Plex appeal fades as Lifetime Pass jumps to $750

Software platform Plex is killing its buy-once-use-forever model with an eye-watering hike of its Lifetime Plex Pass from $249.99 to $749.99. The increase will take effect on July 1, but does not apply to existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders. The existing monthly and annual subscription pricing for the service is also unchanged, …

[IGotOut]

No doubt...

They'll blame rising memory and storage costs, so I'm pretty sure in a year or two when the prices crash, they'll happily give people a huge refund.

/S

[Phiphi in SoCal]

This is to get FOMO subscribers...

When they push back pricing to $350.

Trigger the lemmings.

[NoneSuch]

Re: This is to get FOMO subscribers...

Seeing as they can amend their EULA at will to redefine what a 'lifetime' is, expect this to be cancelled at some point in the future.

PLEX is dead to me now.

[Anonymous Coward]

If only the bug fixes and features were actually wanted. Most of the stuff they added the last few years hasn't been worth having for users. It really should have gone into simple maintenance mode for bugs and breaking changes in dependencies etc.

Glad I got a life time pass back in the day. I think it was a dumb model then but well done for not discontinueing the product and making a new one to charge again I suppose.

Making reasonable money from software without being annoying and chasing features not needed to show subscription value seems hard. Maybe the AI slopware will have a positive in the end making it impossible to earn a living sell software products.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I've been annoyed for a few years about Plex's change in focus from home libraries to streaming. I was so worried they'd just drop home library support that, despite being a lifetime pass holder for a decade or so, I decided to give Jellyfin a try about a year ago. Didn't last a week. My god, their AndroidTV app was absolutely horrible, I wanted to tear my eyes out.

Eg, I seem to remember there was no way to display movie title when scrolling through the list. As pretty as the thumbnails are, I want to *read* the film titles when scrolling through my library, not have to analyse each and every thumbnail to decode the title.

[David 132]

I have no experience of the Android TV app for Jellyfin, but I'm quite happy with the Roku and iOS apps - they do show movie titles, and seem (to my eyes) perfectly slick enough.

There's an alternative, also official, Jellyfin iOS client named "Swiftfin" which in some ways works better than the Jellyfin app. I think it uses a different video decoding engine. I keep both on my phone, and if one doesn't play correctly, I just switch to t'other.

I switched away from Plex, after using it happily for a long time, when it spontaneously keeled over on my NAS one day and refused to re-install. I switched to JF and haven't looked back.

[Eecahmap]

Roku Media Player plus a DLNA server (previously on my MythTV box, now on my NAS) is what I use.

Years ago, I tried Plex, and deleted it almost as quickly. That piece of . . . crap . . . wanted to send everything about my media collection to their mothership.

I also tried Jellyfin, and even left it installed for a while. It was also a disappointment.

In the end, I gave up on glitz.

[cleminan]

My experience with DLNA is that it chokes on more then a few dozen files. Could never get a DLNA client to see more than a fraction of the MythTV library.

[phuzz]

From what I can tell, there's only one person working on Jellyfin's Android client, presumably for free, so it feels a bit churlish to criticise it. That said, it does need some work, I just wish I had the faintest idea of how to contribute.

[Chz]

Jellyfin server is brilliant.

The Jellyfin clients are a bit pants. But fortunately, you don't have to use the official clients and plenty of excellent alternatives exist.

[balrog]

Exactly the same boat, started moving all my DVDs and BluRays onto spinning rust when the DVDs started to fail. It was all I wanted back in the day. No idea why they are trying to get in on the streaming thing, what do they offer that going direct to Netflix or Amazon doesnt deliver?

[intrigid]

"My god, their AndroidTV app was absolutely horrible, I wanted to tear my eyes out."

Aren't there a myriad of client-side options available for Jellyfin, given that it's FOSS?

[joeldillon]

Not necessarily. Just because it's open source doesn't mean lots of people are going to go to the effort of writing full-functioned Android apps for it for example, there aren't an infinity of open source developers.

[LybsterRoy]

My weapon of choice is Kodi running under LibreElec - open source & free. Currently have two instances one on RPi4 the other Dell i5

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Eek

I was probably one of the last people to get a $75 Lifetime Pass, and I'm certainly not going to argue about value for that money. The big problem I see with Plex is that they're trying to push people into Plex as a streaming service, promoting that capability over accessing one's own library. There's no ad-free tier, from what I can tell, so if you've paid for a subscription or lifetime pass, you still see ads, which completely kills the appeal for me.

[David 132]

Re: Eek

I wonder if you could now re-sell it to someone else at the bargain, bargain price of only $500 or so? ...agree a sale, receive the funds, then log in & change the account e-mail address to the buyer's?

(only half-joking)

[Dan 55]

Perhaps once upon a time Plex was a bit more polished than the Kodi it took from, but is there any reason to pay for it now?

[DanAU]

They still have the best music app (Plexamp).

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it better than late 2.9x Winamp?

[Charlie Clark]

I've been running Kodi on an RPi for over a decade. You really need an RPi4 for h265 content, but really an RPi2 will be sufficient most of the time.

As for setting up remote access, I'm not sure if I want to potentially expose my library to the rest of the world. When we're away anywhere long enough to want to watch anything, I normally just put some stuff on a USB disk and use whatever device I have that can do HDMI.

[Detective Emil]

Procrastination pays

I had been meaning to get around to spinning up Plex. Not any more.

[David 132]

Re: Procrastination pays

Consider Jellyfin. It's perhaps a little more rough-and-ready around the edges, betraying its community-project nature, but I've been using it and (as commented above) it's plenty slick enough for my needs.

[billdehaan]

Re: Procrastination pays

The only real criticisms I've had with Jellyfin are pretty minor. It doesn't have a very usable Xbox app (it's a web app, relying on a non-existent mouse for proper navigation), its' Linux desktop app doesn't have integrated subtitle downloads like Plex does, it only allows 100 files in a group, so a movie folder of 650 movies has to be paged through six times, and the way it handles collections is not as sophisticated as Plex's.

Pretty minor stuff, honestly.

In terms of playback, organization (other than collections), tagging, and support for external subtitles, it's just as usable as Plex. I just wish there was a Kodi plugin for it the way there is for Plex.

[Anonymous Custard]

Jellyfin for Kodi

There is, in fact there are two - https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/kodi/

[FrogsAndChips]

Re: Procrastination pays

I was a Plex user and once considered subscribing to Pass in order to benefit from hardware acceleration (my NAS is not very powerful), then discovered that Jellyfin was providing it for free! Setup and transition was a breeze and I had no trouble streaming these HD movies that made Plex choke. I'm not a power user (just local streaming of movies and music to PCs and TV), so the features and UI are enough for me. I really wonder what Plex Pass offers that Jellyfin doesn't provide for free.

[BartyFartsLast]

Ah, another service fallen foul of the flawed economics of "lifetime" fees

[David 132]

The MBA obsession with OpEx over CapEx will be the death of us all. "You'll own nothing, and be happy"™

[John Robson]

When I first installed flex it wasn't a "service", it was a bit of software I installed on my own hardware... there was no "service" being provided by Plex.

Now Plex is getting harder and harder to use because it insists that what I actually want is to use some Plex provided service rather than the software I actually installed for my own media control.

[Tron]

Thankfully...

...I'm old enough to live without such unnecessary things.

They may want the cash to add a load of AI stuff that nobody will want to use. Which is pretty much the tech industry in a nutshell right now. The AI bubble can't deflate soon enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Thankfully...

Yeah.

I must be doing something very wrong. I’d never even heard of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Thankfully...

Spot the out of touch old man

[Ken G]

I'm here!

But i have been using Plex.

[Jim Willsher]

Blimey, I paid £95 back in 2020 for the lifetime plex pass. Glad I did!

[David 132]

Well, I wouldn't be too smug... as Plex obviously want to terminate the Lifetime Pass deal and its subscribers who cost them ongoing money without generating revenue, think carefully about the implications of that word "terminate".

What I'm saying is, watch out for taciturn Eastern-European assassins, falling pianos... or perhaps it'll be as simple as "huh. Why does my Plex setup insist on playing nothing but The Ring and chainsaw-juggling tutorial videos???"

[si 4]

Used XBMC back in the day as the xbox library manager for games and movies then moved over to Plex for local playback on PC, got fedup with having to rebuild libraries often and the network discovery issues so moved onto Emby and have been happy since.

[MrMerrymaker]

So what?

[Persona]

The big problem with lifetime fees is how long is "lifetime" It's rarely your lifetime, it's the service providers. If you pay for that lifetime subscription and they fold the next year it becomes a very very expensive one year service.

[DS999]

Or they'll introduce a new version

That's under a different name so it isn't covered by the lifetime subscription. Had that happen to me once, fortunately I had only paid like $50 for a lifetime subscription but EOLing that product and trying to push everyone to what was clearly a version upgrade with a completely new GUI to hide that fact was pretty shitty.

[Bebu sa Ware]

how long is "lifetime" It's rarely your lifetime

Argument for Boomer Discounts ? :).

Based on observation "lifetime" is roughly 10 years ± a few years—certainly never the "three score and ten."

A lot of tech and associated software evolved so quickly that five years sends both to the knackery.

[DS999]

How does "pay for remote access" work exactly?

I guess they are relying on people to not know how to set up a VPN to their home router? I could imagine the crowd that runs Plex is more technical than most, maybe not Reg reader technical but surely enough to be able to set up a VPN?

I can't imagine there is any reason anyone needs a lifetime subscription since it is providing anything you need. Hardware transcoding? Why would you pay for that, unless you're running on crappy hardware you can easily do that via software (and if you need to do it more than once you should save a transcoded version)

[phuzz]

Re: How does "pay for remote access" work exactly?

I don't know how prevalent it is these days, but remote access used to be widely used for piracy. Set up a media library, then charge people for remote access and you've got your own pirate Netflix.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: How does "pay for remote access" work exactly?

People actually charged for it? "Sharing" copyrighted media is bad enough legally, but charging for each is legally a very different league.

[FIA]

Re: How does "pay for remote access" work exactly?

People actually charged for it? "Sharing" copyrighted media is bad enough legally, but charging for each is legally a very different league.

How?

You may not have received any compensation, but you've allowed someone to not compensate the creators by sharing?

I'm not sure the act of 'charging' changes the morals that much does it?

[steviebuk]

Re: How does "pay for remote access" work exactly?

Got no problem with it since I bought a blu-ray many moons back with "ultra violet" the legal way to watch a digital copy of the blu-ray. So I signed up, then had to signed up to a 2nd, 3rd and 4th service before I could get the digital file then "This can't play on this monitor as it doesn't comply with DRM". Fuck this shit!!!

Then several years later Ultra Violet is canned and all those blu-rays with it have a defunt service attached to them.

So no, fuck them, I don't feel one bit guilty about sailing the high seas. When they give a better service than the official, greedy cunts.

Oh and while we're at it, Streaming. That got us back on track for a bit. Didn't moan about paying for NowTV or Netflix or renting the odd movie on Amazon. Then they all got greedy again. One want rights to their own stuff so removed them off netflix and Paramount was born. Then disney+. Not gonna pay for all the different streaming hubs.

Then amazon prime who doesn't already have enough money it seems, stuck adverts on which is not what we paid for. Now you have to pay extra to remove them....fuck off.

And rights bullshit. Kickstarted Will Work For Views a unique documentary about a YouTuber. The kickstarters claimed would be DRM free, it wasn't and eventually went with Amazon, but, despite having already paid you required a Prime account to view it. And then about a year later UK Amazon lost the rights so I can no longer view something I paid for.

All this bullshit, again, makes me feel no ounce of guilt over the greedy, out of touch cunts in Hollywood.

[Gordon861]

Re: How does "pay for remote access" work exactly?

Whilst I can setup a VPN into my network to sort of stream locally when away from home, setting up the facilities for 75+ year old parents to do the same from their phone/tablet is not so easy. Even added it to their smart TV last week.

No need for Spotify etc, PlexAmp just plays music I like in the car via Android Auto.

No VPNs or odd apps, just click the icon and type your pin number and they have access. So less family tech support either.

[kennethrc]

Re: How does "pay for remote access" work exactly?

> I could imagine the crowd that runs Plex is more technical than most

... but my family and friends aren't. They install Plex, send me a 4-character code, and they're in. "Source sourcing" aside, this way they get to see content that isn't normally available via usual channels (and won't go away even if it is currently out there somewhere).

I disagree with a lot of Plex' direction changes of late, but I do pay them monthly (and even more by now than what a lifetime pass would have cost me in 2016) as I make my living via SW so I understand that the lifetime model is unsustainable.

[frankyunderwood123]

dabbled with plex…

.. settled on kodi via libreELEC.

Tried Plex and found I just wasn’t an advanced enough user in terms of what I wanted out of media server.

I also recall looking at the fees and that was the clincher for me.

[Peter Galbavy]

Given all my media on Plex is either local or a couple of remote friends servers, the only "service" I am using (after buying the lifetime pass a decade ago, more of a "have some money as support" at the time) is authentication and redirects, it will not be hard to move to Jellyfin or one of the other media server projects. The media server part of the project has stalled and very few useful "local media" oriented features or bugs have been implemented. Meh.

[webstaff]

Whats worse is how hard it is to make plex only show library media.

They really have taken up the tech force them selves upon you route.

Still using it for now as I bought a lifetime pass a few years ago as a thankyou for years of previous use.

So I won't feel bad if I need to jump ship.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Silly me; I just double click media files on my hard drive. Why the hell would I want to stream my media? Stream it where, when it's illegal to copy or share your media except as physical copies of the originals?

I suppose if I had a bankroll and a passel of kids you might want to let the stream the media to their phones or laptops, but I'd think that to be a vanishingly small market segment.

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to watch things on my TV in my living room, and store them on a NAS rather than my desktop.

If it helps, think of Plex/Jellyfin/Emby/etc. as just a specialised file browser that only shows media files

[PCScreenOnly]

Too many

Convert all your old DVD's and store in a single server / NAS and move all the DVD's to the loft or storage.

Access from anywhere, being at home, away for work etc.

Plenty of reasons for me to use Plex, but I only stream my own items.

That said, because of how I use it I hate the way it is moving to streaming. I have those already, just serve me MY stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Too many

Wow.

Is that the typical use-case? Hmmm.

Nope!

Do not need.

[DanAU]

Plex is an actual company with an office and employees, so they do have recurring expenses. I'm surprised they still offer lifetime passes - they're unsustainable.

[Blue Screen of Bleurgh]

Tried Plex back in the day when things were simple and you had control over your own media viewing and local libraries. But over the years and the arrival of the sub model and emphasis on streaming. I moved onto Kodi for awhile, and now just use Emby (free version) for my own NAS collection of films and TV show accumulated over the years and streaming internally to up to 5 devices on my LAN, which suits me fine.

[Lee D]

I have a lifetime subscription, but would never have paid that price.

Even with a paid perpetual subscription already, they need to fix some things to stop me just disappearing.

Their media detectors are worthless and often don't detect a bunch of content. My usual trick is to copy an IMDB or TVDB series number and paste it into the search because that's the only way to get what you want even when you type in the full name and year of a piece of media.

They have a habit to overwrite my chosen imagery (e.g. clear, easy-to-read, easy-to-recognise old DVD covers with whatever junk reworked art the Netflix version has now, etc.)

They need to seriously fix their backend video processors... they glitch out on all kinds of perfectly-fine media files that VLC / FFMPEG just laugh at, meaning your show just STOPS and then it hangs up the processes and takes minutes to resolve. I mean, if nothing else, that's a DoS or security problem right there.

The app sucks and they removed audio playing from it... I mean... why? Why would you do that? They're talking about putting it back in but it's been over a year since you've been able to play an audio file via the app.

At this point, I'm already on the verge of ditching an already-fully-paid-for service, that runs locally, on my own machines, because of the problems it has.

Trebling the price, and thus peeing off your customers, losing future customers, and therefore indirectly making the service worse? Yeah, that's not going to help me stay at all. Maybe that's the plan.

But if the lifetime subscribers start to leave... Plex is dead.

[cleminan]

> But if the lifetime subscribers start to leave... Plex is dead.

I doubt they'd notice other than a lessening of the load on whatever network service they were using. Those lifetime licenses aren't generating any income now.

It may hurt word of mouth recommendations, but as the user base rolls over to people who expect to pay a recurring fee for everything they may, in time, find a sustainable model.

[OculusMentis]

What is it?

I have been using Plex at home or remotely since 2007 and never paid a penny…

[RobDog]

Serviio for the win

Stays in its lane - serves your media. You can have remote access to your media via the web for $30 licence fee.

[NoCoffee]

I'm so glad I got a lifetime pass during the Pandemic at £74.99, but that was only after 55 monthly passes at £3.99, yeah, pandemic made us all do maths!

[FIA]

The increase will take effect on July 1, but does not apply to existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders.

I've read this a few times.

How would it apply existing users? You've already paid?? I don't understand the point being made?

[steviebuk]

Its shit

when the likes of Jellyfin exist.

They have dug their own grave.

[BadRobotics]

Alternate routes?

Right now I am happy with streaming my library of movies and TV shows (thank you Mr Torrent) but if Plex abandon home libraries, what would be a simple hardware solution that just sits under my TV and has capacity for many TB's of media?

[Stephen7Eastern]

Re: Alternate routes? >>-> LibreELEC (aka Kodi on minimal Linux)

LibreELEC (aka Kodi on minimal Linux). Install it on at least a RPi4 if you use x265. But it will work fine on an older RPi3 if you do not use the x265 codec. We've been using it well over a decade and find it is stable and beautiful. It's free too and you don't need an internet connection to use it (for total privacy); in fact, the total opposite of Plex - free and private with no bs. Kodi is the only entertainment source we view. We exited cable 25 years ago, netflix 10 years ago (shortly after Hollywood greed destroyed it), and we cannot receive OTA TV signals.

The time consuming issue you might have is setting up your TB's of media. To setup your files with metadata (aka, to make it beautiful, better than netflix with art, descriptions, actor names, etc) each movie and TV show must go into its own directory and be properly named. Then once done, allow Kodi to update the metadata. However, this is optional because Kodi works fine direct from folders, just like you would on a computer with VLC. Can't recommend LibreELEC on a RPi5 enough; it is entertainment perfection.

https://libreelec.tv/downloads/

Infrared receiver for remote control

https://flirc.tv/products/flirc-usb-receiver?variant=43513067569384

Other versions of kodi for PC etc.

https://kodi.tv/

[LybsterRoy]

Re: Alternate routes? >>-> LibreELEC (aka Kodi on minimal Linux)

I can't comment about the RPi5 (I have both RPi3 & RPi4) but the main LibreElec/Kodi is running on a Dell i5 Optiplex sitting in a draw under the TV. I went for the Dell because I wanted a machine with the power to record two TV shows (using Hauppauge adapter) whilst watching a movie. The RPi4 which was the then current most powerful pi just didn't have quite enough oof

[Stephen7Eastern]

Re: Alternate routes? >>-> LibreELEC (aka Kodi on minimal Linux)

When using LibreELEC, I found the cpu speed difference between the RPi4 and RPi5 was not a significant lift, so you're probably still good with your current setup. btw funny thing, I have Kodi's TV feature masked from the menus and forgot that it handles TV functions until your post. Sounds like a very useful feature for folks who can receive TV signals.

[andy gibson]

Meanwhile

They continue to ignore really useful feature requests from users.

Stopping your show under five minutes before the end? Tough, it's now marked as "watched" and you can't get back to that point.

[BenDwire]

Re: Meanwhile

There's already a setting for that: Settings -> Library -> "Video Play Completion Behavior" and change it from the 95% threshold, to the end of the credits.

Yeah, not obvious to me either, but it's there, and probably why requests (by people who don't RTFM) are ignored.

I too bought a pandemic-priced pass for £75, but don't allow any remote access, so I only use it for skipping opening and closing credits. While it still works then I'll keep using it, but I installed Jellyfin in a VM and pointed it at my library, and it worked fine. That's where I'll be going if/when they wreck it.

[ICL1900-G3]

Roll your own

It's not difficult.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: Roll your own

Have you ever tried, or do you expect Claude to do it for you?

[XTwizted38]

I'm glad there are other apps out there to use. I don't need the majority of the things plex offers. I just need a way to watch my library from wherever I am. With this rise in pricing, I think it's time to just use another program. Goodbye Plex, wish I could say it's been fun.

[APro]

Plex Streaming? Yeah right - never worked, but didn't care.

I got a Lifetime pass some time before the pandemic and during the lockdowns it paid for itself keeping kiddies entertained around the house.

However, the move to a "Streaming Service"? Forget it - it never worked in my setup - infinitely spinning circle. I just use the server to TV stuff. It all just worked. Then came the drop and then reinstatement of the Panasonic TV app - so moved to the Xbox app. Then the internet access requirement to "login" to my own Linux media server within my own network (WTAF!!!)! I've used the remote connection stuff a handful of times to watch my videos when away from home for more than a few days - useful, but not critical. With Youtube Family, Netflix, and Prime the streaming stuff of Plex is increasingly irrelevant. I just want a "decent" media server with Xbox or TV app. Plex is it at the moment, but welcome any other options (especially any not needing internet access to "login" at home).

[cleminan]

XBMC FTW

Well, it was until my XBox died. I've not found another media system able to stream ISOs or DVDs from another host.

I migrated to Mythbuntu which was enough to filter content behind a PIN from the kids, video worked well, content IDs too. Streaming, recording & editing broadcast TV was quite mature, but the audio player wasn't as good as XBMCs (or winamp), building playlists on metadata seems to work for everyone else but me. Unfortunately it all came crashing down when my VMWare machine died & I've not had the bothered to set it all up again. I've looked at Kodi but its missing something I can't quite ID.

Its all academic until I can get the TBS DVB-T2 drivers compiling again.

[Blackjack]

Any FOSS Plex alternatives? I mostly just move videos to a sd card in my phone or tablet or just use YouTube.