I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That's it folks. I've been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.
They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.
I'll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I've been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it's time to make it production ready.
Edit I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying "Just buy a plex pass" are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.
Ok, how do you access Jellyfin remotely?
Ok, how do you think you can avoid paying Plex's remote streaming if you really really don't want to just buy a lifetime Plex pass?
its not tricking your device, that's how you maintain a connection to your home network. you don't even need to send all traffic through the tunnel, most wireguard apps can do split tunneling per app.
setting up wireguard is really not that hard, and you don't even need to update it because it's in the kernel.
with wireguard.
or open up 80 and 443 and let the fun begin if you are adventurous.
I think you're missing my point. What will Plex see your streaming as if it's behind wireguard: local, or remote?
I put my bets on local
So then OPs complaints about charging for remote streaming are irrelevant...
The vpn is only needed for if
A. Your behind a CGNat
B. On a dynamnic ip and dont want to setup a dyndns.
C. isolating your network from the outside for security reasons.
Yes, but the point is that if you setup Wireguard then your Plex streaming is now local and free.
The question is... how to get devices that dont support wireguard to work?
WireGuard. VPN’s are more than just hiding your IP behind another country, they allow you to access resources that are not available to the world-wide-web.
Linking a relevant comment I made
Yes, now keep going with that train of thought and imagine what would happen if you put Plex behind the same wireguard setup. Specifically whether or not Plex would consider that local or remote streaming.
plex should consider that local, because now your traffic goes through that network, and reaches computers and services on that network. except if it relies on broadcasts, because wireguard does not forward broadcasts, but even with jellyfin that only affects automatic server discovery and DLNA, if you type in the URL it will work
Yes, so then OPs issue with Plex charging for remote streaming are irrelevant.
By nature of setting up Wireguard for Jellyfin, you've eliminated the entire purpose of switching to Jellyfin in the first place.
if we are only looking at this issue, then yes
Outside of ideological reasons or fears of further enshittification, is there anything Jellyfin does better? (Honest question)
no outside party will know what, when and where you watch
I'd say hw enc/dec, flexibility on the UI, and plugins still being an options are the big ones.
Along with not having to disable online media sources. Also not having to deal with cert pinning is a major benefit too. No external outage breaks your use.
Doesn't Plex now have hw encoding / decoding?
They do, but JF has been more broadly supporting of GPUs than Plex in my experience.
Apologies I neglected to the read your entire comment, all in all I suspect it’ll be a logistical nightmare for Plex.
Yeah, my only point is just that if you're going to switch to jellyfin because of this, you're going to have to setup wireguard, at which point you've circumvented the original issue that made you go to Jellyfin.
If you really can't stand Plex on an ideological basis that's one thing, but I dont think most people here realize the above about wireguard.
I’ve got a lifetime plex pass I picked up on a deal ages ago; at this point it’s more that I don’t like the direction that plex is taking the platform, and policies like this fall under that dislike.
Previously they charged unlock fees to every user of their android and iOS apps no matter what. Now those fees are gone and you just have to pay for remote streaming if the server owner doesn't have a Plex pass.
I really don't see any problem with this. It's just shifting pricing from all users to just users who aren't paying for a Plex pass.
why can’t you expose it like Plex? You can do it… I don’t get your comment
Just open the right ports or config a reverse proxy 🤔. No need for a VPN
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415
Understandable, then I guess you can still try to reverse proxy it with an unknown route like
myserver.com/ld5S7fR1Z4D7ZlR/which isn't ideal but might still be a way. Not sure if that's really secure though, but at least it should prevent scrapingIP whitelisting might also be a thing, but it's a pain to setup and the VPN solution might be easier 👀
Let's hope they address those issues.