Plex has confirmed that it will require a Remote Watch Pass or Plex Pass for remote streaming on its TV apps. The change is going into effect for the Roku app first, followed by all other TV apps and third-party clients in 2026.

Earlier this year, Plex increased its pricing for Plex Pass and stopped supporting all options for free remote streaming in the Plex apps, such as adding a custom server connection in the app settings. The company said at the time, “The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature.” That’s also when Plex introduced the Remote Watch Pass as a less expensive way to enable remote streaming again.

Plex is now rolling out the remote watch changes to its Roku TV app. If you have Plex Pass, or the owner of the server you’re streaming from has Plex Pass, you don’t need to do anything. Otherwise, if you are streaming on a different network from the server’s home network, you need Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass.

  • Asweet@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    I tried setting up Jellyfin a while ago, but ran into a lot of difficulties with TV show matching. Plex is a lot better at grabbing a pack of loosely organized files and understanding episode structure without renaming or moving files, which is great for continuing to seed files that are in the library.

    I haven’t seen anyone discuss this, so maybe I’m doing something wrong? If not, this is the one major blocker that I have before rolling it out Jellyfin as an alternative to the people I’ve shared my plex server with.

    Really want that in place because the writing seems to be on the wall (in flashing neon) about the direction Plex is going

    • Bongles@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      I ended up using tiny media manager to move and rename all of my files. Fixes that issue.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      01·
      10 days ago

      Plex is a lot better at grabbing a pack of loosely organized files and understanding episode structure without renaming or moving files, which is great for continuing to seed files that are in the library.

      You may want to look into the *arr suite. Sonarr for managing TV show downloads, Radarr for managing movie downloads, Jellyseerr for managing media requests, Prowlarr for managing torrent/usenet indexers (search engines), Cleanuparr for automatic download management, and Huntarr for automatic downloads.

      I haven’t seen anyone discuss this, so maybe I’m doing something wrong?

      The go-to these days is to use hardlinks, which will allow you to have the files show up in two places at once. Sort of like a shortcut, but it actually shows the true file instead of simply pointing to a different file location. One stays in your torrent’s location for seeding, and a second hardlink is created in your media folder, with proper naming structure for Plex/Jellyfin to find. The *arr suite automates that process. It tracks your downloads, and automatically creates Plex/Jellyfin file names in the corresponding library folders when the download is completed.

      It’s the best in every sense:

      • You can continue seeding.
      • You don’t need to keep multiple copies of the same file, because the hardlink in your library folder is pointing to the same file as the torrent. So it doesn’t take up twice as much space on your drive.
      • You get proper naming conventions for your media discovery.
      • You don’t need to manually manage your library.

      The big downside to hardlinks is that they can’t be used across drives or partitions. The hardlink can only point to a file on the same drive. So if your torrent download folder is on a different drive than your library folders, you can’t use hardlinks.