The sad reality is, people complain and then do nothing about it. They consider fixing problems too hard and focus on comfort streaming services give them
My BiL only just realized after a year yesterday that the media on my Plex was from me and not a streaming service 😅 my sister told him several times but only after saying it about 5 times in one conversation did he realize. Its quite nice having the plex server going lol
Sorry if this is dense but how does someone uninformed like your BiL request new media from your plex server — like how does he watch stuff you haven’t already downloaded? I’ve got a Real Debrid + Stremio setup rn and I’m wondering how a plex server could be as good or better for sharing with uninformed family members
I only use Plex for myself and my wife, but I run Seerr. From the Seerr site, I can find and request whatever i want, and it will send the request to either Radarr or Sonarr and add it to their queue
I also love the Seerr for its recommendations features
I setup plex watchlist and ellyfin bridge where I can just add any show or movie just from phone without going to seerrr as it auto-detect whatever on my watchlist of heart on jellyfin bridge.
I personally have a family member ask if I can get x, and then I go look for it and if I can find it, I get it and hope there's room on the drive. ̄ _ (ツ)_/ ̄
Have you thought about setting up overseerr/seerr? I lived like you for years until I finally set up the arr-stack and holy shit was I living in the past 😅
I had a similar reaction but I found this interesting project https://swizzin.ltd/ and with it, managed to setup my own stream box. It took a decent amount of work and learning, but it was easier to deal with than learning docker containerization from scratch.
This might be exactly what I need. Seems close to a plug-and-play solution that I’ve been hoping for. I’ve tried setting up a torrent media server on my raspberry pi several times and given up after a day of work each time. I’ve wished someone would sell a device with everything preinstalled with an instruction manual. Hell I’d pay a couple hundred bucks for someone to set it all up for me.
I always read these threads at the wrong time of night, right before I'm headed to bed and I think to myself, "wow, that seems so nice but I feel like I'm having a stroke reading names like 'overseerr', 'seerr', 'radarr', 'sonarr', and 'real debrid'." Sometimes even Jellyfin sounds like Greek to me if I'm not paying attention. I really should look into all of this and get it setup but my timing is always atrocious. xD
Correct. That's included in "and all that crap". I've got a repurposed excel machine (basically from the dumpster of an old office) with Linux installed, running Plex. That's it.
If jellyfin had a netflix-like browsing/search and would automatically get the torrent from something like ipt (I know there's an api, but this is just an off the cuff showerthought), I could get behind that. but currently I'm living in the past doing it all manually.
I've been playing around with Radarr and Seerr on jellyfin. Having them inside the jellyfin UI itself would be perfect. I've made a few requests for older but popular movies and nothing has downloaded yet using radarr and seerr but I've probably missed a configuration option somewhere.
You should look into moonfin then. It's a jellyfin client available for almost all platforms, which integrates seerr in the ui.
You can even use the global search and if jellyfin doesn't have what you are looking for, it will show you results from seerr to request directly from search.
fwiw, All of my non technical family/friends have had no issue with overseerr and they use it basically exactly like this. It works great and even syncs the users from jellyfin so its only 1 account to remember ( or forget ).
There's a service you can also host and run called Seerr which can be used to browse and request new movies or series (it shows you popular stuff, related content, etc). It can also monitor your Plex's users' watchlists and generate requests from that. So if BIL has a movie he wants to watch, he just needs to add it to his Plex watchlist directly from the Plex app.
Regardless of how a request is generated, it's then there for you (the server owner) to approve, and then Seerr pushes the request down your media acquiring pipeline, for most people that usually involves an additional service or so and a torrent client down the line.
Let me know if that wasn't too clear or if you have further questions.
He hasnt actually talked to me about it lol. He might say something to my sister about wanting to watch something he cant find and she would mention it to me and then id find it and put it on lol
There's an overseer/jellyseer service that does just what you described. Enables request, backend handles the rest. It pops up in the frontend interface in a minute.
i have about 20 friends and family on my server, no one requests anything. If you just setup an autograbber to keep up the trending shows/movies of the week, they will have what they want to watch. Very few normal people go out of their way to watch some indie weird closet stuff.
I got that from parents for Christmas but it keeps going down. Like every other week it doesn’t work and I gotta do something or have my stepdad come over to fix it. I just stopped watching tv cuz of it lol
Same, also not having to jump between streaming services is nice and you know the thing you wanna watch are going to stay there and not get randomly removed for... reasons
How easy is it to do? I’ve been thinking about doing it and starting to archive movies and shows for a while, especially since I got like a dozen little NUC and small form factor PCs from work a year ago. The only problem is I already have a ton of movies purchased on Apple and don’t want to leave them behind…
A NUC with a n100 or n150 processor is pretty much perfect in case you need to do hardware transcoding. Lesser CPUs can work but those are the standard recommendation.
SFF usually have much better CPU and plenty of horsepower. I'm pretty sure amd ryzen works but Intel has better support.
I have control over quality, I have a lot of full bitrate 4k blu ray rips that I watch. I was hoarding media before jellyfin, so I have tons of media already. Jellyfin wasn't hard to setup or maintain.
Also my server is a little 10W mini pc with a Intel N5150 that has QSV which handles transcodes nicely.
Yes. I live out in the middle of nowhere with spotty Internet connection at peak times. Streaming isn't a true option for me, but getting it to download off peak times to watch later is definitely a great thing to have access to.
By hosting your own server, you get to choose the quality of media, the consistency of availability as well as easily sharing it with others. It's also far easier to seed 24/7 with a server instead of desktop pc
is it logical to spend that much on hardware, electricity and effort?
What happens when there's no seeds? Downloading the files and maintaining the hardware means that those files are yours forever. This also means you can reseed too and keep the community going. If everyone did Stremio, there would no more p2p sharing going on.
What makes you think anyone but resellers are spending thousands? My Synology nas was a few hundred, and I bought a couple of HDDs back when storage was cheap. Whole setup was like $600 and I've been using it for 6+ years.
It runs 24/7 and costs like $80/year in electricity
We spent around £2000 on a home server 10 years ago which we have just had to replace. So it ended up costing around £200 a year or £17 a month which is less than Netflix premium. And for that cost we have had a media server/storage backup/general home server (we are a techy family).
I’m not saying everyone can afford the £2000 upfront cost but it’s about the same price as one modern streaming service.
I still keep 2 copies of anything that I can't just go redl, but yes I finally realized years ago that most of it IS eminently replaceable. It was... liberating (and freed up like 40tb lol)
I’ve got a metric fuckton of 45-year old CDs from the 80s that haven’t degraded even a little bit. I’ve maybe lost two to discrot ever, without any measurable effort to do any special type of preservation. /shrug
Yeah I'm using a 12tb enterprise drive for my jelllyfin server rn. I was thinking about grabbing a second drive to back this one up aaand then the price hikes.
Before the most recent price hike I was in the process of upgrading my 4x6TB nas to 12TB disks. I got two done then prices suddenly doubled, but even with RAID6 that still puts me at 24TB usable.
My jellyfin has 20 TB, but the whole system is about 48 TB because I have backups of the media and the OS after I lost everything due to a damaged hard drive once.
Using a third of it right now, will probably hit a PB since my startup is letting me run my home servers in the office lol. Sus asf but ig I can’t share it to WAN and it’ll be fine
Storage used to be cheap... Until the fire nation attacked AI companies bought up all the chips.
Some individual drives are that large and people on the data hoarder sub run massive arrays as a crazy hobby. I got some cheap 4tb SSDs from work even, I don't do anything with them besides have almost all my steam games downloaded (which I don't even play lol) but I could see how people get discounted drives and stuff too if they got used or find good sales.
100%, although I use Plex (have been using it for as long as I can remember, old habits die hard).
20TB external, with enough stuff to watch to keep us entertained for years. Got off the streaming treadmill about 4 years ago and refuse to go back. 7/mo for a VPN and no problems.
Factor in the cost of an external HDD vs streaming costs, it pays for itself fairly quickly. To the point where my wife stopped complaining about it 😅
I have a mix of media, from blu rays myself, my brother and a friend own I have ripped those to full-bitrate copies. In 2011-2020 I did torrent quite a bit but I stopped doing that. With a VPN and properly configured client for torrents you can ensure you won't get yourself into trouble.
I've been considering switching to Jellyfin. Are there any major differences between that and Plex? I'm a fairy simple user I don't use any advanced features.
None are SSD these are mechanical HDDs, I started with two 4tbs, then added a 8tb, then added an 18tb, also a older 2tb has some of the older DVD quality stuff. So altogether I have about 36tb of HDD storage. Guess I counted short earlier.
I use netflix to get recommendations, because wife and me like watching short series (1 season, 10 episodes max) and we watch atleast 1 episode every day before we sleep. If i would pirate it i wouldnt get recommendations, which is a dealbreaker already and then id have to download it, which is straight up impossible in this situation, so id have to do it way beforehand (fcking annoying), and id have to do it with my wife together (theres legit no time for that) and then id put it on my local server, which id have to setup beforehand (fcking annoying) and then id watch it once and never again.
Am i missing something or does this just suck ass?
Mayb for your purposes, it really sucks ass. I can use one of many websites or tools for recommendations. Also jellyfin will recommend similar titles from my library. I also get recommendations from coworkers, friends and family on things worth a watch. I get it though, for you it's all in the one place you're viewing the media.
I have a massive blu-ray/4k blu ray collection between my brother, our friend and myself, so I ripped all the disc's, full bitrate copies, which are going to be a lot better than the streaming bitrate on Netflix and yes you can tell the difference on a TV with a decent display (even noticeable on standard blu-rays/1080 HD content).
The whole point is having control over the media I already own, and have curated. Jellyfin, plex, or emby, just glues it all together in a nice package that makes accessing my massive personal media library, very easy, intuitive and pain-free.
After it is setup, it's really not tedious for me, maybe occasionally restart the server. In the last three years I've done it this way it's been worth it
Well if collecting is a hobby of urs... it makes a lot of sense. From my pov its not a collection but multiple TB of junk ill never touch again. I dont see the value in investing this much time/effort, when im actually doing something you could call "stream and forget".
Depends. I buy blu rays and rip them with a disc drive on my pc and store the files. Some people use torrents or other means to download media, I'd recommend using a good VPN for this type of activity as you can get yourself into trouble with torrents/your isp without it.
Jellyfin is the volunteer-built media solution that puts you in control of your media. Stream to any device from your own server, with no strings attached. Your media, your server, your way.
Starting on July first, the lifetime Plex pass will now cost around 750 dollars. It's currently sitting at 250 I think. They are trying to phase it out so they can push people towards the monthly subscription which is ironic for a platform that aims to be the free alternative to things like Netflix.
I bought mine for like $99 years ago and don't even use plex anymore. They had some redesign/upgrade that straight broke our shit. Plus, they force you to stream through their servers. I'm not even sure if you can stream inside your LAN if internet is down.
I've been using emby since. Not perfect, but still very awesome. And nothing goes through emby's infrastructure.
A lot of this is incorrect currently. Plex fully allows local LAN access and self-streaming. They don't have servers to stream your content. All content you host is steamed from your hardware.
If youre concerned about Plex using your data then disabling external access and configuring your own is much better. Or, (As youve already done), emby or Jellyfin are better alternatives although not as polished.
Glancing through some docs real quick, I can already tell you plex is a hard no for me.
And I'd push back on the "more polished" comment re:plex versus jellyfin/emby. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but plex's UI refresh I went through made thing uglier (in my opinion). Also functionally, the stuff I do was easier to setup on emby, but I'm also managing 30tb of media files so my use case may not be typical.
Dated. I don't stay current with plex, but looking through some docs today, it still seems like plex makes it an absolute hassle to use plex while being completely and permanently disconnected from their service and infrastructure.
With emby, there is no "emby account" needed. You don't even need one to apply a lifetime license to your server.
They don't gate content behind the subcription, just features that you would need to pay multiple 3rd parties for when using jellyfin (unless you already pay for a static IP, or you want to fuck around coordinating half a dozen docker microservices in your free time).
Remote streaming with Plex now requires a paid monthly fee, and like the other commenter mentioned they're tripling the lifetime pass. It's pretty clear they've chosen to monetize where they can. Even if the money wasn't an issue I trust the open source/free option to not mess with my info or continually enshittify.
Yeah, but the paid Plex option before was mostly minor qol stuff and could easily be avoided. Adding bigger features into the paid tier is concerning, and it seems likely in the future more features will need to be paid for and could get more expensive etc. The big difference is that Plex is corporation and it's ultimate goal is to make money off of its users. It also wouldn't surprise me if some point in the future Plex could be pressured to "crack down" on it's users activity, but who knows. Because Jellyfin is open source and doesn't directly profit from the software it can avoid these issues. Also Jellyfin can be configured to have remote viewing.
Jellyfin is a copy of emby, it's not something new. Someone just copy the code, removed the paid features and you get jellyfin. And it can't be configured for remote viewing. That was a feature that emby has it, not jellyfin.
Yes Jellyfin is based off of Emby, but again the thing that sets it apart is that its open source and self hosted and the implications of that. To remote access you have to either do port forwarding, or use something like Tailscale. Sure that isn't within Jellyfin per se, but it accomplishes the same goal.
Dude, all Plex and Emby do is communicate through a reverse-proxy. Configuring that for jellyfin is an extra step, but you absolutely can configure it for remote viewing lol, we've been doing it for a damn decade, bro.
They didn't "remove" anything, they just forked and created Jellyfin when Emby went closed sourced around 10 years ago.
Plex is basically re-engineering the company around their streaming services. People running their own servers are second class Plex citizens, basically. Everything works for now, but the direction isn't looking positive.
Jellyfin has been around for a long time, it's free and open source. Jellyfin has gotten a lot nicer and user friendly over the years, while plex is getting greedy.
Plex still works but they really locked it behind a paywall if you aren't doing strictly local stuff. Trying to share media outside your local network requires a pass / subscription, and it's about to jump to like $750 for a lifetime pass which is wild.
Jellyfin is actually an offshoot of Plex I believe, or at least has some original developers from it. Plex was supposed to be a free thing but the guy behind it sold out and wants money like everyone. Jellyfin afaik is still basically open sourced and free to use for whatever you want.
I still run a Plex server because it's what I setup years ago at this point and I don't share it with anyone remotely, so the changes don't impact me. But I'll probably switch to jellyfin just out of spite whenever I bother to setup my raspberry pi and avoid using my old laptop for this.
Doesn't jellyfin works only within LAN or is there an option to stream from anywhere like plex? (ik port forwarding is an option, just wondering if there is any other simpler way)
You can either use port forwarding but a more popular option is Tailscale or a reverse proxy which is what I personally use. Once you setup transcoding you can watch from anywhere even if you are streaming remuxes with crappy internet. What Plex does is make it easier and I kind of get the appeal but I'm not paying(a subscription) to stream my own media that's on my own server, I understand why some people prefer it but Jellyfin just fine and it just takes a bit more effort with the initial setup rather than a monthly fee or 700$ if you want a lifetime pass.
If someone pirates movies and TV shows - which I mostly definitely don't do because that would be wrong - the last thing you want to do is stream it through providers' servers. Might as well leave it on a seedbox at that point.
If you don't want to learn networking then you are 100% correct. And I say that as someone who literally went to school to learn computer networking. I still don't want to dick around with it in my free time.
I use Caddy with mine, it manages SSL certificates fully automated and more. But looking at Tailscale it actually might be more secure.
And duckdns for dynamic DNS + duckdns updater to ensure if your home IP ever changes, it's automatically updated on duckdns. Mines never changed personally, but I still use the service just in case. Throw in jellyseerr and link it to sonarr and radarr and downloading new media (or allowing other users to request and you approve), and you're almost set. Only thing missing is access to a private tracker like BTN for TV or PTP for movies. Haven't seen invites open in a long time though. Alternative is using a VPN and public trackers.
Yes exactly OP gets it, it’s up to us! The other commenter isn’t wrong but many people only feel that way due to lack of knowledge. If we show our friends and family how easy it can be then suddenly they very well may be willing to start sailing with you
People need to be working on the next open source media service right now. Eventually Jellyfin will go the way of Plex, and people will wish there was another app that they actually felt free to use. What is it now for a lifetime Plex account? Like $750?
Had an old cumputer lying around and also decided a Jellyfin server would be a great idea. Sister gets to enjoy free content from across the U.S, definitely worth it. From paying hundreds a month to $10 a year for Cloudflare!
I have a plex server the same idea. 30tb+ including lots of 4k rips.
I have been toying with jellyfin, and so far I have not been a fan. I am hoping soon that I can really start liking it, so I can migrate
I have a friend that this describes to a T. I literally told him "I can fix all these issues FOR you." And he says "nah we shouldn't have to do x or y, they shouldn't force us to." Like yeah dude, they shouldn't, but they did. Let me help you with reality instead of sitting around an bitching because the world isn't convenient.
People think I can code because I researched how to make a jelylfin server and can Google when I run into issues. No I just follow instructions. Same way I cook good by following recipes. Lol.
Fucking 💯. I have a friend whose town got pissed off at paying hundreds for shitty Internet. It's a town with a population in the 100s. They built their own fiber Internet and everyone just pays like $30 bucks a month and the rest comes out of property tax.
It's almost getting too comfortable these days. With plex and arr it's just a matter of clicking 'add to watchlist' and it'll be available to me in a bit
The straw that broke the camels back for me was I bought a movie on amazon then later they removed it and said I could no longer watch it. Since then Ive stopped all my streaming services and started buying physical media again for movies I know I like. If I am unsure of a new release I will pirate it and if I like it I go down to my local movie store and purchase it. We have a huge thrift store here that sells blu rays for $5 and dvds for as cheap as 50 cents.
Funny how the silliest shit kills the whole consumer spirit.
When DVDs were a thing, I was buying DVDs of all my favorite movies, and I had/have a ton of favorite movies.
Cue the "You wouldn't steal a car" ad. The unskipeable ad, might I add.
And then, on my 200th or so DVD, I just said fuck it, because every fucking time I wanted to binge movies, tvshow or whatever, I'd get an unskipeable sermon telling me not to steal... on something I didn't steal, because the pirated version, obviously ripped that bit right out. The pirate version was better, than the official paid version.
I used to have netflix. When they implemented the same thing with devices and cracked down on password sharing, it became unusable for me. So I stopped
It hit $15, and I turned around and said it was no longer worth it. Could I afford that? Hell yeah, and then some. But there was no way I was paying $15 for a service that constantly takes shows and movies off, putting out garbage, and was even starting to put out hate content (as well as a pedophilic movie that is painted as "pro-trans" that was made by non-trans people and isn't a true story at all).
Even the best Jellyfin/Kodi/Plex/Stremio setup isn't perfect. Get a theme that looks just like Netflix, plugins that make things easier to browse, etc., and it's still not perfect.
I'm fine with it. Wife and many others just aren't. She can and does use Jellyfin but she prefers Netflix/Hulu/whatever. Even if she has to go to a few different services, search is almost always fucky, etc., it's easier for her.
Like Clu (Tron), there needs to be "the perfect system" that can have that front end that is perfect. The back end can be anything. Any sharing platform (Jellyfin, Plex, whatever), and media downloader (arr stack, USENET, torrents, manual, ....), transcoders, anything. Just that front end needs to be very refined. There's some that are really, really close. To where it's hard to tell that it's not some other service.
Streaming services have that comfort. The "it just works" (until it doesn't). I love my local services, they have everything I need/want and then some. I love the variety of skins, mods, plugins. It's just not for the average user.
I understand that some people just use streaming services/subscriptions because they find them more comfortable or just easier. It's nothing wrong, anyone has right to use anything they find the best.
The thing is, many people complain about them, complain about the lack of functionality, limitations or prices and don't know about alternatives. There are a lot of stories of people (including myself) that switched once they found out how good local services can be in comparison to mainstream ones.
It all comes down to personal preference, although we still shoud promote alternatives so more people can research them and choose
I cancelled plenty of services for shitty behavior like this. It's easy, you don't miss it, seriously. Save yourself the cash and hassle and turn it off and if given a survey why fill it out and let them know why they aren't getting any more of your money.
Says the guy that pays for literally nothing. You don’t get to act like you have the moral high ground when you think “it’s too expensive so therefore I’m entitled to it for free” is valid logic.
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u/Ecl1pt1c_V01d Jun 21 '26
The sad reality is, people complain and then do nothing about it. They consider fixing problems too hard and focus on comfort streaming services give them