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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Asweet@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 hours ago (7 children)

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

[–] dmention7@midwest.social 2 points 7 hours ago

It took me awhile to figure out the correct setup to get Sonarr, qbittorrent, and Jellyfin all to play nicely together, but once you get it figured out, it transparently addresses the problems of folder structure and allowing you to keep seeding content.

I had the same issue as you, initially, where I had to do a ton of library maintenance in Jellyfin. But since using Sonarr to monitor and import media from torrents to a structured media library, Jellyfin has been pretty hands-off

[–] remon@ani.social 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I think it's a common practice to keep the original file in the torrent folder and create a hard link with proper naming in the media folder.

[–] cm0002@toast.ooo 2 points 6 hours ago

Well if you want to continue with torrents, use Sonarr configured to torrent and configure it to move files by linking instead of moving

But I would HIGHLY recommend you switch to usenet for your source. You do have to have one or a couple cheap (talking 9-20$ a YEAR) indexer subscriptions and a subscription to a usenet provider itself (7-30$/month) but it's SO much faster, easier and you don't need to worry about seeding.

[–] Bongles@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 hours ago

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

[–] bowreality@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago

I have the same problem. There is a Lemmy community for Jellyfin. Maybe we need to ask there. I run both right now. Plex and Jellyfin. I use Jellyfin whenever I can but still have plex for that issue

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Not necessarily the same drive but the same pool. I have a ZFS pool with 6 drives and can use hardlinks just fine.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago

Yeah, I guess I should have been more clear. Hardlinks also work for things like RAID drives. But if your PC has a C:/ and D:/ drive, you can’t hardlink across the two.

[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago

if the hard links everyone else is mentionining aren't feasible for you, take a look at tvnamer. I've found it works quite well for scanning and renaming files, it even supports custom renaming pattern and you can pass it a tvdb series id if it doesn't automatically detect your series.

I use it cause all my torrenting is done on a different machine, and those files get transferred over to my server. so the arr suite isn't the best solution for me