jellyfin welcomes you with open arms
This is for remote streaming. Can Jellyfin be accessed outside the network? I thought that was the difference.
Like if I didn’t like Plex and I ran Jellyfin (and I have done), I could access it locally but I couldn’t access it, say, from a hotel a thousand miles away. Or it requires a lot more work (and maybe some paid service) to do.
Plex may have gone up, but a bunch of us got it for $100 or less years ago and we are not affected by the new limitations. Still free for our family members accessing remotely. Wasn’t free for us to set up.
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I don’t run Jellyfin, but I’ve considered it. From what I understand, you have to set up a reverse proxy or something like Tailscale in order to access it remotely. Doing that safely can take a bit of learning, but the only part that could cost money is getting a domain name.
Is a domain name strictly necessary though? You would need a static IP. I thought you needed something like a VPS or VPN — I know what a VPN is, but I think it was something with a similar acronym — and that was a service that cost money.
With Plex it just works. When I load up Plex on a remote machine, first it tells me my server is offline, because my server is a Mac and Macs are sleepy bois, so it wakes up the Mac, which wakes up the drives, and then the server loads up and I can play pretty much anything.
I’ve ran Jellyfin on both Mac (current setup) and Windows/Intel. I like Jellyfin overall, and it does some cool things Plex doesn’t. Like you can fix details Plex won’t let you. Like for some reason it only lists the foreign actors in anime, you can manually specify the English voices if you want. Plex doesn’t let you do that and AFAIK there’s no way to. (There should be an API out there that taps into a service that lets you access any language cast, and there should be a way to set it to dynamically change the cast to whatever language you have selected.) But anyway, Jellyfin is somewhat fine, but to use it on other devices (e.g. an Apple TV box on the same network), you have to do a fair bit of configuring. It’s not just, log into the account on your phone and type in the text on the screen. Jellyfin doesn’t even prioritise Apple development, but they have come a long way.
Honestly the others in this comment section would be better to ask about accessing Jellyfin remotely, but I can tell you what I know.
If you go the VPN route, Tailscale is typically recommended, which appears to be free for personal use. It looks like these are the docs for using Tailscale with Jellyfin.
I host a couple services for my family using a reverse proxy (nginx through SWAG), and I have a free domain name with duckdns. This is not as secure as the above tailscale solution, but has worked for me so far. This is likely how I would add Jellyfin to my workflow, since I already have a reverse proxy and domain name.
I also bought Plex years ago for 87€ but i gifted that account to a friend once i got jellyfin up and running.
You’re right - Jellfyin doesn’t have a native built-in way to access it from outside. That’s the reason Plex intercepts with their own servers when you do remote streaming, that’s one of the aspects you pay for.
Using tailscale (free and setup in like 5 min) you can access jellfin from everywhere. Easy peasy.
Rumor says that Plex also denies you remote access when you use a VPN or mesh like tailscale… so ymmv
I’ve accessed my Plex off network with tail scale 🤷
Yes it can be accessed outside the network. We use Tailscale. Our Jellyfin setup cost us the energy to run it, lol.
Yes you can.
As open as the source? (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
I’ve never understood how Jellyfin vs Plex can be so polarizing
I work on Jellyfin. I once posted saying Plex is not a competitor because we are not in a race, so there is no such thing as “winning.”
So… many… angry… responses.
I don’t get it either. Most of us just want to help by signaling there is an alternative but maybe people are resistant to let go because they paid for Plex, I think.
I used Plex, and have a lifetime account, for the past decade. I just switched over to Jellyfin this week.
Feel free to ask any questions that you have about differences or my opinion.
Why did you switch if you already have a lifetime plex pass? With that, it costs nothing for anyone else to stream from your server.
I would not update to windows 11. I installed Bazzite and Jellyfin was a one click install. Plex was more involved. Plus Plex seems to be well on its way to enshitification.
How well does remote viewing work on jellyfin? I have a lot of friends and family that use my Plex, I’ve also had a lifetime pass for pushing a decade.
Like how easy is it to send an invite and the person be rolling with no technical setup from me? I just sent a Plex invite last week to my friend’s brother who did some plumbing work on my house, dunno if I’ll even ever see that dude again haha. I’m certainly not goin over to his house to set something up.
Or my dad struggles enough with it as it is, he’s 70 next year so I get it. But that might be more of a problem with the Plex app on his ancient smart TV.
This is a big reason I stick with Plex.
I haven’t set this up myself as my internet provider doesn’t do a public IP address per customer. I never even corrected it with plex.
But as far as I’ve heard, the difficult part is setting it up on the host side with tailscale. From your dad’s side, it should just be entering your IP and then the user/password.
Not OP, never used Plex, I make accounts for people and send them the address, username and password, that’s it.
As for the work I had to do, I run Proxmox so I copy pasted a command from the PVE community scripts, and set up a reverse proxy.
Making accounts / passwords for other people seems like a bad enough idea that I’d rather pay for PlexPass.
Would you rather allow everyone access to your server?
With Plex, everyone has their own accounts they are responsible for. They create the account and set the password. You give those accounts access.
I couldn’t stand the onslaught of “what’s my passwords.”
I’ve only had that issue like two times, and I’ve got 10 users on my server. And people can change their own password.
I have Jellyfin instance open to the internet. Not many people use it besides me (and even I use it seldom for now) but I have like 3 people beside me that have tried it out.
I am not sure if there is invite capability or anything. But the way I did it is just create logins and basic passwords for my friends and family and tell them that they should change it upon first login.
As for streaming - I did watch couple of movies outside home through android app and had no issues with anything quality or connection-wise. It just worked.
Cool sticking with plex still. Screw your jelly fins
