this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Plex has paywalled my server! (lemmy.giftedmc.com)
submitted 1 day ago by haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.

I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.

I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.

Even a pop up that says "we need you to donate please" would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.

Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.

In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.

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[–] HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world 8 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (2 children)

As was stated on the first post you made about this, it's a dns or nat reflection issue.

Plex sees you accessing it through your external IP address, and not through your lan IP.

I had a similar problem, and had to roll back some nat changes I made, and now it's working fine again.

Meanwhile, free remote streaming works fine if you have a proper VPN setup. I just tested it, and was able to stream to my phone, through the Plex app, over my tailscale VPN, and I do not have Plex pass on the server or on my phone...

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

This sounds like a whole lot of convoluted bullshit to use Plex locally and "looking local" through VPN solutions when you could just roll a Jellyfin instance and do things a more straightforward way..

[–] HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah, but my wife and kid also use it, and they're not going to be happy if I change things.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 6 points 4 hours ago

I did not make a "first" or "second" post about this. This is it.

[–] PhAzE@lemmy.ca 32 points 23 hours ago (6 children)

Plex has pay walled FREE servers streaming to FREE clients only.

If you have a plex watch pass (for client) you're good and can stream from any server. If you have a plex pass (for server) any one can stream from your server. But you have to have one or the other.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 16 minutes ago

Yes. But it used to be free to watch remotely. It's 99% your own hardware doing everything. Their services get used for discovery, not as proxies for the connection itself, AFAIK.

You already had to pay them to allow transcoding with your own GPU, etc.

Right now it's still not too bad, but just watch, enshittification will affect paid users too. For one, I expect the lifetime pass to go away, and go away retroactively eventually.

[–] HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

And I just tested streaming from my free server to my free phone while said server is at my house, and my phone is with me at work.

Works fine over a VPN.

[–] PhAzE@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 hours ago

Yep, VPN will allow you to be on the same local network, and they're only pay walling remote play.

[–] MSids@lemmy.world 10 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

For software I like made by people getting paid, I was happy to pay the one time fee. It's really good, secure, and downloads are fast now.

[–] JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Ditto. There is a crowd on Lemmy who seem to get angry whenever people are happy to pay for software and I do not understand it. Surely we want developers to be paid for their hard work? Don't we want them to able to comfortably live?

[–] MSids@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

Agreed. I've stated it before in other threads, and I'll say it again here, but if they asked me in 5 years to pay another $89 or whatever in continuing support for a badge on my server I'd happily do it. Plex is really good. Great UI, great apps, great external enrichments like trailers/subtitles/ratings/actor info, and Plexamp is 9.5/10 for music.

Their biggest fault is how they communicated about the change for remote users. I did have a few family members get the email and ask if they were going to have to start paying monthly now, but they've never been on a free server. They should have stated more clearly than if you were on a Plex Pass server that no change is required.

[–] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago

Best 70-ish euro I spent over a decade ago

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[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 26 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

What about switching to Jellyfin?

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 15 points 23 hours ago

Already done. Thanks for the suggestion though. :)

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 36 points 1 day ago (29 children)

It's pretty rare that a company starts taking away free features and doesn't end up fucking payers in the end.

The biggest bar to Jellyfin is TV clients, the second biggest is security.

TV clients can be fixed with a one-time purchase of a $20 android TV stick. If viewing your familys ARR content isn't worth $20 you probably don't need to do it anyway.

Security for remote streaming is a harder thing to handle. Most people are capable of port forwarding, But just hanging a smallish public project out there in the open is always a dicey proposition. It honestly needs real fail2ban, probably SSL, 2FA and password complexity requirements.

We could probably make a jellyfin helper container to handle some of this. Walk people through Let's Encrypt, dynDNS, port forwarding tests, add fail2ban with a firewall, maybe even slap suricata in it.

We need to convince the project to add 2FA and password complexity requirements.

I don't know guys what do you think is it crazy? does it make sense? Would anybody actually use it?

[–] rollerbang@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I access my stuff via VPN. As for sharing with others, I simply don't do that. VPN is still an option though. Or temporary client whitelisting, etc.

[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 0 points 9 hours ago

Yeaaah ! Most people anyway have some kind of VPN installed on their device... Just slap in a wireguard VPN config to tunnel your traffic home... bOOm jellyfin everywhere and 99% secure !

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[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 35 points 1 day ago (32 children)

Old news, but time for Jellyfin. I made the switch a couple months ago. Some minor teething issues, but better, IMO, especially now as my family all have LDAP users and that just works.

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