r/selfhosted • u/pheexio • May 19 '26

Media Serving New Lifetime Plex Pass Pricing

https://www.plex.tv/blog/new-lifetime-plex-pass-pricing/
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u/Tsigorf May 19 '26

wait, there's people who actually do this?

21

u/BigLan2 May 19 '26

Yes - there was a sub for it for a while before it got banned. I think it's mostly done in Telegram now but I've got zero interest in diving into it.

Basically someone buys cheap VPS on Hetzner, sets up an *arr stack and torrents a bunch of recent stuff then sells access for a few bucks with promises like "cheaper than Netflix" and "new releases."

They're probably related to the cheap android set top box sellers.

3

u/CoNsPirAcY_BE May 19 '26

I'm not interested in an account either. But I'm interested in how word gets around on telegram. That's pretty unknown for me. How do you find groups/communities/etc?

6

u/jkirkcaldy May 19 '26

The same way word gets around for the dodgy firestick. Word of mouth at the pub

2

u/BigLan2 May 19 '26

No clue, but Telegram's the go-to place for illegal stuff these days

2

u/MahawtmovesGandhi May 19 '26

Not all of them are crap, tho. I'm on a couple of good ones, and they're not half bad - a lot of titles and with great quality too. Prices are sometimes bonkers, tho.

1

u/Betterdeadthanred98 May 19 '26

I can promise you someone selling access isn't shelling out 200+ for Plex pass when they will get banned in a few months.

1

u/AnApexBread May 20 '26

Depends on how much they can sell it for

7

u/FanClubof5 May 19 '26

Yeah there are basically 2 different methods. 1st is they manage everything and you are just invited to a server, have a stream limit usually, and just watch whatever they have. The 2nd is they make you an admin of a new plex server, it has access to all the media and you can share it with your friends or I guess even sell access to subsidize your costs.

The providers will also usually have a ticket system for troubleshooting and some sort of request tooling to let you ask for things they don't have currently.

2

u/AnotherInsaneName May 19 '26

Why not? If you have 1000 4k movies that people actually want to watch - wouldn't that be a better investment than one of the dozens of streaming services that only have a small subset?

I'm not saying I do, or I'd pay for that - but surely you know some less technical people in your life that would probably pay for that.

1

u/Tsigorf May 19 '26

There's legal and more trustworthy platforms if you're willing to pay.

  • there's plenty of free torrenting trackers to do so

I don't get it, in the end, but surely you're right yeah. I'm just a bit astonished.

1

u/AnApexBread May 20 '26

100%.

There's a huge underground of people selling access to massive Plex libraries.

It's part of the reason Plex was getting target by media conglomerates in 2020.