Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April

www.plex.tv Important 2025 Plex Updates

Personal Media and Beyond You’re going to be hearing a lot from us this year—we’ve got a ton of exciting...

We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.

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If this is enough to push you away from Plex but you’ve tried Jellyfin and it didn’t quite do it for you, try https://emby.media/
It is the software Jellyfin is forked from and bridges the gap between the freedom of Jellyfin and the polished look and function of Plex.
- I went from Emby to Jellyfin as they started their enshittification journey. I don't really notice it being less polished.
  
  I’m not aware of any enshittification with Emby, unless you know something I don’t. Emby sort of “just works” which is why it’s a more direct replacement to Plex than Jellyfin is.
  As for Jellyfin, I check in on it every now and then and they’ve made a lot of progress but the features and polish aren’t there. I hear good things about the Jellyfin web component, butif you want a good experience with Jellyfin apps on mobile or whatever TVOS you’re running, you have to use third party apps because the official ones are still woefully barebones. I still hear a lot of griping about issues with subtitles, and HEVC playback.
  Did Jellyfin ever even figure out proper Intro Skip? That was a big pain point for me for the longest time, as the only way to accomplish it was a third party plugin and the only option was to skip all intros, you didn’t get a button. I remember reading somewhere they added some kind of framework that would allow proper intro skipping going forward, but that the official function was not ready.
  
  The media segments feature has been released as of 10.10.0 and it still needs a plugin. Still feels a bit clunky but works already on my Android TV box. I guess there will be more polish in future versions, now that the groundwork is done.
  
  Do you know how to get intro skipping to work? I’ve reinstalled the latest version of Jellyfin for testing and have the Media Segments Provider plugin installed, but there still seems to be no intro skipping button on any clients. People in this thread keep telling me it exists but outside of this thread there appears to be no evidence it exists.
  
  It's been a while since that I set this up, so take this with a grain of salt. I have these two plugins installed:
  Chapter Segments Provider
  The older Intro Skipper
  I'm honestly not sure if I even need both - maybe the Chapter Segments Provider is unnecessary, even though it's official and newer. I don't understand exactly how it works from the docs.
  However, Intro Skipper gives you a new scheduled task named "Detect and Analyze Media Segments". Use this to extract metadata about media segments from your library.
  Now that the server knows about some media segments you need a client that can handle them. I've had success with the Android TV App (check the settings) and the Web interface should support them too.
  I didn't need to configure anything aside from that, as far as I can remember.
  
  Yeah I heard about that. That is good news as it means hopefully Jellyfin can start closing the gap on feature parity with Emby.
  The thing about people leaving Plex is that things being “clunky” is a nonstarter. The value of Plex was how everything just worked. You could give a link and credentials to your boomer mom and she’d be good to go. That’s why I still recommend Emby to these people as it’s still the best way to achieve that without paying for Plex. Here’s to hoping Jellyfin can reach that point soon.
  
  With version 10.10 they integrated chapter markers into Jellyfin. You still need a plugin to generate the intro timings, but any client I tried has support for skipping with a button.
  
  I’ve just reinstalled the latest version of Jellyfin and installed the Media Segments Provider, and tested every client available for it and none of them appear to have a skip intro button implemented.
  
  Most clients have it disables by default and you'll still have to install the intro skipper plugin.
  
  Well that’s good news, that means they’re close at least.
- Absolutely not, fuck Emby with a branding iron, they're far shittier than Plex's decisions.
  At least Plex started out as a for-profit company and has never misrepresented themselves as anything but. Unlike Emby.
  
  fuck Emby with a branding iron
  
  Nah, as far as I’m aware Emby hasn’t started their own streaming service and pivoted away from their self-hosted oriented position, or shoving a bunch of bloat into their server software. They haven’t shoehorned a bunch of unwanted social features into it either. If you were fine paying for Plex five years ago, you’ll be fine with Emby.
  
  Yea because like I said, they're on an enshittification train on the same track just some stops behind, except they started with far worse decisions
  
  It sounds like they haven’t even made their first stop, nor do they even have the train yet. And it seems like none of those bad decisions have even been made yet.
  I guess you could predict that one day they will start their enshittification journey, but that day is not today.
- How is the general perception of emby? They're closed source and US based.
  
  They're not just closed source, they started as the open source project response to Plex. It was promised that they would be open source forever. They lied, slammed the source door shut a few years later and pivoted to a paywall.
  There was no discussion with the community or contributors, no alternatives explored, no surveys or polls.
  Just a "Sorry we're going closed source" blog post, Jellyfin was forked from them in vengeance.
  
  Well now I'll like Jellyfin even harder
  
  Emby remains in the position Plex used to, pre-enshittification. They’re closed source and have a PlexPass style license, but if you miss the value you got with old-Plex, Emby fills that spot.
  For context, Emby used to be open sourced but offered the Emby Premiere subscription for some added features, and the open source half allowed people to just bypass the paywall, so they closed sourced it. Jellyfin is a Fork of Emby pre-closed sourcing.
  
  Emby used to be open sourced but offered the Emby Premiere subscription for some added features, and the open source half allowed people to just bypass the paywall, so they closed sourced it. Jellyfin is a Fork of Emby pre-closed sourcing.
  You should not be recommending them at all for any reason for that. I was there and saw the shit that went down over it.
  Emby should be considered a no-go for all purposes.
  
  Oh no I’d absolutely recommend it for anybody switching from Plex. Anybody who liked Plex and the state it was in pre-enshittification will obviously have no qualms with a proprietary solution. If FOSS is your end goal then you’d have a better argument, but Plex refugees are for obvious reasons not a part of that demographic.
  Emby is a great product that “Just works” in the same way Plex used to and for that purpose it is head and shoulders above Jellyfin even if it doesn’t have the benefit of being FOSS.
  
  I have had both a Plex and Emby lifetime subscription since around 2018 and relied on Emby for quite a while during Plexs shenanigans 5-6 years ago but still think Plex and Jellyfin are the only true options. Emby is just an amalgamation of the worst qualities of Plex and Jellyfin. It "just works" as a media player in the same way that VLC "just works" but doesn't offer a whole lot outside of that especially nothing that these other two don't offer. Plex is the "polished but expensive and limited" solution and Jellyfin is the "free, some work required, and open" solution.
  
  Emby offers a more robust, polished experience than Jellyfin and it’s just not even close, I’m sorry. You can get sort of close with some third party Jellyfin clients but then you’re split up between multiple apps that look and operate with different design languages depending on whether you’re watching media, managing your server, or listening to music, etc.
  With Emby, I get very polished, functional, good looking apps on mobile and Android TV. I can use the Emby IOS app to manage my Emby server, watch TV, Movies, and listen to my music collection. It looks great and works great with no fiddling or plugins needed for basic functionality like intro skip that Jellyfin still does not support without the help of plugins in the year of our lord 2025.
  On the Jellyfin side however you have the official Jellyfin app which is just an uglier and more dated looking version of the Emby app, and it can’t play any of my music collection. StreamyFin is much nicer looking than the official app, but you can’t manage your server or play music so you still need the official app also. It also lists your music playlists as libraries, though it can’t play music so you’re just given errors. Now if I want to actually play my music I need a THIRD app, Finamp, which can actually play my music library but it struggles with metadata and needed hours of fiddling to get all the metadata right, but at the end of the day it’s just a fuck ugly knockoff of the music section of the official Emby app.
  So the comparison between Jellyfin and Emby for me is, do I want one iOS app that just works, looks great, and functions great? Or do I want three separate apps, 2/3 of which look a college students very first app they threw together in a single weekend, and still end up with less functionality than Emby? Emby being the obvious winner here.
  I would love to switch over to Jellyfin but it still just has so far to go before I could consider it a viable competitor to Emby or Plex. Unless Free and Open Source is your ultimate goal, at the expense of both form and function.
  
  That's just putting them on another enshitification train that just happens to be a couple stops back, but is still moving along.
  How they went about going closed source was unforgivable and also means they will absolutely have no qualms implementing crappy enshitification type decisions in the future
  
  Emby’s enshittification train isn’t a couple stops back, there’s currently no evidence it exists. Simply having an Emby Premiere license is not enshittification for the same reason it wasn’t for Plex. Even in Plex’s most beloved golden age they had the PlexPass. That is not now nor was it ever an issue. Not every software existence has to be FOSS to provide any value. Emby went closed source and Jellyfin got to pick up the torch from that point on. That is a perfectly reasonable resolution as thats how things are supposed to work, that’s a good thing. Do you see Plex being forked into an open source version? No you don’t.
  
  The first stop was when they went closed, they didn't just go closed peacefully and Jellyfin didn't fork off in a quiet way either
  It was a complete betrayal, Emby made promises that they would remain open source forever. They broke that promise in a slow walked plan. It started with "Oh just some of the build scripts will be closed source, but don't worry the rest of Emby will stay open!"
  Until one day they slammed that door shut with a no notice relicensing and an "Oh sorry we're going closed source because we just can't make enough money"
  There was no discussion with the community, no alternatives explored and it was mainly the arbitrary decision of a single person. It wasn't even discussed with contributors.
  Jellyfin was forked from Emby in vengeance, not some sort of planned fork like you're making it seem
  
  Yeah that doesn’t sound like the first stop, that just sounds like internal drama. That just truly isn’t a concern to any end user, nor does it affect the value or usability of the product in any way.
  
  It's very relevant, it directly speaks to how they'll behave themselves closed where they can make crap decisions even easier.
  Plex for all its issues, at least was upfront most who jumped on the Plex train did so with the knowledge that it might enshittify and honestly it's not as bad as it could be
  A bunch of us who started on the Emby train did so under the pretense that at worst we might have to deal with a paid subscription or support contract type of deal.
  That was a lie, I was there 10 years ago when it went down, that's when I pivoted to Plex full time (I had been running both for like a year at that point)
  
  Where they can make crap decisions even easier
  Easier than… what? They haven’t made any yet. Every single thing you say seems to be predicated on some imagined scenario that hasn’t happened. It sounds like you’re bitter about internal drama that in 10 years, an entire decade, has resulted in exactly zero actual negative repercussions for the end user. I would not call that “relevant”.
  10 years you’ve been shaking your fist at the clouds yelling “Just wait, you’ll see, they’ll start enshittifying any day now, just you wait” and in 10 years time that hasn’t happened. Maybe it’s time to free yourself of this grudge.

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