- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
This company sounds like it’s in its death throes.
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We have Rokus on our TVs and ditched Plex as soon as a Jellyfin app became available
The problem is the “lifetime” option, they needed to just stop offering it.
The optics of making it prohibitively expensive instead is just terrible.
It used to “pay for itself” after 3.5 years, now it takes over a decade. I don’t think they understand most people were buying it before (as in a decade ago) as a form of donation to a software that didn’t have a good alternative.
Now that Plex is trying to become a media streamer themselves for a revenue stream, and alternatives like jellyfin exist for what made Plex popular…
They should have just sunset the “lifetime” deal
It used to “pay for itself” after 3.5 years, now it takes over a decade.
The cynic in me says that this also means subscription pass costs will be going up in the future too. So it may again “pay for itself” after 3.5 years with a $750 price tag for lifetime
if they thought the $750 price point would make them more money than $250, they would just raise the price. instead they’re exploiting fomo and essentially admitting that the market has dried up but they want to continue to dangle bait for whales.
Holy fuck thats 10x what i paid
Fuck you plex. Ditched you a long time ago and it was obviously the right choice. If anyone gets money it’s Emby. Yes I know about Jellyfin but it just sucks with HDR. Totally.
jellyfin streams HDR just fine for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To mpv-shim? Yeah that works but is the stupidest shit ever, sadly. Linux tho. Dunno if works fine on win without the helper.
i honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. server is a container on unraid and streams to various playback devices. no helpers or anything else required.
This was November 2019. Plex clearly beating inflation.
The company isn’t in its death throes - the lifetime pass is.
They want everyone on subscriptions, so they’re just pricing the lifetime pass ridiculously high to discourage its purchase. If anyone does buy it they make big bucks, but if they don’t they make subscription money.
This is the type of move you pull when you know you’ve got the market cornered.
Yeah, like we (the one good accounting office I worked at) would buy licenses (not rent) for Microsoft office. Instead of paying 40 a user a month or whatever, we paid 400 a user once. It bugged the hell out of our inhouse IT “specialist” (the partner who liked to play with computers) but he could pay 500 a year per employee for his own software.
It looked cost prohibitive, but it was just a lump sum instead of an annuity. It was still only $100 software tho.
What’s the point? Better off paying for Netflix at that rate for a few years
I bought my lifetime pass years ago. But, there is no way that plex is worth more than an entire computer
trying to squeeze as many people for the current price as possible. will probably run deep sales close to today’s price in the future.
How much longer until the “Plex sold to private equity” headline?
It already more or less has been, which is why it’s on the death-by-enshittification spiral. Plex tried to join the streaming wars way too late to compete, it can’t go back to being a self-hosted media server company because it won’t generate enough profits for investors, so it’s going to do an Evernote and keep charging more and more from its last users until everyone leaves.
I stopped using the main app when the ad-driven and subscription content choked out the media server, but RIP Plexamp when it goes.
They already taken 10s of millions in VC so whenever those investors decide it’s not profitable basically
I don’t get what the point of this is. I have never paid a cent for Plex. If I ever want to access my library remotely, I’ll use something else.
Ya, I transitioned to an always on VPN a few years ago (VPN to my house, not one of those honeypot ones) so I don’t even really need it anymore. But I paid something ridiculously low years and years ago. Whatever the price was before it moved to $75.
If I were starting from scratch today, I’d just build out Jellyfin instead.
What will you use? Because pretty much nothing else exists that is as easy and as widely supported as Plex.
It will probably be Jellyfin. I’ve dabbled with it in the past, but it’s likely the best option once I finish transitioning to Linux anyway. I’ve been working on a home server to handle all media related activities instead of using my desktop 24/7, so this is something I’ll incorporate into that project.
Well jellyfin is not made for remote access, which was my point.
Weirdest ad for Jellyfin I’ve ever seen
It’s so weird though. Do they not know it exists? Do they expect their customers not to know it exists?
When your primary competition is free (and arguably better), the last thing one should think to do is raise prices.
I can only assume that some C-suites are looking at numbers and don’t know what else to do but make the product more expensive.
Jellyfin isn’t arguably better, especially for some of tne main things people use Plex for - remote streaming and library sharing. Jellyfin pretty much doesn’t support them.
That’s the arguably part. The argument.
So…
What is the argument for jellyfin? It’s basically the exact same thing without the relay servers or no-setup remote streaming and sharing.
Remote access is the single area where Plex is better. Even then, it’s not that you can’t do it with Jellyfin; it’s just harder to set up.
Everything about Jellyfin is free. This includes hardware transcoding, which is subscription based on Plex.
The Jellyfin apps are also much better than they used to be. I’d say easily on par with Plex now (the native Jellyfin client and the music app, finamp).
To me, it seems like a really hard sell when Jellyfin effectively does everything that the paid service does for free.
Remote access is the single area where Plex is better.
Saying things like this is laughable. JellyFin is basically temu plex, better at pretty much nothing other than being open source. At best it matches it in some ways, at worst it is significantly worse and lacking features.
Everything about Jellyfin is free. This includes hardware transcoding, which is subscription based on Plex.
If the server owner has a lifetime pass, theres no subscription fee needed by anyone. Hardware transcoding on Plex is also significantly better than on JellyFin.
The Jellyfin apps are also much better than they used to be.
But still trash compared to plex.
To me, it seems like a really hard sell when Jellyfin effectively does everything that the paid service does for free.
Again, apart from easy and secure remote streaming.
I do think it’s weird that Plex decided to put hardware transcoding behind a paid membership, so that’s obviously a negative, but it sounds like the argument for jellyfin is that it’s free but you get less. That’s ok, I’m not dragging jellyfin through the mud on this, but you have to admit many people think their Plex purchase is worth it compared to jellyfin.
How?
The argument for Plex is their catalogue.
No, the argument for plex is that it’s easy and widely supported. It has an app on every device in existence, and a new user can be streaming from a friends server remotely within minutes of asking for access, with no VPN or IP whitelisting or any other workaround required. Secure, fast, easy.
What platform doesn’t support Jellyfin?
The rest of that applies to Jellyfin as well, I just give you the url and the account details then you’re good to go.
90% of the TVs out there. Not everyone has an android tv.
What url are you giving me for jellyfin? You’ve exposed jellyfin to the open internet? You know how stupid that is?
You think 90% of TVs don’t use Roku, webOS, Android, or Apple?
No different than exposing any other port service, like Plex for example. However it’s my reverse proxy.
no VPN or IP whitelisting or any other workaround required
But what about this? I can spin up a Docker image of Plex, log in, and it just works. My tech illiterate family members and friends can access it and I don’t have to deal with setting all of these other items up. Plex will just use UPnP out of the box whereas I’d need to set up DLNA or some other means to get remote Jellyfin access working.
Maybe I am wrong but this is why myself and others opt to just use Plex for family and friends and Jellyfin locally. 🙂
If it’s in your own LAN then there’s no setup. Just point to the internal IP after spinning up the docker image.
There are almost no digital products that are worth a three digit price tag and this is certainly not one of those.
Hmm, I’m of two minds about this
On the one hand it’s simply a ridiculous increase and pretty indefensible as a jump. Especially given that it doesn’t really offer much you can’t do for free with something like jellyfin
On the other hand at least they still offer a lifetime sub, crazy expensive yes, but the option is still technically there for someone who wants to use the software without subscription. Plenty of companies have gone down the sub only road, and I think we should give at least a bit of credit for them not doing the same, even though they’d clearly like to
I know audiophiles are a bit of an outlier in general, but Roon lifetime is even more IIRC!
They gotta pay their corporate trips to Hondorus somehow https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/inside-a-corporate-retreat-that-went-very-badly-wrong/ar-AA20gPzT
Such a fun read!
Y’know, at least they invited everyone instead of just being a C-suite retreat. I guess
As long as they honor the lifetime part I’m not bothered. I bought my over a decade ago for about $25-30 on sale.
Seems like a big risk, how many companies have there been who offered such a thing but then went under not many years later and no longer could make good on it?
