I want to unlock the ability to view content on my mobile device. I can do that with a one-time purchase (payed with google opinion rewards) or with a subscription. I want to unlock the ability for my entire family though, across multiple devices. Do I have to pay the “one-time payment” for every device? If so, the plex subscription might be worth it. Is there any other major benefit to having a plex subscription?
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I got the 100 bucks life-time pass and couldn’t be happier with it. Totally worth it if you use it a lot.
Some other benefits are the “skip intro” feature and the ability to download from other people’s libraries.
Regarding downloading from other people’s libraries, I believe they need to allow you to do so. I have a library that was shared with me, but I can’t download anything from them, although I can save it “offline” via the Plex app. The unfortunate thing is that the offline function doesn’t not work very well at all, it works about 20% of the time for me on iOS and Android.
Yes they have to allow it and they also need a plex pass on their end. (Though older accounts might not as this was a recent change and wasn’t applied retroactive).
I used to have one. Then I asked myself why I was paying someone else to access my own stuff.
you’re not wrong… but you gotta give credit where credit is due. Plex does a good job of having a client on every platform. Telling family and friends “search for plex on your devices app store” is a whole hell of a lot easier than having them jump thru all the hoops that it takes for jellyfin to work.
- Open in browser.
Done. Doesn’t seem like that many hoops.
OK great. Now to that on your Roku, Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, smart phone, etc. There aren’t clients for every platform and the ones that do exist frankly are just not even close to as polished looking as Plex is.
Fortunately Roku doesn’t exist in my country. Jellyfin has apps for AndroidTV, AppleTV and smartphones. It really only lacks an app for consoles
Not a good option, at least on desktop it doesn’t direct play hevc
Through a subscription fee, no less.
So you built your own software to access your own stuff?
Because Plex provides you with the user interface to access your own content. Atleast that’s how I like to think about it
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Agreed. But jellyfin is a lot less polished and harder to use for the layman
Jellyfin is shit
What sealed the deal for me was skip intro. Incredible feature I don’t believe any other option has.
Wait for lifetime memberships to go on sale if you can. There are a few sales a year. Usually on Black Friday.
Jellyfin has a skip intro plugin that is easy to install and works great from my experience.
Jellyfin plug-in to skip intros: https://github.com/ConfusedPolarBear/intro-skipper
Jellyfin also has skip intro
Interesting. Detected the same way, audio scan? Maybe I need to finally try it out.
I bought the lifetime pass when it went on sale a few years ago. I have used the hell out of it and loved plexamp before that feature was available to non Plex pass users. If I had to buy it now, I might just go with an open source alternative like jellyfin.
What worked for me was subscribing for a month, then cancelling. A couple months later, I got an offer for discounted PlexPass, including the lifetime subscription.
I feel like it is, but, be on the lookout for a sale and get the lifetime option when there’s a sale.
Do you know if there’s any frequency to the sale? Like, once per year? Once per quarter? Every major holiday? Or you haven’t a clue?
Pretty sure they do the discount on Black Friday. Or used to, anyway.
I’m not sure. I remember I was waiting for it to go on sale when I needed it, and it happened pretty quickly. But I don’t know if it happens at any set intervals.
It goes on sale a couple times a year. If you check Slickdeals, you can find the last few times it was on sale. It is always on sale during Black Friday though.
I sub for the skip intros alone, turns out it affects everyone who watches on your server which is great.
I don’t really utilise any other aspects of Plex Pass but £4 isn’t much to me and Plex is insanely useful to me.
If you pay the one time fee or the subscription fee, the system unlocks all the paid features for all of the users on your account. Under your account you can have multiple users, each with their own viewing history (and restrictions, iirc). So if your users log into Plex on their devices using your account username and password - abbadon420 and Hunter1 - and then select their user profile, they will all have access to the features.
The one time fee unlocks forever (the lifetime of Plex, of course) and the subscription unlocks the features for the term of the subscription and then you revert back.
I used to have a Plex Pass, but I dont think it’s worth it anymore. I have remote access via Tailscale, which I use for a number of other services as well.
No. Just use Jellyfin
I dig the hardware transcoding, the hdr-sdr tone mapping and the tablet App.
If you use Plex free and never found the limitations to be a burden, you have your answer.
All in all I personally find that a one time unlimited subscription is a great deal that is rarely seen nowadays
Plex subscription is crap, this is coming from someone who had one. I’d recommend using something else like emby or jellyfin
Not sure if you wanna weigh this in as a reason to choose one or the other, but with the one-time purchase you can only stream via Plex on mobile. If you want to download the file and then watch it at a later time WITHOUT streaming you need Plex Lifetime (I made this error!)
There are modded versions of the android app that let you play on mobile without the pass, check mobilism.
Yeah, but the on-time thing is only a couple bucks. I trust that money will be put to good use.
Normally people are using https://jellyfin.org/ although i have never used it so I’m not sure if it offers the same functionality but it’s worth a try.
I had the same desires and switched to Jellyfin. It definitely has its idiosyncracies but I don’t regret the switch.
