Selfhosted

Aaaand that’s one of the reasons why I got rid of Plex. “Bought” it, then they found some other feature to paywall. Bought that, then another feature. Then it stopped playing files of certain extensions through chromecast. Fuck that. Put together Jellyfin and moved my collection over. Zero trouble since.

y'all don't use jellyfin???

for music: navidrome

I know Plex is a business that has to make money, but if I hadn't bought a lifetime pass for $50 a decade ago, I'd have dropped them at this point.

Jellyfin or Emby.

What’s plex better at?

I agree, streaming on local network should be free, what is.

I had other reasons too, so a while back I tried other self hosted solutions and I got back to Plex, it is more polished and a cleaner user experience. I'm happy to pay for a well written software as long as it is reasonable and not too greedy.

Plex recently switched the remote watch thing to be behind a paywall. If your PC/App was also on the same local network it would probably work.

I don't get this? is this because I have a lifetime pass?

I used Plex about 12 years ago. The first time my internet went down, and I couldn't use it, I stopped using it. Garbage. Not what I wanted.

I used Windows Media Center as long as I could, I loved it. But, eventually, I had to leave Windows 8 behind. Now I use Jellyfin and SABnzbd, it works okay most of the time, but I don't serve media to the outside, so I don't know if it works for that.

User error, at least you figured it out. It’s always free to stream in your own network.

People often involved with piracy probably love entering personal information in that context...