We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). 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. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
If it costs them money to run it, it makes sense?
Yeah this seems fine; if they’re proxying the stream through their server it’s using their bandwidth which costs them money. It doesn’t make sense for them to not charge for it.
Why are they proxying the stream through their server though
If you’re not on the same local network as the server and it’s not configured to be accessible from the general internet, you need some sort of proxy to access it.
Not necessarily. Tailscale uses their own servers in order to do the negotiation, but once the connections are opened on both ends you should be directly connected to each other. All without port forwarding or any config on your end.
https://tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-works
Right, but IIRC anyone can go on the plex.tv website and use shared servers due to the “proxy”
Huh that’s really interesting, you’re right, and I learned a lot of new stuff about networking that I didn’t know before.
The self-hosted servers use UPnP and NAT-PMP to automatically forward the port used for media streaming.
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They typically don’t. They do proxy it if there is something preventing a direct connection, but the proxy bandwidth is super limited and results in pretty terrible playback quality.
They aren’t, all their server does is handle the login authentication afaik, and then streaming happens directly from the server to the user.
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They do actually provide a relay server if your personal server isn’t entirely accessible for whatever reason (for example I recently added a new NIC on my server which changed the IP and broke my port forwarding and my users were still able to watch my media via the relay). It is limited to low res quality but it is something they’re offering.
How else would it work?
Directly to the clients from the already self-hosted server, exactly like all the other media hosting software does. Lmao.
Port forwarding, tailscale…
… Nebula…
When I stream from my plex server it’s a direct connection between my device and the server. The only time it proxies through plex is if your server isn’t directly accessible, like ports are blocked or not forwarded properly.