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.
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.
I went from paying SchedulesDirect $25/yr to hack an EPG into a series of dead & dying DVR software platforms (SageTV, WMC, etc)… To just doing the one-time Plex lifetime sub for $70ish.
It has more than paid for itself at this point… If they reneg an make it expensive someday in the future, maybe then I’ll reconsider Jellyfin.
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.
Yeah, this is it. When they ask me for more money, or when they demand I host on their servers, I will adios. Until then, I paid $75 one time and the service does exactly what I want it to do, and it’s ezpz for a basic individual myself.
I think the most likely scenario is the company goes under because they didn’t have enough money, and then folks will come here and complain about that. Maybe I’ll be one of them, but I’ll try to remember I paid $75 more than 10 years ago, and so I think I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth.
Currently, they’ve been content to get more money out of you without asking you, so you’re right so far, but only if you consider your advertising details and personal information to be valueless.
They’re expanding data collection and showing more ads as a matter of course for years now. When they can no longer get money from other companies because of you, they’ll switch to nickel and diming you.
I find that it helps to think of transactions in a more reductive way, like bartering + money. I am trading X amount of money, Y amount if privacy, and Z amount of hassle for whatever service or product. Even though Y and Z are hard to quantify, they are real things with real value, so not considering them at all is surely worse for me, and what they’re counting on.
I have found that nearly every mainstream online service I might be interested in presents a negative value proposition when calculated like I described, but everyone values their privacy and time differently, so your mileage will, of course, vary.
Yeah, that’s really overthinking things. I host my movies and shows, I watch them from wherever. I feel like I’m not going to spend more time analyzing it, because my usage of the app is literally finding my movie and watching it, or putting it on for my kids. If my junk email gets more junk emails, so be it. I personally lost the privacy battle a million years ago, although I guess I do my best by not having Facebook or Instagram or anything of that ilk. I do exist, and so I’m fucked anyway, but I’m not going to spend energy that somehow doesn’t get me a meaningful return on that energy spent.
It may be applying more thought to it than you are willing to do, or be regarding things you don’t consider important or valuable, but very many people value those things and find them worthy of consideration.
To “overthink” something is to expend more time and energy making a decision than can be objectively gained from making the “best” decision vs. the others. Your decision to not consider the non-monetary costs is your own and your prerogative, but it has no bearing on the objective value of your personal privacy.
You’ve decided not to participate in the privacy battle and so have lost much of it without a fight, which is understandable. Its a hard, thankless battle without end against powerful foes, requiring vigilance and continually gaining knowledge. I think it is fair not to fault people for giving up, but passively encouraging others to give up, too, is working for they enemy you’ve surrendered to.
Its OK to let people choose their own priorities and pick their own battles, especially if it isn’t hurting anyone and entirely within their own lives like this issue is. People fighting for causes that you aren’t fighting for, but still benefit from, is a public good. Someone defending their own privacy is done for their own good, but helps you, too. See “do not track”, adblockers, the EFF, and countless other consumer protections as examples.
I appreciate you putting it this way. There IS a battle happening to be sure.
Unfortunately, it feels like the battle that’s being fought is between former Plex users and current (continuing) Plex users. It’s frustrating as a continuing Plex user to feel like we are making all of the Jellyfin users angry just by existing. Some of us feel like explaining why our choice is rational, but that is often met with more hostility.
My hope is that we all (as self-hosters) can recognize that we all have different priorities and those priorities will lead to different choices. It’s not wrong to leave Plex for something else. It’s also not wrong to keep using Plex if it suits your needs.
(to be clear, I’m not at all implying that you were being hostile. This is just a general impression I get from several self-hosting communities when it comes to Plex versus other options)
Plus you can easily run them side by side. I setup jellyfin a while back when Plex used to charge users for streaming on mobile but now they don’t if the server owner has a Plex pass.
For me Plex is still a lot simpler to manage if you have a lot of users, and if users have their own servers they share with you
Charging for certain services is one thing. That’s not what drove the last Plex exosdus.
Most people take umbrage at Plex offering features for free, saying they’ll never be paid features, and then removing them as options for free accounts and effectively paywalling them.
That hasn’t been my experience. They unilaterally changed their TOS repeatedly after I was already subscribed to a lifetime agreement. Even if they made the terms better, that’s still bogus, as contracts of adhesion are ethically dubious in general. This is economics, not Calvinball.
Both Jellyfin and Plex are pretty great currently, I prefer Plex slightly, but if Plex becomes worse then I’ll likely make the switch over to Jellyfin. I’ve liked Jellyfin for years but Plex has still been my main app.
I have both of them installed anyway.
Plex is less confusing to use if you want to share your library, but thankfully I don’t have any concerns about that because I’m selfish with my media and just have it set up for my own personal use.
I am not aware of any company that has reversed course on enshittification once it has begun, so Plex seems certain to follow that path. I would consider at least being prepared.
I am not aware of any company that has reversed course on enshittification once it has begun
It happens when they’re punished for it in the market. Microsoft finally realized they’re bleeding Windows and Xbox users, so they’ve got major initiatives to improve both. Unity tried to make the worst business pivot I’ve ever heard of, and their customers were very clearly and vocally jumping ship in response, so they undid that pivot. Plex’s only competition is an alternative that doesn’t have a business model, so if they bleed enough users to Jellyfin, they’ll either reverse course or stop just shy of some threshold where people leave Plex; or their business will die, which is also an option on the table.
Hose are called “trial balloons”. They announce a feature they know will be wildly unpopular to gauge the severity of the backlash, then temporarily reverse course while running a massive public outreach campaign to draw as much attention as possible to their feel-good response to the public: “we hear you and respect your opinions”, etc.
Then, when the buzz dies down, they re-implement those same things slowly and quietly. In some of your examples, their responses are literally nothing more than words in print; no actual actions have been taken that align with their announcements.
Unity somewhat fits that description, but it was definitely net negative for their business, and with how long it took them to walk back from it, I don’t think they had any plans to walk back before the backlash. Microsoft has been slowly making Windows worse for a long, long time; it wasn’t something they did all at once and then issued a “we hear you”. They are legitimately scared of losing their market dominance right now.
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.
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.
I went from paying SchedulesDirect $25/yr to hack an EPG into a series of dead & dying DVR software platforms (SageTV, WMC, etc)… To just doing the one-time Plex lifetime sub for $70ish.
It has more than paid for itself at this point… If they reneg an make it expensive someday in the future, maybe then I’ll reconsider Jellyfin.
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 don’t understand this argument.
I paid once many years ago. I’ve never been asked to pay again. Why would I switch before they make a change?
In the meantime, jellyfin is getting better and better. Plex will probably be dead to me at some point, and when that happens, I’ll hop over.
I’m in this same boat. Right now jellyfin just isn’t close enough.
I was at a buddies house last week, he uses jellyfin. We were having weird decoding issues, pink/purple flashes that looked like HDMI desync.
Resetting/reseating etc etc anything on the TV did nothing. Had to restart his server then it was magically fine 🤔
I’m fine dealing with that kind of stuff occasionally, but my family is not capable.
Yeah, this is it. When they ask me for more money, or when they demand I host on their servers, I will adios. Until then, I paid $75 one time and the service does exactly what I want it to do, and it’s ezpz for a basic individual myself.
I think the most likely scenario is the company goes under because they didn’t have enough money, and then folks will come here and complain about that. Maybe I’ll be one of them, but I’ll try to remember I paid $75 more than 10 years ago, and so I think I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth.
Currently, they’ve been content to get more money out of you without asking you, so you’re right so far, but only if you consider your advertising details and personal information to be valueless.
They’re expanding data collection and showing more ads as a matter of course for years now. When they can no longer get money from other companies because of you, they’ll switch to nickel and diming you.
I find that it helps to think of transactions in a more reductive way, like bartering + money. I am trading X amount of money, Y amount if privacy, and Z amount of hassle for whatever service or product. Even though Y and Z are hard to quantify, they are real things with real value, so not considering them at all is surely worse for me, and what they’re counting on.
I have found that nearly every mainstream online service I might be interested in presents a negative value proposition when calculated like I described, but everyone values their privacy and time differently, so your mileage will, of course, vary.
Yeah, that’s really overthinking things. I host my movies and shows, I watch them from wherever. I feel like I’m not going to spend more time analyzing it, because my usage of the app is literally finding my movie and watching it, or putting it on for my kids. If my junk email gets more junk emails, so be it. I personally lost the privacy battle a million years ago, although I guess I do my best by not having Facebook or Instagram or anything of that ilk. I do exist, and so I’m fucked anyway, but I’m not going to spend energy that somehow doesn’t get me a meaningful return on that energy spent.
It may be applying more thought to it than you are willing to do, or be regarding things you don’t consider important or valuable, but very many people value those things and find them worthy of consideration.
To “overthink” something is to expend more time and energy making a decision than can be objectively gained from making the “best” decision vs. the others. Your decision to not consider the non-monetary costs is your own and your prerogative, but it has no bearing on the objective value of your personal privacy.
You’ve decided not to participate in the privacy battle and so have lost much of it without a fight, which is understandable. Its a hard, thankless battle without end against powerful foes, requiring vigilance and continually gaining knowledge. I think it is fair not to fault people for giving up, but passively encouraging others to give up, too, is working for they enemy you’ve surrendered to.
Its OK to let people choose their own priorities and pick their own battles, especially if it isn’t hurting anyone and entirely within their own lives like this issue is. People fighting for causes that you aren’t fighting for, but still benefit from, is a public good. Someone defending their own privacy is done for their own good, but helps you, too. See “do not track”, adblockers, the EFF, and countless other consumer protections as examples.
I appreciate you putting it this way. There IS a battle happening to be sure.
Unfortunately, it feels like the battle that’s being fought is between former Plex users and current (continuing) Plex users. It’s frustrating as a continuing Plex user to feel like we are making all of the Jellyfin users angry just by existing. Some of us feel like explaining why our choice is rational, but that is often met with more hostility.
My hope is that we all (as self-hosters) can recognize that we all have different priorities and those priorities will lead to different choices. It’s not wrong to leave Plex for something else. It’s also not wrong to keep using Plex if it suits your needs.
(to be clear, I’m not at all implying that you were being hostile. This is just a general impression I get from several self-hosting communities when it comes to Plex versus other options)
Plus you can easily run them side by side. I setup jellyfin a while back when Plex used to charge users for streaming on mobile but now they don’t if the server owner has a Plex pass.
For me Plex is still a lot simpler to manage if you have a lot of users, and if users have their own servers they share with you
I did that for a bit, but there was a noticeable increase in power usage on my server for something I’m not using.
Charging for certain services is one thing. That’s not what drove the last Plex exosdus.
Most people take umbrage at Plex offering features for free, saying they’ll never be paid features, and then removing them as options for free accounts and effectively paywalling them.
Same brought mine almost 8 years ago, and have never had to pay them a cent more.
Overall not a bad investment.
And plex just looks nicer and offers a better experience.
If it changes I’ll consider migrating but for the moment Plex had done right by thier lifetime pass members
That hasn’t been my experience. They unilaterally changed their TOS repeatedly after I was already subscribed to a lifetime agreement. Even if they made the terms better, that’s still bogus, as contracts of adhesion are ethically dubious in general. This is economics, not Calvinball.
They became dead to me much sooner then you. Once they knew what I was watching I left.
That’s pretty much where I’m at too.
Both Jellyfin and Plex are pretty great currently, I prefer Plex slightly, but if Plex becomes worse then I’ll likely make the switch over to Jellyfin. I’ve liked Jellyfin for years but Plex has still been my main app.
I have both of them installed anyway.
Plex is less confusing to use if you want to share your library, but thankfully I don’t have any concerns about that because I’m selfish with my media and just have it set up for my own personal use.
*when Plex becomes worse
I am not aware of any company that has reversed course on enshittification once it has begun, so Plex seems certain to follow that path. I would consider at least being prepared.
It happens when they’re punished for it in the market. Microsoft finally realized they’re bleeding Windows and Xbox users, so they’ve got major initiatives to improve both. Unity tried to make the worst business pivot I’ve ever heard of, and their customers were very clearly and vocally jumping ship in response, so they undid that pivot. Plex’s only competition is an alternative that doesn’t have a business model, so if they bleed enough users to Jellyfin, they’ll either reverse course or stop just shy of some threshold where people leave Plex; or their business will die, which is also an option on the table.
Hose are called “trial balloons”. They announce a feature they know will be wildly unpopular to gauge the severity of the backlash, then temporarily reverse course while running a massive public outreach campaign to draw as much attention as possible to their feel-good response to the public: “we hear you and respect your opinions”, etc.
Then, when the buzz dies down, they re-implement those same things slowly and quietly. In some of your examples, their responses are literally nothing more than words in print; no actual actions have been taken that align with their announcements.
Unity somewhat fits that description, but it was definitely net negative for their business, and with how long it took them to walk back from it, I don’t think they had any plans to walk back before the backlash. Microsoft has been slowly making Windows worse for a long, long time; it wasn’t something they did all at once and then issued a “we hear you”. They are legitimately scared of losing their market dominance right now.
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.