That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing

I love Plex and will continue using it. I bought a lifetime Plex Pass years ago for and have no regrets. My Plex Pass means none of my watchers have to worry about paying anything.

I have plex set up with cloudflare tunnels, with the url configured in plex under Settings > Network > Custom server access URLs, does this mean that my users will no longer be able to view content inside the plex app or app.plex.tv? The enshittification is real

Open Source

"On 21 May 2008, XBMC developer Elan Feingold forked the source code of XBMC and started a new project called Plex"
GPL v2 source.
They've long been suspected of being greedy lil GPL violaters.
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/2974

Oh no a paid, proprietary, piece of shit software does something shitty. Who could've ever saw this coming?!
I've said it for years anytime anyone mentioned running a Plex server. As soon as you install that on your server or your homelab it's no longer your server. Proprietary software is malware

The more users on Jellyfin the better shot it has at getting more developer attention and users willing to contribute financially even if just occasional one off donation. How it goes with any open source application. More users, more developer interest, more feedback from users, subset of users willing to financially support the project

Thank you for posting this. I thought it was just me.
In my case, one user actually lost access entirely to my libraries, the updated app was trying to force him to buy a personal pass, even though I have a Plex pass.
I had him reset his app and clear cache, to no avail. I ended up having to REMOVE his access to my libraries, and then reshare them to him, before he could access them again.
He was quite upset at Plex during the entire process.
Then the next day, he got this same email, and was frustrated all over again thinking he was gonna have to fight it again.
Really terrible customer service here, very sloppy. Aside from the fact that this is a greedy cash grab, it's just being done poorly.
Jellyfin still isn't feature packed enough for me to switch to, unfortunately.
- What features are you looking for? Jellyfin plays movies just fine, what else do you need?
- I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'm getting a lot of vitriol here from people saying "Well your users are idiots", or other angry things. No, my users are family members, and not everyone needs a degree in CS to be able to connect to a Plex server. A few of them are elderly. The email was misleading to them, on purpose. It threw many of them into a flurry. The whole thing was handled terribly by a company who keeps going out of their way to make it difficult for them already to simply watch my server.
  I'd suggest trying Jellyfin out again. Personally I was in the same boat even just over a year ago, I wasn't impressed, but it's come a long way. It's absolutely not as polished as Plex, but if you can look past that I'm finding most of the features I need are there.
  
  Yeah, odd response from this community. Entirely unexpected.
  I plan on looking into it again, if nothing else than to have a backup when Plex finally does completely crap the bed.
  Which I agree, this is pretty close, but I'm not there yet.
  I'm glad you posted this because I thought I was alone too, I searched for and didn't find anyone with this problem. Almost made a post here, but decided I didn't want the abuse haha.
- I find the server part of Jellyfin to work pretty well and I love that it provides some features you would have to pay to get on Plex (skip intro/credits for instance). The clients on the other hand, specially for tvOS and the fact that you can't install it from the store on Samsung TVs, are really what's making it difficult for me to switch.
- What's missing from Jellyfin for you?
  I'm going to migrate over soon personally. I canceled my plex pass instead of upgrading to lifetime a few months ago because I felt like Plex was going to go down enshittification alley soon. I haven't used Jellyfin much though, so not sure what to expect at this point. I don't have a lot of users luckily
  
  Public exposure to the Internet without needing tailscale or a VPN. I keep hearing mixed opinions on whether it's recommended or not.
  I'm not afraid of configuring it, reverse proxy and all that. I just want it to be secure, and I keep getting mixed signals.
  For now I'll keep dealing with Plex, but eventually I'm sure I'll need to figure out a solution using jellyfin.

People use Plex?

This doesn't really affect my household. My wife, my daughter, and I all have lifetime PlexPasses.
That said, this level of enshitification has me wishing there were options (yes I know about Emby and Jellyfin and I've investigated both more than once) but they have me ensnared by PlexAmp and Sonos integration. I've been around since before anyone had even seen the letters MP3 strung together, and I have never had a music player as capable as PlexAmp.
- Plexamp is honestly amazing. I'm investigating finamp, but I know it won't be as nice. Them killing off the tidal integration did help the decision a bit though
  
  The tidal thing didn't bother me, as my music collection is relatively large. But yeah PlexAmp is truly an extraordinary bit of software.
  
  I strongly recommend symfonium on android. Plexamp is a really polished app but I found the handling of downloaded files quite poor, I don't think you can even search downloads when you're offline? (other bonus to symfonium is it supports jellyfin and sources, in case you were to ever fully move away from plex)

People are saying switch to jellyfin, which I'm all for. But you're expecting a service which will make remote access easy like Plex ur kinda fucked.
I mean if have to set up wireguard or whatever for Jellyfin you could just do the same for Plex?
Again go to jellyfin either way, proprietary software can suck my gurl cawk, but either way you need a VPN or open ports.
- better computer literacy is always better
  mas adoption -> more contributing -> more features like "share with friends"
  
  No I understand the benefits of open source software but this isn't just a feature you can code in. Without portfords to the server, a VPN, or a reverse proxy, jellyfin would have to start hosting a service.
  Is it technically feasible? I guess but seems like its both out of scope and not in the interest of the developers since the last thing they want probably want to get caught in is hosting streaming relays for everyone free of charge.
- You can use a VPS to make it accessible without VPN via the internet: https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup
  
  Oh yeah no you can rent out a vps and use it as a VPN/router appliance. I've done that before for other projects, just figured it seemed a lil overkill here.
- I use tailscale for accessing my home network remotely, it was a super easy setup
  
  Wouldn't that count as a VPN, albeit one run on someone else's machine?
- Use Nginx or something similar. Easy and secure.
  
  I prefer a VPN for this sorta thing because its a bit more hardened.
  Nginx is a good reverse proxy for my publicly available hosts.
- yeah we primarily watch on a Samsung TV through a PS5. I'm not seeing any alternatives for either device. I might be able to slap together a desktop from spare parts but I'm not sure I want to start maintaining a whole other computer.
  Probably time to make a switch either way, what with them paywalling HDR and h.265
  
  Cloudflare tunnel and a domain name will stream Jellyfin to any device while delivering a decent amount of safety.

My bad, this is all because I finally decided to purchase a lifetime pass.
- Same
- Old guy here. Never, ever, ever fall for the lifetime pass deal.
  
  For me, it's worked out for plex. What it offered at the time was more than worth the price and I've felt a little bad about it being a once and done payment.
  That being said they've hurt some of the good will with the changes they've made, but also I imagine they're struggling to find a sustainable path for development.
  
  Plex has worked well for me for many years with the lifetime pass. Got it 10 years ago so it translates back to about 8 euro per year.
  That's not a bad deal.
  
  Malwarebytes has worked out for me so far. I don't think they offer it anymore though...

In 2012 (ish), I bought a lifetime subscription for a flat $75. Over the next few years of using it, they got worse and worse with shit like this, so I switched to Emby for a bit, and then Jellyfin. I never shared with friends, tho, because I have no friends, so it was always just a pretty interface and convenience for me. Lately, I've just been opening the files directly in VLC, because Remmina is refusing to connect to my media server, and I can't be arsed to figure out why.
- Old school is still the most sacred path.

Your users are getting that because they have a plex account that they use to stream. They might stream from just you, but they could stream from any other shared server they're connect to. That's why they get this email.
If you have a plex pass and are a server owner, they can ignore this and keep streaming from you for free.
If they try to stream from a server owner who does not have plex pass, it won't work unless the user themselves have a plex watch pass, which let's them stream from any server that doesn't have plex pass.
Since you have plex pass, your users won't be impacted at all.
- It's a very confusing and poorly worded email. My users were equally confused. Not everyone is techy or even deeply aware of how Plex even works. Nor should they be expected to.
  The message was designed to confuse and extract money from people who don't know better. It's trashy and they should be ashamed.
  That said, I'm still using Plex for the time being.
- This. Only the server owner needs a plexpass.

I am very fortunate in that before Plex I found and used ps3 media server/universal media server. Because of that, it always felt odd paying just to stream my own content on my own hardware. I am certainly not against paying developers, but Plex always felt like paying for another service, not donating to an awesome Dev cause I love what they do. Another reason I stopped using Plex, I couldn't get anyone but myself to give a dam and use Plex, (suddenly, when NETFLIX gets The Last Air Bender, NOW my sibling wants to binge watch it. 🙁). Jellyfin has served me just fine so far, it fucks up only in the same situation plex did, when I try watching with someone else.

I see some posts taking about jellyfin and tailscale and I find it interesting that it's not mentioned tailscale is a private company. Why are they not being held to the same standard as Plex? How long before it becomes enshittified? I saw they have a free plan but give it time until they realize the number of users in the free tier are large enough to monetize.
edit: I'm prepared to be down voted but mark this and see where it ends up at.
Edit2: and I'm not defending Plex. I agree it's a shitty move.
- Tailscale and Netbird are foss software so they can always be forked. There are also. alternatives like Wireguard and Hyperspace. (Never tried hyperspace)
- I'm very much with you.
  Never understood why Plex, a once open source fork of XBMC, was seen as a positive thing when they switched to the closed source, SaaS model.
  I also don't understand the love for Tailscale when Wireguard exists.
  But, anyway, the same people who are reacting shocked to Plex can be shocked when Tailscale does the same.
  They'll probably hop on Discord to vent their frustrations before there, too, they find themselves spurred by a company with no clear plan on monetization finding out that offering hosted services at a yearly loss can only exist for so long.
  Open source isn't just about idealogy, it's about longevity for software that can't be clearly monetized - harken back to "amazing" services like Keybase that worked great for a few years until their VCs started asking for return of investment.
  Use the shit that was made for you, not to exploit you. And if that shit isn't up to your standard, learn to contribute, or just enjoy the corporate graveyard in which you choose to live.
  (so sorry for the pseudo-unhinged rant, but between the recent Win11, Discord controversies - and now, this - I'm just fed up with all the shocked_pikachu.jpg posts I'm seeing on Lemmy)
- I have definitely seen worries about tailscale in other threads related to a recent VC funding round, I suppose they haven't aggressively started the enshittification journey (yet), and it is also a bonus that most of tailscale is open source, e.g. headscale exists.
  If tailscale started reducing the free service # of devices/users to push people towards their paid 'personal plus' plan then maybe we'd see a similar backlash. I say this as a tailscale user myself.
- Some points as someone who does not use Tailscale:
  Tailscale the software is under a BSD license. Plex is proprietary.
  The discussion in this thread about Jellyfin is less corporate versus non-corporate (where in the context of proprietary software this would be payware versus freeware) and more FOSS versus proprietary software.
  To be clear, Tailscale is proudly doing the same Series C venture capital bullshit as Plex. They're seemingly just as corporate as Plex, but at minimum, the software as it exists right now isn't tied down to Tailscale.
  Additionally, this isn't Tailscale versus Plex; it's Jellyfin + Tailscale versus Plex.
  Jellyfin + Tailscale means that you're using Jellyfin, which is FOSS. Using FOSS doesn't just benefit you but also everyone else using it because it benefits greatly from the network effect. Any money that goes to Jellyfin that would've otherwise gone to Plex is given back to the community and hard-working developers rather than lining some soulless venture capitalist's pocket.
  With Jellyfin + Tailscale, everything you're using locally is FOSS. With Plex, none of it is. And even taking corporate into account, with Jellyfin + Tailscale, most of what you're using locally is non-corporate. With Plex, all of it is corporate.
  Tailscale is giving you a real service through use of their VPN. Because Plex is run on the end user's infrastructure and barely touches Plex's server for remote streaming, they're basically just making you pay them a "fuck you, that's why" subscription fee.
  TL;DR: This isn't a binary "corporate versus non-corporate".
  
  Everything you said is true.
  Also of note, tailscale is making a shit load off money off corporate America. Every one of us who are deciding engineers that dips our toes in goes holy fuck that's cool and immediately pushes to implement it in a professional capacity.
  And, when Tailscale reduces its free offering, it'll be time to move to Headscale (or elsewhere).
  We (most) are not advocating leaving Plex because it is not FOSS. We're advocating leaving them because they are changing the terms in ways that have repeatedly suggested that it is circling the drain and feasting on its current userbase in a very Google/Apple/Microsoft way.
  We're not getting anything out of people leaving Plex. There's no stock here, the community is not so small that it needs all the people from Plex. It's a humanitarian effort, probably a neurodivergent one, but still humanitarian.
  
  Thank you for the detailed reply, appreciate it. Helps me think through my setup. FWIW I run both Plex and jellyfin but not tailscale since I'm not open to the Internet (double natted at the moment)
- What are you talking about? This is a post about Plex. Nobody is gonna think about bringing up Tailscale for criticism. Tailscale gets plenty of skepticism in the self hosted community, whenever I see someone recomend Tailscale I usually see someone bring up that it can be a victim of enshitification. It doesn't get hate (yet) because they haven't fallen to enshitification (again, yet). But the main reason is probably because you dont NEED Tailscale for Jellyfin. When it does shit the bed, use headscale, netbird, wireguard, or any other vpn if you are really are so apposed to Tailscale.
- Every for profit company will eventually go to shit, that's a given, it's only a matter of time. You use their services till they benefit you and when they go to shit you switch to the next best option.
- The client is open source and can be administered using the open source Headscale server. I use it with Keycloak as an auth gateway.
- Tailscale hasn't removed features yet. When they do, I'm sure there will be a similar outrage.
  
  Deuces at the ready
- Tail scale already has a bunch of limitations for unpaid users but it's only an extra step to set up wireguard in a container.
  
  I'm not a plex/jellyfin user, but I have a server and did try setting up Wireguard (as well as headscale). Could not get either of them to work. I use containers pretty often, so no issues there, but debugging networking issues is just above my pay grade. Tailscale just worked in like 5 clicks. It was stupid easy. If the alternatives get any easier to use, I would love to switch over to FOSS.
  
  Their free tier has always been about the same IRRC. ACL's are basic only. Limited, but still generous users and devices.
  If the drop device counts on free or eliminate ACL's we'd also advocate leaving them.
- I have never used Tailscale. I have also Jever seen anyone in the wild recommend it and explain what exactly the use-case is beyond plain, old, reliable, open source WireGuard.
  So yeah, agreed.
  Also I have been hosting Jellyfin publicly accessible for years with zero issues, so idk... I also dint k ow what the "you have to use Tailscale for jellyfin" people are doing with TVs/Firesticks/... in hotels, airbnbs,...

I've only ever used jellyfin and have no complaints.
I avoided plex and went with jellyfill because it's free/libre software.
- It wanted me to organize my files and then it started to transcode them when I streamed. Not optimal for my use case
  
  There are containers that will transcode immediately upon import if that's what you prefer.
  
  Yeah, I had/have problems with Jellyfin transcoding too.
  Basically transcoding things that didn't need it and wouldn't transcode things that did need it.

What was the appeal of Plex anyway?
- It has been a few years since I last used Plex but I always liked their interface, their tech stack is fairly modern, they have apps for pretty much every device, their title matching for content works really well and there was not much wrong with it back in the day other than it lacking local authentication.
  I switched over long ago when they started pushing streaming services to my users that I couldn't deactivate server side.
  
  What did you switch to?
- The wife / parent appeal of simplicity.
  Otherwise just use JellyFin.
- Local media streaming Is the appeal?
  Now if you're asking why use Plex vs Jellyfin, for me jellyfin has more issues with high bitrate 4K HDR content and subtitles for my situation.

I'm coming up on 5 years as a Plex pass owner, so my users and I will not be impacted by this change. In five more years if they asked me nicely to pay another $89 to support the service I would. Send me some stickers and put a badge on my server. I get a lot of use out of the software/service, as do my family members.
I will say, I am quite annoyed at the wording and audience of this email. Jellyfin is just not an option for me until there is excellent feature parity with Plex. I know they are a lot of Jellyfin fans here, in my opinion, Plex is a significantly better experience for me.
- Couldn't have said it better myself. I used plex for free for the better part of a decade. Bought lifetime when a raise was coming and it was still $140 (kicking myself because at one point with a sale I was looking at something like $45).
  I've used plex pass enough, and it's my main driver for all our entertainment outside of music and audiobooks that if they asked for some more money, I wouldn't care so much.
  The ease of use, the UI, and remote access without having to jump through a bunch of hoops is worth it.
  No shade to Jellyfin, but it's not nearly as dumb dumb friendly.
  
  I've even been using it for music, and audiobooks works pretty well for iOS. The only real available android client for audiobooks (Chronicle) sucks pretty bad, and is no longer under support. Lots of bugs and it only remembers where I left off about half the time. I just ftp the books to my local device and use smart audiobook player for books.
- Exactly, most people that share co tent with others already have the Plex pass so this doesn't do anything to them or their users.
  
  This change, is absolutely benign for the vast majority. Which means it's a desperate grab to make more money which will ultimately fail.
  Check out the trend over time.
  They removed plugins when it was a threat to them controlling their ecosystem, people were using them to pull from YouTube and anime sources directly. They were basically turning them into Kodi, but with benefits
  They did the same thing with offline resharing. You used to be able to sync a bunch of crap to your phone, go on vacation and share it with your family from your phone.
  Then they started obnoxiously tracking you under the guise that you could see what your friends were watching, but they changed their terms so they could sell your watch data to third parties.
  Then they started putting ads into free remote watch
  Now there's no more free remote watch.
  As you said, this change is unlikely to make a big difference for anybody, so it's unlikely for them to make any serious money from it.
  My personal guess is, they're sitting on a fuck ton of venture capital promises and those bills are coming due with the market becoming questionable.
  They've done everything to the free crowd to increase revenue. If they are truly cash strapped, the next logical thing is to get all these people with lifetime passes to buy in again but on a subscription basis. That means they're either going to abandon the lifetime product like playon did, or find some other way to force everyone to pay monthly to watch their own content.
  Nobody seen anybody needs to switch to jellyfin but you're going to need a backup plan because inside of the next year or two chances are Plex is not going to be recognizable to you.

not a plex user but someone buried the lede here... to me, this is the neon sign that screams GTFO:
we noticed that you've accessed libraries in the past
what business of yours is it to notice my private comings and goings?! what other actionable intel do y'all keep in your logs?! bye!
- External servers are shared with you, they can just check which owners have libraries shared with them. That's not some nefarious logging, its information they need to offer that function
  
  Counterpoint: I can access my friend's Jellyfin servers, and they can access mine, without anyone else in the world knowing what the fuck we're doing. Saying "It's necessary" always begs the question "Why did you make it necessary?"

The beginning of enshittification.
Prices will keep climbing, functionality reduced in favor of service tiers, and of course ads, ads, and ads.

Fuck them, glad I switched to Jellyfin years ago.

I'm done with Plex - They won't get my recommendations. My holdoff buying PlexPass were the little bugs that always mattered - Pausing for more than a few minutes HARD locked up the stream, the stream had to re-init to load subtitles, and then the MAJOR issue with "What files is Plex NOT seeing" and other indexing issues. I paid for my Android app, happily. But now, telling me I can't stream my own media, after paying for the app? Y'all can F right off with that. I'll be finally setting up Jellyfin ASAP.

LOL, aren't there at least a half dozen open source alternatives for Plex?

It was announced some time ago. I started using Tailscale because of that

Once you invite an MBA in you can never uninvite them…

Wonder how long those 2.99 a month figures will last. I give it a year before there's no seperate remote streaming package and the only remaining one is >10$. The main appeal of Plex was not paying. It's used by pirates. The goal is content for free. It's no longer free. I don't care at all if random people can use my Plex server. If they are unwilling to adapt to a new platform, then I guess they'll resubscribe to Netflix. Most of them never unsubscribed from Netflix to begin with.
This was the end for me. Used Plex for almost a decade. I'm off to Jellyfin. It's actually almost no change whatsoever to integrate it into my home setup.
- Seeing how they now want 250 for lifetime Plex pass?! Over double what it was just a few years ago? Ridiculous, and us server owners haven't seen really any new features come out recently. Jellyfin was a bit fiddly at first, but I'm getting used to it, and enjoying it more now I think
- If you bought a Plex pass in the past your users won't notice a difference. And I assume most server owners did it for the hardware encoding alone

Guess it’s time to start using jellyfin and contributing
- JellyFin is fantastic software and I have no complaints.
  
  yup same. First thing I install on a new device is jellyfin. For software that's relatively young, it's pretty awesome.

Seems like it was only a matter of time.
20% more will jump to Jellyfin. The other 80% will entrench and talk even more about how great Plex is. I mean Jesus, $250 to watch pirated movies. lol wtf It's also fucking wild to me that people are defending a monetization model that is on self hosted hardware. Like, I gotta pay for my server and then a license to avoid buying DVDs. Fuck it, at this point just buy the fucking movie.
Ya'll are brain dead. Plex loves you tho.
- I dunno man, I don't care much, when Plex gets shitty enough I'll jump. But paying for the ongoing maintenance of software isn't some evil thing, even if I self host it.
  
  You're not paying for software maintenance, you're paying a subscription service to a private company that has already decided to cut back on features that others also thought they were paying to maintain.
  If you want to actually pay for software maintenance, migrate to Jellyfin and pay them instead, rather than filtering your payments through middle managers and shareholders first.
- Yup, read through this thread and it becomes clearer and clearer. and trust me, I've been a long time hold out, I've been through this many times - but this is the first time I've seen functionality removed from Plex to be put behind a paywall. And doing a price hike at the same time. Absolutely shitty. I've already migrated off.
  
  You have a plex pass though, so nothing changed for you - you just got all angry because you didn't read the email properly.
  Your users are going to be much worse off now than they were, and you will absolutely lose a bunch of them who don't want to (or can't) have to connect to a VPN every time they want to stream from your library.
- It’s also fucking wild to me that people are defending a monetization model that is on self hosted hardware.
  It's wild to me that people who claim to be tech savvy don't understand that Plex Server, the software, is what makes Plex what it is and as popular as it is. No other solution exists that is as easy as Plex and as secure as Plex. Jellyfin, Emby, Kodi, etc are nowhere near as simple to use and don't have the breadth of app support that Plex does. Plex is basically on every device anyone owns. They sign in and they can stream from everyones libraries. No VPNs needed, no other hoops.
  I paid like $100 for a lifetime Plex Pass like 10 years ago. The 2 dozen friends and family that share my server don't pay a cent and this changes nothing.
  
  This.
  I just set up Plex for my mom on her bargain bin cheapo android TV. It had the plex app right there and it’ll play without transcoding.
  Can’t do that with Jellyfin.
  
  This place sucks at times as it becomes clear it’s just an echo chamber that we used to call the Donald for.
  My users don’t like the UI of Jellyfin as it isn’t as polished as Plex. I do this for my users and although it costs me money, it does save them a whole lot more money and means they’re taken out of some capitalist systems which should be the goal no?
  I also have the cost of a VPN too.
  Edit: The comment I replied to was on -6 upvotes at the time of posting.

I've used it briefly in the past but with all the streaming services popping up and prices going up I thought it will be a matter of time for Plex to follow suit. So I moved to Jellyfin and never looked back. I kept account (ok I forgot about it) but when I saw that email today in my mailbox I just logged in and deleted it.

Indeed, no need to have Plex anymore. Will probably set up a family VPN and we can all stream directly from my harddrives, bandwidth is not an issue anyway.
- No need to abandon all the user-friendly aspects of a self-hosted streaming platform. Just use Jellyfin. I switched to it from Plex years ago and have never looked back.

I don't use Plex. I have never used Plex. But based on the one time I tried, this doesn't surprise me even a little bit.
Years ago I installed it on my NAS, it was a one click download package. I installed it and hit the button to set it up. And then it prompted me to make a cloud account.
Why do I need a cloud account? I am logging into my local server and I am not sharing anything with anybody nor am I subscribing to any cloud services. I have no need of a cloud account. But, the way they built the thing, you need a cloud account to log into your local system.
I did not create a cloud account. I uninstalled it. I concluded that a company that claims to care about user privacy, but requires cloud integration in an area that absolutely does not require cloud anything, does not actually give a shit about privacy. I Googled and found that the requirement for a cloud account was, at the time, a fairly new thing. Lots of people didn't like it. I concluded that this company was beginning to enshittify, although this was years ago and none of us had heard that word yet. But either way, it was obvious that the company was moving in a not customer-friendly direction and I did not want to be along for the ride.
My choice has been proven right several times over the years since. And yes, every time they remove a feature, or make some other customer unfriendly decision, I retell this story.
The moral here is that a company either cares about its customers or it doesn't, and it's usually pretty easy to tell which one fairly quickly. When one bad decision is made, and not corrected, others will follow.
Synology is the latest example of that. For anyone not paying attention, they have recently announced that their 2025 series units will only work with Synology branded hard drives, which are of course more expensive than standard Seagate or Western Digital drives (which work just fine). But if you look, the bread crumbs are there and form a trail. Over the last few years they have removed features, for example the device is no longer can decode h.265 surveillance video, and the units will no longer display SMART data for 'unsupported' drives. I say no longer because they used to, but an update changed that so they no longer do.
Bottom line though is don't do business with companies that don't respect you.
- what's with h265 that's everyone's acting like it's some massive hurdle that you should have to pay to be able to use files with that encoding? that's one of the things Plex has paywalled already and it's becoming harder and harder to find good quality content that isn't in that format.
  
  h265
  https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/10/30/h-265-hevc-license-pricing-updated-for-low-cost-devices/
  Lot of companies don't want to pay it themselves... and lots of people don't see the point when there's a list of perfectly capable codecs that are free... including AV1
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_codecs
  Ultimately as a software developer making money... if you don't license the codecs that you're using properly (when using a non-FOSS codec) you are liable for damages at that point for violating the terms of the license for the codec. It IS a cost. And across millions of users that costs adds up.
- I was an early Plex user and I ditched it completely when they first started the cloud account bullshit. There weren't as many good options at the time, but I just switched to a very simple dlna media server that my TVs supported. Now of course we have a wealth of options and Plex makes even less sense to me, but I can see lots of people will keep using it due to inertia.
- I had exactly the same experience, at about the same time. Had been hearing good things about Plex so decided to try it out. Immediately noped out when it required me to create an account with them. Similar to you I looked around and found it to be a relatively new change.
  Frankly baffling to me that anyone with the wherewithal to self-host was okay with it.
  
  I think a lot of it was frog and hot plate situation. If they had done all this stuff all at once people would have dumped them immediately, but they did it slowly always seeming reasonable and considered at each step.
  And a lot of people still adopt their product because for better or worse, it is the best known and relatively easy to use.

The Remote Watch Pass is only needed if neither you nor the server owner have a Plex pass: https://support.plex.tv/articles/requirements-for-remote-playback-of-personal-media/
When using an affected platform to stream personal video content remotely from a Plex Media Server, then one of the following needs to be true:
The admin account for the Plex Media Server has an active Plex Pass (which also allows remote playback for any other user streaming from that server)
Your account has an active Plex Pass
Your account has an active Remote Watch Pass
The remote playback restrictions do not apply to streaming music content to Plexamp or photos to our Plex Photos app.
- No, as long as the Server owner has a Plex Pass the people on the other side don't need to do anything... its only if the Server owner doesn't have a Plex Pass then remote users would need one
  
  That is correct and echoes what I said

"your friends"
dude my friends don't charge me for shit
- You posted almost verbatim what I was about to write. It's a proper "don't shit on my pie and tell me it's a blueberry" moment. That's not what friends are.
- For real
  How about I don't pay the invoice, because we're such good "friends"?

Playon, Evernote, Lastpass, there have been plenty of examples.
Whenever a company starts charging for previously free features, it's time to GTFO, even if you're on their pay side.
I've got lifetime Plexpass, but I can read the writing on the wall. It's only a matter of time before they enshittify my product or stop providing updates. They'll sunset Plex and start Plex+ or some shit, give em a year or so.
Get your Jellyfin installed and working, they can work beside each other. Tailscale if it's just you, reverse proxy if you have the fam on in.
- Oh god playon. They burned me hard, and were shocked when I turned them down for 3 free months of generous free subscription fees. Never even checked, did they crash and burn?
  
  They are still going. I would have thought that there will download it for you and let you watch it as long as you can prove you have the login would have gotten them enough legal attention to shut them down. Apparently it's either a gray area or they're below the radar.
  I think one or two of the smallest properties are still usable in the old desktop app, but nothing that isn't already serviced by YTDLP.
- I would rather stop sharing completely before I make a Jellyfin accessible to the internet with the state their Backend is in. If you want people to be able to use it on TVs, Jellyfin is also not an option because most of them don't support vpns
  
  You could throw Authelia or HAProxy in front of it.
  You could do a port knocking daemon.
  Tailcale is available and free on half a dozen different video viewing devices.
  There's about a million ways to skin that.
  Also, keep in mind, it was a Plex security vulnerability In a lastpass admins home box that caused their asses to get leaked.
  None of this shit deserves to be openly hosted online
- You have valuable insight. I guess we all just look for better products and services. Ultimately it seems like the market will always extract and give nothing back.
- This mindset is bizarre.
  "Everyone should get out now because at some stage in the future Plex might get greedy and ruin it all and charge us through the nose. Move to Jellyfin! They'll definitely never ever do anything like Plex."
  I think you know where this is heading....
  
  Everyone should get out now because Plex has started to ruin things and you should seek alternatives now, while you have time, and not wait until they finish shitting the bed.
  And no, jellyfin won't do anything like this because they don't have control over how you use it and don't force their cloud on you.
  
  I don't know why you'd equate might-enshittify to already-enshittifying. Especially when Jellyfin isn't VC-funded, the leading indicator for enshittification.
  
  Plex is in control of their user's computing in a way Jellyfin isn't. You can remove anti-features from Jellyfin software and even redistribute it. So it's much less likely they would do something like Plex and it even doesn't matter if they did as you can find others to work on it in a way you want. Plex is proprietary software, Jellyfin is software freedom.

Welcome to jellyfin!
- Here's Jellyfin's 'How to Contribute' page.

Jellyfin. Tailscale. Bob's your uncle.
- Bob your uncle will absolutely not use Tailscale to stream from Jellyfin, so Bob your uncle will no longer have access to OPs library.
  
  If theres a demand, there is a way.
- a domain + reverse proxy + vps
  then uncle bob does not need a vpn to access your plex
  
  Yeah and expose the unsecured Jellyfin Backend to the whole world. Nice
- My uncle isn't named Bob

Lol "Your Friends at Plex"
get fucked, assholes, Jellyfin is better anyway
- Jellyfin is better anyway
  I wish this were true, but as a multi-year Plex-to-Jellyfin migrant, I have to point out that Plex was the better software.
  I still choose to run Jellyfin for other reasons (don't like the commercial path Plex is taking, among others), but I still do miss the better reliability and larger feature set in the Plex software stack.
- Doesn't jellyfin just not do this at all? Like if you want to stream remotely you need to figure out a vpn solution to do it?
  
  I use a non-rooted docker, reverse proxy, and cloudfare domain. I know Jellyfin has some API security issues but I'm still unconvinced that any of them can be used to escalate to any level that would threaten my server (or even my instance of Jellyfin).
  
  You can stream remotely via jellyfin if you expose your server to the internet. VPN is safer but not the only option.
  
  I used a reverse proxy just fine.
  
  Not necessarily a VPN but you're 100% on your own for security. When i used to run Emby, I had a white-list IPs but this doesn't work great since most ISPs rotate IPs over time and if you're on wireless it could change all the time.
  
  You're 100% correct. I always find it funny how hardcore some people are with jellyfin vs Plex. I'll probably end up getting downvotes on this but imo Plex is way simpler to setup and keep running, and as a lifetime pass owner, I've very rarely felt like my experience has been deteriorated by any of the changes that the jellyfin crowd freaks out about. Plus plexamp is honestly such a great music player. I'll happily keep running Plex for the foreseeable future.
  
  Very easy:
  https://tailscale.com/ (basically plug and play)
  Or
  https://github.com/juanfont/headscale
  
  That's correct
  
  Incorrect.
  
  No. You have to expose your server to the internet in some way bit you don't have to set up some sort of VPN. There are plenty of people who will tell you how awful of an idea it is but if you make smart choices it's not a big deal.
- I fucking hate corporate speak.
- Good thing jellyfin is open source then.
  
  That's what Emby thought.

It seems like multiple things are being conflated here and I'm not sure what the reality is because I've never used Plex.
Some people claim this has something to do with Plex needing to pay for NAT traversal infrastructure. Okay, that seems sort of silly but at least there's the excuse that their servers are involved in the streaming somehow.
But their wording is very broad, just calling it "remote streaming." That led me to this article on the Plex support website, which walks people through setting up port forwarding in order to enable "remote streaming"! So that excuse doesn't really seem to hold water. What exactly is being paid for here then? How do they define what "local streaming" is?
- Exactly my point. There's some due hard people here saying that remote streaming is only possible because of plex's servers, but that's just not true. They act as fancy DNS or proxying, they lust point to your local server. That's all. Regular DNS or even an IP and port are all it takes to get remote streaming up
  
  There are two types connection in this scenario
  Direct - no additional cost to Plex, using the port forwarding instructions you mentioned. No limit on bandwidth - the best (and most common) option
  Relay - for whatever reason your client cannot reach the server (CGNAT / port forwarding not possible / firewall on client side etc), Plex will act like a man in the middle & limit the connection to 2mbit. (Yup, megaBIT).
  I switched away from Plex last year because they wouldn’t let me connect with my box in Hetzner. I’m now using Emby, ironically I’m also paying for Emby’s monthly subscription. Not because I believe I need to, but because I want the developer to continue to work on it.
  
  it might not cost plex much but from the average joe's point of view they might not want to mess around with this stuff, or might have never even heard of DNS or proxies in the first place so those types of people might be more inclined to pay for a feature that does all that for them. thats what plex could be hedging their bets on
- The only thing I can think of why they’re doing this is, to drown illegal servers and remove them easily (ones that you see on eBay).
  Even if those people people for a Plex Pass, and they get caught.. Plex wins; because they still have their money.
- What exactly is being paid for here then?
  Software support and the company existing, mainly, which I dunno about you but I'm ok with.
  
  It seems deeply opposed to the spirit of selfhosting to have to pay for the privilege of accessing one's own server. If the software itself cost money, that would be one thing, but this whole monetization scheme is skeevy.

So as long as the server owner has Plex pass everyone's still able to stream from the server?
- Exactly. I have a lifetime pass and everything works for me and the people I share my library with.
  
  For now. Their most recent round of venture capital was 40 million and that was like the 7th one. Those investors are gonna be demanding returns if they haven’t already and they will eventually push to monetize as much as possible
  If plex works for you now then sure, don’t fix what isn’t broken. Jellyfin isn’t going anywhere and is just getting better, if anything holding off on migrating just increases the chances that migrating will be smoother. But guarantee you that in a certain amount of time plex will fuck over their customers
  
  Well it doesn't take effect till later in the month so it working now isn't really pertinent.
- Thing that has always been free for over a decade now suddenly costs a subscription even though there is no overhead to Plex
  Yeah, don't care, scummy thing.

I never got the idea of selfhosting but paying (except for enterprise-grade support or donations) anyway.
- When they monitor what you watch and who you share it with, it’s enshittified. Fuck Plex. I used to be a lifetime drum thumper. Stopped a few years ago.
  Plex doesn’t care about you, your comfort, ease. It wants your money and it wants to monitor and control what you do with your own data.
  Fuck. That.
- You know all the certs and security and port stuff you need to do? Plex does that. You just download the app, point it at your folders with media, and you’re all set both at your home and beyond it. There is no self hosted solution that is that turnkey. I really don’t understand how so many people don’t see the appeal of that. It makes quasi-selfhosting possible for people with far less technical knowledge than those of us here.
  I could write a less than one page bullet point instruction and virtually anyone who knows how to work a desktop computer could get a server up and running in one or two hours tops. If they have any computer experience, more like 30 minutes.
  What’s more, people with literally no computer knowledge can easily open the app and watch your stuff. They just make an account, download the app, and they’re off to the races. TV, tablet, doesn’t matter. There is no self hosted solution that is nearly as streamlined as Plex. I say this as somebody who likes jellyfin a lot. They are completely different experiences that require completely different levels of knowledge
  
  I run into you again! This time I get to wholeheartedly agree with you! You are spot on and nailed it.
  I use Plex for exactly the reasons you said because when I set it up I didn’t know anything about self hosting a media server and I wanted to share with family in other locations. I keep it because it’s so easy for my older, less tech savvy family members to access so I don’t have to be their support person for it.
  I’d consider Jellyfin if the end user access was more plug and play.
  The biggest thing about this is I don’t get why OP is so annoyed. If you have a Plex Pass you’re not impacted, you can still share and your users can still access your library for free, they can’t share with you without a Plex Pass but who cares.
  
  I LOVE Jellyfin but can only imagine the amount of work I'd have to do if I tried to get my parents and in-laws successfully using it. We all just split the cost of lifetime Plex pass the last time it was on sale.
  
  You know all the certs and security and port stuff you need to do? Plex does that. You just download the app, point it at your folders with media, and you’re all set both at your home and beyond it.
  I am just gonna read your comment until here, Plex does shit if you are CGNATED, and as it is 2025 I suppose most users are, I still needed to expose through IPv6 with a reverse proxy, using a VPS or a VPN to access my Plex Server, so yeah, Plex hasn't helped me at all since many years ago with the noob friendly approach they have.
  EDIT: Oh and their relay feature is garbage, even for Plex Pass users, and I happen to be a lifetime one.
  
  Completely agree, and I think it’s fair for them to make it a paid feature. It’s kind of like using wireguard yourself to create a whole network vs Tailscale.
  
  Outside of portforwarding plex ports on your router though? But yeah plex does provide a service and it is asinine the pushback this is getting.
  
  Any time you rely on another company to handle your data, you are beholden to their whims, end of story. Don't like what they're doing? Too bad. Give up the convenience and host it yourself, or continue to be a slave to their corporate interests.
  
  Downvote without explanation. Nice!
- For a good while, Plex was the only game in town that did the job well, and they put the transcoding feature behind the paywall.
  Given it wasn't that expensive for a lifetime pass a number of years ago (I remember it was cheaper than a game anyway) and they still seemed relatively user-centric at the time, many people like me felt like they were supporting developers building something that was useful to us.
  I still run my Plex server since it's not really costing me not to, but I've been running Jellyfin too for a little while and it more or less can do the same job these days
  
  Yup, for the time it was worth it. I got about 7 years out of my "lifetime" plex pass, and I got it on sale. All in all, I won't say the money was wasted.
  It's 100% a waste if anyone pays for that BS monthly streaming fee though.
  
  I put my chips (£100) on Emby.
  I haven't regretted my purchase. I can't sell anyone on much either, because Emby does all the same as other services, except they've kept adding features while Plex kept doing the Google thing and taking them away. CPU transcoding is free I believe, as is remote streaming up to 10 devices for each user.. Idk I paid pretty early on, but lifetime license is where it's at. Subscriptions just open your asshole for greedy CEOs to fuck you. Best to keep subscriptions voluntary, like donating on Github or Patreon
  
  I'm pretty happy with Emby, which also lets me easily do remote streaming.
- Take HomeAssistant for example: you’re free to use it self-hosted, but as soon as you want to expose it securely through the Internet, there’s need for infrastructure that has costs, both in materials and labor. In HomeAssistant’s case, it’s NabuCasa that does it, and costs money, and helps fund the work of HomeAssistant’s developers.
  Having things free (libre) and open source is a blessing, but we have become used, entitled, even spoiled, to enjoy the work of very specialized people for free. That’s not always feasible.
  Another example, Zabbix, is totally open source and free, they only charge for support and training if you ask for them. It has worked for them for many years, but if they start to struggle with funding, I’d understand if they charged for it.
  
  Home Assistant doesn't require to pay for anything at any point in time for any reason. If you want to expose your instance to the web, they have all the documents on how to do it yourself. There's absolutely nothing "hidden" behind a paywall. The only reason to say is if you want Nabu Casa to handle exposing your instance to the internet and various cloud services like Google Assistant/Alexa. The reason to pay Nabu Casa is if you don't have the technical know how (or lazy like me) and to help fund Home Assistant (which I want).
  That's all to say that Plex and Home Assistant are not similar in their pay scheme. It'd be more akin if Jellyfin started charging users to allow a one click way to stream outside the home with no obligation to.
- In the case of plex, it's not 100% selfhosted. There's a dependence on plexs public infrastructure for user management/authentication. They also help bypass NAT by proxying connections through their servers so you don't have to setup port forwarding and can even easily escape double NAT situations.
  I can understand paying for that convenience, but cost keeps rising while previously free features continue to get locked behind paywalls.
  Tbh, having users required to authenticate with plex.tv was enough for me to look elsewhere. The biggest reason to self host for me is to remove dependency on public services.
  
  The central user management is not a feature, it’s a hook to force people to pay for self-hosted software.
  
  100% my experience as well. The external authentication requirement is what made my choose Jellyfin a couple years ago.
- With Plex, you're getting the easy ability to grant access to users. You get a single pane that can search across multiple Plex instances, and NAT traversal/port forwarding. Jellyfin makes you figure that out yourself.
  
  I will say, I really want someone* to make a Jellyfin aggregator so you can use multiple servers at once.
  *Not me.
  
  It's not exactly difficult if you use Tailscale or really any VPN. So I really don't see the value for the cost; if you're even considering self hosting a Plex server/instance, there's a list of basic knowledge you should have or learn (like what you mentioned).
- Immich has a weird "buy a licence" model which literally does nothing.
  
  Immich, I believe, is linked to Futo. And Futo has a license model that's basically "if you like this app, and want to support the development, consider buying a license."
  Sounds like it might be similar with Immich.
  Better than "donate to this project", since a license seems more like the user is getting something out of it, even if it's basically a glorified donation 😂
  
  Instantly bought the server license. Support your favorite FOSS, people.
  
  I never even saw that, while running my own instance lol
- You can selfhost for free however you want but software developers have the right to ask for money to use their software. I selfhost about 60tb of media and have paid for Plex monthly for about 10 years now. They are still so far above the competition for ease-of-use that I wouldn't even consider switching at this point, even to save $7/month.
  
  They have the right to ask, but I don't have to pay. I've been playing with Jellyfin for about a month now, and I have to say, it's just as easy as Plex is. The only thing I had to do myself was make my own users. In fact, I tried Jellyfin a few years ago and was unimpressed - now all I see is Plex making stuff to make advertisers happy while Jellyfin is adding stuff to make it's users happy, to the point where I think Jellyfin has surpassed Plex.
  
  Eh, I find Emby pretty close to on-par at this point.

Friendship ended with plex, jellyfin is new best friend.

Trying to monetize the piracy of your users. That's a bold business strategy.
Look, I know a lot of people could be using the sharing feature to share material that is in the public domain or that they own the copyright to, but let's be honest: most of that sharing would be considered an "unlicensed public performance" by the MAFIAA.
- Dotcom's been doing it for decades and he's rich as hell. Even after losing 95% of his money since 2012 he's still got $10mil.
- They sold to private equity a couple years back. The enshittification started that day.
  
  They took VC funding (which is also bad), selling to private equity is very different (they strip mine businesses).
- to monetize the piracy of your users
  that's generally what gets sites and services in 'trouble'
- Trying to monetize the piracy of your users. That's a bold business strategy.
  Some time ago, never mind how long precisely, Plex were trying to legitimise themselves, by adding streaming from official sources, etc.
  I would be curious if this is meant to be a deterrent, or just to look like one by making piracy expensive, so they can eat their cake and have it too.
  
  It's not that expensive. You can buy a lifetime pass for like $70 when it goes on sale. That's like half the price I pay to Comcast each month for my internet.

I'll be honest, I thought Plex Pass was always a requirement for this 😅
- Only if you were remote streaming on Android or iOS or you'd need to pay a one-time fee to bypass the restriction.
- Same. People want literally unlimited shit for free
  
  I understand charging for the software but a subscription service for a self hosted program is fucking wild.
  Why does everything has to be a subscription these days?
  
  If they can't do anything better than jellyfin which is fully free open source I don't see why they should expect money. If Photoshop were paid for gimp they certainly wouldn't deserve anything.
  I think the bad feelings are by virtue of taking away something that WAS free. This is just basic human psych people are loss averse.

That was announced 2 months ago?
- I don't have an email, and I didn't get any notifications in my plex dashboard...
- And? Does that make it alright? 😆
  
  I never stated if it does or does not. But seems like a lot of people are surprised about this news.
  Why are you even using emojis?
  
  No but the fact that software is reasonable to charge for does.

Can I still watch for free from my pc to my tv locally through the Plex app?
- Yes, its for external address using remote play.
- For now
  
  It’s jellyfish time anyway! :)

I have a lifetime Plex Pass, but I stopped using Plex a couple months ago after finally diving into Jellyfin. Even ignoring everything else, just the performance difference made the change worth it. Everything from UI responsiveness on smart TV apps to library scans on the server.
- I'm in the same situation. I wouldn't call Jellyfin better, but I far prefer using something that's not becoming progressively hostile to my use-case of self-hosted media.
  
  Yep, that’s why I threw in “even if you ignore everything else.” The ads and the direction of the app/service/company made me glad to learn that Jellyfin Software felt so much more snappy.
  The initial setup isn’t as snappy, assuming you want to use secured connections for remote users, but once it’s set up it is just as simple for friends and family to get connected. And being open source, there are some nice apps tailored to certain kinds of media like music and audio books.
- Honestly same, except I've been using jelly fin for about a year. Even with me having a Plex pass, I'm not using it.

Exhibit #46,853 for why freeware will inevitably fall out from under your feet and why you should exclusively use FOSS wherever possible.
EDIT: Here's Jellyfin's 'How to Contribute' page.
- Preach, brother! Preach!

YES JELLYFIN! Thank you Plex for enshitifying!
- Quickly now, make jellyfin better!
- And how are you doing remote streaming from friends with Jellyfin?
  
  Reverse proxy + fail2ban
  
  I'm not personally. I'd run a VPN for others to connect in. Apparently a lot of folks just expose it to the internet and then enforce logins.
  
  Give them the address of the server?
  
  My whole family streams from my brother's server hundreds of km away...
  
  I'm doing it with a jellyfin client to my friend's jellyfin server.
  
  I was forcing VPN for a couple years but I've just recently started allowlisting client IPs instead. Not as good but definitely easier.
  
  My mom streams mine across an ocean.
  
  Tailscale.
  
  The same way you’d set up remote plex.
  Plex will have some cost associated with remote streaming, so I don’t see any issue with them charging for that.
  If people don’t want to pay then they should just set it up themselves, like they would have to do with jellyfin anyways.
- Here's Jellyfin's 'How to Contribute' page.

ITT:
- If you consider paying a monthly fee for something that was free yesterday then I guess I'm wrong, go ahead and pay the subscription
  
  Got lifetime pass for $80-$90 over a year ago. No media subscriptions in my life. That also wasn’t directed at you specifically, there are just a lot of comments here really upset that anyone uses Plex.
  You seem rather defensive. This is the second time you’ve come at me like this. You literally said you have Plex pass in the other comment, why are you playing dumb?
- LOL
  Hope for the best, plan for the worst,
  or don't plan, you do you!
  
  You can apply that to literally anything in life. People are so desperate to hate Plex they are making up theoretical situations. You should plan for your car to break down, you should plan for your house to burn down, you should plan to stub your toe today.

As long as the library owner has a Plex Pass nothing changes for ANYONE who is streaming from that Plex Server.

I switched to Jellyfin recently and I mostly prefer it over Plex, except for lack of organization tools and the goddamn roulette wheel that is seeking. Why is it that seeking defaults to 30 second intervals, requires a click to confirm, and occasionally just jumps to some random point near the beginning of the file? Great software overall, but it's wild to me that this basic playback functionality is so hit or miss.
- I had the point near the beginning of the file thing once and it was a really shitty file that only VLC could seek in.
  ffmpeg fixed it, but I've no idea how because ffmpeg command lines are some arcane black magic shit.

I got the same email.
I haven't had plex installed for over 7 years, and I've NEVER used the shared libraries feature.
We noticed that you’ve accessed libraries from friends and family in the past
They've apparently noticed activity that's never occurred.
- https://www.androidauthority.com/plex-remote-watch-pass-bug-3549249/
- Others in another thread are trying to convince me that the email is wrong, that my Plex Pass should mean everyone gets to stream for free. The email, however, kinda indicates otherwise. So who knows what's going on over there, but either way - I'm done
  
  The email you posted specifically says if you have PLEX Pass users can stream for free.
  
  Per the email text and Plex's policy, they are correct - only Server Owners need the Pass.
  That said I moved to Jellyfin months ago when they announced it.
  
  I don't quite understand your confusion, they sent the email to everyone with an account. The email indicates clearly that if a server owner has a Plex pass, the users do not need it. The email is not "wrong".
  
  Only the server owner needs a plex pass, it says that in the email.
  
  The email says that if the admin/owner of the plex server you stream from has a Plex Pass then nothing changes.

Jellyfin ia great! But syncplay breaks if you snease.
- Remember to take your Claritin before starting a sync play session
- Weird. Never had an issue with syncplay... What's your setup look like?
  
  Jellyfin on arch behind nginx. I connect with VPN, through NAT or on the local network. What else to say? I have noticed that syncplay is significantly more reliable through nginx. Not sure why that is. But it is still fragile. I've had this issue unresolved so long that I am just living with it. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then i don't use it.
  Clients: firefox, jellyfin client, chrome, android client. The issue is pretty consistent across them all.
  I mostly keep 8bit AVC/ACC, 2-channel mp4s. Some h265 as well. I have not noticed a pattern. Syncplay seem agnostic to encodings and filetypes.
  I get the feeling that i am far from alone on this issue. There are threads out there.

But it's included in a plex pass. I know a lot of people were saying, a while back, they were happy to purchase a lifetime pass, so as to support the software. I didn't actually realise you could share without the plex pass. I thought that was always a thing.
- It was always a thing except with Android and iOS which had a separate one-time fee attached to enable remote playback.

It was only a matter of time. Plex is a Series C startup, employs 100+ people, and has taken substantial VC investment. Those investors are expecting exponential returns, and a "one-time lifetime payment" will never sustain that sort of growth