My opinion: Plex has made it clear that they want your money. They don’t want you to host your own media and be happy with that. They want you to pay a subscription.
The whole Plex Pass Lifetime subscription is kind of a trap. You might be getting away with paying once currently, but let’s be honest: That means that they have taken your money once. And a some time in the future, a MBA dude will notice that they have a lot of non-paying heavy users (meaning: users who have paid several years ago, which is not relevant for the revenue goals of the current quarter) - and they will try to get you to pay again and again. You might be okay with that, but if you don’t want to get hassled, you need to switch to something else.
I’m reminded of a few things. Enpass giving away Pro subscriptions, then years later on adding a higher tier, Premium. Nova’s Prime will apparently become just one tier of many premium tiers for the app. Podcast Addict adding another subscription on top of the premium IAP.
This kind of shit happens all the time, and Plex could do it. Good thing I’m already with Jellyfin.
I have paid for lifetime years ago and I’m still using it. They may introduce new features and try to entice me to pay for them, but so far no one is trying to cut me off from what I paid for
To me this means they know they don’t have a viable business model. It’s possible they took on a lot of debt years ago, and now they have to enshittify to pay it back. I paid for the lifetime membership years ago, and I would say I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth and I’m mostly still happy with Plex, but I would drop them in a heartbeat if jellyfin was a viable alternative.
People don’t like to admit it, but jellyfin doesn’t have feature parity yet. I think they could solve a lot of the issues if they went the federation route, but until then, it’s just easier for my family and friends to each have 1 plex account instead of N jellyfin accounts. Not to mention the jellyfin vulnerabilities that prevent me from considering hosting it openly.
People don’t like to admit it, but jellyfin doesn’t have feature parity yet. I think they could solve a lot of the issues if they went the federation route, but until then, it’s just easier for my family and friends to each have 1 plex account instead of N jellyfin accounts. Not to mention the jellyfin vulnerabilities that prevent me from considering hosting it openly
Could you maybe elaborate on the feature parity? What is missing? I also don’t get the info about N jellyfin accounts, as in separate jellyfin account per each different jellyfin server?
Why would you host it openly rather than in a VPN like Tailscale or whatever wire guard is?
I travel often. There are a lot of devices in hotels, bnbs, and friend’s houses that have native plex support. Not so much for jellyfin.
Casting to cast-compatible devices is very hit-or-miss, but mostly miss. I know the casting ecosystem is already a mess, but as far as user experience goes, Plex has spent more effort ironing it out.
The native Plex client works with a controller on my bazzite HTPC when launched from the steam ui, while the native jellyfin client doesn’t.
I keep trying jellyfin out every few months, but so far keep hitting enough friction that I can’t reliably make the switch.
as in separate jellyfin account per each different jellyfin server?
Yes, if me and 5 of my friends have jellyfin servers, we all need accounts on each other’s servers. I then need to juggle accounts to access their content.
Jellyswarrm is a reverse proxy plugin I could run to mask the problem for myself, but it’s not a solution for mom who may have access to my server, and one other friend’s server that I don’t know.
The correct solution is federated accounts, but the devs have already stated that they don’t want to do that.
Why would you host it openly rather than in a VPN like Tailscale or whatever wire guard is?
Then friends and family have to be on my VPN to stream anything.
They will release Plex-a-rama or Plex 2.0, stop providing security patches for 1.0, proxy routing, tmdb caching, epg caching, and add ads to your experience. They will then require the people connecting to you to have subs.
They were hoping to sell out and buy an island by now. Eventually, it will change hands or go public. Your features will be stripped as necessary to keep making money. Look at what happened to PlayOn’s lifetime subscription.
It’s already lasted WAY longer than anyone expected.
My opinion: Plex has made it clear that they want your money. They don’t want you to host your own media and be happy with that. They want you to pay a subscription.
The whole Plex Pass Lifetime subscription is kind of a trap. You might be getting away with paying once currently, but let’s be honest: That means that they have taken your money once. And a some time in the future, a MBA dude will notice that they have a lot of non-paying heavy users (meaning: users who have paid several years ago, which is not relevant for the revenue goals of the current quarter) - and they will try to get you to pay again and again. You might be okay with that, but if you don’t want to get hassled, you need to switch to something else.
I’m reminded of a few things. Enpass giving away Pro subscriptions, then years later on adding a higher tier, Premium. Nova’s Prime will apparently become just one tier of many premium tiers for the app. Podcast Addict adding another subscription on top of the premium IAP.
This kind of shit happens all the time, and Plex could do it. Good thing I’m already with Jellyfin.
I have paid for lifetime years ago and I’m still using it. They may introduce new features and try to entice me to pay for them, but so far no one is trying to cut me off from what I paid for
Isn’t that kinda exactly what the OP was saying with their comment about MBAs realising they have non-paying users?
I don’t run Plex so I don’t know, but from your comment it sounds like the Plex Pass isn’t “all past, present and future premium features”?
Or were you theorising about a future where they do ask you to pay more?
I’m not missing any features I got when I paid for it (I believe they’ve added some), so no complaints from me.
To me this means they know they don’t have a viable business model. It’s possible they took on a lot of debt years ago, and now they have to enshittify to pay it back. I paid for the lifetime membership years ago, and I would say I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth and I’m mostly still happy with Plex, but I would drop them in a heartbeat if jellyfin was a viable alternative.
People don’t like to admit it, but jellyfin doesn’t have feature parity yet. I think they could solve a lot of the issues if they went the federation route, but until then, it’s just easier for my family and friends to each have 1 plex account instead of N jellyfin accounts. Not to mention the jellyfin vulnerabilities that prevent me from considering hosting it openly.
Could you maybe elaborate on the feature parity? What is missing? I also don’t get the info about N jellyfin accounts, as in separate jellyfin account per each different jellyfin server?
Why would you host it openly rather than in a VPN like Tailscale or whatever wire guard is?
I keep trying jellyfin out every few months, but so far keep hitting enough friction that I can’t reliably make the switch.
Yes, if me and 5 of my friends have jellyfin servers, we all need accounts on each other’s servers. I then need to juggle accounts to access their content.
Jellyswarrm is a reverse proxy plugin I could run to mask the problem for myself, but it’s not a solution for mom who may have access to my server, and one other friend’s server that I don’t know.
The correct solution is federated accounts, but the devs have already stated that they don’t want to do that.
Then friends and family have to be on my VPN to stream anything.
They will release Plex-a-rama or Plex 2.0, stop providing security patches for 1.0, proxy routing, tmdb caching, epg caching, and add ads to your experience. They will then require the people connecting to you to have subs.
They were hoping to sell out and buy an island by now. Eventually, it will change hands or go public. Your features will be stripped as necessary to keep making money. Look at what happened to PlayOn’s lifetime subscription.
It’s already lasted WAY longer than anyone expected.