Plex Will Start Cracking Down on Free Remote Streaming Access This Week

Plex is starting to enforce its caller rules, which forestall users from remotely accessing a idiosyncratic media server without a subscription fee.

Previously, radical extracurricular of a server owner’s web could entree the owner’s media room done Plex for free. Under the caller rules announced successful March, a server proprietor needs to person a Plex Pass subscription, which starts astatine $7 per month, to assistance users distant entree to their server. Alternatively, idiosyncratic tin remotely entree different person’s Plex server by buying their ain Plex Pass oregon a Remote Watch Pass, which is simply a subscription with less features than a Plex Pass and that Plex started selling successful April for a $2 per period starting price.

Plex’s caller rules took effect connected April 29. According to a caller Plex forums station by a Plex worker that How-To Geek spotted today, the changes are rolling retired this week, with a subscription being required for radical utilizing Plex’s Roku OS app for distant access. The Plex worker added:

This request alteration for distant streaming volition travel to each different Plex TV apps (Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, etc.) and immoderate third-party clients utilizing the API to connection distant streaming successful 2026.

Plex started arsenic a Mac larboard of the Xbox Media Center task successful 2009 earlier evolving into a media server institution and, much recently, a streaming work provider. Its caller distant entree rules volition beryllium a trial for the company, which has been challenging long-time users with galore changes implicit the past year, including a Plex Pass terms hike, a foray into renting retired officially licensed movies, and the instauration of societal features and a mobile app redesign.

Plex has antecedently emphasized its request to support up with “rising costs,” which see providing enactment for galore devices and codecs. It has besides said it needs wealth to instrumentality caller features, including an integration with Common Sense Media, a caller “bespoke server absorption app” for managing server users, and “an unfastened and documented API for server integrations,” including customized metadata agents,” per a March blog post.

In January 2024, TechCrunch reported that Plex was nearing profitability and raised $40 cardinal successful backing (Plex raised a $50 cardinal maturation equity round in 2021). Theoretically, the caller distant entree rules tin besides summation subscription gross and assistance Plex’s backers spot returns connected their investments.

However, Plex’s improvement could isolate long-time users who person relied connected Plex arsenic a media server for years and those who aren’t funny successful subscriptions, FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels, oregon renting movies. Plex is improbable to springiness up connected its streaming business, though. In 2023, Scott Hancock, Plex’s then-VP of marketing, said that Plex had much radical utilizing its online streaming work than utilizing its media server features since 2022. For radical seeking bundle packages much squarely focused connected media hosting, Plex alternatives, similar Jellyfin, progressively look attractive.

This communicative primitively appeared on Ars Technica.