Here’s some bad news for people who used Plex to stream content from Buddy’s media server to their TV for free. As it promised to do at the beginning of the year when it included the price of Plex Pass, the service begins to enforce the PayWall for remote broadcasts from the personal server to the TV Server. Plex is rolling out a change to its Roku app this week, followed by other apps for its TVs (for the likes of Fire TV, Apple TV and TV and recently started shipping a revamped version of its app to powerful TVUs.
Under the new way of things, the owner of a media server needs a Plex subscription to give other people remote access to it through the service. Plex Pass now costs $7 per month, $70 per year or $250 for a lifetime membership. Those who subscribe to such (or Remote Watch Pass for $ 2 per month or $ 20 per year) can remotely access someone else’s server, even if the owner of the server does not have a Plex Pass. Plex started to force the change on mobile devices before it did elsewhere.
It always decides when a company places a PayWall around a feature that was previously free. Plex needs to make money to keep things running, which is fair enough. But turning free features into paid ones is definitely not a consumer friendly way, especially when there are open source methods like JellyFin around.
