Okay, thanks to this post I just discovered Jellyfin and though I haven’t even downloaded it yet because I’m on mobile, i tabbed back over here from reading their description page to thank you for this.
I’ve been looking for other solutions but none of them seemed to be incredibly well supported or implemented
Yea, Plex requiring an internet connect just to stream locally tells me all I need to know about them.
I’m not sure why you think that’s the case. I use Plex entirely locally and have never had an issue when the internet was out. In fact my modem went kaput last year and I had a solid 2 days without internet connection. Plex didn’t even blink. The only thing I couldn’t access was Actor/Crew individual pages, as those don’t store metadata locally and are fetched on demand by the client.
If I understand correctly, it was originally implemented when they made it so you could use ssl to access your media without any configuration or cost: https://www.plex.tv/blog/its-not-easy-being-green-secure-communication-arrives/
I also think you can watch locally without logging in, but, it’s a less than ideal way of doing it: https://www.plexopedia.com/plex-media-server/general/plex-no-internet/
Unfortunately, the biggest red flag about Plex is that they now offer their own streaming media. That means they’re in bed with media companies which is at odds with the goals and needs of the original fans and users of Plex servers.
When I saw the first slow steps Plex’s encruddification, I was relieved to find out Jellyfin exists. I wish it had more features, but it’s being actively developed and totally usable already. Also, I’m not a fan of the name, but that’s a stupid thing to complain about.
I’m still waiting for it to be up to par, I have jellyfin on the server and I check it maybe once a month with the latest version but it still fails miserably with my library.
It’s a very clean high organized library managed by sonarr. All Files are in
“series name (year) > Season xx > series name SxxExx (episode title)”
format and yet it still just fails miserably at matching so much of my content (its a rather massive library) especially on anime. Half the time I have to manually match it, and I have to use the Japanese title in order to pull up the English metadata, because that makes sense.
Playback also just… Fails for no reason on tons of my devices. It’s been getting better recently but until it’s on par with Plex I am not leaving sadly
If it fails on anime maybe someone (such as yourself) needs to do the leg work and set build a database for it to match against?
It gets even worse when a number of anime aren’t even licensed for your country so you can only stream them via VPN. Looking at you Crunchyroll
Or when Crunchyroll has seasons 2 and 3 of an anime, but not season 1. Looking at you, FLCL.
I still think one of the craziest examples of multiplatform streaming being required is from Pokemon. They have a whole guide on how to watch every season:
https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-episodes-movies
Edit: oh, and this is AFTER the death of Pokemon TV, their own streaming service lol.
Unbelievable.
Reminds me a bit about how Weird Al was able to get a whole album worth of music videos funded by spreading them out across various platforms.
But that was clever and creative. This is just goofy.
A huge part of that is season 1 of FLCL is two decades and entire production companies apart. It’s likely entirely down to a matter of how difficult it is to get rights for anime. Cartoon network was involved in the two new HD seasons, and is much easier to deal with that Gainax.
TIL there’s more than one season of FLCL - loved that show back in the day. Is the new stuff good?
Crunchyroll’s UI on Roku and other TVs also sucks balls, and is prone to crashing on the slightest whim.
It’s a completely piece of shit. I’ve never seen so many bugs in a streaming app
And it’s easy to share your server with friends and relatives so that they don’t have to go through the same process to watch these shows.
I was sharing my Netflix account with my mom and dad, now that I can’t without paying more, I just pulled the plug on that subscription and add the shows they want to my server.
What is the easy way to share jellyfin over the internet? Portforwarding doesn’t work for me cause I don’t have a static ip address
EDIT: I thank all the answers but none of them seem actually easy
The issue of dynamic IP addresses is solved using a service like DuckDNS. Space Invader has some tutorials on it: https://youtu.be/CS72kN2c6hU
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/CS72kN2c6hU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
There is also ddns-updater which I like to use in docker
You don’t even need to purchase a domain, free dynDNS services (DuckDNS or similar) are good enough for Jellyfin and the like.
I wouldn’t bother with a paid dynamic DNS. Most domain registrars let you change your DNS record with an API call (I know GoDaddy does because I use them.)
Then you just set up a cron job to fetch your IP and then change your DNS record to match. I use a subdomain because my main domain hosts a blog and some other stuff on a VPS, while my jellyfin server is at home.
A good search would be “[registrar name] dynamic DNS script”
I just use a free dynamic DNS provider (ie: DuckDNS), and most home routers are able to publish IP address changes to that DNS, otherwise you just need a small software to publish those change, which you can do ok the server hosting Jellyfin.
Someone already suggested that but it seems to be missing a step, still need something to direct to the port I have for jellyfin?
The easiest way is to setup tailscale on the server, then share the server with the web interface. Your friends/family simply install the tailscale client, login, and it just connects like magic. No port forwarding or firewall configuration required. There’s plenty of how-tos out there.
Is there an easy, free method of doing this securely and privately (as in masked from the ISP) in a way that doesn’t involve me having to manage the network of the person I’m sharing with?
For example, I can use Tailscale for free, but then I have to make sure my friends know how to use that, and that’s a tall order. Not to mention the fact it won’t work on things like Roku.
VPN and have them punch in to a cheap or free cloud instance that acts as a hub router.
You give them a config file and they feed it to their device or router, use a private subnet in the 10.0.0.0/8 range because everyone is on 192.168.1.0/24 and then they just hit it at 10.0.0.1 or whatever.
I like Wireguard but you might have to use something with layer 2 support if you want service discovery to work for true zero config.
All good stuff, but I should clarify, the friends and family in question are not tech literate people. They call the internet “the wifi”, get the shitty gateway from Spectrum and plug it in.
Assuming I can apply any sort of configuration to that device in the first place, the second something breaks, either I’m getting a call, or they’ll call Spectrum and their rep will reset the gateway to defaults.
I’d also be hesitant to employ a VPN to cloud solution, because I have no idea what that’s going to do to the speed.
Basically I was just asking if there was a free method of doing this securely and discreetly where the only thing they ever have to do is put an IP address into Jellyfin. I’m perfectly aware there may not be, I was just curious if there was a method I hadn’t heard of.
Something I’ve kind of thought about is maybe, at least for my parents and closest friend, buying a cheap local machine (or repurposing an old OptiPlex or something) for them to keep in the house that I would mirror my library to, or least be able to manage remotely. “Sure, mom, you wanna see this? I’ll tell your box to fetch it.”
You have to expose it to the internet if you don’t want your users to have to configure a vpn. Ensure good passwords and consider running a rate limiter.
Too keep hidden from ISP, you can use tailscale funnel.
It isn’t free, but I use a seedbox for running my Plex server. That way none of the media downloading is done on our local internet, all the ISP should see is that we are streaming data from a Plex server. They’d have no knowledge on if we own that data or not. I’m sure Jellyfin can also easily be run from a seedbox
Having a seedbox is also helpful because our internet has a pretty low upload speed, which would make watching anything outside the house a massive pain.
Ok but what about streaming them in the seas media group?
Just wait until you find out about news groups 🤯
I guess he’s talking about the Usenet, a way to get your warez via direct download from a Usenet provider. This makes it possible to pirate legally with blazing fast speed (like 5 to 10 min for 4k movies) and with the right Indexers, you can find any release existing in predb 😎
I feel like I’ve always missed something with Usenet. Like I don’t fully understand it. I understand what newsgroups were back in the day I think - basically forums hosted by your ISP and people broke files into segments to spread them across posts or whatever, then you’d combine them and have a file. These would be super fast because it’s over your link to your ISP, but I don’t get how it’s still alive and well and not taken down.
