for me” inane requests.
Jellyfin is a self-hosted streaming service. You have just understood the concept of self-hosting, Sir.
your only real option for remote access is a VPN. But that makes sharing with friends/family extremely difficult.
The first part is true. The latter is exaggerated. Yes, it’s more of a hassle than just “install the app, follow a link and you’re done.” That said, if done through wg-easy (a wireguard configuration frontend), it’s “install two apps, scan a QR code, enter a server URL and you’re done.” Also, corporations spoon-feeding users, creating an expectation that tech just magically knows who I am and works on fairydust and rainbows, that’s what got us into this mess. Expecting a modicum of setting up from the user isn’t too much to ask if they can then access somebody else’s services for free.
Yes, an Android app called Streamyfin.
What flags have you seen?
I got a Plex Lifetime Pass mainly for Plexamp + Tidal, but then they removed the Tidal integration. Roon lifetime pass is similar to what Plex is now, which is basically the only other option for this that exists right now.
