Plex is increasing Plex Pass prices and paywalling remote playback for personal media at $1.99/month or $19.99/year.
Personal Media and Beyond You’re going to be hearing a lot from us this year—we’ve got a ton of exciting...
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I'm not sure I understand the need for charging to play media on a private server when not on the local network. Why is this no longer going to be free? I'm glad I bought a lifetime pass many many years back but I definitely wouldn't pay for Plex nowadays with alternatives being comparable. What a silly choice they made~
It reeks of "we're routing your traffic through our own servers to check your media for piracy" to me.
They do have a proxy service, but it is optional. I have it disabled because my server is faster.
I could see the proxy slipping behind a paywall as that feature has costs, but web accessibility? That's basic function of a video server.
The proxy service is also encrypted end to end
Edit: this relies on the Plex system being secure/nice though.
Why would they check for piracy when it's not them you're pirating from and stopping piracy would remove the most popular use case of their product?
I’m not defending them because it’s a shit move, but they clearly understand the most valuable feature is not their ad-ridden free content but rather the original value prop of the service to make it easy to share personal media with small groups of friends.