I am looking to basically just transition to a small time, forever on, server to support my growing Plex footprint. I don’t need anything top of the line, and I’ve already crimped my lines to the room.
What’s the most cost effective way to go about this? Figured i would come to the pros.
Thanks!
Can I chime in without sounding anti-Plex? Nothing specifically against it, but they’re kind of going bad. Jellyfin is a lot more private and better to host for data control/privacy.
Don’t get me wrong, Plex of easy to setup, configure, share, etc. with a lot of robust features, but their private equity or venture capitalist money has them selling/sharing data and are cutting out jobs to save money, etc.
JF gives you the freedom Plex once did before its corruption. I’ve been on Plex 12+years and switched about a year ago.
See, I hadn’t even heard that. Is JF on anything like Apple TV (like Plex) or would i have to figure out the streaming part?
It’s pretty much everywhere Plex is. The main issue is that it’s trickier to set up for sharing outside your LAN.
I would never be doing that, so I’m sold on it then. It’s basically just my backup movie/TV hub for my LAN.
Honestly its a no brainer if you don’t have Plex pass. Its just an overall way nicer experience.
Definitely suggested then, you’re also going to get drastically more features. If you remember a time when Plex plugins were available - its that. And more flexible.
Any intel-based chipset past 6th gen or so will be ok, 7+ recommended, 10th+ for AV1. If you aren’t doing any transcoding, just about anything will work include a pi.
Does TailScale make this easier or nah?
Very easy server-wise. But you may neeed to help your family member/friend with the initial set up on the client, if they are not so tech-savy.
From my limited testing of tailscale a while back, I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t work. Saw no reason to switch from my wireguard setup.
Can confirm it works. I have jf over tailscale.
I use my own domain but could be done using tailscale urls if you dont want to deal with certificates, split horizon dns, etc.
It’s basically a web server to play media on the front end and a metadata manager and conversion engine on the back.
Pretty well the same as Plex but there’s less reliance on external services, more truly self contained and less subscription. There are client apps for most streaming boxes that I know of.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202526943-plex-free-vs-paid/
There’s nothing wrong with being opposed to enshitified proprietary apps.
Bingo. People can be so tribal about this shit. If you value privacy and hate subscriptions, jellyfin is you homie. It isn’t as hard to set up as some would have you believe (i’m a normie and have used it for years).
If you don’t give a fuck about privacy and don’t mind paying some creep to make it easy for you to access your own files, then Plex is fine. This is the camp some people are in, and it’s just as legitimate as mine. Life is about gray areas and compromise.
I tried to move to Jellyfin…but it wasn’t capable of scanning my library… either too big or too many different video types…but it has never been able to complete.
Quick google search says this is a known issue, so I abandoned it.
one of the learning curves on jellyfin is naming conventions. you have to read the documentation on it. if you don’t have the file named appropriately respective of the type of media, Jellyfin won’t know how to categorize it. I use renamer a lot for bulk renaming, and you can often rearrange the info in the file name pretty easily once you get a handle on how renamer works.
How big is your library? Mine is close to 10TB with files of all sizes and types and I don’t have an issue.
Um… Refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it may incriminate me… ;-)
Seriously though, I think when you add movies and TV shows together, close to 70TB? (All with disc backups of course)
The introduction of UHD has caused the libraries to explode in size…
I’m at close to 150TB, with a lot of my movies being 30GB+. Most are DVDs at full uncompressed, and BD rips in h.265. I’ve also still got my LG BD-ROM that I’ve ripped all my UHD discs on, and those are often over 40GB.
Maybe there was an incompatibility or glitch last time. I’d try it again just in case! Could be a software bug, too. I’ve got an Intel 12900HX in my server. I know AMD are sometimes not as compatible.
yeah, I was running in a container with an RTX3050 backing it for transcoding, but it never really got to that point… I’ve debated a dedicated plex server, using NFS to pull from my TrueNAS… but I already have 5 servers running in my environment…my electric bill isn’t very friendly… ;-)
This was only a couple of months ago… I’ll try it again at some point…but I bought the Plex Pass back when it was like $49 for life… so I’m not hurting for anything. ;-)
Same! Plex pass <100. I’m on a 12900HX now which does well for all h.265 content. The difference is I’m bare metal vs Docker or VM. I’ve got 3 micro PCs all running various things, a couple pis, etc. I like virtualization, but I like separating stuff out to not over utilize, nor worry about 1 system crash taking it all down.
Maybe try adding the files in 10 TB batches or something. My library is approaching that size, and no issues here. Could be tripping up on a specific file or something. I know Jellyfin can be a little particular about folder hierarchy and naming conventions, too.
Watching logs, looks like it’s haning up on specific encoding types…
I’m using a prebuilt docker container that I assume must have come with all the appropriate codecs lined up. If you spun up your own container or installed it directly on your host OS, you may be missing some, I suppose. Without seeing the logs I couldn’t tell you more (not that I’m some kind of self-hosting master, myself), but that seems like a pretty good lead.
Google gets tons of stuff wrong now it has AI. Did you confirm it was a known issue listed on the Jellyfin support site?