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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As was stated on the first post you made about this, it’s a dns or nat reflection issue.
Plex sees you accessing it through your external IP address, and not through your lan IP.
I had a similar problem, and had to roll back some nat changes I made, and now it’s working fine again.
Meanwhile, free remote streaming works fine if you have a proper VPN setup. I just tested it, and was able to stream to my phone, through the Plex app, over my tailscale VPN, and I do not have Plex pass on the server or on my phone…
What about switching to Jellyfin?
Plex has pay walled FREE servers streaming to FREE clients only.
If you have a plex watch pass (for client) you’re good and can stream from any server. If you have a plex pass (for server) any one can stream from your server. But you have to have one or the other.
Yes. But it used to be free to watch remotely. It’s 99% your own hardware doing everything. Their services get used for discovery, not as proxies for the connection itself, AFAIK.
You already had to pay them to allow transcoding with your own GPU, etc.
Right now it’s still not too bad, but just watch, enshittification will affect paid users too. For one, I expect the lifetime pass to go away, and go away retroactively eventually.
For software I like made by people getting paid, I was happy to pay the one time fee. It’s really good, secure, and downloads are fast now.
This is not true in practice, I have plexpass for my server and my wife can’t watch on her phone because they want her to pay too…
Old news, but time for Jellyfin. I made the switch a couple months ago. Some minor teething issues, but better, IMO, especially now as my family all have LDAP users and that just works.
awesome. thanks for chiming in. I will have to check how to do external streaming without opening my network up to the world (metaphorically).
…wireguard
(there are android TV apps for wireguard, not that any normie can actually move a client file to it and turn it on, or could be bothered to)
Thats not what I meant. I of course have wireguard set up for administration and my own streaming needs. But friends of mine who were able to use plex by just making an account but now they cant because of course there is no relay server etc. I’ll have to think of a way to make it available to them (easily!) without putting my network at risk.
This is how I do it: https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup
My primary worry for this is that something in the jellyfin stack gets an open vulnerability, like there’s an overflow you can use on a post call to a piece of media allowing remote code execution.
Tautulli had a leak once that provided the user’s private token. Then there was a way in Plex with a private token to pull data from elsewhere on the server. That’s how LastPass got nuked I hear.
I get you and I know that there can be security issues (especially in Jellyfin) that might give you access. This is the reason I only mount the media and config folders, and nothing else into the docker container. The media folders are mounted as read only and don’t contain sensitive information. For the config folder I created a separate user. Plus I block non-German IP addresses which already blocks quite some bots. If your friends have fixed IP addresses you could also just whitelist them and block everything else.
You could also probably sniff the network and define more strict rules on ‘allowed’ requests in fail2ban but this is bridle because requests might change with different versions.
They actually do a small login f2b effort right in JF, but it appears to be quite limited.
The container is more secure by default, and if people set up their docker well it reduces the dangers substantially. A lot of people don’t go docker though.
Thanks. That’s well laid out, straightforward. I have resources at home that I want access to through my vps. This is a good blueprint.
That is pretty much how I imagined it. Sadly, its A TON of work. I have most of this set up in many VPSs for both me and customers (with other services of course) and I can imagine its probably the best solution. I still hate my life when thinking of implementing it. :D I bet its gonna be easier than I think but you may get my point here. Thank you very much for sharing.
Hell I know what you mean, it was so much trial and error until it worked, hence this guide/template to help others. Plus at some point it feels more like work than a hobby 😅
You’re an absolute champ! Thanks for walking the walk. Its refreshing meeting people who do stuff. Feel free to check out my kodi peertube app at some point ;)
Or just get a Mikrotik router and run Back to Home and baaam you got a similar to tailscate fuction with 3 clicks.
Mine is public, but I block every state but the one all of my users live in(family) and I never get unwanted visitors. Couldn’t say the same if I lived in NY or CA.
If they have static IP addresses, you may be able to whitelist them in your proxy, or maybe there’s some sort of dyndns client/relay software you can run if their ips change.
yeah, thanks. but thats not gonna work for me. i live in a big city and none of us (me and my server included) have static IPs nor am I gonna get them (at all) and I dont want to pay for them either (because ISPs here want you to pay for them). in any case, thanks for trying to suggest something. it might help someone else who has a different setup. :)
Welp, I guess they’ll just have to start their own servers or you’ll have to get out your credit card. Pity.
yeah no. there are a lot of other solutions to this. they’re just a little annoying. others have confirmed there are similar setups like plex is doing with a relay server, but selfhosted.
You’ve got options.
Can your router open ports from a hostname vs an IP? If so, clients could run dynamic DNS.
WG client side isn’t really that hard, though. All the fam run WG 24/7 on devices, and only traffic for the internal network goes through it.
I know. the issue is my friends dont have networks run by me. So I have to gain access to them and have to change setups which makes the situation likely to blow in my face. its just not a good solution imo. People have already suggested a relay server which will likely be the best solution.
I used synology and reverse proxy. It was pretty easy to set up. The tricky part was going into jellyfins setting and connecting your reverse proxy to the path you made.
Overall my kids and family can now access it anywhere.
I run a reverse proxy too. are you talking about a public one? I’m probably gonna use a relay server for it which essentially is the same I guess.
Yes, the public one. I just use synology ddns as the public address. I’m good with programming, but when it comes to IT stuff, I’m dead in the water. So, their infrastructure helped
Neat. Thanks for suggesting.
I made the switch a few months back as well. Have you had the issue where"Recently Added" just straight up doesn’t work? It’s about 50/50 for me whether my new downloads show up there or not, and if they do, it’s usually inserted somewhere down the list between other things I added months ago. Not sure if there’s a workaround, but it’s my #1 complaint with Jellyfin. Otherwise, it’s been great.
How is your underlying file system set up?
It’s an Unraid share on a local NAS. I can’t remember what it’s formatted as off the top of my head, but it would have been the default fs option as of about 4 months ago. Maybe the file system itself is not storing create/modify dates correctly? It’s not an issue in Plex though, for whatever that’s worth.
Give me a package that runs on my ds214play and I’ll switch in a heartbeat
Welp, i killed mine yesterday as it wouldnt let me stream while offline. Modem died so no Internet for me. Why do i have everything local if it dosent work while offline…
Exactly. Thats why i use jellyfin now. Try installing it alongside. For me it worked well.
Its already installed, but missing features, i was waiting for them to finish the db changes, because thats whats blocking them…
what features are you missing?
FYI you can definitely watch while your network is offline. You just net to tell it that you’re happy with that (it’s not activated by default for security reasons).
-
In your Plex server settings, go to Network, enable “Show Advanced”.
-
Near the bottom, find the textbox that says
List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth -
In this field, enter the local IP address of any Plex client(s) you want to keep using if your internet (or the Plex cloud) is down.
-
A example:
192.168.0.50 -
Save the setting, done.
#Important thing to be aware of:
What this setting does is tell your local Plex server to simply give any Plex client that connects from that specific IP full admin access to your Plex server, ignoring any account restrictions. This means that if you have things in place to restrict access to some libraries (kids blocked from 18+ movies etc) those restrictions will have no effect. Also if you have the option set to allow file deletion, then any client from that IP could also delete items. And they could of course change any settings in your Plex server. So your kids can watch anything on your server, if you have a guest in your network and they browse to the Plex web interface, they can mess with things.
Because of that I would recommend to limit the amount of IP’s you enter in that field to the absolute bare minimum. For example, only whitelist the “main living room device” plus one device you to admin the server, such as a laptop.
If you want to whitelist multiple devices, this is a example:
192.168.0.50,192.168.0.77,192.168.0.80If you want to whitelist a entire network, these would be examples:
192.168.0.0/24 (this means 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.0.255) 192.168.0.0/16 (this means 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255)And of course those involved network devices should use static IPs in your home network.
-
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.
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.
I use wg-easy, which is a web ui bundled with wireguard and it works great. I only have to port forward a single wireguard port on my router.
I have had great success with tailscale in this regard.
The same tailscale that announced last week that they are going to start charging?
announced
What announcement? There’s been a new Personal Plus plan around for several months already - introduced without much fanfare, and simply brings the user count from 3 to 6 for a fixed small fee. Presumably this is due to feedback from personal users wanting to contribute something other than nothing.
Where do you see the free Personal plan has changed at all?
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.
custom domain
From what I gather, this refers to the email address you sign up with.
If you use something like a non-gmail email address when signing up, it starts you off on the business plan with a trial (which you can instantly change to free). (Note: they’re gonna change this auto-detection thing with shared domains soon due to a security hole.)
I believe you can still use a custom domain (instead of the randomised *.ts.net provided one) with DNS lookups in your tailnet, on the personal (free) plan.
I have it set up so that my custom domain is pointing to the local ip of my server.
The tailnet domain doesn’t really matter that much if you have your own. I just use tailscale IP for everything that’s not in adgaurs with a host name already
Or even just use the tailnet domain you can generate.
It’s kinda the same as it was before, as far as I can see, for the personal plan. Looks like they’ve just added more the ability to add more than 3 users for a fee.
Says personal is still free? Not seeing what you’re saying
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.
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.
My mom’s tv surprisingly has WireGuard so I set that up for her.
Out of curiosity, what TV and what OS?
TCL with Google IIRC
Because it’s android.
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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.
What added security do you get by using a VPS besides obscuring your home IP? I can definitely see benifits to not leaking your home address, but otherwise the reverse proxy and wireguard tunnels don’t actually add any increased security for the extra steps. You could just host a reverse proxy at home, and any flaws Jellyfin could have in their app would still be exposed.
I’m not knocking your solution, I’m just in a similar place and considering if I want to go through the extra hurdle for a VPS if I don’t need one.
Obscuring home IP is the big one. You also don’t have to fiddle with opening ports on your router and maybe getting ISP attention for hosting on a residential network. But really obscuring home IP address would work.
Dirt simplest solution is caddy on the same jellyfin server and port forward 443 and 80 on your router to that host. Hopefully letsencrypt will work without a domain but I’m not sure.
That’s basically what I do right now except I do have a domain and my ISP doesn’t restrict inbound ports like 443 so it works fine.
Just trying to sort out if I want the headache of a VPS if I don’t need it (costs, maintenance, point of failure, etc).
Sounds like you don’t need the VPS then. Add a subdomain to your home IP. Port forward 443 and 80 to the sever. Run caddy to route the subdomain to localhost:8096. You will also need to tell jellyfin to accept on the new domain.
Awesome, thanks for the tips!
So an additional 10 bucks a month….
5 actually because you can use minimal hardware. You can probably just port forward your router and run caddy on the same jellyfin server but then expose your home IP address.
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.
Just because the destination IP address is not a LAN address? That’s not misconfiguration, that’s a legitimate use of NAT reflection/loopback. If that’s how it determines who is streaming remotely then just run it behind nginx that forgets to set the correct headers.
Edit: Apparently Plex centrally relays all the traffic? Self-hosted my 🍑, it’s not self-hosted if you need to rely on their server.
It doesn’t relay all traffic, that’s a fallback if a connection can’t be established.
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 can’t speak for OP, but I self host lots of stuff, have literally dozens of services running, have an Ansible repo to manage it all and routi some stuff through a VPS, not to mention my day job has included managing services in one way or another for a long while. This is to say, I know what I’m doing. I couldn’t setup Plex to work the way I wanted to, they expect it to run in a docker with network set to host mode, I couldn’t find any way to tell Plex that my living room TV was in the same network, it just wouldn’t accept any connections as local. I know I shot myself in the foot here by not letting it run with network on host mode, but I shouldn’t have to, the port was exposed, I could reach it through the local network IP, but I wasn’t able to stream any content locally.
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.
I have it set up in a way. That does not make it wrong. This is an option that plex gives you without warning so its their problem in the first place. They also just paywalled that feature that worked for years and they’re not considering the consequences or they dont care. The least they could have done is put a link “if youre seeing this on your home network, you need to do THIS.”
You set it up in the wrong way if you want to stream locally on your network.
It’s ok to admit that you made a mistake and it’s not plex’s fault. Just take some responsibility for your actions.
You’re now using mental gymnastics to blame me for someone else’s actions. Sorry mate but I’m not into that mumbo jumbo. good luck somewhere else.
Someone else set up your Plex server?
Access via IP address and not the name. I’ve been having to do it that way for several days now, too.
Edit to add: It’s due to a change I made in my OpnSense setup. I restored a ZFS snapshot and it’s working again as it should.
So its a thing. Very interesting. Thanks for confirming. Have you tried jellyfin? i switched now and it works great.
I’m the only one in my family who accesses it on the web player, and the other ways still work fine.
I’m not breaking something for the other two users in my household because of my own convenience.
fair enough i guess.
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.
dark pattern
Nope, not at all. Its extremely forward, your local IP is listed first every time IME, and your lower-down comment has it backwards as it’s your local IP that had “secure” written on it
it’s not a dark pattern at all, people are just stupid and don’t read (including me, I fucked this up too at first)
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.
Why anyone still uses Plex for new setups is beyond me.
Well, i didnt. Its a legacy install and i had jellyfin already running parallel because of the remote streaming paywall they introduced.
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.
Strange that plex.tv isn’t blocked while a “personal” categorized website is. Have you looked to see what category your domain is shuffled under? You could try submitting a recategorization request to Cisco Umbrella or Fortinet databases. Requests for recategorization are free to do.
I’ve tried submitting recategorization requests through the links provided by my workplace on the block pages. The requests have been denied.
If I’m remembering right, it’s a Symantec web filtering solution that we use and they’ve decided that my domain is in the “personal blog” category. Which is a blocked category. Jeff Geerling’s website actually falls under the same category, which also kind of sucks, because I like reading some of the stuff he puts out.
I would go around them and go directly to the source of categorization. It looks like this is the Symantec categorization website in case it’s different from what you’re workplace provides - https://sitereview.bluecoat.com/#/
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.
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.
Yeah, i assume it isnt. It got pointed out a couple times that it is a plex configuration problem which plex doesnt point out either btw.
In any case, thanks for helping and participating. Have a good one. :)
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.
You’re assuming something that you just cant. I run this network alongside 5 others, some of them professional, for years. My configuration is standard and i’m using the software the same way i did for years.
If plex redirects my call to their server, that is their problem, not mine. I dont care what their inner workings are. I use a local address and this has happened for the first time.
Is it possible that it is an honest mistake on the side of plex? Yes.
That does not absolve them from the end result.
Are you saying that you’re on your home network with your Plex server and it won’t let you play your media without paying? That’s not true if so. You must be outside the network.
My guess is they have VLANs and they didn’t set up the server to treat them as local traffic.
That is exactly the case. It is absolutely true and accusing me of lying is not okay.
You’re not lying, you’re just not good at networking and/or setting up Plex.
Plex does NOT charge for streaming on your own network. If it is saying that you need to pay it’s because you’ve set your network(s) or Plex up wrong.
And the next wrong assumption. It’s beginning to get really tiring. Maybe try to stop individualizing systemic problems. I know it is counter to our society but it is the only healthy way.
I’m building networks for a living. The situation I’m in has zero to do with my skills and assuming so is highly disrespectful.
But yes, as others have pointed out, it is likely that a configuration back when setting the service up years ago led to it using an outside connection which has only now become an issue because of plex’s switch to blocking remote streaming.
No matter because plex works just as well.
Cool, so you can finally admit you set Plex up wrong. Good job.
I’ve had that happen to me with plex, it was probably 100% my fault because I specifically changed things during the setup of the docker file, but apparently Plex can’t figure out that is local if it’s running inside docker with non-host network, it probably only accepts local connections from the docker network, and I was never able to make it treat my actual home network as local.
Under Settings > Network there is a configuration item exactly for this. I’m running host network, but you can add the docker networks here as well.
LAN networks is only available for plex pass users
It all starts to make sense then. I need to set Jellyfin up soon. It’s only a matter of time before they come after the “Lifetime” purchasers like myself. I bought it over a decade ago at this point.
the actual problem here is that OPs network is not configured correctly and that Plex detects that the physical local client is actually accessing the server from a totally other network.
Fairly common when you use docker to run Plex and have the container run in bridge mode. This will put the container in the docker network that will then be different to your local network.
Plex determines if a stream is local or remote based on the network so when your container is in bridge mode, the physical local client will be a remote connection because of the different networks.
And since remote streaming requires Plex pass since end of April, you will see this.
Yup, that’s exactly the problem I have, it’s ridiculous that it doesn’t let me stream from a local network just because it thinks that it’s local network is only the docker one, it should be fairly simple for Plex to figure out it’s accessible via a direct connection and it doesn’t need to route through the Plex servers for this. But it won’t get fixed because it pushes people to pay, hell from what people are saying here the config to fix this is paywalled so they create a problem for which they sell you the solutions.
I don’t have that configuration:
As someone else mentioned, this is only available to PlexPass users. Sorry for the confusion! I bought my lifetime sub over a decade ago at this point and forget about these inconsistencies that used to just be part of the product.
Therefore it’s literally impossible for me to watch my media locally, way to go Plex.
Are you running in docker? Change from bridged mode to host mode on your container which should resolve this.
Yes I am, but I don’t want to give full control of my network drive to a closed source application because it paywalled me out of being able to access my media on my local network. It’s ridiculous that I have to do that. It breaks ECI, and is a security risk. And yeah, it’s a bit paranoid, but the fact that they can fix it with a simple config and put that behind a paywall is VERY worrisome, so I now need to pay if I want to isolate Plex from the host where it’s running.
Plex has paywalled my server!
Skill issue tbh.
Yeah but not on my end.
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
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.
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.
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?
No idea, you’re the one that bought it. I did the same thing for a few years and never bought a plex pass.
What media management and consumption platform did you buy?
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.
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.
You’re both right and wrong.
Its like saying “saying a company is easy to run shows you have never run an huge company.”
Both are false dychotomies. The amount of hosting costs, manpower, etc does not come from the project but how it is set up.
If you have to run servers for a software at all determines the cost for hosting for example. Same for every other aspect.
Linux is a huge software project I’m working on. Yet the cost of it is a joke compared to its size. It has way more users than plex.
You were the one that made the claim that “software doesn’t have huge ongoing costs”, which is what I said is wrong. Lots of software does, as you now agree.
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.
Good point. I wanna point out that plex is not foss. Its closed source software which makes those moves even more idiotic because they could have paywalled new servers and accounts instead or weaned people off from their servers if they use local only, etc.
But yes, one only needs to look at foss projects like lemmy, pixelfed, kde, gnome to see how it is done. This absolutely means you have to have more people than just yourself or you will definitely burn out.
Tldr: some use gov funding, kickstarter, additional features, turnkey hosting, explain and ask for donations, etc.
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 have Tailscale (actually headscale) set up on all my devices and the performance is good enough I don’t turn it off when I’m home and on the same lan as my server. The connection is p2p so it’s just a little encryption overhead. When I travel to other networks like my mobile network, or various corp wifi networks, it continues to try to get a p2p connection. Only sometimes corporate wifi networks block p2p and the traffic round trips through my VPS. It does take a lot of load off the VPS compared to the old way with openVPN. It also continues to work “for a while” if the VPS is down.
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.
