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 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.
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.
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.
They all do it just to get the lawyers off their backs. Plex is just a bigger target. Plex can’t block anything locally so they take action against user distributing pirated content on a cloud service and are like “Here, we took action, can you leave us alone now?”. It would practically be impossible for them to block the distribution of pirated content at the local level.
Plex fucked up when they created their Client-Server model because it allows traffic to run through their servers (the Plex Relay and their “phone home” model). This makes them legally responsible for “facilitating access to pirated content” even though they don’t host the content. Jellyfin doesn’t have this pitfall since you host everything yourself, they just provide the software.
You’re the second person that says " Plex isn’t cracking down on pirated content… but they’re banning people who are hosting servers with pirated content." If that’s not " cracking down on pirated content" IDK what is…
Plex’s (almost) entire user base is pirates, it’s the same with Kodi, Emby and Jellyfin. I don’t know of anyone that has legally ripped all of their DVDs and Blu-rays themselves, it’s just too much of a pain in the ass, and I know multiple people that have run servers for years.
Plex is just covering their own asses from getting sued for “enabling the distribution of pirated content”. Kodi and Jellyfin aren’t big targets since they aren’t a business, they don’t sell a product, Plex (and Emby) does. Kodi and Jellyfin can’t get sued (or it doesn’t make sense to sue them) because they have the disclaimer that says “we make this for streaming content you own, we don’t host anything, we don’t support the piracy plugins, do what you will with it, we’re not responsible for your actions” but since Plex can route traffic through their servers (the Plex Relay) and the fact that they offer PlexPass puts them in hot water.
Instead of Plex blocking the specific users based on email, specific IP or something else specific to that account, they said “fuck anyone using Hetzner, regardless of whether or not you’re violating our ToS.”
I’ve paid for a lifetime PlexPass and have actually paid for it a few times over since it took years before I finally bought one. Yet, I get treated like I’m some mega-pirate making money off of them. They don’t give a shit about their users, all they care about is money and not getting sued.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
They all do it just to get the lawyers off their backs. Plex is just a bigger target. Plex can’t block anything locally so they take action against user distributing pirated content on a cloud service and are like “Here, we took action, can you leave us alone now?”. It would practically be impossible for them to block the distribution of pirated content at the local level.
Plex fucked up when they created their Client-Server model because it allows traffic to run through their servers (the Plex Relay and their “phone home” model). This makes them legally responsible for “facilitating access to pirated content” even though they don’t host the content. Jellyfin doesn’t have this pitfall since you host everything yourself, they just provide the software.
You’re the second person that says " Plex isn’t cracking down on pirated content… but they’re banning people who are hosting servers with pirated content." If that’s not " cracking down on pirated content" IDK what is…
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Plex’s (almost) entire user base is pirates, it’s the same with Kodi, Emby and Jellyfin. I don’t know of anyone that has legally ripped all of their DVDs and Blu-rays themselves, it’s just too much of a pain in the ass, and I know multiple people that have run servers for years.
Plex is just covering their own asses from getting sued for “enabling the distribution of pirated content”. Kodi and Jellyfin aren’t big targets since they aren’t a business, they don’t sell a product, Plex (and Emby) does. Kodi and Jellyfin can’t get sued (or it doesn’t make sense to sue them) because they have the disclaimer that says “we make this for streaming content you own, we don’t host anything, we don’t support the piracy plugins, do what you will with it, we’re not responsible for your actions” but since Plex can route traffic through their servers (the Plex Relay) and the fact that they offer PlexPass puts them in hot water.
Instead of Plex blocking the specific users based on email, specific IP or something else specific to that account, they said “fuck anyone using Hetzner, regardless of whether or not you’re violating our ToS.”
I’ve paid for a lifetime PlexPass and have actually paid for it a few times over since it took years before I finally bought one. Yet, I get treated like I’m some mega-pirate making money off of them. They don’t give a shit about their users, all they care about is money and not getting sued.
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.
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!