Plex is a great streaming alternative. Cancelling Netflix pays for the upgrade to gigabit Internet. Hard drives are cheaper now than ever. Usenet access remains safe and speedy. The DIY community for automation is thriving.
Is that the Jolly Roger coming in to port? Welcome back old friends.
I MUCH prefer Jellyfin to Plex. Jellyfin seems to have active development whereas Plex is more interested in adding in a ton of “features” (aka garbage) that I never ever wanted and continues to leave YEARS old bugs out in the wild. I think it won’t be long until Plex enshittifies itself to death. They clearly have a financial situation that is not aligned with its users.
You could use Emby instead. Jellyfin is the FOSS version of Emby and Emby has apps for everything. I moved to Emby from Plex five years ago or so and it’s been great.
In the worst case scenario, you can access it via browser and then bookmark it.
I do that on my tv for which almost no apps can be installed and found no issues so far. Even HDR media plays, which I found that it is (or was?) a paid feature on Plex
FWIW, my Plex Pass has worked to be much less than that since I purchased it.
Much (not all) of the negative I see about Plex is associated with cost of a Plex Pass. If subscribing monthly, it costs more. If you play the long game with the Lifetime Pass, it’s dirt cheap and pretty darn solid.
Jellyfin feels like it’s 95% of the way there. I switched from Plex to Jellyfin back to Plex again a year or two ago, but I am thinking I should give Jellyfin another shot some time. There was some media that Jellyfin wasn’t able to play even without transcoding that Plex handled fine, but those transcoding issues could be solved by now.
I tried but the technical gap from Plex to Jellyfin was too intense for me to try and make work at this time of my life. Plex works well for my purposes and I paid for the phone apps when needed ($6 per device I think).
I admire and support Jellyfin as FOSS and hope I can jump on when I have more time to make it work.
Yeah for sure, didn’t mean to imply folks shouldn’t use Plex just giving it a shout out as an alternative. I’ve used both and they are both pretty awesome. One of my friends set up a seed box with Jellyfin so I kinda cheated in leaving the tinkering to them but I don’t think it was too bad with the provider they went with.
Yep. Finally got Radarr and Sonarr with overseerr setup this summer because I need a GUI solution for my family. It’s been working pretty great so far!
I have the same but the one thing I can’t get working is accessing overseer from outside the network (ie internet). I’ve read guides of course but at some point they start talking about domains and certificate signing and I start to have a siezure.
Look into Caddy, it’s by far the easiest web server/reverse proxy with automatic SSL support out there. Setup both Caddy and Overseer in Docker and then just simply write
Assuming you have you own domain name and have DNS records setup.
I was using Nginx and Let’s Encrypt for years but it was a bit of a pain in the ass. I just rewrote my entire Docker Compose script to use Caddy so I can deploy everything in about 5 minutes.
Any thoughts on using something like Caddy, or any other reverse proxy option, if you already have a VPN that you pay for?
Currently I’m using Tailscale for my phone and tablet, but there’s not really an option for Roku outside of my home network. I’d like to give a friend access to my Jellyfin, but I can’t seem to get anything working other than Tailscale because I already pay for ProtonVPN.
Routing the reverse proxy through the VPN just complicates things. I’m assuming you mean you want to give a friend access to your Jellyfin server, not your Roku (not sure why you mentioned that), so just have Caddy listen on ports 80 and 443, and forward the ports on your router. Then setup the reverse proxy lines for Jellyfin in the Caddyfile. Assuming you already have DNS setup you should be good to go, just give your friend the URL. Caddy enables SSL by default so there really is no reason to route the traffic through a VPN tunnel. I’m pretty sure the Jellyfin docs have a section for using Caddy as a reverse proxy.
I’ll have to check again on the Jellyfin docs, but when I was las trying to follow the steps, I ran into an issue where some IP didn’t match something else and it told me I couldn’t continue.
My friend uses a Roku so getting him to use Tailscale or anything like it isn’t really an option.
Yeah, I think you’re confused 😉 There is no need for your friend to use a VPN to access your Jellyfin server. All you need to do is make it publicly accessible and tell him where to find it (the URL).
It can literally be as simple as setting up NAT on your router (commonly known as port forwarding, linking the IP of the Jellyfin server and it’s port to a designated port on your router accessible via your public IP) and then giving your friend your public IP and the port that you opened. THIS IS HIGHLY DISCOURAGED THOUGH SINCE NOTHING IS ENCRYPTED.
It’s best to setup either Dynamic DNS (usually free, but you don’t get your own domain name, usually just a subdomain under their domain name) or buy your own domain name for cheap (like $10-$30 USD/year) and setup your A records (and CNAME records if you want) in the hosted DNS section. Once you have DNS working then setup a reverse proxy using something like Caddy (simple), Traefik (more complex), or Nginx (a full blown, complex web server) and Certbot/LetsEncrypt. SSL certs and reverse proxies can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but Caddy makes it dead simple.
From there just give your friend your URL (https://jellyfin.yourserver.com or however you have it setup). He puts that in the connection box in the Jellyfin UI and it should work as intended.
buy your own domain name for cheap (like $10-$30 USD/year) and setup your A records (and CNAME records if you want) in the hosted DNS section.
Does it matter if your domain is on shared hosting already? Like, I’ve got kaitco.net, so I should be able to set up jellyfin.kaitco.net and the A and/or CNAME in the hosted DNS? Or, would I need to purchase a new one that’s not already hosted on any server already?
Thank you for answering my asinine questions about this btw 😅
I just set up a VPN with wire guard and duckdns. Connected my phone and works great. Some one will mention a show and I’ll pull out my phone and add it via overseer. Get it on plex in like 2 minutes.
I might be missing something, but there are lots of guides once you figure out what you’re looking for. A little technical know-how makes things go smoother and faster though.
Worth mentioning that NZBget is no longer in development. It still works but there is a fork out of a new client someone is developing. I can’t recall the name but easily findable. This would be the equivalent of your torrent client.
It’s nearing year end and you can get end of year deals soon on providers and indexers so off hold off until November\December. I think I got a lifetime NZBGeek membership last year for like $100 or something. It was my first time doing usenet but I actually switched my instances to use usenet indexers first over torrent indexers its that good.
There’s a few recent guides on Reddit that discuss this and automation. I got access to some private torrent trackers this year, but haven’t touched them since I got my Usenet subscription. I’ve been waiting decades for it to be this easy once you get it set up.
If you already have that automation part going, this should be pretty straight forward. Add a Usenet download client to your *arr programs, put in the account info from your Usenet provider, add on your account info for nzb trackers, and it works just the same except with more consistency and speed.
I tried to get into Usenet but I’m old and unable to learn new tricks. I just looked at EasyNews and it’s $9.99 pm for 20GB :| so, like, a single 4K movie with Atmos. I don’t understand the allure of UseNet, perhaps because I am a dumb.
Plex is cracking down on pirated content. They can’t do anything locally (yet) but they sent out a mass email about two weeks ago saying that anyone that hosts a Plex server in the cloud (they didn’t specifically mention Hetzner, but that’s who is largely being affected) will lose access on October 12th.
That’s because people were creating their own ‘streaming services’ using pirated content and selling access to it using Hetzner servers, which is very bad for all parties involved because it brings a lot of negative attention when actual profits are being generated from distributing pirated material.
Yeah, but it sucks for people like me who just set everything up a few weeks ago and are using it privately. I’ve hosted a massive Plex server locally for about a decade, but finally decided to stop doing everything locally. I had it running for two weeks in the cloud before I got the email from Plex. I just setup Jellyfin yesterday and all of my users will have to migrate to that.
That sucks for you, but you gotta understand Plex there as well I think. They know that all their clients are pirates, but they can’t just ignore something like that, lest risk catching unwanted attention.
It’s specifically people doing this and selling access to the servers en masse, like these servers have a hundred or more users each. The don’t care about the small fish that are doing this privately for no monetary gain.
Yeah, I guess it’s often profit-driven. If you can get $5 per month from 100 people, you can probably clear hundreds of dollars per month. So that ten times, and this becomes quite a serious profit stream.
I’m just as jaded and cynical as the next guy, but I think that this is a mischaracterization of that email. People were hosting Plex servers with thousands of users and terabytes of pirated content on Hetzner and selling access. I don’t read them taking action as a signal for them blocking local libraries in the future.
Sorry I don’t buy it. It stinks of puppeting for rights holders. I moved to Jellyfin as soon as that story broke. I’ve been a Plex pass user for over 10 years (albeit lifetime single purchase) and the only thing I miss is in-TV subtitle search.
You have made the move to JF based on what you think Plex will do in the future
Yes. Plex have access to my content, my usage history, my personal details, etc. Giving that sort of information away and trusting a for-profit company to do the right thing is naive at best. I feel happier now that the system is behind closed doors, even if I do miss out on a feature or two.
Hence, you were disingenuously spreading nonsense and misinformation.
Not really. Are you mixing my response up with others? I voiced an opinion, that was all.
You sure are incredibly trusting and protective of Plex. For a closed source system, unless you work for Plex, you are spreading misinformation by denying opinions contrary to your own. I would think myself naive to continue to trust in a company showing themselves to be taking action in favour of copyright holders.
Yeah, people act like Plex and other media servers are used for legally obtained content only. Plex is just covering their asses and they can’t block users hosting locally so this is a “here we did something, are you happy now?” to the copyright lawyers.
It’s easy to setup remote access to Jellyfin… once you know what you’re doing. I’ve been doing it for years, and just recently gave Caddy a try as my reverse proxy and it literally takes 3 lines of code to create a SSL secured reverse proxy (literally just Jellyfin.yourfqnd.com { reverse_proxy Jellyfin:8096}).
I’ve written a docker compose file for each of my categories of apps on my server: Plex, Jellyfin, Admin apps, and Pirating. The Caddy config file is simple so I just copy that to its app directory. My DNS and my CNAME records are already set.
So after a bit of work writing the aforementioned scripts I can have my entire setup on a new server in about 5 minutes and one command.
IDK if docker-compose works on Windows, but I’m happy to share it if you run Linux.
Stremio + Real Debrid is definitely not worth investigating. Avoid it at all costs. Keep giving these media companies more money. All the money. Disney needs your dollars.
I dust off my robe and wizard hat.
Plex is a great streaming alternative. Cancelling Netflix pays for the upgrade to gigabit Internet. Hard drives are cheaper now than ever. Usenet access remains safe and speedy. The DIY community for automation is thriving.
Is that the Jolly Roger coming in to port? Welcome back old friends.
Worth checking out Jellyfin as well
I MUCH prefer Jellyfin to Plex. Jellyfin seems to have active development whereas Plex is more interested in adding in a ton of “features” (aka garbage) that I never ever wanted and continues to leave YEARS old bugs out in the wild. I think it won’t be long until Plex enshittifies itself to death. They clearly have a financial situation that is not aligned with its users.
Plex has a client on my TV and Xbox. How would I watch Jellyfin content on those?
I say this a guy that got his RasPi3 Plex server running just good and stable a year ago and doesn’t touch it except to cycle in new content.
You could use Emby instead. Jellyfin is the FOSS version of Emby and Emby has apps for everything. I moved to Emby from Plex five years ago or so and it’s been great.
In the worst case scenario, you can access it via browser and then bookmark it.
I do that on my tv for which almost no apps can be installed and found no issues so far. Even HDR media plays, which I found that it is (or was?) a paid feature on Plex
I agree, I’ll give the software another try once I have more free time to learn and troubleshoot
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Infuse is only $10 per year and that includes on your Apple TV and iPhone. It really is quite slick and looks really good.
Agreed. This is not expensive at all. 100% worth the value which is less than a dollar a month.
FWIW, my Plex Pass has worked to be much less than that since I purchased it.
Much (not all) of the negative I see about Plex is associated with cost of a Plex Pass. If subscribing monthly, it costs more. If you play the long game with the Lifetime Pass, it’s dirt cheap and pretty darn solid.
$1/month or $10 year. I’d say that’s relatively cheap as far as paid media apps go but certainly more expensive than free.
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Unfortunately, there’s no Jellyfin application on my TV, or I’d swap :-(
Jellyfin feels like it’s 95% of the way there. I switched from Plex to Jellyfin back to Plex again a year or two ago, but I am thinking I should give Jellyfin another shot some time. There was some media that Jellyfin wasn’t able to play even without transcoding that Plex handled fine, but those transcoding issues could be solved by now.
I tried but the technical gap from Plex to Jellyfin was too intense for me to try and make work at this time of my life. Plex works well for my purposes and I paid for the phone apps when needed ($6 per device I think).
I admire and support Jellyfin as FOSS and hope I can jump on when I have more time to make it work.
Yeah for sure, didn’t mean to imply folks shouldn’t use Plex just giving it a shout out as an alternative. I’ve used both and they are both pretty awesome. One of my friends set up a seed box with Jellyfin so I kinda cheated in leaving the tinkering to them but I don’t think it was too bad with the provider they went with.
Exact same thing happened to me, i just couldn’t get it to consistently work.
I can’t for the life of me get HW encoding working with Jellyfin. Plex was just plug and play.
i7-11800H
worth checking out until you get to the cry for developers that they posted yesterday. fuck switching my media serving to a dying platform
Yep. Finally got Radarr and Sonarr with overseerr setup this summer because I need a GUI solution for my family. It’s been working pretty great so far!
I have the same but the one thing I can’t get working is accessing overseer from outside the network (ie internet). I’ve read guides of course but at some point they start talking about domains and certificate signing and I start to have a siezure.
Look into Caddy, it’s by far the easiest web server/reverse proxy with automatic SSL support out there. Setup both Caddy and Overseer in Docker and then just simply write
Assuming you have you own domain name and have DNS records setup.
I was using Nginx and Let’s Encrypt for years but it was a bit of a pain in the ass. I just rewrote my entire Docker Compose script to use Caddy so I can deploy everything in about 5 minutes.
Any thoughts on using something like Caddy, or any other reverse proxy option, if you already have a VPN that you pay for?
Currently I’m using Tailscale for my phone and tablet, but there’s not really an option for Roku outside of my home network. I’d like to give a friend access to my Jellyfin, but I can’t seem to get anything working other than Tailscale because I already pay for ProtonVPN.
Routing the reverse proxy through the VPN just complicates things. I’m assuming you mean you want to give a friend access to your Jellyfin server, not your Roku (not sure why you mentioned that), so just have Caddy listen on ports 80 and 443, and forward the ports on your router. Then setup the reverse proxy lines for Jellyfin in the Caddyfile. Assuming you already have DNS setup you should be good to go, just give your friend the URL. Caddy enables SSL by default so there really is no reason to route the traffic through a VPN tunnel. I’m pretty sure the Jellyfin docs have a section for using Caddy as a reverse proxy.
I’ll have to check again on the Jellyfin docs, but when I was las trying to follow the steps, I ran into an issue where some IP didn’t match something else and it told me I couldn’t continue.
My friend uses a Roku so getting him to use Tailscale or anything like it isn’t really an option.
Yeah, I think you’re confused 😉 There is no need for your friend to use a VPN to access your Jellyfin server. All you need to do is make it publicly accessible and tell him where to find it (the URL).
It can literally be as simple as setting up NAT on your router (commonly known as port forwarding, linking the IP of the Jellyfin server and it’s port to a designated port on your router accessible via your public IP) and then giving your friend your public IP and the port that you opened. THIS IS HIGHLY DISCOURAGED THOUGH SINCE NOTHING IS ENCRYPTED.
It’s best to setup either Dynamic DNS (usually free, but you don’t get your own domain name, usually just a subdomain under their domain name) or buy your own domain name for cheap (like $10-$30 USD/year) and setup your A records (and CNAME records if you want) in the hosted DNS section. Once you have DNS working then setup a reverse proxy using something like Caddy (simple), Traefik (more complex), or Nginx (a full blown, complex web server) and Certbot/LetsEncrypt. SSL certs and reverse proxies can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but Caddy makes it dead simple.
From there just give your friend your URL (https://jellyfin.yourserver.com or however you have it setup). He puts that in the connection box in the Jellyfin UI and it should work as intended.
Does it matter if your domain is on shared hosting already? Like, I’ve got kaitco.net, so I should be able to set up jellyfin.kaitco.net and the A and/or CNAME in the hosted DNS? Or, would I need to purchase a new one that’s not already hosted on any server already?
Thank you for answering my asinine questions about this btw 😅
I just set up a VPN with wire guard and duckdns. Connected my phone and works great. Some one will mention a show and I’ll pull out my phone and add it via overseer. Get it on plex in like 2 minutes.
Cloudflare zero trust tunnels are your answer
Is there any links/guides on how to get into the usenet side of things? I’ve been using torrents forever but people keep saying usenet is safer.
Google/learn about/consider these things
VPN, Usenet provider (i.e. EasyNews), Usenet indexers (i.e. NZBgeek), Usenet client (i.e. NZBget), Managing your library (Sonarr, Radar, Prowlarr, Filebot),
Media server & streaming (i.e. Plex, Jellyfin)
I watch through my firestick or android phones
I might be missing something, but there are lots of guides once you figure out what you’re looking for. A little technical know-how makes things go smoother and faster though.
Thanks for the info. I’ve got. Sonarr radarr and prowlarr set up with qbitt right now and jellyfin. I’ll have to do some digging this weekend.
Worth mentioning that NZBget is no longer in development. It still works but there is a fork out of a new client someone is developing. I can’t recall the name but easily findable. This would be the equivalent of your torrent client.
It’s nearing year end and you can get end of year deals soon on providers and indexers so off hold off until November\December. I think I got a lifetime NZBGeek membership last year for like $100 or something. It was my first time doing usenet but I actually switched my instances to use usenet indexers first over torrent indexers its that good.
There’s a few recent guides on Reddit that discuss this and automation. I got access to some private torrent trackers this year, but haven’t touched them since I got my Usenet subscription. I’ve been waiting decades for it to be this easy once you get it set up.
If you already have that automation part going, this should be pretty straight forward. Add a Usenet download client to your *arr programs, put in the account info from your Usenet provider, add on your account info for nzb trackers, and it works just the same except with more consistency and speed.
I tried to get into Usenet but I’m old and unable to learn new tricks. I just looked at EasyNews and it’s $9.99 pm for 20GB :| so, like, a single 4K movie with Atmos. I don’t understand the allure of UseNet, perhaps because I am a dumb.
I have EasyNews, I think I paid $30 for 6 months of unlimited.
Here you go, $6 a month unlimited signup link https://signup.easynews.com/checkout/unlimited-special-deal/
Also, what makes Usenet safer?
Running a VPN makes torrenting just as safe and you’ll be paying a subscription fee for Usenet so it’s a wash in my opinion.
I second this and I’m in the same boat as you
Plex is cracking down on pirated content. They can’t do anything locally (yet) but they sent out a mass email about two weeks ago saying that anyone that hosts a Plex server in the cloud (they didn’t specifically mention Hetzner, but that’s who is largely being affected) will lose access on October 12th.
That’s because people were creating their own ‘streaming services’ using pirated content and selling access to it using Hetzner servers, which is very bad for all parties involved because it brings a lot of negative attention when actual profits are being generated from distributing pirated material.
Yeah, but it sucks for people like me who just set everything up a few weeks ago and are using it privately. I’ve hosted a massive Plex server locally for about a decade, but finally decided to stop doing everything locally. I had it running for two weeks in the cloud before I got the email from Plex. I just setup Jellyfin yesterday and all of my users will have to migrate to that.
That sucks for you, but you gotta understand Plex there as well I think. They know that all their clients are pirates, but they can’t just ignore something like that, lest risk catching unwanted attention.
People thought hosting copyrighted content on someone’s cloud and making it available to others was a good idea? 🤦🤦♀️🤦♂️
This is why we can’t have nice things.
It’s specifically people doing this and selling access to the servers en masse, like these servers have a hundred or more users each. The don’t care about the small fish that are doing this privately for no monetary gain.
Yeah, I guess it’s often profit-driven. If you can get $5 per month from 100 people, you can probably clear hundreds of dollars per month. So that ten times, and this becomes quite a serious profit stream.
Yet.
I’m just as jaded and cynical as the next guy, but I think that this is a mischaracterization of that email. People were hosting Plex servers with thousands of users and terabytes of pirated content on Hetzner and selling access. I don’t read them taking action as a signal for them blocking local libraries in the future.
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Sorry I don’t buy it. It stinks of puppeting for rights holders. I moved to Jellyfin as soon as that story broke. I’ve been a Plex pass user for over 10 years (albeit lifetime single purchase) and the only thing I miss is in-TV subtitle search.
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You seem really sensitive to this.
Yes. Plex have access to my content, my usage history, my personal details, etc. Giving that sort of information away and trusting a for-profit company to do the right thing is naive at best. I feel happier now that the system is behind closed doors, even if I do miss out on a feature or two.
Not really. Are you mixing my response up with others? I voiced an opinion, that was all.
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You sure are incredibly trusting and protective of Plex. For a closed source system, unless you work for Plex, you are spreading misinformation by denying opinions contrary to your own. I would think myself naive to continue to trust in a company showing themselves to be taking action in favour of copyright holders.
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That’s their entire userbase. Bold call haha
Yeah, people act like Plex and other media servers are used for legally obtained content only. Plex is just covering their asses and they can’t block users hosting locally so this is a “here we did something, are you happy now?” to the copyright lawyers.
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Good to know, hopefully this creates a drive to make alternatives a little more user friendly to set up
It’s easy to setup remote access to Jellyfin… once you know what you’re doing. I’ve been doing it for years, and just recently gave Caddy a try as my reverse proxy and it literally takes 3 lines of code to create a SSL secured reverse proxy (literally just Jellyfin.yourfqnd.com { reverse_proxy Jellyfin:8096}).
I’ve written a docker compose file for each of my categories of apps on my server: Plex, Jellyfin, Admin apps, and Pirating. The Caddy config file is simple so I just copy that to its app directory. My DNS and my CNAME records are already set.
So after a bit of work writing the aforementioned scripts I can have my entire setup on a new server in about 5 minutes and one command.
IDK if docker-compose works on Windows, but I’m happy to share it if you run Linux.
Haha I’ve been scrolling down this thread and read these wholesome helpful comments and look up and it’s been you each time!!
Cut that shit out!!
👏 well done you beautiful soul 👍
Hahaha happy to help! Apparently two people didn’t like my comment above for some reason 🤷♂️
I’ve been doing this for over a decade and have a lot of experience in what to do and what not to do!
Gotta sell out to get more VC cash somehow /s
Got any names in particular? I’ve been looking at Usenet for a long long time and I think I’m going to finally get serious about it
Sure, check through this comment thread as a few have already been mentioned.
I will take a second look!
Stremio + Real Debrid is definitely not worth investigating. Avoid it at all costs. Keep giving these media companies more money. All the money. Disney needs your dollars.