cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/2333639
I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That's it folks. I've been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.
They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.
I'll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I've been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it's time to make it production ready.
Edit: I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying “Just buy a plex pass” are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.
And for the thousandth person who wants to say the same things to me:
- YES I know I'm unaffected as a Plex Pass owner.
- My users were immediately angry at it, which made me angry. Our users don't understand what plex pass is, and they shouldn't have to, that's why I had it. The fact that they were pinged even though it should have kept working is horribly sloppy
- Plex is still removing functionality. I don't care that "People should pay their fair share". If Plex wants to put every new feature behind a paywall, that's completely okay. They are removing functionality.
- "But they have cloud costs". Remote streaming is negligible to them. It's a dynamic DNS service. Plex client logs in, asks where server is, plex cloud responds with the IP and port of where server is located. That's it.
- "Good luck finding another remote streaming" - Again, Plex just opens up an IP and port. Jellyfin also just opens up an IP and port (Hold on jellyfin folks I know, security, that's a separate conversation). All "remote streaming" is is their dynamic dns. Literal pennies to them. Know what actually is costing them money? Hosting all of that ad-supported "free" content that they're probably losing money on.
In short, I don't care how you justify it. Plex is doing something shitty. They're removing functionality that has been free for years. I'm not responding to any more of your comments repeating the same arguments over and over.
People are saying switch to jellyfin, which I'm all for. But you're expecting a service which will make remote access easy like Plex ur kinda fucked.
I mean if have to set up wireguard or whatever for Jellyfin you could just do the same for Plex?
Again go to jellyfin either way, proprietary software can suck my gurl cawk, but either way you need a VPN or open ports.
You can use a VPS to make it accessible without VPN via the internet: https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup
Oh yeah no you can rent out a vps and use it as a VPN/router appliance. I've done that before for other projects, just figured it seemed a lil overkill here.
No I understand the benefits of open source software but this isn't just a feature you can code in. Without portfords to the server, a VPN, or a reverse proxy, jellyfin would have to start hosting a service.
Is it technically feasible? I guess but seems like its both out of scope and not in the interest of the developers since the last thing they want probably want to get caught in is hosting streaming relays for everyone free of charge.
Technically literate people could host the relays.
HD/4K video streams eat bandwidth like a motherfucker. Gonna have to find some rich hobbiests for that.
I guess someone could start a nonprofit but you're more likely to do that for the developers themselves first.
My point is if you're paying anyone, it should be the maintainers and members of an open source project. But I've seen people host many other high bandwidth things for free so who knows.
I use tailscale for accessing my home network remotely, it was a super easy setup
Unfortunately most smart TVs lack a Tailscale app, so it's not always possible.
Fair. I'm the only one that uses my jellyfin server. It's usually streaming to my local TV, or laptop if I'm traveling. Working on a portable mini lab right now too, travel router + raspberry pi
Also, my mom doesn't know what Tailscale is. She just want to watch movies
I've been thinking of messing with the FOSS tailscale implementations
Wouldn't that count as a VPN, albeit one run on someone else's machine?
Yea, I should've clarified, was just throwing out a simple option if anyone hadn't heard of that yet, it was easier than setting up openvpn or something on my router. You can also self host Headscale on your machine if you want to have more control over it.
yeah we primarily watch on a Samsung TV through a PS5. I'm not seeing any alternatives for either device. I might be able to slap together a desktop from spare parts but I'm not sure I want to start maintaining a whole other computer.
Probably time to make a switch either way, what with them paywalling HDR and h.265
A cheap streaming stick might work
Cloudflare tunnel and a domain name will stream Jellyfin to any device while delivering a decent amount of safety.
It is against Cloudflare TOS to stream video through them.
No it's not. It used to be. They removed that part of the TOS about video streaming back in 2023.
It's not completely gone, it's just that now they offer you a way to do it, here's some doc about it:
Source: https://blog.cloudflare.com/updated-tos/
Source: https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/reference/policies-compliances/delivering-videos-with-cloudflare/
In short, streaming videos hosted on your server is still against TOS, but they now offer a thing called Stream where you can host videos to be streamed without violating it.
That's for the CDN. It's about serving static, cached content faster. I actually tried to pay and use their Stream service, but it's only to be used for serving video in a web page. While they've not directly clarified on the topic (even after being asked directly in the forums several times), don't turn on caching and it appears to serve the language they've used in the updated TOS. I'm not a lawyer here, but parse that all as you will. Don't take up storage on their CDN and they seem to be happy. I actually did buy some domain names through them to make sure I'm not just using their services without giving anything back. But, that's a matter of conscience.
I’m assuming you don’t just stream home made movies
Stemming pirated Covent is against tos
Who's to say what content I stream. You do you, boo.
Can you elaborate? I've been trying to find a way to expose jf to the Internet safely without a VPN, and I'm getting mixed messages from people.
I just got a cloudfare domain the other day actually.
It's against Cloudflare TOS to stream video.
At all? Even just using their reverse proxy?
Unless you host the videos with them an use their Stream solution yes.
It’s against tos to stream video you don’t own the rights to
It depends on how you're hosting Jellyfin. The easiest and most common way is via Docker in some form. You can also install a docker image of Cloudflare tunnel making sure it's on the same virtual network as Jellyfin (I think it will by default). However you're running Jellyfin, Cloudflare tunnel will need to be able to reach your local Jellyfin install.
Create a tunnel in the Cloudflare zero trust dashboard, create or edit the config file for your Cloudflare tunnel install using the code string from the zero trust dashboard, your tunnel will attempt to connect to the Cloudflare servers, when it does, you have a secure tunnel. Then you can add hostnames on the zero trust dashboard, using your local IP addresses and ports. For example, jellyfin.yourdomain.com points to 192.168.1.10:8096. The tunnel connects your local IP to the routing from your domain.
Be careful to not open this up to apps that don't have security in some form at least. There are ways to improve security on your tunnel end with SWAG and such. And I recommend turning on the security tools in Cloudflare so your domain can't be accessed outside of your country at the least, and maybe even whitelisting IP addresses for even more security.
SpaceInvaderOne on YouTube has a good video on creating a Cloudflare tunnel via Unraid. But everything is much the same in regular docker. I'm sure there's good videos on doing it however you're hosting Jellyfin. Feel free to reach out with questions, I'll gladly help if I can.
Amazing thank you, when I get time to sit down with this I will probably have more questions!
thanks for this
I prefer a VPN for this sorta thing because its a bit more hardened.
Nginx is a good reverse proxy for my publicly available hosts.