Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
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My dude if you are connecting from outside your local network you are "exposed" to the Internet in some way. What magic are you thinking Plex is doing? Is someone hand deliverying the packets via USPS?
In some way is different from directly, on Plex you're behind a relay server so it's akin to being behind a VPS running Authentik/Authelia in front of the service on your home. Compromising the relay server does not necessarily compromises your home server, so it's not direct like putting Jellyfin on a reverse Proxy would be.
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And somehow you think that Plex isn't exposing your server to the Internet for streaming while not on your local network?
Okay there Mr. Madison.
It's not, not directly at least, and that's what everyone is ignoring here. You probably understand the value on Authelia/Authentik but you're failing to see that the Plex relay server is taking that same mantle here, so even if someone managed to compromise the relay server it's still not on your home server, whereas exposing jellyfin directly to the internet only requires one service to be compromised.
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Yes exactly. What do you think plex is doing?
Using a relay server to separate online from home connection
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I've said it for years that Plex is shit because of their license and the fact that you have no control everyone said no it's fine it's my media fucking look at it now
Yeah exactly. I tried to set it up once, installed it on a NAS box, and it starts talking about me making a cloud account. Why do I need a cloud account to log into my own hardware on my own network?
I do not want the cloud
I do not need the cloud
I will say it very loud
No cloud, no cloud, no cloud.But apparently it's set up so the only way to log into your own locally hosted software on your own locally hosted hardware is with an external cloud account.
To that I said no thank you and uninstalled it.
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Yeah, I've written some custom css to get some better wrapping of libraries and such.
There's also the community themes worth looking into.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/css-customization/#community-themesDamn, all this time using JF and I never thought of theming it.
While I use it on a SFF PC I have a couple of users that access my server via a couple of CCwGTV Chromecasts I handed them and so, unable to test since I don't have one to hand but can you / does it theme the UI on the Chromecast too?
Cheers!
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Worst case scenario, you could just run Tailscale directly on your Jellyfin server.
Why is that the worst case it's goes literally like this: install on your server, install on the other decide (phone, laptop), connect to the same account and BOOM works
Because running it on your router gives you access to the entire network of devices, not just the Jellyfin server.
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Dumb question but should there be VPNs operating on both ends, server and client? Or just the client because I'm guessing the server might change the connection address.
A VPN Server on the server or home network (look into PiVPN for instance), and a VPN Client on clients (look at openvpn for instance).
Good luck and let me know if you have any further questions - I'm more than happy to answer!
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That's nice.
That doesn't work if you are on an airplane (unless you want to spend the entire flight downloading one episode). Or if you just don't want to deal with hotel wifi. Or if you just don't want to expose your internal home network at all.
Which is the point and why this is one of those big features of plex that there are so many tickets and requests to get into jellyfin et al. Because yes, you can just copy files from your NAS to your phone's internal storage (assuming you don't care about transcoding and the like)... at which point there isn't much use to a metadata oriented media server/service.
Or you can just set up Plex to always download the next 10 episodes of whatever show you are watching when it has network access. I mean... that probably won't work (see: 40%) but when it does, it is awesome. Which is the "it just works" functionality.
Which gets back to the issue where, because it is FOSS, it is the greatest thing ever and anyone asking for anything else is wrong and stupid. Which is a shame because if the Jellyfin devs could actually get the "download the next N episodes" functionality to reliably work (even at 80-90%) it would be a killer app. And, for what it is worth, I have liked the devs a lot when I interacted with them in the past. But the users and evangelists are just... what we can see in this thread.
You can just download the episodes though? Like right in Jellyfin:
Because yes, you can just copy files from your NAS to your phone's internal storage (assuming you don't care about transcoding and the like)... at which point there isn't much use to a metadata oriented media server/service.
No you do not need to do any of that.
Or you can just set up Plex to always download the next 10 episodes of whatever show you are watching when it has network access. I mean... that probably won't work (see: 40%) but when it does, it is awesome. Which is the "it just works" functionality.
You can download in Jellyfin also, like in the screenshot above.
anyone asking for anything else is wrong and stupid.
I mean, you are asking for things that are already in the app, you tell me if that's stupid or not. I'm just trying to help.
I'd never call anyone even trying to use these self-hosted alternatives stupid.
Jellyfin devs could actually get the "download the next N episodes" functionality to reliably work (even at 80-90%) it would be a killer app
Is there some reason you can't do this manually? I actually can't think of any app with this feature, not even Netflix way back not Spotify.
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I stopped using Plex shortly after they started forcing logging in with your online Plex account to connect to LAN only based server. The writing was on the wall all those years ago.
Who wants to be locked out of their media when the internet is offline, completely defeated the point of self hosting local infrastructureJellyfin, while lacking a bit when I first migrated, has continued improved over the years and it has been joyful to use.
Plus Jellyfin supported hardware transcoding before Plex did, which was a gripe I had with Plex at the time.I stream from my server remotely and share with Family without hassle.
I dunno where Plex is trying to go, glad I bailed long ago -
Using a relay server to separate online from home connection
I don't see anything in the linked article about a relay server
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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.
I used to use Plex, then one day my internet was down and since Plex couldn't phone home, it wouldn't let me log in to watch media ON MY LAN.
So yeah it's inherently broken. That's before you even consider the licensing.
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I used to use Plex, then one day my internet was down and since Plex couldn't phone home, it wouldn't let me log in to watch media ON MY LAN.
So yeah it's inherently broken. That's before you even consider the licensing.
It’s not broken. It’s the core difference between Plex and something like Jellyfin. They handle all the infrastructure/security elements, you’re just hosting the media and transcoding. If you use Jellyfin and don’t know what you’re doing, you open the world up to your router.
I’m not saying everyone should use Plex, but it’s not broken in the way you’re describing. That’s how it works. It has to roll through their infrastructure at some point, it’s not designed for LAN playback.
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I'm surprised by the resistance to Jellyfin in this thread. If you are using Plex, you're already savvy enough to use bittorrent and probably the *arrs. If you can configure that stuff, Jellyfin is absolutely something you can handle. If you like Docker, there's good projects out there. If you're like me and you don't understand Docker, use Swizzin community edition. If you can install Ubuntu or Debian, and run the Swizzin script, you're in business.
Plex is trivial to set up, most plex users I know actually don’t use the arrs. Anyone can do it with a short list of instructions in minutes that mostly consist of “download app, make account, point to your media.”
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But what infrastructure does this feature require? I'm direct connecting to my own personal server with perhaps credential handling and a handshake handled by Plex servers to connect. None of the media is passing through their servers - or it shouldn't be if it is.
none of the media is passing through their servers
With remote yes it is
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Judging by the rest of the thread I'm going to get downvoted for this, but what the hell:
I'm sure I'll switch to Jellyfin eventually but I tried it out a few weeks ago to see what all the hype was about and it just... wasn't great. It was difficult to setup, with way too many overly-complicated settings, and then it refused to play one of the two test files I tried. Like it or not there's a reason that Plex is the dominant player in the game, and a large part of that reason is that it verges on plug-and-play for simplicity of both setup and use.
Yes, it sucks that they're removing remote streaming for free users, but I imagine there's a significant chunk of users who don't know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies for their streams (which happens entirely in the background), and those aren't going to be cheap to run. Maybe putting them behind a paywall will provide the resources to make them faster.
I did buy a lifetime pass last time they announced a price hike; it's honestly paid for itself many times over, and I've been encouraging other users I know to do the same before this next one, because yes, it is a significant hike this time around. That said, while I wouldn't pay monthly for it, I do still feel like the lifetime pass is tremendous value for such a polished product. It's a shame they've had to do it at all, but I don't begrudge them for it.
I agree with all of this. I want to do Jellyfin but plex really is rock solid and easy.
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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.
ITT: valid critiques of plex, understatements about how easy it is to set up and run Jellyfin for you and your friends/family, and a surprising number of people who don’t understand how plex works.
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Can’t say I have a huge issue with this - Plex isn’t FOSS and the infrastructure to make this happen isn’t free. Other options are available if you don’t want to pay the fee.
Yeah I don’t see the big deal tbh
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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.
I keep a Jellyfin instance running as a hedge. Here's the thing with Plex (and actually a lot of companies set up similarly): those "lifetime" memberships are a trap. Think about it: Plex gets your money ONCE but they have ongoing expenses. Sooner or later, they'll have spent every single cent made by a lifetime membership unless they either get more folks OR squeeze everyone a bit more.
Once they started adding their own shows and making strange UI decisions, I could sense the end was coming. A move like this brings it up fast. Jellyfin is not nearly as good as Plex in a lot of ways, but it's really Open Source.
Anyway, a lot of rambling, but in short: when there is a "lifetime" subscription, watch out!
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The ability to watch from anywhere.
Install on the Jellyfin server and share that server (or just the IP with the Jellyfin port) with whoever you want. Now they have access to Jellyfin and Jellyfin only.
That's how I set stuff up for friends and family.
