CmdrShepard42

I agree to just fill up the HDD with media and bring that to play with VLC. Setting up the *arrs and usenet seems like a lot.

Like someone else suggested, maybe just bring a laptop and then you can manually torrent the few new episodes of whatever show you're currently watching rather than dealing with the automation aspect.

Apparently it's not a winning strategy to have Democrats run for elections either, so what's there to lose?

AirVPN is the other choice here that offers port forwarding still.

They also offer freeleech torrents that don't count toward your DL ratio to help stimulate the "economy."

I had not seen that about the Plex Pass doubling.

Yep the most recent delta shows the price of the Seagate drive increasing over what it was in early 2024 and 2023. I can attest to this personally as I've been buying at least one 8-14TB drive each year since 2018 and back then I could get new 8TB drives at $105 but now WD wants $176 for the same 8TB Easystore. Your link shows multiple different options each quarter which is an apples to oranges comparison.

You sound like a boomer talking about the house they bought decades ago for $75,000.

Oh really when the license is still the same exact $120 price a decade later? Have you ever heard of inflation? Apparently not as you talk about how things used to be cheaper while not even realizing that this $120 license should cost $162 if they had kept up with inflation, but please keep telling us about how you used to wear an onion on your belt back when prices were cheaper as you call others "boomers."

How have they doubled their prices? The monthly fee and lifetime license are still the same price and they've always charged for Android and iOS playback if you didn't have the Plex Pass. I won't argue that this change is a good thing but I don't think it's anywhere near as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. They aren't changing anyone now who streams from a server that has the Plex Pass so now my users can watch on their mobile devices for free using a license I paid for once close to a decade ago.

HDD manufacturers have been increasing their prices as of late for the same products that were previously cheaper, and Mullvad is still charging you the same monthly fee even though they've removed important features like port forwarding, so what's the difference? Hosting a server has costs associated with it and this is another one of those costs if you want to use their completely optional solution to use and share your library.

It doesn't do anything more for you than to stream your own media

Sure it does, which is why we're not all using VLC to stream our media.

Furthermore, they do provide a simple way to share our media with friends and family via their authentication servers along with their relay servers if direct access to your server goes down for whatever reason which have associated costs. I have a lot of my own gripes about Plex, but this particular change is probably at the bottom of the list, and I think acting like this software has zero value is disparaging not only Plex but Jellyfin and the army of volunteers over there working hard to make their product better for you and everyone else at no cost. You're essentially saying all their work is worthless since their product accomplishes all the same things as Plex.

That seems wrong to me as you're just making archive.org a bigger target when you know it's not something they can legally host (hence the VPN and anon email).

This is like complaining that you have to spend money on HDDs or a VPN.

Now people expect to pay once and get upgrades forever.

Because they're called "lifetime passes" voluntarily offered by the company. It seems weird to act like people are being entitled about this or that their $75-$120 one-time payment is meaningless compared to someone who's only paid $5 or worse using it for free.

I have had both a Plex and Emby lifetime subscription since around 2018 and relied on Emby for quite a while during Plexs shenanigans 5-6 years ago but still think Plex and Jellyfin are the only true options. Emby is just an amalgamation of the worst qualities of Plex and Jellyfin. It "just works" as a media player in the same way that VLC "just works" but doesn't offer a whole lot outside of that especially nothing that these other two don't offer. Plex is the "polished but expensive and limited" solution and Jellyfin is the "free, some work required, and open" solution.