Back in… 2019, Proctor & Gamble made a bit of a marketing blunder with their Gillette brand with what became colloquially known as their “toxic masculinity” campaign. Now in the time since, Gillette has obviously not folded – despite all the chants from the “go woke, go broke” crowd – but they also haven’t repeated that mistake from what I’ve personally seen.
I bring that up briefly as in that article I said this: “I don’t let others dictate my purchase decisions.”
So now Plex has entered the chat.
And for some fucking reason, a lot of people online are acting like Plex is now one of the worst companies in the world and Plex is one of the worst products around and are now saying “Switch to Jellyfin!” or something else.
And to that I say: calm the fuck down!
It’s been over 9 years now since I first built Nasira. And since first building it, I’ve been using Plex as a media server. First running it through the FreeNAS plugin, which worked… horribly, then running it through a separate virtual machine, and now as a Docker container on a larger virtualization server. For much of that time, I’ve had the Plex Pass – paying the $5 monthly, even though I could’ve easily bought the lifetime pass. And the reason I’ve had it is… largely threefold:
- to have access to it through mobile – it would only allow you to preview media otherwise
- sharing the library with my wife on her own Plex account, and
- supporting the company
So let’s go over the recently announced changes. Starting with the price increase.
There’s been this trend recently where people act like no company should be allowed to raise prices at all. But it’s like… companies have costs as well. And that Plex has been able to put off raising their Plex Pass price for this long is commendable. It’s the first price increase in 10 years. And I’m sure it was a decision they didn’t want to make but largely saw no choice in making for the sake of their bottom line.
So let’s talk about remote playback, since this appears to have everyone’s panties in a bind. Again, Plex has underlying costs. And to enable Remote Playback, you need a proxy server of some kind to stream through. Plex is, obviously, providing that proxy server, meaning they need to operate and maintain it. Which isn’t free!
I’ve personally never used the remote playback feature because I have a self-hosted VPN – specifically Wireguard running on my router – so to Plex’s mobile app, it looks like I’m on the same network as the Plex server. I’m fully aware not everyone has that option. But the mobile app is what prompted me to get the Plex Pass in the first place, since the app wouldn’t play anything more than a preview even when on the same network.
Which is one of the limitations they’re removing. A limitation they never should’ve had at all, in my opinion, but it’s a limitation that got me on the Plex Pass to begin with – and probably the same for plenty of other users. (You always had the option of streaming through the browser.) And I personally don’t mind supporting Plex financially. I’m not someone who is always saying “If it’s not free, I’m not using it” or who denigrates a person or company wanting money for something that takes a lot of effort to produce.
Here’s the thing: you always needed a Plex Pass for remote playback. I don’t think that has ever not been the case, since, as mentioned above, that’s a service Plex is providing through servers Plex owns and operates. So if you could not set up a self-hosted VPN (e.g., restrictive ISP) and wanted to play your personal media on the road, such as while staying at a hotel, then you needed a Plex Pass. Same to download media locally.
What appears to be changing is remote playback… for other users. Now this is a change that won’t affect me because I’m grandfathered in. My wife has her own Plex account without a Plex pass. My Plex account with the Plex Pass is what controls on the server. My wife can stream media from the server to her desktop on her personal Plex account without issue. That isn’t changing.
And if she had ever wanted to, she could use Remote Playback as well without needing a Plex Pass because her account has had access to my server since before the most recent changes. (I don’t have Remote Playback turned on in the server configuration and never have, though.) But that is what Plex cut off when the service changes went active at the end of April.
With those new changes, in short, every user authorized to access a Plex server remotely through the Remote Playback service must have their own Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass. The Plex Pass grants access to additional features, while the Remote Watch Pass is for streaming content only.
So what’s the problem? No, in all seriousness, what’s the issue here? The fact they decided to start charging for something previously offered for free? Get over yourself! If you’re seriously going to up and switch out your entire media streaming experience because Plex decided they needed to start charging for something, then you’re one of the small-minded people I alluded to in my Gillette article.
So why am I not switching away? First, none of the announced changes affect me except for the monthly price increase. And I have no problem paying monthly over buying the one-time Lifetime Plex Pass, since the monthly and annual passes give them a steady stream of revenue. I’m not even going to bother with buying the annual pass since that’ll only save me… $1.15 a month.
Plus, Plex… just works. Their mobile app… just works. Their desktop app… just works. (Provided you’re not trying to use the Linux version on Wayland with NVIDIA’s official drivers.) Aside from trying to use the FreeNAS Plex plugin at the beginning, I’ve literally never had issues. And the same with the Plex HTPC they briefly offered (and wish they’d bring back) that I ran off a Raspberry Pi to my television.
The only recent change I’m not fond of is requiring the separate PlexAmp app to play music on a mobile device. That was a little bit of a shock on my Memorial Day road trip, but pretty quick to get sorted once I had a moment to do so. Plus the PlexAmp app is slimmer anyway, being dedicated to just music.
So in the end… yeah, if Plex still work for you, stick with it. And buy the Plex Pass even if you aren’t using the features that require it just to give them money so they can keep paying developers to keep it rolling. I’ve stuck with it for so long and continue to financially support them because, again, it’s just worked. I would’ve switched it out long ago if that stopped being the case.
And to everyone else who is screaming about Plex’s recent changes and demanding everyone abandon it… calm down, go outside, and touch some grass and don’t go back online until you’ve regained the ability to think rationally…
