I tried testing a movie from my home server in plex through firefox and repeatedly got this message, even after reloading.
I knew that they had paywalled the apps on mobile and streaming from outside the network but now they have also blocked watching your own movies through your own hardware.
I do get the point that making software should be able to sustain people but I dont see the move of plex as a fair thing to do. Yes, they have made great software but taking your home server hostage feels like the wrong move.
Even a pop up that says “we need you to donate please” would have been fine. make it pop up before every movie, play donation ads before any movie but straight up disabling the app is kinda cruel.
Anyway, i have switched to jellyfin and it is insanely good. please give it a try. you can run it alongside plex with not issues (at least i had none) and compare the two.
In any case, good luck. Let me know if you need help.
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This is the reason I didn’t go with Plex when I was setting up my server.
Im using it locally with no subscription or any payment and it works fine. I stream to other smart tvs on the house not my phone though. If its connected to the local lan you shouldn’t have this issue.
As was stated on the first post you made about this, it’s a dns or nat reflection issue.
Plex sees you accessing it through your external IP address, and not through your lan IP.
I had a similar problem, and had to roll back some nat changes I made, and now it’s working fine again.
Meanwhile, free remote streaming works fine if you have a proper VPN setup. I just tested it, and was able to stream to my phone, through the Plex app, over my tailscale VPN, and I do not have Plex pass on the server or on my phone…
This sounds like a whole lot of convoluted bullshit to use Plex locally and “looking local” through VPN solutions when you could just roll a Jellyfin instance and do things a more straightforward way…
Yeah, but my wife and kid also use it, and they’re not going to be happy if I change things.
I did not make a “first” or “second” post about this. This is it.
Plex has pay walled FREE servers streaming to FREE clients only.
If you have a plex watch pass (for client) you’re good and can stream from any server. If you have a plex pass (for server) any one can stream from your server. But you have to have one or the other.
Yes. But it used to be free to watch remotely. It’s 99% your own hardware doing everything. Their services get used for discovery, not as proxies for the connection itself, AFAIK.
You already had to pay them to allow transcoding with your own GPU, etc.
Right now it’s still not too bad, but just watch, enshittification will affect paid users too. For one, I expect the lifetime pass to go away, and go away retroactively eventually.
And I just tested streaming from my free server to my free phone while said server is at my house, and my phone is with me at work.
Works fine over a VPN.
Yep, VPN will allow you to be on the same local network, and they’re only pay walling remote play.
For software I like made by people getting paid, I was happy to pay the one time fee. It’s really good, secure, and downloads are fast now.
Ditto. There is a crowd on Lemmy who seem to get angry whenever people are happy to pay for software and I do not understand it. Surely we want developers to be paid for their hard work? Don’t we want them to able to comfortably live?
Agreed. I’ve stated it before in other threads, and I’ll say it again here, but if they asked me in 5 years to pay another $89 or whatever in continuing support for a badge on my server I’d happily do it. Plex is really good. Great UI, great apps, great external enrichments like trailers/subtitles/ratings/actor info, and Plexamp is 9.5/10 for music.
Their biggest fault is how they communicated about the change for remote users. I did have a few family members get the email and ask if they were going to have to start paying monthly now, but they’ve never been on a free server. They should have stated more clearly than if you were on a Plex Pass server that no change is required.
Best 70-ish euro I spent over a decade ago
This is not true in practice, I have plexpass for my server and my wife can’t watch on her phone because they want her to pay too…
She needs to update her app probably, it works fine for my wife on my server
What about switching to Jellyfin?
Already done. Thanks for the suggestion though. :)
I have been using rygel. I don’t need anything fancy, dump a few media folders onto any VLC player on the LAN.
Jellyfin is great, but in defense of Plex, they announced that remote streaming would require one of the two parties to have a Plex pass was coming back in March so I don’t know if it’s fair to say they are holding anything hostage.
I started down the Jellyfin path after they made that announcement. It’s super easy to install, and in many ways the UI is nicer than Plex. But I ran into challenges getting my server safely accessible for users outside my LAN. And I haven’t had the time to look into that further.
Would be great if there was a clean, easy way to set up the webserver portion so it’s as easy to share content entirely as Plex. But I get they are a volunteer project with a lot on their plate.
I have had great success with tailscale in this regard.
The same tailscale that announced last week that they are going to start charging?
Took a quick look at the free tier,
- 3 users
- 100 devices
- Basically all tailscale features
That seems pretty reasonable to me. Main account and two accounts to share. With just friends and family, I doubt most people will reach the 100 device limit.
Creating a tailnet using a custom domain is considered for business use.
Well, that sucks for me. I was planning on using my domain name.
custom domain
From what I gather, this refers to the email address you sign up with.
If you use something like a non-gmail email address when signing up, it starts you off on the business plan with a trial (which you can instantly change to free). (Note: they’re gonna change this auto-detection thing with shared domains soon due to a security hole.)
I believe you can still use a custom domain (instead of the randomised *.ts.net provided one) with DNS lookups in your tailnet, on the personal (free) plan.
I have it set up so that my custom domain is pointing to the local ip of my server.
The tailnet domain doesn’t really matter that much if you have your own. I just use tailscale IP for everything that’s not in adgaurs with a host name already
Or even just use the tailnet domain you can generate.
announced
What announcement? There’s been a new Personal Plus plan around for several months already - introduced without much fanfare, and simply brings the user count from 3 to 6 for a fixed small fee. Presumably this is due to feedback from personal users wanting to contribute something other than nothing.
Where do you see the free Personal plan has changed at all?
Says personal is still free? Not seeing what you’re saying
I’m willing to recommend Tailscale because I run headscale and it does basically everything a selfhoster needs. When the free version is passable, it’s harder to enshitify the commercial version.
It’s kinda the same as it was before, as far as I can see, for the personal plan. Looks like they’ve just added more the ability to add more than 3 users for a fee.
That’s great until you try and get it working on your <insert person here that doesn’t live with you>’s TV via their streaming device.
My mom’s tv surprisingly has WireGuard so I set that up for her.
Out of curiosity, what TV and what OS?
TCL with Google IIRC
Because it’s android.
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But I ran into challenges getting my server safely accessible for users outside my LAN
FWIW:
- vps + domain (optional?)
- connect vps to home server with wireguard (eg Tailscale)
- reverse proxy on the VPS forwarding to jellyfin (eg Caddy)
Obviously not as trivial or seamless as Plex. Also I wouldn’t try to complicate this setup by using docker for everything. But once its up you can basically host whatever you want on the WAN from your LAN.
What added security do you get by using a VPS besides obscuring your home IP? I can definitely see benifits to not leaking your home address, but otherwise the reverse proxy and wireguard tunnels don’t actually add any increased security for the extra steps. You could just host a reverse proxy at home, and any flaws Jellyfin could have in their app would still be exposed.
I’m not knocking your solution, I’m just in a similar place and considering if I want to go through the extra hurdle for a VPS if I don’t need one.
Obscuring home IP is the big one. You also don’t have to fiddle with opening ports on your router and maybe getting ISP attention for hosting on a residential network. But really obscuring home IP address would work.
Dirt simplest solution is caddy on the same jellyfin server and port forward 443 and 80 on your router to that host. Hopefully letsencrypt will work without a domain but I’m not sure.
That’s basically what I do right now except I do have a domain and my ISP doesn’t restrict inbound ports like 443 so it works fine.
Just trying to sort out if I want the headache of a VPS if I don’t need it (costs, maintenance, point of failure, etc).
Sounds like you don’t need the VPS then. Add a subdomain to your home IP. Port forward 443 and 80 to the sever. Run caddy to route the subdomain to localhost:8096. You will also need to tell jellyfin to accept on the new domain.
So an additional 10 bucks a month….
5 actually because you can use minimal hardware. You can probably just port forward your router and run caddy on the same jellyfin server but then expose your home IP address.
Awesome, thanks for the tips!
I use wg-easy, which is a web ui bundled with wireguard and it works great. I only have to port forward a single wireguard port on my router.
If they’re calling it remote streaming when you’re on the same (local) network, that’s not exactly intuitive. I’d say OP’s phrasing was fair.
OP has a misconfigured server and isn’t connecting to their server over LAN.
But I keep hearing the value of Plex is that anyone can use it.
Yes anyone can use it even people who don’t know how to configure their server
The OP might disagree from what I’m seeing.
OP is also in the allegedly ultra rare camp of “successfully configured Jellyfin and lived to tell the tale.” Not what I’d expect of someone unable to configure Plex correctly. I’ve not set up a Plex server myself but my guess is it wasn’t clear that it was misconfigured - it did work previously, after all.
I can’t speak for OP, but I self host lots of stuff, have literally dozens of services running, have an Ansible repo to manage it all and routi some stuff through a VPS, not to mention my day job has included managing services in one way or another for a long while. This is to say, I know what I’m doing. I couldn’t setup Plex to work the way I wanted to, they expect it to run in a docker with network set to host mode, I couldn’t find any way to tell Plex that my living room TV was in the same network, it just wouldn’t accept any connections as local. I know I shot myself in the foot here by not letting it run with network on host mode, but I shouldn’t have to, the port was exposed, I could reach it through the local network IP, but I wasn’t able to stream any content locally.
Well, with Plex constantly changing allowed abilities and such, it seems to me that this is the expected outcome.
Just because the destination IP address is not a LAN address? That’s not misconfiguration, that’s a legitimate use of NAT reflection/loopback. If that’s how it determines who is streaming remotely then just run it behind nginx that forgets to set the correct headers.
Edit: Apparently Plex centrally relays all the traffic? Self-hosted my 🍑, it’s not self-hosted if you need to rely on their server.
It doesn’t relay all traffic, that’s a fallback if a connection can’t be established.
Yeah, there is no defence on enshittification, sorry. I have jellyfin now. Its also not remote which makes this a huge dick move too.
Wait its not remote? You’re on your local network?
OP has set it up wrong so it’s ALL going remote, even when he’s in the same house.
I have it set up in a way. That does not make it wrong. This is an option that plex gives you without warning so its their problem in the first place. They also just paywalled that feature that worked for years and they’re not considering the consequences or they dont care. The least they could have done is put a link “if youre seeing this on your home network, you need to do THIS.”
You set it up in the wrong way if you want to stream locally on your network.
It’s ok to admit that you made a mistake and it’s not plex’s fault. Just take some responsibility for your actions.
You’re now using mental gymnastics to blame me for someone else’s actions. Sorry mate but I’m not into that mumbo jumbo. good luck somewhere else.
Someone else set up your Plex server?
Old news, but time for Jellyfin. I made the switch a couple months ago. Some minor teething issues, but better, IMO, especially now as my family all have LDAP users and that just works.
Give me a package that runs on my ds214play and I’ll switch in a heartbeat
https://github.com/SynoCommunity/spksrc/issues/5941 ?
I really wanted Jellyfin working in my DS214Play with DSM6, and I noticed that a package for these evansport CPUs doesn’t exist and it’s officially not supported, so I tried myself and I succeeded.
Thanks for the link. It seems they got it somehow working on DSM6, but if I check the thread, it’s a lot of ducttape and locktight involved especially to run with DSM7. Might try it out on a rainy sunday
I made the switch a few months back as well. Have you had the issue where"Recently Added" just straight up doesn’t work? It’s about 50/50 for me whether my new downloads show up there or not, and if they do, it’s usually inserted somewhere down the list between other things I added months ago. Not sure if there’s a workaround, but it’s my #1 complaint with Jellyfin. Otherwise, it’s been great.
How is your underlying file system set up?
It’s an Unraid share on a local NAS, and the array is formatted as xfs.
Hmm, shared how? NFS?
I’m actually not 100% sure how to answer that. It’s just a “share” configured through the Unraid UI, being accessed by a docker container running on the same machine (binhex’s Jellyfin image.) I think that the “share” in this context is essentially just a mount point, but it’s also (optionally) exposed as an SMB share externally.
Ahh OK, a Docker bind. 3 things to check:
-
That you added the folders in that weird way Unraod requires, see: https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-solved-jellyfin-not-detecting-media-in-unraid (this probably isn’t it, but worth checking)
-
Make sure for newly added, Jellyfin is configured for Date File Scanned into Library, vs the Created Date on the file
-
Ensure the Arrs aren’t set to change the date on file import. By default they modify created/modified dates to be the release date, which can put things in an unexpected order.
-
awesome. thanks for chiming in. I will have to check how to do external streaming without opening my network up to the world (metaphorically).
You’ve got options.
Can your router open ports from a hostname vs an IP? If so, clients could run dynamic DNS.
WG client side isn’t really that hard, though. All the fam run WG 24/7 on devices, and only traffic for the internal network goes through it.
I know. the issue is my friends dont have networks run by me. So I have to gain access to them and have to change setups which makes the situation likely to blow in my face. its just not a good solution imo. People have already suggested a relay server which will likely be the best solution.
I used synology and reverse proxy. It was pretty easy to set up. The tricky part was going into jellyfins setting and connecting your reverse proxy to the path you made.
Overall my kids and family can now access it anywhere.
I run a reverse proxy too. are you talking about a public one? I’m probably gonna use a relay server for it which essentially is the same I guess.
Yes, the public one. I just use synology ddns as the public address. I’m good with programming, but when it comes to IT stuff, I’m dead in the water. So, their infrastructure helped
Neat. Thanks for suggesting.
Every non-Free Software will betray you eventually. It’s only a matter of time.
well, except WinRAR
What do you mean WinRAR isn’t free?!
“Free software” is different from “software that is free”
True, though WinRar is technically neither.
I just wonder if plex will ever sell the list of movies and IP address of everyone. Many people have the ARRs to auto download, even stuff still in theaters. What good is a VPN when plex knows your email and IP.
Sell or get subpoena’d; tomayto, tomahto.
I thought free software was when you were the product and non-free software actually supported developers.
Or do you mean non-OSS?
Free as in freedom, not as in free beer.
I thought we switched to libre for that definition and since then used free only as in free beer.
Libre (from French) is sometimes used to solve the ambiguity of the word free in the English language, but it sounds kinda awkward in English and there’s certainly no consensus that this should be the official replacement, or that the term free even needs replacement.
Furthermore, the FSF who originally came up with the idea of “free software” still exists and is still called the Free Software Foundation, though Stallman uses both terms interchangeably.
“Free Software” is a defined term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
I mean non-Free Software.
Yeah, the wording is confusing. A long time ago, there was no paid software, there was only software where you got the source code and other software where e.g. it was pre-installed on some hardware and the manufacturer didn’t want to give the source code.
In that time, a whole movement started fighting for software freedom, so they called their software “free”.
A little oversymplified but i’ll take it. :)
In this thread:
- An OP that doesn’t understand how their network is working
- People rushing to suggest a solution that they fawn over because it’s open source. I have yet to see anyone recommend Emby.
- “Tailscale will solve all your problems!” Great - how do I make that work on an LG TV that’s 100 miles away?
- Open source has high immunity to devs making changes at the expense of user for their benefit because anti-features can be removed. Recommending another proprietary alternative here would be like saying they aught to leave an abusive partner but then recommend someone with the same red flags.
- It’s also the most complex to set up, and for many people the threshold is “walking your tech-illiterate mother-in-law through side loading it over the phone, because she lives 100 miles away… She’s afraid to touch her computer for anything except email and Facebook. And then resetting her password every 30 days, because she keeps locking herself out of it.” Suddenly the “just fucking sign into Plex and it automatically discovers your server” option becomes a lot more appealing.
To continue the metaphor: a partner can have many alluring qualities (income, hobbies, looks) but what does that matter if the relationship is abusive? Leaving (and dating someone “worse”) can be more difficult that just staying in the relationship, but the priority should be clear.
My tech-illiterate mom uses my Jellyfin instance with no issues. I sent her a link to the app store, her credentials, my server’s hostname and that was it. And once it’s set up, Jellyfin is much more straightforward to use than Plex.
Sure Jellyfin has issues and doesn’t support as many types of devices, but Plex is far from perfect. I use it like twice a year, and the UI gets more and more confusing with each update IMO.
Jellyfin doesn’t have an app on every App Store. On some, you have to sideload it, by enabling developer mode and connecting to a PC that is running an App Store server. Then the TV downloads it from the PC.
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Jellyfin is the most complex to set up, right? (Just making sure I’m reading this correctly)
To set it up “correctly”, yes. It’ll require owning your own domain, being able to configure it properly (with either a static IP, or DDNS to point to your server at home), knowing how to automate https certificate refreshes, and a few other things. Plex just requires forwarding a port in your router.
I thought self hosting was about learning networking basics like DNS and setting up let’s encrypt.
So much whining in here about the most simple stuff being too complex.
I disagree; Self-hosting is for a variety of things, and plenty of people (in fact, I’d say probably the majority of Plex users) just want to be able to pirate Netflix without a ton of setup.
Is learning some networking inevitable? Yeah, probably. But I also think this xkcd is apt. The reality is that what may be simple for you and me actually requires a lot of studying for a complete novice. Plenty of people will need to google what a port is, let alone how to forward one. And that’s assuming they even know the word “port” to google. Plenty of people won’t even know where to start.
And true novices are hopefully going to be extremely wary of any info they find online. It’s easy to fuck something up without even realizing it, and leave your entire system exposed; especially when the braindead “lol just forward your Jellyfin port and use your public IP” advice is posted somewhere in every single advice thread.
Worse. Exposing Jellyfin to the internet is a bad idea given the teams stance on security. https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415#issue-824791596
The only safe way to host jellyfin is with a vpn.
Lots of those issues have been blown out of proportion, and would never be a real concern for the “just a dude running a server in his closet for his friends” setups. Which, to be clear, is the vast majority of setups.
For instance, virtually all of the worst issues require that the attacker already has a valid login token. So unless they stole your buddy’s credentials, the only one to truly worry about would be your buddy directly. But yes, Jellyfin has some gaping holes, and letting it touch the WAN at all is always a risk. You’re giving attackers a new potential vector of attack that didn’t exist before, so that’s worth noting.
unless they stole your buddy’s credentials
Thank God trolls never steal people’s credentials so they can hack a small server because they’re bored.
Right.
Even though I could do those things, I just want something that works.
Plex (or even Emby) fits that request.
Plus they both have an AppleTV app for fee that doesn’t suck.
Welcome to “People rushing to suggest a solution that they fawn over because it’s open source.”
How do you personally 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt know that Jellyfin is the right solution? Why not a VPN, shared folder, and VLC? What about running a DNLA server?
Edit: All of you downvoting don’t know; and it makes you salty.
You mean a morally “right” solution? 😇
Jellyfin has a DLNA plugin
Thank you Internet stranger for reminding me of this sketch.
What’s it from?
From a time when the jerk motion was used en mass. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2jvcd5
3 - An OpenWRT router with Wireguard connecting to another router 1000 miles away will do the trick.
Great; how do I get my Mother to do that over the phone?
It’s not a cake walk, but I’ve something similar for a friend who can barely turn on his PC.
The OpenWRT router was fully configured before shipping it to him and the existing router’s needed Wireguard port was opened by me using the Comcast Android app. All he had to do was connect his TV to a new wifi network. That wasn’t easy, but he ultimately succeeded.
Ok, so you didn’t walk someone through it; you shipped them something preconfigured.
That’s not going to scale as I share out my server.
That’s not going to scale…
How many mothers do you have?
None of your business, insensitive clod.
AtariDump@lemmy.world wrote:
Great; how do I get my Mother to do that over the phone?
That’s not going to scale as I share out my server.
Are you incapable of recognizing that in this context my comment was a joke? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Seriously. I hate when people assume default settings are the only option. You don’t even need a Plex account to set up Plex. It will just be less seamless and user friendly. Never adopt the server, configure these via localhost (ssh tunnel works) and then set up your networking. Don’t even need to update it, it will run for as long as the database stays stable. Which should be years or more.
Thanks.
One of my pet peeves is when people immediately jump to whatever their fanboy program of choice is regardless of if it’s actually the right program to run in the situation given.
It’s also always the Jellyfin fans that get emotional about this. Liking Plex is like a cardinal sin to them and I should be happy to migrate my entire viewership to a new solutions that requires them to install a vpn client on their device.
Every post I see here about Plex is some variation of Gotcha! or Schadenfreude where they expect everyone to say, “oh no, guess I’ll pack it up and start fresh”
2000%.
I used to have a list (I might still) of all of the features I was looking for in Jellyfin: if they had all of them I would migrate over. Spoiler Alert: Jellyfin doesn’t have 8/10ths of the features.
I think I’m just going to start blocking the rabid Jellyfin fans and save myself the trouble.
The condescension in your first point is brutal. I suggest you apologize.
And I would suggest learning how to configure your software before coming here and stirring shit. But we can’t always get what we want
Yeah sure. Because a company paywalling functions has anything to do with network configuration.
What people like you dont understand is that there is no minimum requirement of knowledge to selfhost. It is completely braindead how often i have to tell people how a network works and now i have to explain to people why software configuration is not network configuration.
And if you can wipe the foam from your mouth for a second, you’ll notice I wrote ‘software’ not network.
But in the end all you’re here for is a pad on the back from the Jellyfin guys for “seeing the light”. So you do you and maybe I won’t have to read more of you Plex posts, since you’re now in happy Jellyfin land
If #3 is your use case, then yeah, pony up the fees. Or learn to code I guess.
So, like every other jellyfin fanboy, no real actual answer.
Why would there be an answer?
How do I load and configure Tailscale on my TCL Roku TV?
This is an answer im looking for.
Natively, you can’t. Hackishly, you could put a small VPN capable router in front of it that would manage the connection.
That’s according to Dr Internet, so I haven’t tried it, but it seems very likely to be accurate.
So instead of a service that works, I now have:
- an inferior (and incomplete) client experience, unless I spend money
- an additional device to allow the client to connect to Jellyfin, because I can’t safely expose it to the internet
- the responsibility to keep all that additional stuff working for myself and everyone of my friends/family members
sounds like a great deal
Your complaining that the free stuff isn’t as good as the paid?
Actual answer for 3:
- put jellyfin behind a proper reverse proxy. Ideally on a separate host / hardware firewall, but nginx on the same host works fine as well.
- create subdomain, let’s say sub.yourdomain.com
- forward traffic, for that subdomain ONLY, to jellyfin in your reverse proxy config
- tell your relatives to put sub.yourdomain.com into their jellyfin app
All the fear-mongering about exposing jellyfin to the internet I have seen on here boils down to either
- “port forwarding is a bad idea!!”, which yes, don’t do that. The above is not that. Or
- “people / bots who know your IP can get jellyfin to work as a 1-bit oracle, telling you if a specific media file exists on your disk” which is a) not an indication for something illegal, and b) prevented by the described reverse proxy setup insofar as the bot needs to know the exact subdomain (and any worthwhile domain-provider will not let bots walk your DNS zone).
(Not saying YOU say that; just preempting the usual folklore typically commented whenever someone suggests hosting jellyfin publicly accessible)
@smiletolerantly @AtariDump
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_Transparency
Makes sure bots will hit you as soon as the certificate for your domain is issuedOK, add step above: use wildcard certificate for your domain.
Terminating the TLS connection at your perimeter firewall is standard practice, there’s no reason your jellyfin host needs to obtain the certificate.
For #3, subnet routing.
Where do I find Wireguard for my LG TV?
You can’t expect my relatives living 100+ miles away to start monkeying around with their router. That be like asking you to set the spark plug timing correctly using a timing gun.
Did you even read the link? You don’t need it on every device. It’s not really that difficult to understand.
I AM A 48 YEAR OLD FORMER FUCKING TRUCK DRIVER FOR FUCKS SAKE, and yet, I still managed to set up tailscale on my phone and a computer, and then access my stuff that ISNT running tailscale in any way, shape or form, from my phone, simply because I decided to figure it the fuck out.
Stop being so damned lazy.
I am so fucking tired of this “cater to the lowest common denominator” bullshit.
Stop being so dam lazy and do all the things you pay someone else to do.
Mow the lawn. Fix the plumbing. Run new electrical. Neuter the cat. Clean your teeth. Do your taxes. Properly segment your network into several VLANs so that your IoT devices can’t talk to your internal network.
I do all of those things except neuter animals. Most rural folks do.
If you’re cleaning your own teeth, you’re missing several.
I’ll add to #2 (IDK if it’s open source, though):
Give Stremio a try. Once you set it up (basically just add the Torrentio plug-in then whatever content catalogs you want), the workflow is much better and simpler than Plex.
You just browse it like Netflix: see something you want to watch, select it with your remote, then stream it immediately. No server to run, you don’t have to build libraries, you don’t even have download the content beforehand. Just select and watch. Could not be easier.
Is it torrenting in the background? Because, if it is, then you need a VPN and I don’t know how to set one up on my LG TV. Would you happen to have a guide?
If you live in an area where you need a VPN to keep your ISP off your ass, well you’re in luck because the Torrentio plug-in is compatible with Debrid services (Real-Debrid is a good one). They’re cheaper than a VPN (less than €3/mo) and get you direct downloads which ISPs don’t care about since you’re not distributing files like you would with a torrent client. What’s nice is that they work with any torrent—not just video—so you can download wherever you want at 1gbps speeds so long as the torrent has at least one seed. Since you’re not actually interacting with the torrents themselves, there’s no need for a VPN.
Setup is easy. The only thing you need to do is install the Stremio app on your TV, then open it and install the Torrentio plug-in. From there you configure your preferences like preferred resolution, language, etc, enter your Debrid service credentials if you have them; after that you install additional plug-ins for the kind of content you want. I’d recommend starting off with the Streaming Catalogs (lists popular content from Netflix, Amazon, Disney HBO, etc.)and Trakt.tv plug-ins (recommends content based on your viewing habits). There’s also plug-ins for anime if that’s your thing. Once you install the plug-ins you like, the only thing left to do is pick something to watch and enjoy. :)
You can also download the Stremio app to your phone and configure everything from there if you don’t want to fumble with doing all of this with the TV remote. I’d recommend doing it this way so that all you have to do on the TV is fire up the Stremio app and enjoy.
Bro you asked for a guide, I gave you a guide. The fuck you want from me? (For convenience sake I even made as short as possible. Literally less than a 45 second read.)
I put a lot of effort into that comment to help you out, and instead of saying “thank you”, you respond with this bullshit? What the hell is wrong with you?
Ungrateful prick.
I asked for a guide on how to setup a VPN on my LG TV.
Please specifically point out where in your long repo se you provided a guide on how to run a VPN on my LG TV.
Again, you don’t need a VPN if you follow my guide. Your reading comprehension is worse than mine, and I have ADHD. *sigh*
If you live in an area where you need a VPN to keep your ISP off your ass
Uploading copyrightes material is illegal pretty much everywhere I know of.
Many places don’t enforce those laws for simply torrenting.
Some countries (US) ask the ISP to send warning letters and might disable the internet. In other countries law firms get personal details from the ISP and send a costly letter of a thousand Euro for a single infraction like in Germany.
That’s true, but ISPs have logs. And if something happens that makes the police change their mind about enforcing the law, you might be fucked, retroactively.
Again, not an issue if you use a Debrid service, because no files are being uploaded.
Exactly, which is why you don’t need a VPN if you use a Debrid service. No files are being uploaded. The Debrid service handles that for you by downloading the torrent to a remote server, than giving you a direct download link to the file. Nothing is being uploaded from your end.
Is Streamio considered safe/private? I remember looking into it a while back and saw something about needing an account on their servers or something.
I used Kodi with addons for ages but switched to jellyfin because kodi felt too clunky and slow for my wife.
I’m not the person to ask this kind of question to. I use DNS-level tracking protection in my router (via NextDNS), but I’m not a privacy expert.
If you’re living in a country where censorship is a thing and/or privacy is of upmost importance, then you should still use a VPN in addition to a Debrid service with Stremio. Or you can nix the Debrid and just use a VPN if you don’t mind more buffering and all the downsides that come with torrents. (VPNs can be setup to run on a TV through DNS settings either on your router or TV itself, though this may not be 100% secure. Again, I’m not an expert.)
I always see people advocate for Stremio. But my experience was always very mixed. Half the time it would just buffer all the time. I guess it’s s my own fault for having little interest in the latest Marvel/Hollywood movies, but alas. I way more prefer my jellyfin/jellyseer/arr stack. Once it’s available I’m (99%) sure it works from everywhere in the world.
Are you using a Debrid service with it? It’s a much better experience if you are. Give Real-Debrid a try with Stremio. It’ll change your opinion.
Welp, i killed mine yesterday as it wouldnt let me stream while offline. Modem died so no Internet for me. Why do i have everything local if it dosent work while offline…
FYI you can definitely watch while your network is offline. You just net to tell it that you’re happy with that (it’s not activated by default for security reasons).
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In your Plex server settings, go to Network, enable “Show Advanced”.
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Near the bottom, find the textbox that says
List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth -
In this field, enter the local IP address of any Plex client(s) you want to keep using if your internet (or the Plex cloud) is down.
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A example:
192.168.0.50 -
Save the setting, done.
#Important thing to be aware of:
What this setting does is tell your local Plex server to simply give any Plex client that connects from that specific IP full admin access to your Plex server, ignoring any account restrictions. This means that if you have things in place to restrict access to some libraries (kids blocked from 18+ movies etc) those restrictions will have no effect. Also if you have the option set to allow file deletion, then any client from that IP could also delete items. And they could of course change any settings in your Plex server. So your kids can watch anything on your server, if you have a guest in your network and they browse to the Plex web interface, they can mess with things.
Because of that I would recommend to limit the amount of IP’s you enter in that field to the absolute bare minimum. For example, only whitelist the “main living room device” plus one device you to admin the server, such as a laptop.
If you want to whitelist multiple devices, this is a example:
192.168.0.50,192.168.0.77,192.168.0.80If you want to whitelist a entire network, these would be examples:
192.168.0.0/24 (this means 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.0.255) 192.168.0.0/16 (this means 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255)And of course those involved network devices should use static IPs in your home network.
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Exactly. Thats why i use jellyfin now. Try installing it alongside. For me it worked well.
Its already installed, but missing features, i was waiting for them to finish the db changes, because thats whats blocking them…
what features are you missing?
security
Threads like this are why people don’t use open source. It sounds like a reality-denying anti-intellectual one-size-fits-all cult in here. This is also like half the threads about Linux. Just armies of tech bros who couldn’t put themselves in someone else’s shoes if their life literally depended on it.
If people choose not to use software that’s open source because of the way people talk on some thread… were they intellectually thinking about their own best interests? It’s like no longer enjoying a show because some fans did something cridge - anything popular enough will have weirdos (from someone’s perspective).
The way people act while advocating for something does in fact affect the efficacy of their advocacy whether they want to admit it or not.
I’m sure that’s correct. Richard Stallman would be a good example of that, sadly. I doubt anything as negative has been said in this thread, or site. Seems more like people feel attacked when free software advocates point out uncomfortable issues. Like how people get annoyed with vegans talking about animal cruelty (I eat meat, saying that to avoid theonejoke).
What I see in these threads is the reverse. People insist that their pet solution is a panacea for every use case and when someone points out that it doesn’t work for them they get downvotes and sarcasm. Making use of the best software for your use case is not equivalent to complicity in animal torture and environmental destruction. Nobody’s being forced into constant pregnancy or having their calves taken away at birth because I feel like third party security patches for Windows will be a better option for me than fully swapping to a Linux distro.
But what is definitely happening is people stop reading pro-FOSS threads by the third rabid fanboy response and actually miss what could be a useful alternative.
If one limits their scope to the nutrients or taste of food on their plate then they wouldn’t consider the well-being of other conscious creatures. Only considering system requirements to complete an activity misses out the freedom of the user(s), apparently.
It is a given that humans suffer due to the unjust power that proprietary software gives devs over their user’s computing. Even the best dev does not the the willpower to always resist the temptation to use that power at the expense of the users. Many devs are oblivious they are doing anything wrong and many are malicious/anti-consumer.
There is also the impact it’s use and promotion has on others - money/feedback/promotion given to the non-free projects are boons not given to the freedom-respecting projects. I am better off when others start to move away from proprietary software.
Why anyone still uses Plex for new setups is beyond me.
pretty much the only reason I still use Plex is because I like to be able to watch stuff during downtime at work and plex.tv isn’t blocked on the work network while my private domain is.
And no, using a hotspot off my phone on a personal computer isn’t an option, both because the security requirements of my job site prevent us from using personal devices in the main area where I work and because the building itself is a massive concrete structure that blocks most cell signals.
Strange that plex.tv isn’t blocked while a “personal” categorized website is. Have you looked to see what category your domain is shuffled under? You could try submitting a recategorization request to Cisco Umbrella or Fortinet databases. Requests for recategorization are free to do.
I’ve tried submitting recategorization requests through the links provided by my workplace on the block pages. The requests have been denied.
If I’m remembering right, it’s a Symantec web filtering solution that we use and they’ve decided that my domain is in the “personal blog” category. Which is a blocked category. Jeff Geerling’s website actually falls under the same category, which also kind of sucks, because I like reading some of the stuff he puts out.
I would go around them and go directly to the source of categorization. It looks like this is the Symantec categorization website in case it’s different from what you’re workplace provides - https://sitereview.bluecoat.com/#/
Well, i didnt. Its a legacy install and i had jellyfin already running parallel because of the remote streaming paywall they introduced.
Remote, yes, they announced you need Plex pass one side or the other for it to work.
Local, no, that shouldn’t happen. Your device isn’t reaching your Plex server locally.
To work around the remote issue, you can VPN to your local network.
But you’re better off in the long haul with Jellyfin as you’re doing now.
Yeah no. That is local. But thanks for the suggestion. Jellyfin works well.
It isn’t hitting it locally is the issue. Not an uncommon problem with plex unfortunately, its going out to come back in, so the server and client see it as remote.
Without playback you wouldn’t even be able to see that in the dashboard, which just makes the direction Plex is going so much more problematic.
Like I said, better off using JF.
Yeah, i assume it isnt. It got pointed out a couple times that it is a plex configuration problem which plex doesnt point out either btw.
In any case, thanks for helping and participating. Have a good one. :)
Its not a local connection if you’re getting this message. You might be in the same network, but for some reason it’s not connecting directly.
You’re assuming something that you just cant. I run this network alongside 5 others, some of them professional, for years. My configuration is standard and i’m using the software the same way i did for years.
If plex redirects my call to their server, that is their problem, not mine. I dont care what their inner workings are. I use a local address and this has happened for the first time.
Is it possible that it is an honest mistake on the side of plex? Yes.
That does not absolve them from the end result.
Someone else already said it and you’ve already swapped but I’ll say it in detail:
when setting the server connection up you selected “ServerName (long string of numbers)” and not “ServerName (your IP - SECURE)”
this routes your connection through the Plex servers and makes it not a local connection anymore. this is extremely easy to do and forget you’ve done because it barely impacts performance
In other words, it’s a dark pattern that tricks users into letting Plex MITM their connection.
dark pattern
Nope, not at all. Its extremely forward, your local IP is listed first every time IME, and your lower-down comment has it backwards as it’s your local IP that had “secure” written on it
it’s not a dark pattern at all, people are just stupid and don’t read (including me, I fucked this up too at first)
Plex has paywalled my server!
Skill issue tbh.
Yeah but not on my end.
