I've said it for years that Plex is shit because of their license and the fact that you have no control everyone said no it's fine it's my media fucking look at it now
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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I'm surprised by the resistance to Jellyfin in this thread. If you are using Plex, you're already savvy enough to use bittorrent and probably the *arrs. If you can configure that stuff, Jellyfin is absolutely something you can handle. If you like Docker, there's good projects out there. If you're like me and you don't understand Docker, use Swizzin community edition. If you can install Ubuntu or Debian, and run the Swizzin script, you're in business.
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As someone looking to get into self hosting and was researching plex. What’s been the experience like using jellyfish with non techy people? This is mainly something I want to set up for my parents
Jellyfin is very versatile but a bit clunky. I have it set up for my parents on their Roku and it works well enough for them. I set it up for other family members on their WebOS TV but they don't really use it. I used to use it with Roku as well, but had issues with some captions, Dolby Atmos and HDR. I finally broke down and got an Nvidia shield, which fixed all my problems since the developers focus on Android TV the most. I also have Plex, and it is easier to set up, looks more polished, but is less versatile.
As a techie I hate this answer but it's hard to beat a Roku with Plex from an ease of use standpoint. My 70+ year old parents have no problem navigating it.
Uh, my parents are over 80, and I have jellyfin set up on their firestick. They have no problem using it. It's just an app they open like anything else.
Yeah, this is the unfortunate truth. Jellyfin’s setup will never be as simple as Plex, purely because the simple setup requires a centralized server to coordinate things. And Jellyfin is built specifically to rebel against centralization. Plex is easy because the company has servers set up specifically to handle the remote access handshake.
Seems reasonable. I'm a lifetime Plex pass holder, so it won't affect me or the one person I let access my server lol
Yet.
jellyfin + tailscale is all you need. It's so damn good and easy
How do you set up HTTPS? I would like to encrypt the communication between my tailscale devices and my homeserver. Is it just a matter of using Let's Encrypt with Nginx?
Tailscale is based on the wireguard protocol, which has already very strong encryption
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tailscale changed the computing experience for me in everything I do. Amazing networking solution. I also use zerotier but find myself on tailscale more due to how many devices they offer.
This might be a dumb question, but could I access my Jellyfin through an external VPN like Proton?
I have it set up in my raspberry to download Linux ISOs and run Jellyfin
Not in the way you’re probably thinking, no. The VPN (like Proton) will be isolating devices from each other. This is by design, so you don’t end up in situations like different customers seeing each other on the network.
Your router might be able to act as a VPN host. This would allow you to connect to your home network from anywhere, and use it just like you would use a service like Proton. And if your home network is set to allow devices to see each other, then you could see your Jellyfin server. See if your router can run Tailscale or can act as a WireGuard (or OpenVPN) host. Tailscale will be the most straightforward approach, but not everything can run it. Worst case scenario, you could just run Tailscale directly on your Jellyfin server.
The big issue with requiring a VPN is that it makes remote access on some devices difficult or damned near impossible. For instance, good luck getting a smart TV to run Tailscale. Tailscale will be fine for things like phones, laptops, or tablets. But if you have a smart TV you want to remote view things on, you may need to consider a reverse proxy instead. And a reverse proxy is such a rabbit hole that it would deserve its own post.
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If you mean that you are using Proton VPN on your Raspberry Pi to mask your downloading traffic, then no that same VPN will not help you access services like Jellyfin on your home network while you are remote.
Instead you'll want to use something like Tailscale (or Wireguard). You run it as a service on your home network and it then becomes your own VPN that you (or others) can use to connect to your home network when you are remote.
You could run Wireguard on the same RaspberryPi that you use for downloading but I would recommend against it assuming that you're running Proton VPN right on the host itself (and not inside a container).
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