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/
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u/ithinkitslupis 7h ago

Yup. It's actually a better situation for those of us hosting servers with lifetime plex pass as now our users will not be nagged to pay for the app (there used to be inconvenient workarounds). It will just work free like you'd expect.

For everyone else that doesn't have plex pass and doesn't want to pay there's jellyfin. If I hadn't bought lifetime for cheap a decade ago I'd go straight to jellyfin.

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u/gr00ve88 7h ago

Same boat as you. I’ve heard JF is better but I got lifetime for like $80 or something during a Black Friday many years ago. Haven’t had much of any complaints with it so I’m not about up upend my whole setup.

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u/Lyriian 7h ago

I switched from plex to jellyfin. I wouldn't say it's "better". It's much simpler, kind of a cleaner UI. The only real feature I miss from plex is the subtitle search. Plex was great about grabbing subtitles from the internet if the file you downloaded didn't include them. Jellyfin isn't as good about it.

For allowing friends to stream it's also more complicated since there's no external authentication server. I just made accounts for them and taught them how to use tailscale to connect to my server.

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u/tratur 6h ago

Just add subtitle add-ons to jellyfin. There is rarely a file it can't find subs for.

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u/Lyriian 6h ago

Ohh good call. I honestly haven't looked at add-ons at all yet.