this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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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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[–] mic_check_one_two 8 points 1 week ago (12 children)
  1. It’s also the most complex to set up, and for many people the threshold is “walking your tech-illiterate mother-in-law through side loading it over the phone, because she lives 100 miles away… She’s afraid to touch her computer for anything except email and Facebook. And then resetting her password every 30 days, because she keeps locking herself out of it.” Suddenly the “just fucking sign into Plex and it automatically discovers your server” option becomes a lot more appealing.
[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Jellyfin is the most complex to set up, right? (Just making sure I’m reading this correctly)

[–] mic_check_one_two -1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

To set it up “correctly”, yes. It’ll require owning your own domain, being able to configure it properly (with either a static IP, or DDNS to point to your server at home), knowing how to automate https certificate refreshes, and a few other things. Plex just requires forwarding a port in your router.

[–] RaccoonBall@lemm.ee 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I thought self hosting was about learning networking basics like DNS and setting up let's encrypt.

So much whining in here about the most simple stuff being too complex.

[–] mic_check_one_two 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I disagree; Self-hosting is for a variety of things, and plenty of people (in fact, I’d say probably the majority of Plex users) just want to be able to pirate Netflix without a ton of setup.

Is learning some networking inevitable? Yeah, probably. But I also think this xkcd is apt. The reality is that what may be simple for you and me actually requires a lot of studying for a complete novice. Plenty of people will need to google what a port is, let alone how to forward one. And that’s assuming they even know the word “port” to google. Plenty of people won’t even know where to start.

And true novices are hopefully going to be extremely wary of any info they find online. It’s easy to fuck something up without even realizing it, and leave your entire system exposed; especially when the braindead “lol just forward your Jellyfin port and use your public IP” advice is posted somewhere in every single advice thread.

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