I bought Plex pass years ago for £79. The new price of $749.99 is INSANE.
No wonder all the cool people are using Jellyfin.
I bought one ages ago, but I left for Jellyfin when I ditched Windows. I hated the direction Plex has been going for years - if I wanted a content streaming service, I would have signed up for one… I just wanted a good way to stream stuff from my media server to my other stuff.
Jellyfin is basically what plex would have been if they didn’t lobotomize themselves.
Jellyfin is always free, works great, and keeps getting better!
You’ll retain your existing lifetime pass, fwiw. This is just price gouging new customers.
The ones that used to exist, at least. I don’t see too many private individuals joining up now.
Wait what. $750? I think I paid like $100 years ago. Damn.
Same. It was my Xmas gift to myself. If not, I’d learn Jellyfin.
You should learn anyway. I switched and I have no plans of looking back. Jellyfin is basically everything Plex would have been if they continued as they were installed of trying to become some stupid streaming service mess that they are turning into
I paid 75 for mine and 150 for work.
Now I run both and use JF for myself and local and Plex for friends and family.
When Plex finishes fucking us over my friends and family can decide wether they want to deal with tailscale or go without.
Jellyfin is fine if you’re an advanced user and you don’t care about streaming outside your network — and your software is made by an AI company (Microsoft) or an advertising company (Google). If it’s made by a computer company (Apple), you have a bit more work ahead of you. Mac users are a minority, so Jellyfin does not prioritise them. Even if you go all-in with ads and AI, you still don’t get remote streaming, which is kind of the point of Jellyfin.
iPhones come in up to 2TB (for the Pro Max) now. I have 512GB on mine, and I have a dozen HD-4K movies (one is actually 1440p) and a few TV shows. I use an app called Outplayer. It’s like VLC but it has folders, you don’t have to have everything in one place like VLC does. (Though, I suppose you can put your files in the Files app and have them open with VLC. But I mean in the app itself you can have folders.) Android phones have similar sizes, though I’m not sure they go up to 1-2TB. I’m not sure though. Older ones can get there with SD cards, but the read/write on those things is so slow, I would hate to move big videos to and from them. Like start that transfer and then go to bed, hope it’s done in the morning without errors.
Plex went from $120 to $250 a few years ago, and they warned people first. No one who had any sense waited for the price increase before buying. Like most others, I paid less. I think I paid $90? Anyway, at this point they’re just going after the whales. There were plenty of sub-$100 deals on Plex back in the day. Those who didn’t see any value in running your own Netflix chose not to pay, and of course they’re not gonna pay more. Plex was worth paying for at $120 or less. I could almost make the case for it at $250. At $750, if you’d told me 10-15 years ago when it was new how much value I’d get from it, I would have paid — and bought more hard drives.
If you do use Apple stuff, you kinda have the best option, but it’s not free, and it absolutely does not work outside your network. It’s called Infuse. First, the price. It’s priced old school, so if you buy lifetime, it’s only lifetime of the current major version. 6 or 7, I think. So when the next one comes out, you can buy at a discount or you can go to monthly. Yearly is actually the best option, it’s $10 a year. That’s not bad. Ten years of it is $100, and paying monthly or yearly means you’re always on the latest version. Considering lifetime is like $60-80, I think it’s a great deal to go yearly. The thing is, Infuse only works with Apple tech, and it’s not a web server and I don’t think you can make it be one. What it does do is catalogue your media and let you easily download to your Apple devices. It’s got some quirks I don’t like. For example, the player will work with a Plex (or Jellyfin) library, but it won’t write back. What that means is, if you’re watching a series on Plex hosted by Plex, you know, it’s gonna update what episode you’re on. Infuse will read that data (say, it knows you’re on episode 6), but it won’t tell Plex what it’s playing, so if you watch 2 episodes on Infuse, Plex still thinks you’re on 6. Infuse clients only talk to Infuse hosts. (Infuse also doesn’t need a host. Just share the files on the Mac using macOS’s built in file sharing feature like any OS has, and Infuse will read straight from that. It’s very smart and robust, and it’s also considered one of the best media players in the Apple ecosystem, rivaling VLC, and that other one that is only on Apple stuff that people love to recommend. I think it’s ugly, but I’m a dyed-in-the-wool VLC diehard, so I got no room to talk about ugly software. I just like the one I’m used to.
I don’t think Jellyfin is really good at much of anything but being free. It’s not Plex. It kind of acts like Plex, but it doesn’t do for its users what Plex users consider worth paying for. Infuse doesn’t, either, but Infuse takes a different approach. It’s one that Plex also takes (you download stuff to your device rather than streaming it remotely, which is based on you having an idea of what you want to watch when you’re not at home), but it’s not Plex’s priority and I don’t know about Jellyfin.
That said, Jellyfin does let you edit certain things. For example, both Jellyfin and Plex use The TVDB for metadata, but The TVDB tends to prefer foreign language casts when multiple exist, so if you don’t speak the language, and you don’t listen to that dub, the metadata is kind of useless. The problem is that there’s no source as good as The TVDB that provides multiple dub casts, so the media server apps don’t have the ability to let you pick the cast based on your language preferences. However, Jellyfin will let you manually change the metadata, per show. It takes time, but you can do it. Plex doesn’t let you do it at all.
I do feel for people who are looking at Plex’s $750 price tag, but it’s not like they weren’t warned. Plex users have been promoting the hell out of it for years. Those who thought “it’ll go down” and it more than doubled, and then thought, “oh it’ll go down for sure now” and now that it’s tripling… you kinda gotta lay in the bed you made. Or go build one from scratch. Or use a computer from a company that isn’t based around AI or advertising and find a different way.
Also, I don’t think you can pirate Plex, if anyone’s asking. The server runs locally, but the Plex Pass features are server-based.
What I’d suggest if you don’t like Plex or paying for media server tools is, work on Jellyfin or donate in some way or otherwise contribute to the project. Because at some point Jellyfin is probably going to start charging. So I would “get in on the ground floor” now. Be using it. Be advocating for it. Be contributing to it any way you can. Not just to avoid having to pay if and when they do start charging (I do not know that they will, it’s just my guess), but to make it something worth paying for before (if it does start charging), it starts charging more and you’re back at square one. Because none of us are getting any younger. If you missed the Plex boat, don’t miss the Jellyfin boat. Or get into the Apple ecosystem and pony up for Infuse. (Though, as an Apple guy/Mac guy/iPhone guy, I don’t use or pay for Infuse. I just copy the files over to OutPlayer and play them there. It’s not as pretty, but it works.
This is such an incredible long bunch of misinformation and nonsense…
Jellyfin is everything Plex used to be before it started sucking.
Streaming outside your home network might be slightly trickier with Jellyfin but that’s the cost of security and ownership… But really, setting up tailscale is dead simple as well, and would get you what you need in a way that is far superior to Plex…
I stopped reading beyond that because as I skimmed the post it was just more nonsense. Are you sure you’ve actually used Jellyfin?
Why should I answer if you don’t read things that are inconvenient to or challenge your worldview? Just block people who do that and enjoy your echo chamber. That seems to be what you want.
No way a human wrote all this slop
LLMs weren’t trained on every post on Reddit and forums. They focused on long-form comments that prioritised proper grammar and correct spelling. So while I don’t use AI to write my posts and comments, LLMs were likely trained on them, so even though you’re incorrect, I can’t really fault your assumption.
I can’t type like a kid to try to not sound like AI and I don’t want to do that anyway.
So just entirely ignoring that Linux exists?
And that more users of jellyfin host with Linux cause it’s more lightweight
It’s interesting you equate Google to advertising (search company). And you equate Microsoft to an AI company (software company). But you equate Apple to a computer company, which in theory it is, but over 50% of it’s sales and revenue are the Iphone.
Bias much?
Lmao I didn’t even get that far down their stupid post. That’s some impressive stupidity. Apple is a marketing company that happens to manufacture some sub-par commercial devices that appeal to idiots that like to pretend they know what they’re talking about.
Did this person manage to get anything correct in their long-winded cloud yelling?
Yes. I am a bit biased and I generally try to decorate biases when they aren’t obvious.
I do admit, I’m a bit older, so Apple was primarily a computer company while I was growing up. They were a bit of a media company before they were a phone company, with the iTunes Music Store. They still are with Apple Music and Apple TV.
To be fair, they run the iPhone like they run the Mac. They don’t allow pack in software, sometimes called shovelware, and including stuff like Facebook and Amazon. Though some say including their own apps counts. I don’t really think so, but I don’t think it’s worth debating. I think their rent seeking and not allowing third party app stores and sideloading is the more interesting criticism, and one I share as well.
The problem is that Apple is getting into services, which is where Google started. And adding ads is the next step and they’ve already begun that.
Apple died the second Woz was pushed away.
Woz was absolutely the best part of old Apple.
Google and Apple are basically just the same text in a different font at this point
Google makes a lot of money off that sentiment. The compute power of their latest Pixel has been compared to that of the iPhone 11 (2019). And it makes Google on average $1700 a year. More off some people than others.
But hey, vote with your wallet. Put your money into companies that will make the world you want to live in. I admit, I’m living in the past thinking of Apple as the Steve Jobs led company of 1983 with the six colours logo. But I still think computers should serve people first. Maybe none really do anymore, but that’s what I want.
How much did the most recent iPhone cost again?
And yes, you’re in the past, they’ve not been a computer company in at least a decade
Same as the most recent Pixel and Galaxy… and it’s faster than both. Your point?
Also, the most recent phones aren’t necessary. We hit a plateau years ago. Your phone is mostly limited by its ageing battery more than anything else.
My Pixel 10 Pro feels just as fast as my iPhone 16 Pro. I feel like they are both good phones and other than specifications on paper and benchmarks online I wouldn’t know the Pixel was that much inferior.
Sure I don’t game or do video editing on a phone so maybe I’m just not the target audience but for general use I think Google have done a good job.
I have an iPhone 16 Pro Max (2024) and a Galaxy S10 (2019). I think the iPhone might boot up a second faster? Has a better battery. Better camera. I’d be perfectly happy using the S10 as a daily driver. And to think an iPhone 11 (also 2019) is faster? We hit a plateau years ago. All a newer/faster phone is really for is top-end gaming (hobbled by a 6-7” screen) and AI. And the Pixel 10 Pro has some solid AI features. Of course, compute power doesn’t matter if it’s done off-site. (Not sure how Pixel does it.)
Apple devices definition don’t serve people first lol
“I use Apple btw”
who is this for?
those unicorn users who make 150k++ a year and pirate all their media and then wanna share it with their friends that they don’t have?
Wouldn’t they hurt use Jellyfin? Lol The only “value” that Plex seems to have to offer these days are the weird tv services things they keep trying to push
I know someone with a Plex who won’t switch to Jellyfin because it’s too complicated, but now is looking for other platforms. I hate to tell them… they’re all complicated.
travelling salesmen who pirate all their media??
To be fair there are plenty of users who rip their own media. But sentiment stands
Sure if plenty means less then 10. Most people just stream from one of the providers.
I do wonder if this is a last ditch effort cash grab before they go under or a “we really thought we’d be acquired by now so now we have to plan ahead” move.
I imagine most of their revenue comes from the ad supported “channels” they provide, which non-technical people are tricked into using since they have a technical friend or relative who set them up with Plex 10 years ago. With the Fox acquisition of Roku, the merging of Tubi and Roku Channel would be huge and probably cause Plex to lose streaming licenses of certain properties which will end up as lower revenue.
My friend showed me Plex once but I never really understood what it was for or how it worked. When I looked up something I wanted to watch it would just link to other streaming sites like Stan or Netflix
Plex and Jellyfin are basically like having your own Netflix built off your own media library. Plex offers a bunch of extra crap for a premium though.
That happens when you don’t have access to any libraries. You either have to set up your own or get access to someone else’s.
Roon did this and it made me stop using Roon.
Home assistant +music assistant is better now, and has fully replaced that for free.
Goodbye, shit companies.
Now I just need a service that connects to yt music and grab all my data, so I can migrate my history/playlists to Music Assistant.
I used to jave everything in mp3, then moved to streaming, then my tastes evolved and I no longer have mp3s of what I currently listen to…
Been on jellyfin since day one. Works fine, UI is great and gets the job done. TV UI maybe not top notch, buy usable. Mobile UI just fine and usable.
Also, exposed on the internet (reverse proxy, OIDC, https the works) for years now with zero issues whatsoever as well .
There are a few users always throwing thrash on jellyfin, maybe pissed off users that paid for Plex, or Plex shills that like to denigrate jellyfin, I don’t know.
Just ignore them.
Jellyfin is perfectly usable, yes you need to setup port forward, VPN or whatever, but it’s exactly our target audience so move along and stop bitching, Plex shills.
Stay with Plex, use jellyfin, whatever fit your bill.
Anyway plex does not fit my concept of self hosting to be free from cloud lock ins.
I don’t see anyone “throwing trash” on Jellyfin, only pointing out that there are some downsides. Just as it also has some advantages over Plex.
Plex is undoubtedly on a downward trajectory, and I’m glad Jellyfin exists. But it does not yet have feature parity with Plex, and if you use it for music there’s simply nothing better than Plexamp. You waive away the requirements to remotely stream on Jellyfin, but the fact that you suggest simply opening up ports highlights that one of Plex’s strengths is it’s ability to remotely stream without jeopardizing your network security.
I run both concurrently, Plex for the remote streaming, OTA DVR, better living room apps, and (by far the biggest feature for me) for Plexamp. Jellyfin for proof of concept.
I’m not a Plex shill, and am preparing for a day that Jellyfin is the better answer. But for me and my users, that day hasn’t yet arrived.
I fully respect your comment, and I don’t doubt there are good reasons behind Plex. I choose to use jellyfin because I was put off by the corporate product resell approach of Plex that goes against my self host idea, so I never used Plex and cannot say anything bad about it.
But I find annoying and even suspicious that every time there is a Plex or jellyfin discussion a few voices always denigrate jellyfin like it’s a no good choice for lack of features or dubious security and such.
Yes guys (not talking to you in specific) I understand that jellyfin lacks those features, many people don’t care, and who do care they already know.
How am I just learning about wholfin now? They need to add that to the third party clients list on the main site because at a glance that’s easily top 3 best looking jellyfin clients
Yeah, easily the best one I’ve used on TV; that’s for sure. I found it randomly on some forum a few months ago.
Wholphin
thank you for the suggestion, will try it out! I am using a Fire Stick
Moonfin is also pretty great on Android TV too imo
This is a new one for me. Looks pretty sleek.
Yeah I changed to Wholphin recently, and it’s pretty cool — though you may need to tweak a couple of things depending on your TV
I happened to setup jellyfin when i had first heard about it while I was already hosting plex, so when plex decided to charge for remote streaming years later I was already halfway there.
I like jellyfin
I tried Plex once, before I knew about jellyfin. I just wanted an open-source self-hostable media server with my own media.
When I tried it, after installing Plex, I was presented with a login for a Plex hosted account. Iirc that was optional and I skipped it, after that came the nags for Plex pass. Piss off. That’s exactly the opposite of what I wanted out of something like jellyfin.
Oh yeah and apparently you can’t stream remotely without a subscription either? If it were a feature they had to spend time on I’d still not want to use it, but I’d understand at least.
From the application’s point of view, there is no difference between internet and intranet access. I just saw that downloading the media you already own, using your own infrastructure, requires an even more expensive subscription.
How tf did people stick around with this shit for so long.
deleted by creator
If the owner of the Plex server has lifetime and other users that don’t have Plex pass at all and want to watch it remotely, they just need to be part of your home.
They don’t even need to be a part of your home. The server owner just needs to have a Plex Pass. None of my users are in my home group and can still stream remotely since I got a Lifetime pass back when they were, I think, $99.
Haven’t used it myself, but wouldn’t something like Tailscale solve the remote access limitation?
It does, but the limitation just doesn’t make any sense.
Much like USA Mobile carriers treating hotspot data differently than the phone’s own data, under the ancient premise that phones use less data than PCs - something that hasn’t been true for well over a decade.
The same reason most foss projects are barren. Plex focuses on ease of use and giving people what they want. Users mostly don’t care about the sub. It’s easy to use and works.
Meanwhile jellyfin doesn’t have a remote first interface that isn’t absolute dog shit and I need to set up a reverse proxy and potentially idp to get the ability for my family to log in.
This shit isn’t hard. The answer to the community is, make the product better, and start bundling shit in. But I’m sure I’ve already offended some nerd who thinks this is all just so easy and requires no work to tell me I just need to learn Linux better. And that putting in a reverse proxy by default will make maintenance a pain and I just have to put portainer and LE to fix it.
The shit y’all are bitching about is the problem.
This shit isn’t hard
Well it certainly would be hard for me, as I don’t know anything about the UX needed for these features, and very little about networking in general, and probably close to zero about the networking concepts required to make something like you describe work.
But it sounds like you know a lot, jellyfin is a project that is 100% volunteer developed. Maybe you could contribute your expertise either via code or by providing a concrete action plan to the jellyfin team?
Be the change you want to see and all that.
It really, honestly, is super easy to get going. All you need is a folder with your media and a compose file you can find in plenty of tutorials.
The thing we Linux nerds often forget, I think, is that we know what we’re doing (most of us at least I hope), and regular people don’t.
I can read a simple compose file and pretty quickly notice if there’s something off.
If you wanted to do that, you’d first have to read up on containers and compose and all that stuff. You can, of course, just grab a compose file and run it, but that’s generally not a great idea if you don’t know what you’re doing.
This is peak Linux nerd shit.
No. I payed $200 and Plex is better. My needs have been perfectly met for the past 10l5 years and foreseeable future.
Second, fuck off with this attitude. I came here answering a question how, ‘ohhhh it’s so fucking complicated why normies might want to pay’ with 2 concrete use cases and you immediately go off with that nerd bullshit that I need to contribute more.
I had 3 prs hit main in Apache last week. Fuck off, your nerd shit isn’t helping adoption asshole.
Bro flexes Apache contributions and still can’t paste 10 lines to make a reverse proxy
No my time is just more valuable to me and I have money 🤷♂️
Love offending the nerds with no familyies hunched over a desk all day 🤣
Good old case of “mad cuz bad”
Tipster is that you?
Most FOSS projects are barren? Huh
I’m here to say it’s all very easy and requires no work.
Seriously, you literally just install Jellyfin (or run it in Docker), set up nginx with certbot and make a port forward on your router. Zero maintenance at all.
Any LLM can give you a complete step-by-step guide that takes 10 minutes to follow if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I cannot understate how bad of an idea it is to expose something to the Internet when you don’t know what you’re doing.
Jellyfin is not designed to be exposed directly. They have a number of outstanding security issues. You should really use a VPN to access your local network instead.
I expose plenty of services. I like to live life dangerously 😎
ADHD linux zealots will argue anything, no matter how stupid, if you dare hold any comparison to a commercial product. It’s literally built into their ADHD brains need to argue and be right.
They will sit there and argue insane shit and pretend like most people have a desktop sitting in their living room much less setting up an entire *arr stack with reverse proxy. And then scream at you when you say that sounds like work I don’t have to do for less than a hamburger meal.
It’s easy bro, just learn docker, get it set up so that services boot at launch, and I’m sure nothing will never break or need to be updated again.
yup people forget about convenience. its why I’ve been building retrovibed for the last year. that *arr + plex/jellyfin + vpn + reverse proxy nonsense is insane. yes you can do it… but seriously who the fuck wants to manage that many moving parts.
You are absolutely right about all of that, I did it exactly like that, had ChatGPT tell me what to do and done. I am not an IT person, but I still like messing with tech. But that’s more than 95% of people are willing to do, and that’s why people use plex. Takes literally a minute to set up and it just runs. That’s why people choose Apple. Simple and easy, little to no maintenance. That doesn’t make it a great product, but an accessible one, and that’s what counts for most people
Meme material.
My breaking point was to pay for transcoding.
Paid for the android app which allowed HWA but then I wanted to watch it on my chromecast TV. Welp gotta pay or bust.
So I bust, went through the early adopter pain (early 11th gen Intel Xe gpu, no actual knowledge of linux or docker, little experience with linux and docker) and set it up.
Working great since then.
Currently restreaming japanese IPTV with jellyfin via an m3u stream at work (and through a mobile VPN router)
Not the most stable stream but sufficient
Oooh. Can you give some more details about how you did that? I have a Japanese friend coming to visit for about 2 months and she might want to watch TV during the day.
Something something akariko something netgenx on google.
My stack is including dispatcharr for managing m3u streams (and fallback sources) and jellyfin to watch it.
When I first used Plex, it didn’t even have accounts. I don’t even understand what the account is for.
Lifetime single pay subscriptions don’t make financial sense at all for a company. As much as I hate subscriptions, it’s the only way to get long term support, which software needs.
They managed years without going to a subscription model. This is about shareholder needs not software upkeep.
If Jellyfin can fill most Plex features for most people, maybe it’s not that they need to charge money to survive. Maybe it’s that their product value proposition has eroded.
Certainly, but open source projects rely too heavily on the goodwill of volunteers who still need to feed their families. Hopefully Jellyfin’s incoming users contribute to the project.
Don’t worry. My family isn’t going hungry. Enjoy your media.
But Plex’s subscription plan is also priced like shit. Netflix is like 2$/month, Debrid is 3$ while plex is 10$ for me.
Where in the world do you get Netflix for $2?
India, Bangladesh, plenty of Asian countries. I was using a vpn to pay for netflex through Bangladesh. A $25 plan in the US was $3.23 there. Its all a scam.
India
netflix is $20/month, so what you’re saying is that plex is cheap (I have no idea what plex offers but I don’t pay for either)
Two dollars/month
Jellyfin
Even now - at the peak point of the Memory/SSD price bubble - about 1/3 of that lifetime pass buys you enough dedicated hardware to do it yourself for at least the next decade, probably more.
Plex works just fine without a subscription. What is the subscription even for?
It has centralised features like proprietary user sharing (which is neat but still), arbitrary limits like device limits, the ability to transcode using your server’s hardware, and other stuff that Emby/Jellyfin users have as standard. So we generally see the restrictions as taking power and ownership away from our own media/hardware.
And any cool premium Plex features like merging multiple servers into one UI get adopted and ported into Emby/Jellyfin pretty damn quickly
Downloads for Offline Viewing (jellyfin has this for free) and Remote Access (stream videos while outside of your home network, you can just use tailwind with jellyfin for free)
What is this ‘offline’ thing I keep hearing about?
You can download media for when you’re not able to reach your server. I use it to be able to watch things on my iPad at work. My iPad automatically downloads the next few unwatched episodes for whatever I have queued. And whenever it reconnects to my server, (like when I connect to WiFi) it automatically syncs to update the downloaded episodes. That way I don’t need to connect to my employer’s WiFi.
You can download episodes/movies to your device for offline playback. Not groundbreaking, you could just copy the files to your device manually, but if you do it via the plex app it will sync your watch progress once you connect again.
You can also use it to bulk-download shows from other people’s libraries.
Why would I need to copy the files to my media player when it can just stream from my NAS directly, regardless of internet connection.
Well if you don’t leave the house I’m sure that’s fine. Some people use it to watch stuff when they’re away, or if they have a job that lets them play something while they work.
I do leave the house but I generally don’t bring my home cinema with me.
Example - You have a tablet and want to preload content into the Plex app before a flight.
I used it when I travel abroad and want to watch something, like when you’re on a plane or train with shitty internet or roaming charges.
If you host a server and have a lifetime pass, you’ll be able to share your collection with anyone. It will allow hardware encoding so less lag on your users end. You can also locally download content on your devices to watch offline.
So no useful features for me.
I don’t want to share my media with anyone and see no reason to stream from outside my house, it’s not like I can take my home cinema with me. Also, why would you want to re-encode and lower the quality?
Just because the use case isn’t useful for you doesn’t mean it’s useless for everyone. I have a family who enjoys media and I like sharing with those that I like. Encoding is necessary for people who are not physically in my house and who may be viewing on a mobile device.
You asked why anyone would want these features, I explained why I use them, and you’ve taken it as me trying to convince you that you needed it. Wild.
Well in your case you don’t need the subscription at all, apart from some minor things the subscription won’t do anything for you.
But I do all the things you’re not doing. I share my server with dozens of friends/family so I need remote streaming. I can watch shows on my own server no matter where I am (at work or when visiting relatives, or even on the phone on the train). And if you streaming on the phone or with bad internet in general it might sometimes be a good idea to reduce quality to save bandwidth.
I really would like to use Jellyfin, but the remote access is quite useful to me personally. My immediate family lives far away and they can access my library remotely quite easily. They just want to watch their requested shows and don’t need 4k HDR 7.2 surround sound for their cooking shows.
I guess I could set up tailscale or some other vpn access to my network but I don’t feel like explaining that to parents and siblings. Even my partner, who lives with me, has little patience for all things electronic. They’re an Apple user and I’m aware enough not to constantly pester them with my ideals and preferences. Plex works on our Apple TV and is easy so it’s the best solution right now. Am I in the minority? Probably, but different strokes for different folks.
TLDR: Jellyfin is awesome, but Plex currently makes more sense for my needs.
I guess I could set up tailscale or some other vpn access to my network but I don’t feel like explaining that to parents and siblings.
Just set up VPN between your router and their router, no need to explain anything.
Yeah, that’s a potential solution, but then my sister’s starting college soon so she’d need to VPN into one of the networks when she’s not at home; which brings us back to square one.
Then there’s whenever they’re not home and want to watch something on their phone or laptop.
Jellyfin is quite easy to use remotely (prerequisite: purchased domain (easy), tunnel VPN (complex) or public static IP (not always an option)). I confess I use Emby as I bought premium for it once I learned how much it suits me, and the UI is much nicer and rounded – although I didn’t need to pay in order to do most of what I wanted. I can say that my friends access the library with a one time login and minimal friction, but I’m also not going to preach further - sometimes it’s better not to fuck with a working system, and I respect your choice
Similarly, I have a Plex lifetime license.
I think my biggest hurdle for Jellyfin is setting up a VPS for all my self hosted services. Currently I use Cloudflare Tunnels, which is easy but I’d like to get away from it because Cloudflare and it doesn’t allow for streaming services to run on it.
I’ll spin up Jellyfin and see how Swiftfin is on the Apple TV. If I feel it has minimal friction I’ll try and make the jump.
With regards to spreading the good word of self hosting, I’ve had the best luck just offering good services to those around me. Spliit, HomeAssistant, and Immich have been easy to get my partner to use. Then I just happen to say “oh yeah, this is running on my server btw”. The holy grail would be to convince my friends to use Fluxer or something instead of Discord.
I have a Fluxer login but I keep forgetting to log into it. I’ve been on Matrix lately, and Osmium for another Discord server that was nuked for basically no reason.
