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Plex Raises Premium Subscription Prices for First Time in Decade (www.plex.tv) 51

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Streaming service provider Plex announced Wednesday its first price increase in a decade for its premium Plex Pass subscription, raising monthly rates to $6.99 from $4.99, yearly subscriptions to $69.99 from $39.99, and lifetime access to $249.99 from $119.99, effective April 29. The company is also making remote playback of personal media a paid feature, introducing a Remote Watch Pass subscription at $1.99 monthly or $19.99 annually for users who don't need full Plex Pass features, and removing its one-time mobile activation fee.

The price increase applies to new and existing subscriptions, with the exception of existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders, the company said.

Plex Raises Premium Subscription Prices for First Time in Decade More | Reply

Plex Raises Premium Subscription Prices for First Time in Decade

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  • Glad I got a lifetime pass when I did then. Inflation marches on and profit-price spirals continue elsewhere.

    • Re:Ouch (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DrEnter ( 600510 ) * on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @04:14PM (#65245697)

      As the new prices don't kick-in until next month, it would be a good time to get a lifetime pass for anyone considering it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Maybe.. maybe not. First of all: this looks like corporate enshitification. Even the existing $4.99/month is a bit high for a service that is not much system resources on the service side. It's basically paying $60 every year for a piece of software that would traditionally be a one-time payment. For example: Windows 10 Home cost about $60, and that cost gets you set for several years at least until the next major upgrade.

      It's sketch that their cost of maintenance for a piece of software that i

      • Overpriced? I've had a lifetime subscription for 8 years. That works out to $15/year and the price/year keeps going down each year because it is lifetime. Even at the new lifetime price, it is still next to nothing over the long term. Nobody is going to opt for the monthly or yearly subscription options unless they just want to try it out before they commit to a lifetime subscription. They obviously structure the pricing options to push people toward the lifetime option. Traditional one-time payment? The da

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          That works out to $15/year and the price/year keeps going down each year because it is lifetime.

          No.. You missed the opportunity cost component of the lump sum. For example, suppose you invest money you don't end up spending and your investment return is about average for the market ~%8 post tax. $120 Invested at Year 1 is actually $222 today.

          That's $222 you do not have which you would have had if you did not spend the dollars. Furthermore, since Plex got the $119 they can invest the money in their

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Njovich ( 553857 )

      Don't worry, I'm sure they are already working on a plan to rescind those lifetime licenses. They just doubled the lifetime 'plan' and upped the annual plan by 60%. That's not a company looking out for their users. They are in squeeze mode, and they will either continue squeezing until the last drop, or they just want to generate some extra cash now to clean up the balance sheet for some takeover by a company that will do it.

      Main question is when and how. Perhaps they'll allow you to use some old 'unsupport

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 )

        Yeah, not out of the realm of possibility they're jostling for a takeover/buyout. But to be fair, this is also a company who didn't really raise prices for 10 years -- and who tried to partner with smart TV manufacturers as a revenue stream. (That never sounded extremely profitable to me, because television sales are really small profit-margins to start with. Every LCD you see for sale these days seems to be some kind of "Smart TV" primarily because they'd have to sell the set at a loss otherwise, to rema

      • I've already switched to Jellyfin for my primary viewing. Some of the extended family use Plex because that is what I first set them up with.

      • For most Lifetime license owners that'll probably just be the kick in the pants they need to migrate to an open source alternative...

    • Until they end that and force people off it.

      And don't say it wont happen - others companies have done this.

  • Clarifying on Remote Streaming (Score:5, Informative)

    by aitikin ( 909209 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @04:28PM (#65245743)

    Per TFA:

    IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS:
    For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee.

    so if you have a Plex Pass that remains active (including lifetime) any subscribers you have can still stream from your server without having to purchase a Plex Pass.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      Its not about the streaming itself with their license. Youre basically paying for the online presence of your server that lets you use the Plex app on your streaming boxes, the liveTV and DVR software and program guide, and a few other features. Using the non-licensed media server limits you to a web player for playback.

  • Yes, some of my friends were telling me about Plex and how you can install it on your own server as an app and then use it. But I looked at it once and refused to use it because I knew that it's going to get monetized and become subscription-ware.

    I helped my friend fix a problem on his Plex server at home streaming in his home to another television that was too slow because his local connection was fast, but his local server was trying to transcode everything in real time slowing everything down to a crawl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Keick ( 252453 )

      That's why I shifted to Jellyfin. I don't think it directly supports remote streaming - but that is likely solved with some dynamic dns tricks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kalpol ( 714519 )
      I ditched Plex ages ago when I noticed it was phoning home. What it was phoning home about, I never checked. I just went with Jellyfin which has been juuuuust fine along with a VPN into my network for remote access. (you can of course expose the web interface, if you like, but I don't). The worst thing about Jellyfin is that the music playing app on the Roku is lacking some features, but I can live with that. The mobile app is excellent.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      It doesnt transcode if you record your shit in the right format to begin with.

      • It transcodes based on the available bandwidth and the decoding capabilities of the client device (like if you're still rockin' an old Android tablet that can't do HEVC). Technically, you can have multiple copies of the same content on your server if you don't want to use real-time transcoding, but depending on the size of your media library, that can eat up a lot of drive space.

        Some people are also just kind of masochistic and don't mind watching 700mb H.264 rips on their 4k TV, so their content streams e

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by e3m4n ( 947977 )

          I always do H.264/265 1080p and use AC3 or EAC3 for the surround. A vast majority of streaming boxes support that. I use handbrake for the encoding and MakeMKV for the ripping. I did find doing h.265 at 1080p resulted in much better upscaling from my tv.

      • Or you can use hardware transcoding on any recent Intel or Nvidia GPU and not care.

        My Plex server has a GeForce 1050 in it, shared into the docker container. Transcoding 4k streams is child's play and makes the CPU go from 3% to 5%. Oh no!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by e3m4n ( 947977 )

          I would imagine 4k files are quite huge. I rip 1080p and sometimes use h.265 on the really big files to reduce the filesize. But I do have like 460 movies I ripped from Bluray. I found a decent h.265 rip at 1080p upscales really nicely.

        • Can't do hardware transcoding without a Plex pass.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mysidia ( 191772 )

            Wait.. You need _what_ now? Hardware encoding/transcoding the ffmpeg community did all the work on is being appropriated by Plex and locked behind a monthly subscription?? We need to get RMS over here to enforce the GPL now.

            • Nothing in the GPL says you can't charge for your software. There's literally countless of paid pieces of software out there which use ffmpeg or libav under the hood.

        • Or you can use hardware transcoding on any recent Intel or Nvidia GPU and not care.

          That implies you have a recent piece of hardware supporting transcoding, or what to spend money on it. My plex server is a micro ITX motherboard with built-in atom processor. Spending money only to have a higher ongoing power cost is not worth it when you can simply use the right format for not needing to transcode on every playback.

        • For Plex to use hardware accelerated transcoding, you have to be a paid subscriber. I wasn't happy to see that.

    • Quite a few years ago one of my friends asked if i wanted access to his Plex server. Even back then, the mobile app was paid. I said "yes" to my friend just to be polite, and then never used it beyond the free trial.

      I think at the time I was still using a modded Xbox with XBMC (which later became Kodi) connected to the TV in my living room. That Xbox actually seemed fine until I upgraded from the 40" 720p plasma TV to the 55" 4k TV that I have now.

    • Re:Plex = Subscription-Ware (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @07:28PM (#65246079)

      but his local server was trying to transcode everything in real time slowing everything down to a crawl

      Plex transcodes as you set it up to. The choice of how and when to transcode is entirely yours. If the client device can receive the stream and play it without buffering it doesn't transcode. If you disable it it doesn't transcode either. It's strange to blame software for a user who doesn't RTFM.

      I looked at the software and realized that it's just a bunch of crap of real-time transcoding and media serving which could be done by a dozen other completely open source and freeware applications instead of this subscription piece of crap.

      You don't need to pay a cent to stream on your network.

      And now they're telling you that you cannot play your own personal media remotely without a fee. Just validates my point.

      Virtually all other pieces of software require network access. If you have that then Plex doesn't require a fee either. What Plex is charging for is the ability to tunnel through things like CG-NAT where other software frequently fails. They are providing you a service for what you're paying for, and incidentally they also offer a lifetime fee with no ongoing subscription.

      • Yeah this was a very long time ago. I'll probably say close to 7 or 8 years ago. Yeah my friend it's not very computer literate so when I was over his house he asked me why is his Plex playback so slow and when I asked him to show me his configurations that I've never seen in the app before, I quickly browsed around and found something that said transcode videos. Don't remember at all what it was and once I turned it off his local Plex server was able to send the data the way it was and the local network.

  • And no one escapes inflation.

  • I've got a home media server and use Kodi on a mix of Fire Sticks and Onn (Walmart's rather inexpensive Android TV device) boxes with the TVs in my household. There's no need to do any real-time transcoding since the heavy lifting can be done just fine by the playback hardware (my content is a mix of H.264 and H.265).

    From what I understand, Plex somewhat simplifies making your content available to devices external to your network, but anytime I've actually wanted to watch something away from home, it's jus

  • So any body have any idea on what the pros and cons of Jellyfin are versus Plex?

    • Jellyfin gives you a highly configurable system that is free and open source.

      Plex offers compatibility with more equipment out of the box as well as flexibility in what you can use as a server - a nvidia shield TV works well as a plex server and client apps are available on many smart tvs without having to sideload.

      There is also plex TV, which is a free streaming service along the same lines as pluto.tv.

      I terms of performance and capability for playing your own media I'd say there isn't a lot in it. I think

    • Jellyfin uses far more ram on the server, doesn't have an app on my TV and the mobile app can't keep subtitles in sync with the video.

      On the other hand, it will do hardware encoding with paying a subscription.

    • I would use jellyfin if it had an xbox app but since it doesn't I use plex for movies on the big tv

    • I think, for a non-technophobe who is only interested in streaming his/her own media (which is probably 99% of the Plex userbase, actually) - Jellyfin server works fine. You just might have to find a Jellyfin-compatible client app if there's not a native Jellyfin client on your platform of choice.

      Even if you're not sure, it's easy enough to try Jellyfin - since it doesn't require you change your file's naming conventions or anything like that. Turn off Plex, turn on Jellyfin. If you decide Jellyfin's not go

    • If you use Plex for Live TV & DVR, your guide data is included in your Plex pass. To get reliable guide data for Jellyfin, you need to either subscribe to Schedules Direct for $35/year (which I did before Plex had Live TV), or fuss with XMLTV. The Plex Pass quickly pays for itself in just guide data, especially if you lock in the current price. Built-in commercial skip and intro/credit skip is also incredibly handy in Plex but requires some custom scripting in Jellyfin.
    • I've been using Jellyfin for a few months. I can't speak for other app platforms, but the Apple TV app needs serious work. It will sometimes just force subtitles on for you, even when you have them deselected. It also has trouble knowing when to get a refreshed media library from the server, and no way to manually trigger one.

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