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Why I moved my Plex library to Jellyfin after 14 years (the.unknown-universe.co.uk)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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[–] 113 points 5 months ago (89 children)

This article doesn't mention the limitations of remote access for Jellyfin, which requires some tricks like reverse proxy or Tailscale. I think Jellyfin is a great option if you only watch/listen on your home network, but if anyone wants to replicate the remote access capabilities of Plex, I typically warn them they are going to have to roll their sleeves up.

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  • [–] [S] 41 points 5 months ago (37 children)

    You're right, I missed that.

    I personally use a reverse proxy and Wireguard setup to access remotely.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (36 children)

    Not something that unfortunately works as easily for me to connect my ailing mom's TV to, and do NOT want to manage the reverse proxy + cert + etc setup for a number of reasons

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Doesn't that mean your jellyfin server is directly exposed to the Internet? The very thing everyone constantly warns against?

    I'm still on Plex, one of my biggest hangups with JF is that the remote access is kludgy

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago* (5 children)

    What in the goddamn fuck, sir

    Step 1) Install tailscale (headscale also exists if you wanna fully self-host it)

    Step 2) Done, solved

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Most people are not gonna go that route unfortunately. I want to love JF, but the remote access is a big sticking point, especially for non tech relatives.

    It bugs me when people just say tailscale like that solves it all. It's very useful and solves a lot of problems, but not all. Unfortunately.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I completely agree, Tailscale will not just solve your issues. If you want to have is as simple as possible for your users you are going to need to expose it publicly for your users. And the reason I posted the comment above is to share a solution that has worked for me to get my users "Smart"TVs to work. Honestly if someone where to make a service that provides a "plex networking" solution for jellyfin I think allot of people would consider using it and leave plex for good!

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (17 children)

    There are a ton of reverse proxy options that manage the cert for you

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (12 children)

    There's lots of reasons I don't want to set this up

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    I just wish they'd fucking take their security seriously and we could wipe plex out.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    Yeah it can be more limiting. Personally I got lucky and my mom's TV runs Android so I could just install a wireguard client.

    I will probably at some point bridge her network with mine since I want to install a TrueNAS box at her house for remote backup. So the VPN client will be moot at that point.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    How do you go about doing that?

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Which part? For the TV there was literally a wireguard app. I just had to install it on the TV and configure the connection to my wireguard server.

    For the bridging I gave her my old router which I haven't tested but I believe should support VPN bridging. I already have her on a subnet that won't conflict with my network for that reason.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago (11 children)

    Just fucking yeet it online

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Someone breakes in, then moves laterally to your home assistant running frigate to watch you sleep at night. Then uses your residential uplink as a proxy to resell on an open market.

    After that, the possibilities are practically endless.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    It's a rootless container. Chances are they are not going to do any of that.

    Things are on the internet all the time.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    Yeah docker isn't the isolation sandbox some people make it out to be. It's not meant for that. You very well may have a setup that's meant for that but it's more than I'm willing to expose.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

    No reason to connect jellyfin to any sort of local network, router will still hairpin for local connection.

    With that setup its honestly more secure than 99% of IOT devices, and like 50% of routers.

    edit: and if youre running it in the pentagon or something just toss authentication like keycloak in front of it, plus a bit of crowdsec/fail2ban and an IP whitelist, I'd be surprised if you'd even get an attack, much less one violating that strict of a threat models.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Don’t selfhost if you think a reverse proxy is tricky.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    That seems like a rather arrogant tone to take. Reverse proxies are complicated. Easy to set up, but challenging to configure depending on what your needs are. Not everyone wants a homelab.

    Everyone's journey starts somewhere and sometimes people's needs just don't extend beyond the easier choices available.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Tailscale truly could not be easier/simpler.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago

    Not for all clients, like Roku for example.

    Yes the solution is different hardware, like a Google TV, older firestick, raspAP, or flash openwrt on a router. But that's no longer plug and play and may have other caveats. Besides costing money.

    No shade, it's just not QUITE that simple every time.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Honestly for video I agree, for audio, it's just me and only in my house or phone so tailscale is fine. If my friends really want audio, they can pay streaming for it.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (18 children)

    There is a third option, the program that Jellyfin was originally forked from back in 2018, Emby.

    Sort of the middle child between the two. Nearly identically to Jellyfin for obvious reasons, several third party apps for Jellyfin work with it as well like Jellyseer, it has apps for nearly every device, and easy external connections via their servers like Plex does.

    They do however have a premium subscription system like Plex to support things like those servers. It's not as expensive as Plex, even before the recent rate hike, but it is there and some stuff is locked behind that premium license.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (13 children)

    So all the bad things of both, still a proprietary product that you can funnel your cotent through servers you don't control while simultaneously not being plex.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (12 children)

    But also benefits of both, reduced cost with easier remote setup, while simultaneously not being plex

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Beats frothing for a company, if I gotta froth

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah, via an Emby Connect account through their server infrastructure for the initial connection.

    Does This Mean My Streaming is Passing Through the Cloud?
    No, all connections are direct from your devices to your Emby Server. The sole purpose of the Emby Connect feature is to help your devices locate your Emby Server so that you don't have to set it up yourself.

    I used it in the past, but moved off when I started self-hosting more than Emby. I now have a cheap VPS at Digital Ocean and a Pangolin droplet to handle any web apps that I need to share a remote connection for (like Emby and Jellyseerr), without having to bother with VPN setup. Works like a Cloudflare Tunnel, but without the cloudflare crap.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    I only personally have experience with jellyfin, but the docs of Emby look to support the same remote access as Plex (without the TURN server).

    So essentially you can use a login instead of a server IP, but it does require port forwarding or upnp on your router - which you may already have enabled.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    I can't recommend emby because their business practices are pretty scummy. After accepting open source contributions for years, they went closed-source in 2018 and took all those contributions with them (they had a CLA). The very next update, they added hardware acceleration and locked it behind a paywall. They had a pretty big 'security incident' a few years ago, which probably would have been averted if they were still open source, as users in the community flagged it as an issue long before the devs took action.

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