I am looking to basically just transition to a small time, forever on, server to support my growing Plex footprint. I don’t need anything top of the line, and I’ve already crimped my lines to the room.
What’s the most cost effective way to go about this? Figured i would come to the pros.
Thanks!
Can I chime in without sounding anti-Plex? Nothing specifically against it, but they’re kind of going bad. Jellyfin is a lot more private and better to host for data control/privacy.
Don’t get me wrong, Plex of easy to setup, configure, share, etc. with a lot of robust features, but their private equity or venture capitalist money has them selling/sharing data and are cutting out jobs to save money, etc.
JF gives you the freedom Plex once did before its corruption. I’ve been on Plex 12+years and switched about a year ago.
See, I hadn’t even heard that. Is JF on anything like Apple TV (like Plex) or would i have to figure out the streaming part?
It’s pretty much everywhere Plex is. The main issue is that it’s trickier to set up for sharing outside your LAN.
I would never be doing that, so I’m sold on it then. It’s basically just my backup movie/TV hub for my LAN.
Definitely suggested then, you’re also going to get drastically more features. If you remember a time when Plex plugins were available - its that. And more flexible.
Any intel-based chipset past 6th gen or so will be ok, 7+ recommended, 10th+ for AV1. If you aren’t doing any transcoding, just about anything will work include a pi.
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Does TailScale make this easier or nah?
Very easy server-wise. But you may neeed to help your family member/friend with the initial set up on the client, if they are not so tech-savy.
A big PSA here is to have them pass you the device activation link that pops up when they first start Tailscale, and activate their device on your tailnet.
Then you tag it, write an ACL rule for it (or you probably already have a rule for Jellyfin clients connecting only to the Jellyfin server on your tailnet by now, so just the tagging is enough) and that’s it.
MUCH simpler than having non-savvy people attempt to set up a Tailscale user account. Plus, you can only have 6 users in a free tailnet but you can have 100 devices.
Interesting approach, I would have to test this out. I don’t usually add people to my Tail net, but share my server as single device. I don’t think there is low limit for that, but I am not sure.
From my limited testing of tailscale a while back, I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t work. Saw no reason to switch from my wireguard setup.
Can confirm it works. I have jf over tailscale.
I use my own domain but could be done using tailscale urls if you dont want to deal with certificates, split horizon dns, etc.
The Jellyfin clients for Apple TV are not very good in my opinion and use case. Thankfully there are a lot more than there used to be 6 months ago. But, at least for me, they are lacking in features. I keep trying to them every so often hoping they have improved so I can finally make thr switch.
In case anyone still cares, it looks like a lot of the Jellyfin apps on Apple TV got an update the end of last month. Moonfin checks off all my boxes now that they have live TV sorted. Although they have WAAAAY to many options in that app. I think I can finally make the switch, at least for me. I have some remote users that will stay on Plex for reasons.
On the Apple tv just use infuse. Sure it sucks paying for an app, but it works.
Glad it works for you, but it is missing live tv, which is the biggest thing all the Jellyfin apps either do poorly or don’t do at all. I went through all 19 ish apps I could find a few weeks ago and none of them checked off all my boxes. But I will keep looking and hoping.
There’s nothing wrong with being opposed to enshitified proprietary apps.
Bingo. People can be so tribal about this shit. If you value privacy and hate subscriptions, jellyfin is you homie. It isn’t as hard to set up as some would have you believe (i’m a normie and have used it for years).
If you don’t give a fuck about privacy and don’t mind paying some creep to make it easy for you to access your own files, then Plex is fine. This is the camp some people are in, and it’s just as legitimate as mine. Life is about gray areas and compromise.