I have an old lifetime pass. Should I sell it?
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
107 points (95.7% liked)
Technology
84816 readers
4101 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
And Jellyfin downloads start spiking.
Huh, coincidence I guess.
Incase you haven't heard it enough, jellyfin is free and not anymore difficult to set up. If I can figure it out then you're probably well capable of it.
There is still no feature parity. I even have Emby lifetime but still switched back to Plex, because it is unfortunately so much better.
Jellyfin lacks a good head engineer, which is why it will always be subpar to Plex and also Emby
Unless something has changed, it doesn't have the remote streaming capabilities of Plex. Not saying one can't remote stream, but it's not as simple as installing a client and logging in. It requires network config and security, VPNs, and each client to setup stuff too. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that though.
Plex has been enshitifying but I'm on the lifetime pass so for me things are free and just work still.
It really is as simple as installing a client and logging in. Simpler, actually. You can just open it in a browser and login. Any hosting is going to require network config, but it's just port forwarding which is as basic as it gets
I'm seeing that you can use VPN like tailscale, setup a reverse proxy, or just open ports. Just opening ports and giving direct access is a security vulnerability and not recommended. VPN is easy, but not something I would want to try and get my clients to sign up for and show them how to use. Reverse proxy seems like the best option, but that's not easier than just installing the Plex client for streaming that has the proxy built in.
A VPN has never been required. You can always just configure a port forward and/or firewall on your router.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/post-install/networking/
It's not particularly difficult, and it's fully documented.
And the jellyfin developers have said that several of the security concerns around doing this will likely never be resolved.
Also if you want HTTPS, and goodlordits2026ofcourseyoudo, this is absolutely not as easy as opening a port.
Fair enough! I run my own kubernetes cluster at home, that has JF as a service 😅
So I may be slightly out of touch
I have that and more but won't set this up
You're right in that its fully documented, but it seems your understanding differs from the documentation. Your provided link explicitly says, "Opening a port directly to the Internet is therefore insecure and not recommended."
I think I deleted Plex$ I think 4 or 5 years ago and never looked back. Jellyfin is 1:1 replacement for me. I plugged it to my certbot Letsencrypt certificates, did ip forward on exit of my wireguard tunnel connected to my domain and can play my stuff anywhere. It runs fine on old thin client qith ancient quad-core AMD GX cpu. No transcoding acceleration, but I have net fast everywhere I go, so I don't need it.
The only thing keeping me with Plex (bought lifetime like 10 years ago) is that I serve content to elderly family members in two different countries other than the one I live in.
Otherwise I'd be Jellyfin all the way!
You can do this with Jellyfin too, there's lots of guides online on how to set it up. Requires a bit of self-hosting knowledge, but if you're reading this there's a good chance you have that.
Great; how do I setup Tailscale on my Roku streaming box since I shouldn’t open Jellyfin ports to the Internet?
If you are hosting more than just Jellyfin, which of course you are because no one can stop at one, then you'll need a reverse proxy anyway.
Jellyfin does provide a reverse proxy guide in the docs, but I do think that people over estimate the ability of an average person to self host an application. It's not going to be as easy as Plex for the hoster, but when set up with that aim then you can make it that easy for the users.
We're on Lemmy so there's heaps of experience around, if you need help in setting up Jellyfin using a domain and reverse proxy so it's available over the internet then give it a go and when you get stuck ask in !selfhosted@lemmy.world
Or if that fails I'll help
And this right here is exactly why I chose Jellyfin. If it's owned by a company it will just get worse over time.
It was definitely worth it for the $40 I paid a long time ago. I used it a little longer than desired because Jellyfin's DVR support wasn't always there. It is now and i haven't used Plex in over a year.
IMHO, Jellyfin needs a bit better UI, but Plex is actively making theirs worse, so...
I think i paid $75 or $90 probably a decade ago or more now and think it was worth it, and still use it, but $750 is just nuts. At this price, they clearly don't want anyone actually buying it but without having to face the backlash of outright removing the option altogether. I would imagine one of their next steps will be to remove or restrict people like me who bought it long ago. We'll probably get locked to a specific version that comes out right before some major update that fixes long held issues that people have complained about for years.
I would switch to Jellyfin but Plex makes sharing secure and easy and it is full of great features for the price I paid long ago. I also have a lifetime pass with Emby that I bought during a dark period of Plex but they also went closed source (which spawned Jellyfin into existence) and always felt much less refined than Plex in most areas.
And that's how you get a major piracy community around your product.
I think you can setup Jellyfin for Kodi.
You can. It syncs the Jellyfin database into the Kodi one so you browse with Kodi but the content comes from Jellyfin. Works pretty great really.
I paid like 75 euros for it a long time ago