We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
Does Jellyfin do remote streaming?
Yes. You’ll have to set up a reverse proxy, I use nginx, and get yourself domain, I use duck DNS, and get a SSL certificate from let’s encrypt if your wanting to steam to something like a Chromecast or Roku.
It’s not all that hard honestly and there’s a good guide here for general home media, including both Plex and jellyfin
https://www.simplehomelab.com/docker-media-server-2024/
No, you don’t need a RP.
You can and should set it up though as it’s a very good convenient feature.
But you can expose Jellyfin directly.
Assuming you know them well enough, can’t you just give your IP address to folks and forward the port on your router?
Or just use tailscale. Much easier.
You can, but the reason you use a reverse proxy, isn’t revealing your IP or something, it’s that without it, the traffic is unencrypted.
As in, log in details and the contents of media streams are sent fully readable by any network node on the way.
Yes
Here’s the thing though, for the average plex user (myself included) you’ve already used too many acronyms and words I don’t understand. Plex serves a purpose for a lot of people, people who are even willing to pay for it to be easy.
Kind of reminds me of Netflix before anyone else did streaming. They had so much stuff I stopped sailing.
Yep. Imo now with Plex you are paying for a much simpler and accessible setup. Seems fair enough to me. Lemmy FOSS or die users (every else in this thread seemingly) are not the target audience of Plex but they sure love to complain about it.
Well that sucks.
Yeah, welcome to the easy, fast, cheap conundrum.
If you’re willing to do a bit of learning and asking the community for help if you get a little stuck, you’ve got a free solution, if not, which is perfectly okay mind you, then Plex is your solution and you have to decide how much you’re willing to pay.
And honestly, of you’re going down the home media route with friend and family, you’re going to want to set up sonarr, radarr, ombi, transmission with VPN anyways.
I’m going to be going the free solution route, been trying to find a cheap laptop to turn into my server right now. Do you mind if I reach out about it or do you know of any good instances?
Just put it behind tailscale and use the IP. Doing this for a two years now with weekly anime watch togethers with my friends. Not elegant but enough.
If you can set it up? Yup.
Behind CGNAT? Maybe you need to set up a relay or something to circumvent it.
With the caviat that you have tailscale enabled on both devices. This prevents it from being used on a roku outside your home but you could access it remotely from your computer/phone/tablet.
It is significantly harder than Plex, currently. There are improvements happening all the time though.
You very much can create an external port and access anywhere without any of this. No tailscale needed but I’d recommend one knows what they are doing…
Hmmm, i use a Synology NAS with Jellyfin installed and my family can use their Roku TVs without issue. I didn’t realize Synology made a difference there
It totally depends on how you expose it to the outside world. If it’s exposed just like it is, it works fine with every device. If you put an authentication before it (e.g. Authelia), it can only be accessed by browsers from outside the network. That being said, it’s not recommended to expose Jellyfin directly, because there are a ton of security flaws. Best practice is to use a VPN
Weird.
If I nslookup my jellyfin URL it responds with an IP in my local IP range…
And it works both outside with a 2FA page and inside without…
Well I’m a Luddite so I’m probably exposing myself to miners or something
Better than exposing yourself to minors
I do this too but it only works on my home network not remotely.
Huh? I’m streaming from my Jellyfin just fine when I’m on the go, with no tailscale or other VPN set up
It was significantly harder to set up remote access for Jellyfin than Plex 6 months ago. I ha ent attempted since. With Plex there was literally no set up, it just works. Until it just works without having to do any extra work, Jellyfin will struggle with adoption.
I have both running, and thatd a big difference to me. Also I prefer the way Plex detects intros and credits for skipping and their detection for captions. Once that’s all sorted Jellyfin wins in every field.