Plex appeal?!….Plex raising prices for Plex Pass…..

[NewtonMP2100]

….starting April 29, the Plex Pass will cost $6.99/mo or $69.99 a year wth a lifetime purchase option available for $249.99…..right now, the lifetime Plex Pass costs $120 while the monthly option is $4.99, annual $39.99……

…..also Plex is no longer going to offer remote playback for personal media as a free service……2 options: Plex Pass or pay for Remote Watch Pass $1.99/mo, $19.99/year………


…………raising prices………..?!

[special]

I never really looked much into Plex. I think it allows you to stream media you already own, right? Is this a nice thing to have or a must have?

[Will Collier]

special wrote:
I never really looked much into Plex. I think it allows you to stream media you already own, right? Is this a nice thing to have or a must have?

A lot of users swear by it. Personally, I swear AT Plex.

I have Infuse Pro on my AppleTV for local playback. Works great, plays anything I throw at it, and without all of Plex’s unnecessary UI complexity, requirement that you have to use their server software, and annoying habit of ignoring how I’ve curated my own media. $10/year..

[davemchine]

iTunes is a great way to keep media organized but provides almost no ability to play my media away from home without a slow cumbersome sync to a device.

Plex is the opposite. It offers NO organizational tools. It simply indexes what you have and allows you to play it wherever you are and on whatever device you wish as long as you have internet access.

In the past I would collect the entire families devices and sync media to them prior to going on a trip. It was a huge undertaking and very time consuming. With Plex this is completely unnecessary. While I find parts of Plex frustrating it is by far the best option I know of today. Some like emby but I think that takes more technical knowledge.

[freeradical]

If you want to organize things with Plex, you have to manually create a new library, and then point to where the data lives.

AFAIK, you cannot create a hierarchy.

It would for example, be nice to create a TV shows library, and inside that library, have a library for each TV show, and then another sub-library/folder for seasons.

[Gareth]

freeradical wrote:
If you want to organize things with Plex, you have to manually create a new library, and then point to where the data lives.

AFAIK, you cannot create a hierarchy.

It would for example, be nice to create a TV shows library, and inside that library, have a library for each TV show, and then another sub-library/folder for seasons.

I'm new to Plex, but my file storage is set up like that. TV Folder > Show Folder > Season Folders. Plex indexes it all just fine and it seems fine on the UI side (I see the TV shows, and then when I select one, I can select the season and then the episode).

Plex did not do a good job at auto-adjusting the resolution for out of home streaming. I had to manually select 480p for each episode when I was on a super slow connection.

[davemchine]

I just point the Plex server at my iTunes library and continue to use iTunes to organize the media.

In the client settings there is an option to auto adjust quality based on connection but like Gareth I've had mixed results with that. If I'm staying overnight at a location with slow internet I'll just click the three dots next to the show and specify a lower bitrate. If I'm staying long term someplace with slow internet I'll adjust the client to play all media at a lower bitrate so I don't have to fiddle with each playback. I haven't had to do that in a long time though. Of course syncing media is still an option and I use that for flights.

[DavidS]

I bought the lifetime pass when it was around $99. I think I got it for less on a Black Friday sale, probably 10+ years ago. It would work great, when it worked. With all the streaming services available now, I have not used it in a while.

[MikeF]

I use Emby Server (free) for our library of movies and TV shows. It lets you organize it any way you want. No restrictions on naming things which was one of the reasons I didn't go with Plex originally. And Emby lets you remotely log in and watch stuff -- for free still.

The only complaint I have and they have never fixed was that somewhere a year or two ago, the chapters default to 5 minute intervals. The actual video files have legit chapter locations (checked with Handbrake and VLC), Emby just no longer recognizes them and defaults to 5 minutes. All the stuff entered into the library earlier than that update is fine.

[sekker]

I have a Plex lifetime, but we abandoned it awhile back for a simple iTunes system as we did not have time to re-organize everything.

I think Plex makes it easier to deploy for second sites - for example, to have my son that's 1000 miles away access our home media content.

Has a funny origin, came out of XBMC - 'Xbox Media Center' - software.