this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April (www.plex.tv)
submitted 2 days ago by Sl00k@programming.dev to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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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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[–] captainjaneway@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

In a nutshell, if your app isn’t able to make a direct connection to your Plex Media Server when you’re away from home, we can act as sort of a middle man and “relay” the stream from your server to your app. To accomplish this, your Plex Media Server establishes a secure connection to one of our Relay servers. Your app then also connects securely to the same Relay server and accesses the stream from your Plex Media Server. (In technical terms, the content is tunneled through.)

So, your Plex Media Server basically “relays” the media stream through our server so that your app can access it since the app can’t connect with your server directly.

Source: https://support.plex.tv/articles/216766168-accessing-a-server-through-relay/

It's not a requirement to stream and it's sort of dumb they are lumping this relay service as a part of the remote streaming. Remote streaming should be allowed for free - if you are not a subscriber. The relay should just be a paid service, which makes sense. But if it's a direct connection to my server, it should be free.

That being said, I understand how Plex may have built some technical debt into this relay system. It might be hard for them to decouple the relay from the remote streaming. What they should have done is:

We are removing the relay service as a free service, but you can still do remote streaming with a direct connection.

And they should have built their architecture in a way that's easy to decouple the two services.

[–] Tilgare@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for that - I wasn't aware of the relay service, but completely agree that this is what they should be charging for and not the remote play feature in its entirety. I'll probably drag it out for a while by refusing to update the app and server... Might be able to make it work with Tailscale as others have suggested.

In the past I've paid for a month or two when I wanted to download to my devices remotely (and I think that's the singular feature that I've ever cared about in the Plex pass). But to take features away and then try and charge me for them is a bridge too far, I can't support that bad behavior.

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

I paid for the lifetime membership ~6 years ago so I'm going to stick with it. Plus I just use it for my own home. It's not like I'm serving a bunch of other clients. But I'll switch to Jellyfin if the lifetime membership ever gets taken away.

[–] Tilgare@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

I considered it when they warned about the increase and offered it at $75, but I just didn't have the money to spend back then. Felt pretty stupid for not doing it, but I don't even know what paid features they offer, and I'm clearly not missing them.

99% of my usage is at home as well, so this is unlikely to affect me - until that random 1% anyhow.