Plex price hikes and new free feature limitations

[mistiry]

From: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2642674/...-hike.html

Once the new Plex Pass prices kick in, remote streaming of content in personal Plex media libraries won’t be free anymore. That means if you want to stream your Plex Media Server content outside your home—or, crucially, if you want to stream media from another Plex Media Server user who doesn’t have a Plex Pass—you’ll need to pay up. 

So, if you are a free-tier user you will no longer be able to access your own library remotely. Nor will you be able to watch other's libraries. And, if you're a paid user, you will not be able to remotely access a non-paid users' library.

Price is going up to $250USD for the lifetime pass. Monthly rates also going up, if you use the Plex Pass subscription.

[JollyRgrs]

I 100% have more than gotten my money's worth for when I paid for lifetime subscription YEARS ago. If you're on the edge of buying one or not, I'd say do it now. I was saying last night that if I didn't make use of the features for paid so far, and was debating it at the $250 price point... I'd just find something else (jellyfin or other alternative).

Just to list things that I use that are paid only:

OTA HDTV Antenna... DVR and TV Guide
Users... as in I can limit what content my kids see (by TV/MPAA rating or by custom labels or combination thereof)
Remote Viewing... I can use the mobile app (as can my family) to view Plex when not at home.
PlexAmp... not sure if that's still "only for paid" or not, but I use it more than spotify these days. music library in plex is nice, and they have a really cool "sonic/acoustic" fingerprinting to play "like" songs together. When you want to listen to a song radio based off of a great hard rock song, it doesn't mean you want to listen to their super soft power ballad next. Their feature figures this out and won't do that to you.
Transcoding via GPU... yeah, h.265 4k DV, all that stuff... not all my devices handle that. also, when on the go, if a lower bitrate is needed due to lack of great signal, transcoding down helps a lot.

probably other stuff I am missing, but those are some of my highlights that I make good use of that are for paid users only. Again, if you're not taking advantage of them now, and want to, I'd buy the $119 lifetime. When it goes to $250, I'd not bother. If you couldn't decide at the $119 price point, $250 definitely won't be worth it.

[mistiry]

I guess one positive is that I could watch my own library, while at home, on a mobile device now for free. And totally get it, there are use-cases out there for folks to need the features that it offers. I don't need remote viewing for my own library, and anyone else that I share with currently already has the lifetime pass. So I don't think this ultimately will mean much for me personally, except that the reason I had Jellyfin (mobile app viewing at home) goes away and I should be able to just use Plex like I do on PC and TV.

[JollyRgrs]

ay! I didn't even think of that. So you actually come out ahead