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.
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 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.
I have had great success with tailscale in this regard.
The same tailscale that announced last week that they are going to start charging?
https://tailscale.com/kb/1251/pricing-faq
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?
Took a quick look at the free tier,
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.
Well, that sucks for me. I was planning on using my domain name.
I have it set up so that my custom domain is pointing to the local ip of my server.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
FWIW:
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.
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!