From bouncing around my favorite corners of the Internet, I get the impression that large numbers of people have “a guy” (of any gender), akin to a weed dealer in furtiveness and legality, who is hooking them up with an underground, probably Plex-based (but increasingly moving to Jellyfin), streaming service. I get the impression that there are hundreds to thousands of these little “Plex server” operations, each serving a couple dozen to a hundred or so users out of the goodness/vileness of each “guy”'s heart and the hobby budget of that “guy”'s homelab. This isn’t all Plex gets used for or even necessarily the main use case, but I think they’re out there.
Obviously no “guy” will admit to doing this, but my “Plex Server Guy Theory” neatly explains this post announcing that general discussions of piracy are allowed in the Lemmy.ml Plex community and this post by someone apparently serving enough new Plex user volume that a webhook would be convenient to have. I’ve also seen people discussing Plex refer to “my users”, as if they have a user base of friends and trusted or semi-trustred acquaintances rather than just a household or family.
I personally neither have nor am a “Plex Server Guy”, nor do I know anyone who has admitted to me that they do have or are one, so I can’t be sure they really exist. But I have suspicions.
Are “Plex Server Guys” as I imagine them real and common and I am just too square to have ever been invited to do crimes with everyone else? Are they rare in real life but enriched in the dubious/cool corners of the Internet? Does it depend on your country? What’s the deal?
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I am the Plex guy in my group of friends and family. I think there’s probably a bit of confirmation bias at play. Being on Lemmy alone puts you into a niche area of Internet already, which is going to make hearing about geeky things like home labs more common.
So yes, they exist.
I would probably be this guy if I ever got around to doing the research into how to make my Jellyfin available over the internet safely.
If you haven’t heard of it, tailscale is great for this. You can create a VPN with all of your self hosted stuff for you to access from anywhere, plus you can share specific machines with other users.
I’m really trying to avoid using for-profit 3rd parties. CURRENTLY I could sign up as a free user and probably be fine. But Tailscale could wake up any day and decide to start charging, or put restrictions on the free tier that would force me to a paid tier.
Part of the reason I bought a Blu-Ray drive, some big HDD’s, and started collecting discs in the first place was to take back control from tech companies. It’s why I chose Jellyfin over Plex. Going with Tailscale would defeat the principal.
Fair enough, you could always manage your own VPN to accomplish the same goal. I didn’t want to deal with the headache of authentication or dealing with keys, so something like tailscale is perfect.
I am that guy. I got pissed off that there was no way to buy all of the episodes of Good Eats legally. Next thing I knew, I had a dual xeon server and 60TB of hard drives. Of the 50 or so people using my server I think 6 have servers of their own.
I spent forever looking for Mythbusters on DVDs, the only 2 DVDs I ever found were “collections” and not seasons. So weird they don’t want my money.
Good Eats radicalized me too. Not for plex but for cooking.
Yeah, everyone in my family has cooked professionally for at least a few years. My wife’s family lived off of microwaved food. As I was teaching her that food could have flavor, she started asking questions about cooking that were easier to answer with a clip from good eats. Eventually, I went looking for a boxed set of it, and one hadn’t been released. So I spent the $600 I was willing to spend on it on a server.
How so
Alton Brown’s enthusiastic and educational way he did the cooking show helped bring home cooking to a lot of people. For me, we watched it in my middle school’s cooking class
Oh I see, thank you
Did you find a good source for good eats? The only one I found was low quality TV rips.
Usenet
I grabbed the low quality complete rip, and have sonarr set to upgrade episodes. Even a decade later, I think I still have a few 480p/720p episodes.
I don’t do any of this stuff, but it’s really interesting to me.
Do you mean that sonarr is always looking for a better version of content you already have, and that over time your library gets upgraded? that’s pretty cool. Can you specify versions in your “shopping list”, like the special edition or director’s cut or even a VHScopy?
Generally it looks for a higher resolution. Sonar also has the ability to look for anything listed for a show in tvdb’s “specials”. That’s usually things like extended cuts of episodes, or interviews.
Interesting, thank you. sounds like a pretty well developed set of tools.
For me it was buying star trek the next generation on blu-ray and getting annoyed with having to flip through fifty disks to watch an episode.
I am Plex Guy, my friend is Plex Guy, between the 2 of us we share our servers to over a dozen people. My mom and grandma use my server in another state, I don’t charge anyone access. In total I have 8 users on my server, my friend has probably the same on his, with both of us giving access to a different friend meaning he has access to double the amount of content.
I got absolutely fed up with subscription services raising prices and removing content (I only ever had Hulu and Netflix) so I just built my own service. My only subscription now is a Tidal family plan for myself, my wife and my mom.
Also it’s interesting how between these 2 servers, they’re built differently. I built mine using TrueNAS and housed it in a dedicated PC case large enough for all the drives, my buddy made his as a Windows server, and has everything wall mounted with custom 3D printed brackets.
Also, when I go to Brazil for vacation, my content isn’t region locked, it’s at home in a box on my living room that I just access with no VPN or any bullshit needed.
I’m a Plex server guy for friends and family, I have about a dozen users and maybe 3-4 at a time at the peaks. I charge nothing, it’s just a hobby. We’re out there.
I’d switch to Jellyfin but my users need transcoding and Plexamp is my favorite audio player since Winamp.
I’m a Jellyfin Server Guy, and same deal. Around a dozen friends & fam, no charge.
I’m not sure why needing transcoding would keep you off Jellyfin though, Jellyfin transcodes just fine.
How do you share it? I assume you don’t expose it to the Internet as is?
Does Jellyfin not do transcoding? I’ve been using it with transcoding for almost two years, so if it doesn’t, man that’s gonna be quite the shock.
It definitely does do transcoding.
I dunno, maybe it didn’t when I was first setting up my server a few years back. It doesn’t have Plexamp though and that’s a deal breaker.
It has finamp though right
Doesn’t have the excellent Plexamp automix nor ability to add all my friends shares to my radio stations.
I appreciate the efforts but I’m very happy with my current setup. It works, it’s almost zero maintenance, and I got lifetime plex pass for like $50 years ago.
By radio are you referring to proxying internet radio streams, rebroadcasting OTA using an SDR, or an endless playlist stream?
None of the above, well maybe the last one. Plexamp has algorithmically generated playlists based off song/album/artist, decades, genres, top rated tracks, etc. including auto mixing with crossfading, and ability to choose tracks not only from your own libraries, but from all libraries shared with you.
This feature has done wonders for library discovery as I have an absolutely massive music stash. It’s completely replaced music discovery via streaming apps for me.
I really do appreciate all the efforts to inform me of JF features but I am quite happy with my setup currently, and I don’t want to reconfigure all my shit AND get 12 n users to switch apps. It was hard enough as it is.
I’m that guy as well, but can’t get family to use it. So when they complain they can’t stream something, I just ignore them. I do it for myself, they just get it because. But I’m not going to keep offering, fuck it. Go spend your money on shitty streaming services. I’ve got 7000 movies now and almost 300 series.
I’m specifically doing this to get family and friends to cancel their streaming subscriptions. Not to save them money, to hurt the corporations more than I can do just myself.
Can’t make someone do something they don’t want to, even if it benefits them financially. I stopped trying.
True that. I don’t pressure them into it.
I’m transcoding on a HD770 without an issue on jellyfin.
I’ve been wondering about this, how does hiding the activity from your ISP, as well as the ISP of the person streaming from your server, work?
I have friends I’d like to share my library with but am always nervous about the risk.
TLS/https will be enough to hide your streaming activity. They’ll be able to see that you’re streaming something based off of the traffic patterns, but won’t be able to see what specifically is being streamed.
HTTPS
I really need a better *arr setup. Mine keeps breaking with the VPN setup and indexers that don’t find shit
I’m a jellyfin guy. I share with roughly 6 friends just for fun.
Depends what industry you’re in, I guess
I’m in tech and there are more Plex guys than people looking for Plex guys
Me and a relative jointly host and manage a server. Over the years we’ve slowly allowed in a handful of trusted friends and family. By now we probably have 20ish connected. Most use it as a supplement to their main streaming services, primarily used for exclusive content like the star wars shows. Some, like those of us hosting, have cancelled every streaming service and use it exclusively.
I can’t say how many people are trying to make money on it, but there are plenty of folks running Plex or Jellyfin servers that they’ll allow friends and family to access. And I would estimate that a fairly low percentage of those have no pirated content on them. So even for the small-group servers, discussions of piracy are often relevant.
I do run a Jellyfin server, but only locally on my own network.
there any guides you’d recommend for setting up and starting your own jellyfin server (as well tips for combing/curating new stuff for your library, ideally). am tech literate enough to follow guides but not enough to figure out automation process entirely myself
The Jellyfin Documentation has info on setting it up and installing it. I have it running on an odroid hc4, but pretty much anything with enough storage will be fine (an old laptop laying around is a great way to experiment with server stuff).
I don’t have much in terms of automation–I have a script that syncs local files with my server. What else did you have in mind?
Oh, I also have some commands documented for normalizing audio and removing unneeded audio/subtitle tracks.
I have a Plex guy. He runs a server and invites anyone he considers a friend, but also gives access to most who ask. He has a giant rig that costs him a lot in electricity bills. But he doesn’t mind and doesn’t want any money, because he’s a sweet person and it’s just something he does.
Edit: I’m in Europe; also he always honors requests.
I was the Plex guy until all my non-paying family members embraced being fascist dicks. Enjoy paying $200/month in shitty subscriptions, dicks.
Hell yeah, ethical Plex guy!
I run an Emby server, but just for family. Two of my kids use it, one doesn’t. I posted previously that my daughter doesn’t have anything that can play a DVD, but she still gets them and I add them to my server so she can watch them.
I added my parents to it, and they watched some stuff, but they can’t remember how to use it. Every time I show them, my dad will watch things for a few days, then he forgets how.
I appear to be unique among the people running streaming servers in that I only add things if I own the DVD (or if they’re in the public domain). I also only have about 1300 movies.
I visit thrift stores to get cheap DVDs. There’s one near me that charges $1/DVD, but they have a 50% off sale on the last weekend of every month.
I’m trying to be more particular about what I add. I had started thinking that for 50¢, I can buy a shittier movie, but now I’m only getting the movie if I know it’s worth it, or if it’s got > 7 IMDB rating.
Today’s haul included True Grit (the remake), Capote, and Ready Player One.
Plenty of sub 7 IMDb cult classics :) you’re missing out
Yes, there’s even a subreddit dedicated to people advertising their Plex servers. Lots of them are paid, it’s wild.
What sub? Divisions by zero, the piracy Lemmy instance, is very against paid plex shares and I think bans it.
Apologies, I meant on Reddit.
I thought the sub communities here were called Sublemmys :p
👋
Most of us run systems for friends, family, even a few coworkers; but there are those out there that sell access to their systems to anyone willing to pay. This is explicitly forbidden by the TOS of Plex/Emby, and I’m pretty sure Jellyfin as well (haven’t checked that one), but it still happens.
There’s even tools like Ombi to automatically manage requests from users passing them to Radarr/Sonarr to be retrieved.
Jellyfin doesn’t have a TOS, it’s open source license allows using the software in any way you want
Well that answers that question. Thanks :)
I have a Plex server guy. He is one of my oldest and best friends although we don’t get to hang out much anymore. I know he has other friends he shares the Plex server with but I have no idea who or how many. I’ve been using it since Plex was new, not sure how long exactly but more than a decade. I occasionally buy him nice hard drives because the library is ridiculously huge and always growing. As someone who loves weird and obscure shit, it’s my favorite streaming service by far and he’s my hero for running it.
