Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April
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Don't ask me? I'll ftp before I'll WebUI like so, but for online viewing, I'll take streaming please. My kids, wife, and mother-in-law find that a million times more convenient.
Meanwhile, there's a dude hating on the notion that Jellyfin's app will download the Raw file for offline viewing purposes. Please, do not ask me to pretend to care what is going on in that person's head. In my world, using VLC to play my files is a perk. Gimme that yummy 2x or slow-mo as I see fit, please.
WebUI is streaming though on desktops though and I assume they're also using iOS/Android/TV which all have clients, so I'm trying to get at the difference there.
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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 never got the appeal of plex. I've been using Serviio back in the day and it was free, open source and did what I needed it to, which is play a video on tv, that's it.
Plex wanted me to purchase subscription years ago and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out how to set it up for free.
I've been using stremio for a few years now but i think it's closing in on the EOL as well, so i might go back to serviio and kodi one of these days. Just need a good NAS that could run a streaming server as well. Don't want to keep my gaming rig on at all times just to watch movies.
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You don’t need to manually setup port forwarding with plex and if you want access off your network (such as when traveling) or to let others in it gets way more complicated.
But let's be honest - it really is not complicated. That was a one minute configuration in my router.
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Jellyfin is very versatile but a bit clunky. I have it set up for my parents on their Roku and it works well enough for them. I set it up for other family members on their WebOS TV but they don't really use it. I used to use it with Roku as well, but had issues with some captions, Dolby Atmos and HDR. I finally broke down and got an Nvidia shield, which fixed all my problems since the developers focus on Android TV the most. I also have Plex, and it is easier to set up, looks more polished, but is less versatile.
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But let's be honest - it really is not complicated. That was a one minute configuration in my router.
One minute for you and me, but that sort of thing just isn't feasible for many even if they have someone walking them through it over the phone.
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WebUI is streaming though on desktops though and I assume they're also using iOS/Android/TV which all have clients, so I'm trying to get at the difference there.
I thought their implication was that they would use the WebUI for downloading videos for offline watching later. Beyond that, I don't really know or care; Their suggestion was weird to me, but I took it at face value and replied accordingly.
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But let's be honest - it really is not complicated. That was a one minute configuration in my router.
I consider myself pretty tech savvy but after I got Jellyfin set up I accidentally broke it within weeks, I wasn’t even able to get it consistently playing outside of my home network to my devices. Some ISP’s also make it hard to tinker with their modems/routers, and let’s not forget that most people when they set up their Internet just use whatever the ISP provides for them.
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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.
Universal media server works for me. I run it headless on a small instance. Streams my movies and music just fine.
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I don't have a static IP adress, so I use Tailscale to connect remotely to my Jellyfin server (located at home).
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This is my exact concern.
If I pay for the lifetime pass now, what's to stop them from restricting even more features behind new types of subscriptions and paywalls. "We're adding back the 'Watch Together' feature but it requires a Platinum Plex subscription and will not be a part of Plex Lifetime Pass users."
Seems kind of inevitable honestly.
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i'm not sure why it would do this, i've never had any issues with watching plex while the internet is down (in fact that was one of my original uses for it, to have movies and tv in a building without internet). I don't have it turned on but I do know you can go into server settings -> network and set a list of IPs/subnets that can access without any authorization at all. That lets you use plex without even having a plex account afaik.
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I see. So if you read that instruction you'll see it's the exact same setup that I outlined. They use a vpn to connect your client to your server and just negotiate the meeting in the middle. It's the exact same risk scenario as running a reverse proxy on your own vps. Unless I'm missing something else?
You are, authentication on the VPS, you're relying on Jellyfin authentication against the internet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is your suggested setup: [home server] Jellyfin -> [remote server] Reverse Proxy -> [remote machine] users. Let's imagine a scenario where Jellyfin has a bug that if you leave the password empty it logs you in (I know, it's an exaggeration but just for the sake of argument, an SQL injection or other similar attacks would be more plausible but I'm trying to keep things simple), on your setup now anyone can log into your Jellyfin and from there it's one jump to your home server. On Plex's solution even if Plex authentication gets compromised the attacker only got access to the remote server, and would now need to find another vulnerability to jump to your Plex at home.
Putting something like Authelia/Authentik on a VPS in front of Jellyfin is a similar approach, but the Jellyfin client can't handle third party authentication AFAIK
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Me too. Docker isn't hard if you use a compose file. It's easy to read syntax.
Linux server.io has great documentation for their images.
Docker isn’t hard if you use a compose file. It’s easy to read syntax.
This is giving me "yaml isn't hard to use if you use a compose file!" It is, actually. It's easy for you because you understand the technology. The vast majority of people do not.
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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.
I think I represent a huge portion of Plex users; I am tech savvy enough to follow a simple walkthrough on YouTube to get my server setup. But the arrs, jellyfin, and docker both look like graduate level chemistry to me.
Plex has been around for ages and they have put money into making things easier for users like me to understand with events such as Pro Week and directly paying content creators to dumb things down for me.
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Hmm i need to revisit it again. Thanks!
I just confirmed it has it. You need to be on the same subnet, which is why VPN won't work. But then everything shows up as castable
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I think I represent a huge portion of Plex users; I am tech savvy enough to follow a simple walkthrough on YouTube to get my server setup. But the arrs, jellyfin, and docker both look like graduate level chemistry to me.
Plex has been around for ages and they have put money into making things easier for users like me to understand with events such as Pro Week and directly paying content creators to dumb things down for me.
It's quite easy without docker to get lots of it running with a dietpi install. Runs on rpi and alike, but also on any "normal" old low end pc. Just select jellyfin, arrs, ... It handles it all for you, no need to learn Docker (I know people will argue about the advantages of docker, which are valid points, but ease of installation is more important to many people). The only difficulty remains the streaming outside your own LAN (because it's risky). VPN, tailscale, ... there's options but it always keeps on feeling risky to open up outside LAN. Local setup for jellyfin can be really really easy tho, if it's just for yourself and you mostly watch at home anyway... And in some jellyfin compatible app like Finamp and Streamyfin you can just download a few music albums, episodes or movies to your phone before you travel...
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You don’t need to manually setup port forwarding with plex and if you want access off your network (such as when traveling) or to let others in it gets way more complicated.
That ease of outside LAN access poses a big risk tho. Plex can and eventually probably will share, be forced to share, get hacked etc Those cloud accounts imply the possibility of very detailed reports about who's streaming what, when, where, from which source...
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Thanks for the info! How is your experience with using the app? Is it buggy? Does it need frequent updates?
I've only personally used it a couple times, but my relatives have used it a bunch with no reported issues. I have not had to update it yet, but it's only been a few months. Definitely not frequent updates. My jellyfin server has had one update since then, but even the server updates aren't coming in on a weekly basis, so I don't expect their client will break anytime soon.
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You are, authentication on the VPS, you're relying on Jellyfin authentication against the internet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is your suggested setup: [home server] Jellyfin -> [remote server] Reverse Proxy -> [remote machine] users. Let's imagine a scenario where Jellyfin has a bug that if you leave the password empty it logs you in (I know, it's an exaggeration but just for the sake of argument, an SQL injection or other similar attacks would be more plausible but I'm trying to keep things simple), on your setup now anyone can log into your Jellyfin and from there it's one jump to your home server. On Plex's solution even if Plex authentication gets compromised the attacker only got access to the remote server, and would now need to find another vulnerability to jump to your Plex at home.
Putting something like Authelia/Authentik on a VPS in front of Jellyfin is a similar approach, but the Jellyfin client can't handle third party authentication AFAIK
My interpretation of your linked instruction (granted, I haven't tried plex) is that it's the same two scenarios.
Your plex client app login talks directly to your server login. The client app meeting the server is arranged by the plex relay server and nothing more. There is no 'logging in' to the plex relay server; it's function is to arrange a meeting of two tunnels and that's it, much like a tailscale derp server.
The relay server is serving the same function as caddy on a VPS, hell, they could even be using tailscale under the hood and it'd look exactly the same to a user.
Anyway, attack vectors even with a public facing jellyfin are mitigated because
a) jellyfin is running in a docker container = a successful attacker would only be able to trash my jellyfin container, which ultimately is not that big of a deal (unless there is a different docker exploit that enables access to the server itself, which is an entirely different issue and larger than a jellyfin/plex discussion)
b) fail2ban in conjunction with a reverse proxy bans malicious ip addresses that come back with too many errors too many times (errors that you, the admin, specify) So, for example, brute force login attacks are mitigated.
c) the reverse proxy itself allows access to only one specified internal ip address/port combination. Pending a caddy exploit (again, a different discussion) it is not possible to fish for acrive ip addresses or port scan my internal network.
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That ease of outside LAN access poses a big risk tho. Plex can and eventually probably will share, be forced to share, get hacked etc Those cloud accounts imply the possibility of very detailed reports about who's streaming what, when, where, from which source...
If you are someone on this community or is just generally tech savvy enough to host Jellyfin you should. I don’t advocate for plex for people who don’t need it. But a lot of people are not knowledgeable enough for Jellyfin or are just nervous about it
