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
There is also ddns-updater which I like to use in docker
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.
You don’t even need to purchase a domain, free dynDNS services (DuckDNS or similar) are good enough for Jellyfin and the like.
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.
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”
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.
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.
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
TIL there’s more than one season of FLCL - loved that show back in the day. Is the new stuff good?
Ooooh…wait… by streaming you mean netflix, etc…
Can we please invent a word for streaming pirated content?
I can think of a fine word that also brings to mind flowing water - torrenting!
I just go to 9anime, whoever runs that site is a golden god. They got all the anime, a shit ton of manga and it’s all free.
Heck yeah! Jellyfin FTW!!!
Thank you for giving me just enough curiosity to look up what Jellyfin is. I’ve been wanting to set up a media server but lost interest quick when I realized Plex seems to have completely moved away from being a media server program. I’m so stoked to give it a proper try.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfin
Website: https://jellyfin.org/
Give it a try.
I was a Plex early adopter. Left Plex for Jellyfin when the Jellyfin project was barely a year old because it was clear where Plex was heading. (Emby was another option then, but they made some decisions I couldn’t abide so I skipped right over them)
0 regrets, and even my non-technical spouse and two children have no problem with it.
Everyone’s got their opinions, but the one guy slagging off Jellyfin below sounds like he’s never actually used it.
I setup jellyfin plus the arr stack on an rpi4 and man has that little thing changed my life, all the content I could ever want just for the cost of a Usenet provider. Hope you enjoy man!
How’s the rpi4 as a media server? I wanted to do that too, but i looked into it when the 3B was new and the general consensus was that it wasn’t really ideal.
As an aside, raspberry pi’s are so cool. My rpi3b running retropie/ emulation station turned out so great, and it runs way more games than I expected.
realized Plex seems to have completely moved away from being a media server program
It is still a great media server no mater what the Jellyfin fanclub says. Jellyfin is great, but from a user experience perspective it’s just not in the same league as something as polished as Plex and if your userbase is not just IT workers and FOSS enthusiasts (or you enjoy a good looking and working UI) Plex is the place to go.
if your userbase is not just IT workers and FOSS enthusiasts (…) Plex is the place to go.
What does this even mean? My 6 year old niece uses jellyfin, it’s actually simpler than netflix. I may be biased because I’m not into frills but I think the UI looks great. I’ve admittedly had a few non-critical bugs with the UI (web, flatpak, android, roku) but most all of them have been worked out now. Plex is more polished and has a much larger ecosystem like you said, but the rest of this comment is not the most reasonable.
I have a large amount of users on my Jellyfin instance including people who are more tech illiterate and nobody has had any issues. The setup of Jellyfin is probably more complicated than Plex (just guessing, I haven’t tried it) but besides that, the UI is very user friendly
First and foremost, I don’t know or particularly care about fanclub opinions as a whole. Not trying to be rude or anything, but it’s weird to tell me that A is great despite what B fans tell me when I never even heard a word from B fans to begin with.
I’ve looked briefly into plex recently, which seems bloated with services and monetization that I don’t want or care about (even the help articles are written like ads), and I’ve looked at the 3 websites for Jellyfin that I linked, and Jellyfin seems like a more clear cut and feature rich version of what plex started out as, which was primarily a media server program.
I’ve only used Jellyfin, but I struggle to imagine Plex being much easier - it was a piece of piss to just run the installer and point at my folders. Complexity only comes when doing stuff like making it available over the internet.
