Well I already have jellyfin running in a container, just have to figure out how to get mum’s TV to work with it I guess
<edit> log in on a local IP and not the network name and it’s working again. but I’ll be moving to jellyfin from now
Imagine wanting to charge to stream your own media with your own hardware and resources… Hey wait, we don’t have to imagine it anymore, Plex already did it.
I forgot as I am a Plex Pass Lifetime user, and oh boy I’ll be sure to milk that out (actually after all these years I think I have already done that) just to keep being an annoying stat for Plex and nothing else 🤣
Aaaand that’s one of the reasons why I got rid of Plex. “Bought” it, then they found some other feature to paywall. Bought that, then another feature. Then it stopped playing files of certain extensions through chromecast. Fuck that. Put together Jellyfin and moved my collection over. Zero trouble since.
So glad I installed jellyfin years ago and never bothered to set up Plex.
Remember when Plex tried to sell you a subscription to use outdated versions of open source game console emulators?
Plex wants to be a profit-driven company, but their business model is piracy. They’ll squeeze you for subscriptions, while making your experience worse to try and broker a peace deal with content owners.
idk I find $2/month to be very reasonable. I don’t feel squeezed.
To stream remotely from your own server?
If I chose to use Plex’s
plex.tvservices to expose my server to the internet, that’s one thing. But I have my Plex server exposed through my own infrastructure (NPM + Let’s Encrypt), so fuck that shit.The $2/mo is for the Plex relay service. If you access the server directly it should be free.
It’s not. Now you need to pay any time you want to connect to your server from outside of your LAN.
You can use ZeroTier to connect from anywhere. It only makes you pay to use the plex router/relay.
Would a VPN be a solution to that?
Yes, a VPN can resolve it. Depending on how you do it you may need to add a subnet or list of IPs to the local allow list like so. This also, for me, fixes my wifi subnet being treated as remote.
Sorry to have annoyed you.
Unforgivable, have a wretched hour and a half.
Setting up ddns takes 15 minutes for a professional (mostly setting a 1-line script to reload a simple url every ten minutes)
and poking a hole in the firewall takes maybe half an hour (since every router puts the relevant page in a different spot)
And for this you think it’s reasonable to pay ~$25/year for the rest of your life? You’re not wrong in the sense that you’re welcome to choose your own values, but I … disagree with you on the value position.
I would be ashamed of myself and be tempted to leave the industry in disgrace if setting up DDNS and allowing a single port through a firewall took me 45 minutes.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. I want the newbs to feel accomplished when it only takes them 2 hours to figure it out. 😉
But seriously, you and I have it on reflex, but there’s merit to the notion that we also have our mise en place - we’ve read the manual, we’ve saved or memorized the script, already know our local equipment passwords, etc - all things we took the time to do before and now have at the ready.
I know it’s fashionable to shit on Plex here, but OP either has his server misconfigured or is just trying to stir the pot:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202526943-plex-free-vs-paid/
Free to Use: Video (movies & TV) streaming of personal content on the same local network as the Plex Media Server
It means the same specific subnet. If you have multiple subnets (one for wired, one for wireless for example) it will also trigger that limitation unless you go in and manually tell it hey these are local.
Right, the $2 is to use the relay service, which costs Plex bandwidth. They can’t just do it free for everyone forever, bandwidth costs money.
They charge for remote access whether it’s through their relay service or not, and you can’t opt out of fallback to their relay service.
If you connect with the IP address it doesn’t charge you. You can use ZeroTier to connect from anywhere.
That’s not quite the same - that gives you the appearance of being a local device, which is enough to fool the restriction.
Their policy and technology enforcement is to charge for remote access, not relaying.
I have always connected via a FQDN, for some reason last night it decided to shit it’s self. Resolved by accessing via local IP, then the FQDN worked again
Think they worked out that using the IP instead of the hostname solved it.
I have always connected via a FQDN, for some reason last night it decided to shit it’s self. Resolved by accessing via local IP, then the FQDN worked again
Yes, but they’re still sending emails to people even when it doesn’t apply. I had a Plex pass and still all of my users received emails and freaked out. They’re trying to trick people into thinking they need to pay, that’s the asshole move here.
People often involved with piracy probably love entering personal information in that context…
Watching people realize this toejam eating weirdo was right about everything makes my day everytime.
Longtime lifetime Plex Pass holder here.
FOSS is important. Having control over how you use your own hardware and files is important.
But even if none of that mattered, once I actually used Jellyfin for a few days the snappy bloat-free feel of it won me over. Switching between Plex and Jellyfin felt like switching between windows and linux.
User error, at least you figured it out. It’s always free to stream in your own network.
the thing is I always use the network name. Once I used the IP I couls go back to using plex.<mylastname>.TLD
I would go with jellyfin, but my stupid old Samsung TV has tizen and can’t find a way to install it.
You could plug in a firestick or something similar as jellyfin has an android app.
You need to setup a developer account so you can install apps from local sources
I tried that through network and an app on my pc, didn’t work.
I had a similar issue where I wanted to use my Xbox Series X to play Jellyfin but there was no client available. I ended up switching from Plex to Emby. I tested it for a month and then bought a lifetime pass, I’m quite happy with it. The client definitely isn’t as polished as Plex’s clients are but they allow me to do everything I want with much more control. I especially like the plugin system, being able to create my own persistent 24/7 faux tv channels is A++
I use an nVidia Shield for it. There’s probably cheaper ones, but you tend to get what you pay for, and I’ve got a few 4KBR remuxes that even that struggles on.
Get an Onn streaming device from Walmart for ~$30
I don’t live in USA.
Okay. What streaming devices can you order online?
I know Plex is a business that has to make money, but if I hadn’t bought a lifetime pass for $50 a decade ago, I’d have dropped them at this point.
I paid too, but consider that you basically paid $5 per year for 10 years and I’d say that good. You don’t need to feel guilty if you decide to leave, you got your money’s worth.
(And I mean, I have a sneaky suspicion they’re coming for the lifetime users sooner or later)
Yeah, for sure. They can’t survive if people just paid 50 $ ten years ago. They’re going to restrict the service for lifetime users sooner or later.
Same here. I have no complaints about the service and it’s easy for my tech illiterate family and friends, but I’ll switch as soon as they try to charge pass owners for new features.
“Try our new Plex Pass Lifetime* Plus!”
*Valid for the lifetime of the product†.
†2 yearsSame. Lifetime pass. That money is gone, and I use jellyfin nowadays. My photo collection will be stored on ente soon. Still no idea where to host my music library.
For your photo collection I’d also suggest Immich.
Be prepared for a barrage of “Jellyfin” in your comments.
But yea seriously, use Jellyfin.
I mean, with a post like this, I’d call it baiting
Is there something better than jellyfin? I’ve been using it for a little over a year, and it works for the most part, but clients are often pretty buggy (especially on apple apple devices)
infuse is a good jellyfin client. there’s a free tier but im not sure of the limitations.
The free tier limitation is that it doesn’t work with jellyfin
I’m pretty happy with Emby, but it’s not open source.
Have you tried the third party ones? I’ve seen recommendations for Swiftfin
Yeah that’s the one I’m using on our appleTV, it’s buggy as hell. “Continue” show often doesn’t work and picks an episode that I’ve watched long ago and not the next in line, often never updating it despite watching several episode over several weeks. Aftee Pausing a show or movie and closing the app, if you want to continue from where you left off, well that doesn’t work consistently either, usually it will just restart from the beginning. Switching language on shows pretty much doesn’t work at all, it will either never change from default audio language, or use an entirely different language than the one picked from the list.
All these things work perfectly fine from a browser or official app on android.
Infuse is so good on Apple TV it’s worth the money
Plex will do the exact same thing if you have an episode earlier in your history that didnt get marked as “watched”. But plex lets you manually tag episodes as watched which usually fixes it. Maybe there’s a similar option in jellyfin?
Jeælyfin also has this, is just doesn’t work on appleTV
Was I supposed to read that with a Scottish accent?
I mostly use Infuse on the Apple TV and Streamyfin on the iPhone.
I’d be happy to pay for Infuse if the lifetime wasn’t AU$150, and I just outright reject paying a subscription for an app for using something FOSS, even if it’s only AU$20/year. A lifetime license that’s 3-5yrs of a yearly sub is much more reasonable.
I use Emby and it’s flawless, might be worth swimming upstream?
Same, though I can’t get remote access working while running a vpn on my machine and it’s driving me nuts
Yeah, the way things at going I feel like I should protect myself further with a VPN, but it does break some of my services’ access. Just another hurdle in the track to net independence that will be overcome! Heaven knows we’ve overcome many to get where we each are.
No need to bust your brain trying too hard - you’ll find an answer eventually!
I had it working on Windows, just can’t remember how haha. I’ve moved to Linux and I don’t know if I’m missing something to get it going, or if it’s because ProtonVPN isn’t nearly as devloped on Linux as it is on Windows. Appreciate the positivity though!
I can’t say I’ve given Jellyfin a proper try (as in using it and the clients exclusively for a long period) but we have been using Emby for quite a while before I knew it existed.
If I’m not mistaken Jellyfin is actually a fork of Emby so they’re pretty similar, but one is a bit older.
If I’m not mistaken Jellyfin is actually a fork of Emby so they’re pretty similar, but one is a bit older.
Jellyfin forked from Emby in 2018 when Emby chose to switch to a closed-source model. Because of this, there are many similarities, but the projects continue to become increasingly different from one another as time goes on.
I was probably using Emby already by then, had bought a lifetime license since it didn’t require bouncing things off and outside server like Plex did (or was it that Plex was a renewing subscription, I forget) , so it just stayed out of inertia.
What’s an “apple apple” device? 😁
Yea, Jellyfin on iOS hsed to be buggy. Seems much better these days, and there’s also Finamp for music
Is there something better than jellyfin?
Plex.
What if you want to own your server?
I do own my server. It’s in my living room.
You can absolutely run plex in a local only mode. You don’t sign it in to an account and then set your subnets in the local networks section like so. Or leave it blank if you have a standard flat home network.
What sort of bugs are you experiencing? I’m using the official Jellyfin app and it’s been extremely stable on all my Apple devices. But I noticed a while ago that videos that were not MPEG were problematic so I converted all the AVI and WMV and WEBM to MP4 and it has been much more reliable. Scrubbing and previews have worked much better also
“Continue show” often doesn’t work and picks an episode that I’ve watched long ago and not the next in line, often never updating it despite watching several episode over several weeks, even if they’re marked as “seen”. After pausing a show or movie and closing the app, if I want to continue from where I left off, well that doesn’t work consistently either, usually it will just restart from the beginning. Switching language pretty much just doesn’t work at all, it will either never change from default audio language, or use an entirely different language than the one picked from the list.
btw i use jellyfin
lol crap, it’s the new arch!
We need a name for lemmy users running arch on their pc that they’re using to watch stuff on their Jellyfin server
I wanted to move to Jellyfin, but there isn’t an app for it on the LG WebOS library like there is for Plex, so I wouldn’t be able to watch stuff on my TV, which sadly makes it useless for me :-(
I don’t have the money to be going out and buying extra add-ons for my TV to watch stuff either, sadly. So, Plex it is for now!
Root your TV and install the homebrew channel on it.
Yes, this is real.
The Homebrew Channel for LG WebOS is got three pieces of absolutely essential software:
A YouTube app modified with built in ad blocking and sponsor blocking. The Jellyfin app. The Moonlight app.
With these three plus the toggle to block system updates your TV gets 1000% better for free.
now I need to find a Wiimote, damnit
You can use the Smart remote which is basically the fusion of a wiimote, a tv remote and a computer mouse
I tried googling some of this but I must be misunderstanding the thread, mind ELI5 for the rest of us? ^_^’
15 years ago a pirate decided to name the main channel on the Nintendo Wii for homebrew the “Homebrew Channel”, as it has been for 15 years.
That was my reference. If you found a hacked Wii right now and turned it on, it would be one of the channels available.
OK.
So, you know of android rooting?
(I'm assuming no)
Android rooting is the action of getting superuser prileveges on an android device, which lets you do literally anything. From removing bloat, to overclocking, it gives you full power over the device.
Keep in mind that “with great power comes great responsibility.” -the
sudocommand on first useWell, it’s that, but for TVs.
As for the remote, how you move the cursor is wii-like, and you can click the [OK] button to click stuff. You can also scroll, because the [OK] button is also a scroll wheel.
What I meant is I tried to Google homebrew smart remote and found nothing. I do have understanding of the concepts and was looking for the specifics :)
Yes there is, I literally have it installed on my two LG WebOS TVs. Plus there’s a web browser app that you can create shortcuts for, which works for Dropout so I would assume it works for Jellyfin as well.
When was the last time you checked? A client was added to the WebOS store maybe 2 or 3 years ago for recent models, and support for older models (like my C9) came months later.
Yes there is. I have it on my tv.
Can you try using DLNA to connect to jellyfin? You need to install the plugin first.
More effort, but there’s also this https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos
I did try and preempt that in my comment - but it’s hard to switch from plex when there are 5 other people with everything all configured and history etc
No it’s not. Tell them to learn to switch or lose access. It’s your server, do what you want.
but it’s hard to switch from plex when there are 5 other people with everything all configured and history etc
That’s exactly what Plex wants you to say
How to migrate your watch history, apparently: https://www.florianjensen.com/2024/08/21/how-to-migrate-from-plex-to-jellyfin/
USE JELLYF-
Be prepared for a barrage of “Jellyfin” in your comments.
Oh.
Jel-ly-fin, jel-ly-fin, je-ly-fin!
Ah the weekly “Plex should be entirely free even though it’s commercial software!”
Plex is entirely free and completely local, but only if you don’t use the features that make it so convenient (the relay server they offer, authentication and authorization, etc). Things I’m pretty sure jellyfin doesn’t provide at all. If people spent half the time reading as they do trying to convince people to get angry at optional features then maybe we wouldn’t have so many posts like this.
Jellyfin does offer authentication and authorization. Relay can be done via nginx iirc?
Having to set up a reverse proxy is basically a non-starter for most people, while I’ve talked extremely non-technical people into running Plex since it just works out of the box.
The authentication is lacking 2fa and has a half hearted attempt at fail2ban
If you try to properly implement either of those, the standard device clients won’t work anymore.
Plex provides default SSL.
The relay is actually a bit more useful.
You can be on a carrier grade NAT with no real external IP.
It’s more akin to running a VPS somewhere and SSH tunneling your home server through it.
They also cache* the entirety of the TVDB and EPG Services.
I’m not sore about most of this with jellyfin, and I am trying to primarily use it, but I really miss some of the features. But realistically, adding 2FA to the clients would be a huge benefit. trying to replace 2FA with wish.com fail2ban feels particularly dirty.
Good explanation. I’m out in the boonies with Starlink for internet right now so no port forwarding for me. I paid like $100 for a plex lifetime pass 12 years ago or something so none of my family or friends even notice most of the time. HEVC encoding helps too (you can squeeze 720p through their relay server with it).
You can run the OIDC version and use SSO and implement MFA on the IdP. I use Keycloak for SSO w/ MFA and users sign into my Jellyfin via Keycloak. Just disable username/password auth and leave it SSO only.
The only benefit Plex really has is the relaying, but I was able to sync watch with 3 people basically as far across North America as you can get from me and it worked without issue so…
That’s fine for browser-based watching, literally no one in my group watches via the browser. Even on android it’d be a fight. Grandma’s not going to go on to a browser to auth her session.
The clients need to support it. If it were just backend, I’d fork it myself.
Neither do I - I use either my phone, or my smart TV, or my fire stick. SSO works fine there, or you can use the QR based session transfer to SSO on your phone and then “sign in on another device” or whatever by scanning the QR your other device is showing. I think they call it quick connect or something.
It does what you want.
And if you think Grandma can’t figure out scanning a QR code, Grandma is also not gonna figure out MFA lol.
Relaying gigabytes of traffic per user costs serious money. Rely on them to do it, and they are either going to charge you or are just waiting to charge you when their VCs come knocking.
Also the weekly intentionally misunderstanding how Plex pass/Plex remote pass works in order to complain:
Free to Use: Video (movies & TV) streaming of personal content on the same local network as the Plex Media Server
Can you get around that bs with a VPN?
You should be able to. I have a wireguard tunnel to my parent’s house and when they watch plex it doesn’t go over the relay server (I can’t port forward on starlink).
How is Plex used if you aren’t using it to stream your self hosted media? I remember seeing channels and such before. Is all the official stuff licensed content? I can’t imagine their offering is very competitive.
They’ve added commercial supported live channels like many other free services but yeah, it’s lacking compared to others. Pluto.tv is my go-to if I want to throw something on at a family members house or something like that. Owned by the networks, reasonably short ads, completely free. Too bad they didn’t figure that out 10 years ago lol.
Oh I’ve actually heard of Pluto.tv and watched it somewhere.
99.9% of the use mine has seen for the past several years has been to stream to my living room TV in the same house. But regardless, what point are you making? It’s commercial software. And btw the $85 I paid years ago to use it forever was more than worth it to me.
I’m not trying to make a point, I’m just curious how many this impacts and so on. I imagine it will go down similar to Netflix account sharing crackdown; generally viewed unfavourably, but will convert enough users to pay for it to be worth it.
Gotcha. We’ll see, I guess.
it’s commercial software
digital cancer
Here’s a controversial and complex stance, but you may be able to understand it eventually:
Don’t buy it.
I am a proponent of FOSS too but that doesn’t mean anything built for profit is shitty, let alone “cancer”.
Hey, you paid for them to spy on your media, give them their money’s worth.
God I hate humans
I do too. They tend to speak from the heart but the second something is inconvenient, they’re cool with relaxing their morals.
Except they’re spamming to users that they need this subscription even when they host locally or already have a membership.
I bought a plex lifetime pass for $100 over a decade ago and I never see ads like this. I only occasionally get the notice for plex pro week and stuff like that.
I also bought Plex lifetime pass also for $100 and I am getting ads like this.
That’s pretty fucked up. I’d be shootin off some angry emails to customer support. Sorry to hear that!
y’all don’t use jellyfin???
for music: navidrome
With navidrome, my library is a little messed up from what I have on my local and the album art is wrong. Do you know any guide to properly setup navidrome library.
i wish i could help. i got the privilege of having a friend who took the headache off me and just set everything up properly before i even got my server ready lol
we haven´t encountered this issue, so all i can say is: it´s solvabe. sorry
What benefits does navidrome provide as a separate music server if jellyfin can host your music already?
I can only tell you that personally I’m interested in trying out Navidrome because I don’t like all my eggs in one basket (Jellyfin is more complex sw for sure too) and I think I’m not the only one caring more about my music collection than movies and tv. But I did try Jellyfin for music (not with my main library) and it works very well, Finamp on android has offline mode which I find almost essential.
Does Jellyfin do smart playlists yet?
Edit: There seems to be a plugin. So, now it’s just about the fact that I already have it set up the way I want, and that I don’t wanna put all my eggs in the same basket. But I guess using Jellyfin for music is totally viable now.
Jellyfin can’t even do smart collections of TV and movies
for music: not streaming.
Music is a solved problem, the files are small even at FLAC quality and can be tiny with Opus whilst sounding transparent. Any SOC made in the last 15 years features a more than fully capable DAC.
Why even bother with streaming? Have a local collection of files. Even syncing is easy.
i understand what you mean. there´s bad phone reception in my area and streaming is a horrible experience, i download everything on my phone. if i have a stable wifi connection i can stream easily. the benefit of it is just not bloating my 128gb phone to it´s limits
I’d like to personally, however with my home environment being Apple TV device the plex application is fantastic. And sharing my libraries with other friends sharing back with me is pretty great. Does jellyfinn have that ability? I’ve seen about an app that’s supported but I’m not sure about it, the Apple TV app that is.
And sharing my libraries with other friends sharing back with me is pretty great.
This feature is imo THE killer feature of Plex, although I use Jellyfin. There’s no sharing of libraries like Plex does. Multiple user accounts per server, yes, but you have to switch between servers and search separately.
unfortunately i have no idea about the apple ecosystem. the ios app is smooth. i hope you can just download it and test it somehow on your apple tv.
jellyfin supports several user accounts for friends and family.
And this is why I’m setting up Jellyfin. I paid for a lifetime Plex pass a while ago, and I would have been happy to toss them some more money if they had just stuck to the core service (like Nabu Casa/Home Assistant - absolutely worth $7/mo), but nooooooooooooooo Plex decided to spin up their own streaming servers and go down that path instead.
I smell an IPO coming soon.
It was a pain to get up and running, but now that it is i actually prefer it. OSS aside there are things I like, like editions/versions are all kind of merged, more customization of the appearance, more performant. I’m pretty happy. Granted it was months of reorganizing my media for it.
