Plex has paywalled my server!
-
Took a quick look at the free tier,
- 3 users
- 100 devices
- Basically all tailscale features
That seems pretty reasonable to me. Main account and two accounts to share. With just friends and family, I doubt most people will reach the 100 device limit.
Creating a tailnet using a custom domain is considered for business use.
Well, that sucks for me. I was planning on using my domain name.
-
I thought free software was when you were the product and non-free software actually supported developers.
Or do you mean non-OSS?
Yeah, the wording is confusing. A long time ago, there was no paid software, there was only software where you got the source code and other software where e.g. it was pre-installed on some hardware and the manufacturer didn't want to give the source code.
In that time, a whole movement started fighting for software freedom, so they called their software "free".
-
I'll add to #2 (IDK if it's open source, though):
Give Stremio a try. Once you set it up (basically just add the Torrentio plug-in then whatever content catalogs you want), the workflow is much better and simpler than Plex.
You just browse it like Netflix: see something you want to watch, select it with your remote, then stream it immediately. No server to run, you don't have to build libraries, you don't even have download the content beforehand. Just select and watch. Could not be easier.
Is Streamio considered safe/private? I remember looking into it a while back and saw something about needing an account on their servers or something.
I used Kodi with addons for ages but switched to jellyfin because kodi felt too clunky and slow for my wife.
-
Is Streamio considered safe/private? I remember looking into it a while back and saw something about needing an account on their servers or something.
I used Kodi with addons for ages but switched to jellyfin because kodi felt too clunky and slow for my wife.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I'm not the person to ask this kind of question to. I use DNS-level tracking protection in my router (via NextDNS), but I'm not a privacy expert.
If you're living in a country where censorship is a thing and/or privacy is of upmost importance, then you should still use a VPN in addition to a Debrid service with Stremio. Or you can nix the Debrid and just use a VPN if you don't mind more buffering and all the downsides that come with torrents. (VPNs can be setup to run on a TV through DNS settings either on your router or TV itself, though this may not be 100% secure. Again, I'm not an expert.)
-
Are you saying that you’re on your home network with your Plex server and it won’t let you play your media without paying? That’s not true if so. You must be outside the network.
wrote last edited by [email protected]My guess is they have VLANs and they didn’t set up the server to treat them as local traffic.
-
I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says "we need you to donate please" would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
I’ve never seen the appeal. A simple smb share and Kodi work perfectly fine no?
-
I’ve never seen the appeal. A simple smb share and Kodi work perfectly fine no?
Not on the go, but you can use your own DDNS/VPN & Jellyfin for that instead of Plex
-
That’s great until you try and get it working on your <insert person here that doesn’t live with you>’s TV via their streaming device.
My mom's tv surprisingly has WireGuard so I set that up for her.
-
I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says "we need you to donate please" would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
Welp, i killed mine yesterday as it wouldnt let me stream while offline. Modem died so no Internet for me. Why do i have everything local if it dosent work while offline...
-
I’ve never seen the appeal. A simple smb share and Kodi work perfectly fine no?
It's not great with a family, each with multiple devices. Years ago I used it with a central MySQL db, but it was a huge pain and frequently broke with updates.
As mentioned by others, Jellyfin is an amazing alternative and I've been using it for a few years already.
-
I thought free software was when you were the product and non-free software actually supported developers.
Or do you mean non-OSS?
Free as in freedom, not as in free beer.
-
I’ve never seen the appeal. A simple smb share and Kodi work perfectly fine no?
Not really, if you use Kodi the information on what you have watched remains on the PC running Kodi, if you always watch from the same device that's not a big deal, but if you like to watch stuff on your smart tv, then on your PC, and downloading some to watch on your phone on the go, having the information of which episodes you've watched on the server helps keep things organized.
-
Are you saying that you’re on your home network with your Plex server and it won’t let you play your media without paying? That’s not true if so. You must be outside the network.
I've had that happen to me with plex, it was probably 100% my fault because I specifically changed things during the setup of the docker file, but apparently Plex can't figure out that is local if it's running inside docker with non-host network, it probably only accepts local connections from the docker network, and I was never able to make it treat my actual home network as local.
-
Creating a tailnet using a custom domain is considered for business use.
Well, that sucks for me. I was planning on using my domain name.
The tailnet domain doesn't really matter that much if you have your own. I just use tailscale IP for everything that's not in adgaurs with a host name already
-
The same tailscale that announced last week that they are going to start charging?
It's kinda the same as it was before, as far as I can see, for the personal plan. Looks like they've just added more the ability to add more than 3 users for a fee.
-
Welcome to “People rushing to suggest a solution that they fawn over because it’s open source.”
How do you personally 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt know that Jellyfin is the right solution? Why not a VPN, shared folder, and VLC? What about running a DNLA server?
Edit: All of you downvoting don’t know; and it makes you salty.
Jellyfin has a DLNA plugin
-
I thought free software was when you were the product and non-free software actually supported developers.
Or do you mean non-OSS?
"Free Software" is a defined term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
-
Welcome to “People rushing to suggest a solution that they fawn over because it’s open source.”
How do you personally 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt know that Jellyfin is the right solution? Why not a VPN, shared folder, and VLC? What about running a DNLA server?
Edit: All of you downvoting don’t know; and it makes you salty.
You mean a morally "right" solution?
-
I thought self hosting was about learning networking basics like DNS and setting up let's encrypt.
So much whining in here about the most simple stuff being too complex.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I disagree; Self-hosting is for a variety of things, and plenty of people (in fact, I’d say probably the majority of Plex users) just want to be able to pirate Netflix without a ton of setup.
Is learning some networking inevitable? Yeah, probably. But I also think this xkcd is apt. The reality is that what may be simple for you and me actually requires a lot of studying for a complete novice. Plenty of people will need to google what a port is, let alone how to forward one. And that’s assuming they even know the word “port” to google. Plenty of people won’t even know where to start.
And true novices are hopefully going to be extremely wary of any info they find online. It’s easy to fuck something up without even realizing it, and leave your entire system exposed; especially when the braindead “lol just forward your Jellyfin port and use your public IP” advice is posted somewhere in every single advice thread.
-
OP is also in the allegedly ultra rare camp of “successfully configured Jellyfin and lived to tell the tale.” Not what I’d expect of someone unable to configure Plex correctly. I’ve not set up a Plex server myself but my guess is it wasn’t clear that it was misconfigured - it did work previously, after all.
I can't speak for OP, but I self host lots of stuff, have literally dozens of services running, have an Ansible repo to manage it all and routi some stuff through a VPS, not to mention my day job has included managing services in one way or another for a long while. This is to say, I know what I'm doing. I couldn't setup Plex to work the way I wanted to, they expect it to run in a docker with network set to host mode, I couldn't find any way to tell Plex that my living room TV was in the same network, it just wouldn't accept any connections as local. I know I shot myself in the foot here by not letting it run with network on host mode, but I shouldn't have to, the port was exposed, I could reach it through the local network IP, but I wasn't able to stream any content locally.