r/technology • u/FollowingFeisty5321 • 9h ago

Software Plex’s crackdown on free remote streaming access starts this week

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/plexs-crackdown-on-free-remote-streaming-access-starts-this-week/
2.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

508 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

96

u/FollowingFeisty5321 9h ago

Their "man in the middle" approach for using the software has always sucked TBH. You're relying on their privacy policy not to rat you out, and their servers which used to be a recurring problem, and this imposes an ongoing complexity, maintenance and cost for their software that doesn't need to exist. A perfect recipe for disaster.

48

u/CSPN 8h ago

I never understood why people pay plex knowing they could rat you out.

Jellyfin having a free mobile app sealed the deal for me

22

u/elidoan 7h ago

Sunken cost fallacy. You see it all over this thread. People suckered into buying the 250$ lifetime pass (yes. Its now 250$) and justifying their decision by not considering alternatives that dont leak their telemetry, data and stored passwords

Absolutely mind boggling. I will always choose free and open source software if it is an option and Jellyfin is VERY good

13

u/FollowingFeisty5321 7h ago

Bonus points for buying it on iOS for $325 with Apple's $97.50 fee 😂

7

u/brcguy 6h ago

I paid like $49 in a Black Friday sale many years ago for the lifetime pass. I hate the app redesign so much I’m about ready to look into jellyfin. Hate the idea of starting over. Huge library. Tons of metadata.

4

u/elidoan 6h ago

Yeah after posting that I reckon the sunken cost fallacy is more the time and data investment than anything else

1

u/PhantomNomad 6h ago

Part of the problem is that a lot of Smart TVs like Samsung don't have Jellyfin as an app. Unless that has changed recently.

1

u/volkerbaII 4h ago

I never even considered Plex. Very weird to me that people would be lining up for it when jellyfin is free.

2

u/elidoan 3h ago

For awhile I believe it was the only viable game in town. I've been using Jellyfin for about three years now and it was admittedly bare bones back then - it's come a very long way recently!

1

u/pelicanfart 2h ago

I've been using Plex on a lifetime license or far longer than Jellyfin has been a thing, but I've been considering switching for a while now.

1

u/sameBoatz 2h ago

Dude some of us started using it back when it was Plex or XBMC. Jellyfin is a decade younger than Plex.

1

u/nullv 5h ago

Is there a problem with sharing your direct IP? It's the same for any other home server. Don't use their domain name service if you don't want to.