I only spent $90 and will never pay for streaming again

Finally it happened. My streaming services are all gone. I still pay for YouTube Premium – who would argue when it offers ad-free videos and music streaming for $14 a month – but every other streaming platform has stepped up, and that’s because I spent $90 on a Plex Pass lifetime membership, which is $25% off the regular price of $120 for Black Friday.

I went on a little trip with Plex. It started a few months ago when I decided to finally build a Plex server with a mini PC and an external hard drive. Then a few weeks ago I finally expanded this experience with a proper network-attached storage (NAS). Now I have the final piece of the puzzle in the form of a proper Plex Pass membership that I don’t have to pay for month after month.

I’m a little ahead of myself. In case you don’t know, Plex is a completely free media server application. Download it on almost anything and you can stream your media from any device with access to the app. I’ve used it alongside a large collection of physical media to eliminate streaming services that, frankly, are filled with content that I’m not remotely interested in watching.

Plex is one of those rare services that is truly free. You don’t get a limited version of the app where you feel like you’re hitting a paywall at every turn. Plex Pass, available for either a one-time lifetime fee or as a cheap $5 monthly membership, simply expands on an already excellent free service.

Plex Pass has a lot There are a lot of additional features, but there are a few that really make a difference for me. First the intro and the credits are skipped. I’m a habitual anime viewer, and while I enjoy a good intro from time to time, I don’t have precious minutes to waste bingeing on the same end credits sequence. Plex Pass lets you skip the intro and credits of shows.

Basically every major streaming platform has this feature, but the Plex Pass version is surprisingly robust. For anime in particular, Crunchyroll has one terrible Skip function. Half the time it doesn’t work or it only shows up after the intro is finished. I’ve never had this problem with Plex.

The other big feature is hardware transcoding. I primarily watch media from my Plex server on my local network, but I have it configured so that I can access my server even when I’m away from home. When streaming remotely this way, I need to transcode the video files, especially when watching a large 4K Blu-ray rip of a movie.

Transcoding with software is pathetically slow and usually results in an endless barrage of buffering and sub-720p image quality. For hardware transcoding, I can use the Intel Core i3-N305 CPU in my NAS as well as the integrated graphics to do the transcoding. Even a relatively weak CPU like this can break through multi-stream video transcoding.

Those are the two highlights for me, but there are a few other features that I use well with Plex Pass. You can download your media, which is great when I’m catching a flight. Plex Pass also offers HDR tone mapping for high-quality Blu-ray rips and support for multiple editions of the same content if you’re a mega-nerd about movies like me.

I’m really just scratching the surface here – Plexamp is basically Spotify for your personal music collection, complete with lyrics and downloads, and you can connect a TV antenna to not only stream live TV, but also use your server as a DVR use .

I’m not going to lie, managing all of this is a lot more work than just swallowing the fee your streaming service of choice will charge you. But it’s also a lot of fun. I’ve had a lot of fun configuring and optimizing my Plex server and I’m excited to achieve even more with Plex Pass. And as a bonus, I don’t have to pay nearly $100 a month for services I barely use.