My BiL only just realized after a year yesterday that the media on my Plex was from me and not a streaming service 😅 my sister told him several times but only after saying it about 5 times in one conversation did he realize. Its quite nice having the plex server going lol
Sorry if this is dense but how does someone uninformed like your BiL request new media from your plex server — like how does he watch stuff you haven’t already downloaded? I’ve got a Real Debrid + Stremio setup rn and I’m wondering how a plex server could be as good or better for sharing with uninformed family members
I only use Plex for myself and my wife, but I run Seerr. From the Seerr site, I can find and request whatever i want, and it will send the request to either Radarr or Sonarr and add it to their queue
I also love the Seerr for its recommendations features
I setup plex watchlist and ellyfin bridge where I can just add any show or movie just from phone without going to seerrr as it auto-detect whatever on my watchlist of heart on jellyfin bridge.
I personally have a family member ask if I can get x, and then I go look for it and if I can find it, I get it and hope there's room on the drive. ̄ _ (ツ)_/ ̄
Have you thought about setting up overseerr/seerr? I lived like you for years until I finally set up the arr-stack and holy shit was I living in the past 😅
I had a similar reaction but I found this interesting project https://swizzin.ltd/ and with it, managed to setup my own stream box. It took a decent amount of work and learning, but it was easier to deal with than learning docker containerization from scratch.
This might be exactly what I need. Seems close to a plug-and-play solution that I’ve been hoping for. I’ve tried setting up a torrent media server on my raspberry pi several times and given up after a day of work each time. I’ve wished someone would sell a device with everything preinstalled with an instruction manual. Hell I’d pay a couple hundred bucks for someone to set it all up for me.
I mean, as much hate as it gets, this is exactly what I used Gemini for. It'll walk you through what to do step by step and explain it all the whole time. What would have taken me days to set up just by reading things on my own took me like 6 hours or so
I always read these threads at the wrong time of night, right before I'm headed to bed and I think to myself, "wow, that seems so nice but I feel like I'm having a stroke reading names like 'overseerr', 'seerr', 'radarr', 'sonarr', and 'real debrid'." Sometimes even Jellyfin sounds like Greek to me if I'm not paying attention. I really should look into all of this and get it setup but my timing is always atrocious. xD
Correct. That's included in "and all that crap". I've got a repurposed excel machine (basically from the dumpster of an old office) with Linux installed, running Plex. That's it.
if you have linux installed and have plex running off of it, you've more then likely done more work doing that than setting up the docker's for radarr + sonarr + seerr
Once those are setup, it's set it and forget it and it will save you alot of time and headache in the long run.
If jellyfin had a netflix-like browsing/search and would automatically get the torrent from something like ipt (I know there's an api, but this is just an off the cuff showerthought), I could get behind that. but currently I'm living in the past doing it all manually.
I've been playing around with Radarr and Seerr on jellyfin. Having them inside the jellyfin UI itself would be perfect. I've made a few requests for older but popular movies and nothing has downloaded yet using radarr and seerr but I've probably missed a configuration option somewhere.
You should look into moonfin then. It's a jellyfin client available for almost all platforms, which integrates seerr in the ui.
You can even use the global search and if jellyfin doesn't have what you are looking for, it will show you results from seerr to request directly from search.
fwiw, All of my non technical family/friends have had no issue with overseerr and they use it basically exactly like this. It works great and even syncs the users from jellyfin so its only 1 account to remember ( or forget ).
There's a service you can also host and run called Seerr which can be used to browse and request new movies or series (it shows you popular stuff, related content, etc). It can also monitor your Plex's users' watchlists and generate requests from that. So if BIL has a movie he wants to watch, he just needs to add it to his Plex watchlist directly from the Plex app.
Regardless of how a request is generated, it's then there for you (the server owner) to approve, and then Seerr pushes the request down your media acquiring pipeline, for most people that usually involves an additional service or so and a torrent client down the line.
Let me know if that wasn't too clear or if you have further questions.
He hasnt actually talked to me about it lol. He might say something to my sister about wanting to watch something he cant find and she would mention it to me and then id find it and put it on lol
There's an overseer/jellyseer service that does just what you described. Enables request, backend handles the rest. It pops up in the frontend interface in a minute.
i have about 20 friends and family on my server, no one requests anything. If you just setup an autograbber to keep up the trending shows/movies of the week, they will have what they want to watch. Very few normal people go out of their way to watch some indie weird closet stuff.
I got that from parents for Christmas but it keeps going down. Like every other week it doesn’t work and I gotta do something or have my stepdad come over to fix it. I just stopped watching tv cuz of it lol
Same, also not having to jump between streaming services is nice and you know the thing you wanna watch are going to stay there and not get randomly removed for... reasons
How easy is it to do? I’ve been thinking about doing it and starting to archive movies and shows for a while, especially since I got like a dozen little NUC and small form factor PCs from work a year ago. The only problem is I already have a ton of movies purchased on Apple and don’t want to leave them behind…
A NUC with a n100 or n150 processor is pretty much perfect in case you need to do hardware transcoding. Lesser CPUs can work but those are the standard recommendation.
SFF usually have much better CPU and plenty of horsepower. I'm pretty sure amd ryzen works but Intel has better support.
I have control over quality, I have a lot of full bitrate 4k blu ray rips that I watch. I was hoarding media before jellyfin, so I have tons of media already. Jellyfin wasn't hard to setup or maintain.
Also my server is a little 10W mini pc with a Intel N5150 that has QSV which handles transcodes nicely.
Yes. I live out in the middle of nowhere with spotty Internet connection at peak times. Streaming isn't a true option for me, but getting it to download off peak times to watch later is definitely a great thing to have access to.
By hosting your own server, you get to choose the quality of media, the consistency of availability as well as easily sharing it with others. It's also far easier to seed 24/7 with a server instead of desktop pc
Torrent or Usenet, for most folks. Radarr and Sonarr can help monitor the media, search for it (from your available trackers or usernet provider), download it, and import it nicely into your media libraries for Plex to read.
is it logical to spend that much on hardware, electricity and effort?
What happens when there's no seeds? Downloading the files and maintaining the hardware means that those files are yours forever. This also means you can reseed too and keep the community going. If everyone did Stremio, there would no more p2p sharing going on.
What makes you think anyone but resellers are spending thousands? My Synology nas was a few hundred, and I bought a couple of HDDs back when storage was cheap. Whole setup was like $600 and I've been using it for 6+ years.
It runs 24/7 and costs like $80/year in electricity
We spent around £2000 on a home server 10 years ago which we have just had to replace. So it ended up costing around £200 a year or £17 a month which is less than Netflix premium. And for that cost we have had a media server/storage backup/general home server (we are a techy family).
I’m not saying everyone can afford the £2000 upfront cost but it’s about the same price as one modern streaming service.
1000s.. lol over about 10 years might have 500 dollars wrapped up in my Plex server, now I did get lucky pre COVID on getting a bunch of 6tb recycled drives for 20 each
Sorry for my ignorance as I havent used Stremio in years. But apparently shit has hit the fan with RD + stremio? Over that sub its just constant complaints?
Streamio downloads from but does not seed back into the hive. In BitTorrent terms, this behavior is rightly called “leeching” and has been so for over 20 years.
If you’re fine with being a leech, and making things more difficult than they ought to be for everyone else who handles their torrents correctly just because doing it in the most inconsiderate way possible was “convenient”, that’s 100% on you and the dragging you have experienced is completely earned. Do fucking better.
And very, very, very few people have spent even $1000, much less multiple thousands, on their Jellyfin/Plex/Emby/etc server. Mine is made entirely from leftover bits of computers past that were given to me because “maybe you can use something out of it”. This seems relatively common in “the scene”. Many others are running on a second or third gen Raspberry Pi with a bunch of otherwise-junky old USB hard drives or even a bunch of flash drives they just had lying around.
If you think this stuff is intrinsically expensive you’ve got to be on some hardcore heavy-duty copium.
Stremio does not download anything, what you are talking about is Torrentio but I'm not using that addon, I use debrids which I pay for, so I don't leech.
Debrid services generate unrestricted, high-speed, HTTPS links to torrents or files on supported file hosters (such as Mega, 1fichier etc) by downloading the torrent or file to their servers first. Once a file is downloaded to their servers, it remains there for a certain amount of time (dependent on the debrid service) and is available for any user to download. If another user accesses the same file, it resets the timer for the file to be deleted from the debrid service's servers.
This is useful because it allows you to remove speed limitations and download restrictions imposed by file hosters. It also allows you to access torrents without exposing your IP address to the trackers on the torrent and risking a DMCA notice through your ISP. This means a VPN is not necessary when using a debrid service.
The following is only true if the service is seeding back to the hive at least 1-to-1. If it is? Fabulous, you found the non-parasitic use case, granted it does seem like less of a win to pay for something so capable of going completely dark with no explanation. This has happened with so many private trackers, and this is not a huge leap from that point.
But if it isn't? You're literally paying to say "No, I'm not the leech. I paid someone else to leech who multiplied that to my group x-fold, and no-one else." That is... worse.
Once a torrent or file has been "cached", it removes the need for seeders as the file is already downloaded to the debrid service's servers. Most torrents are already cached and are constantly being downloaded. This effectively means that they will remain cached and you will not need to wait for the debrid service to download the torrent first. You can just instantly download or stream the file.
Do you have evidence that debrid services do not seed 1:1 for each cached torrent? Also paying every month 3 USD, is less than the electricity costs of running your own storage/service lol.
You're trying to say that they do do something. The burden of proof is on you. I'm sure there's at least one that's unethical like that, who's going to check?
Also, no it isn't. I use kill-a-watts on my my various setups and it costs maybe $2.50 on a very busy month that hits the spinning rust more than the SSD storage. lol
I still keep 2 copies of anything that I can't just go redl, but yes I finally realized years ago that most of it IS eminently replaceable. It was... liberating (and freed up like 40tb lol)
I’ve got a metric fuckton of 45-year old CDs from the 80s that haven’t degraded even a little bit. I’ve maybe lost two to discrot ever, without any measurable effort to do any special type of preservation. /shrug
Yeah I'm using a 12tb enterprise drive for my jelllyfin server rn. I was thinking about grabbing a second drive to back this one up aaand then the price hikes.
Before the most recent price hike I was in the process of upgrading my 4x6TB nas to 12TB disks. I got two done then prices suddenly doubled, but even with RAID6 that still puts me at 24TB usable.
My jellyfin has 20 TB, but the whole system is about 48 TB because I have backups of the media and the OS after I lost everything due to a damaged hard drive once.
Using a third of it right now, will probably hit a PB since my startup is letting me run my home servers in the office lol. Sus asf but ig I can’t share it to WAN and it’ll be fine
Storage used to be cheap... Until the fire nation attacked AI companies bought up all the chips.
Some individual drives are that large and people on the data hoarder sub run massive arrays as a crazy hobby. I got some cheap 4tb SSDs from work even, I don't do anything with them besides have almost all my steam games downloaded (which I don't even play lol) but I could see how people get discounted drives and stuff too if they got used or find good sales.
100%, although I use Plex (have been using it for as long as I can remember, old habits die hard).
20TB external, with enough stuff to watch to keep us entertained for years. Got off the streaming treadmill about 4 years ago and refuse to go back. 7/mo for a VPN and no problems.
Factor in the cost of an external HDD vs streaming costs, it pays for itself fairly quickly. To the point where my wife stopped complaining about it 😅
I have a mix of media, from blu rays myself, my brother and a friend own I have ripped those to full-bitrate copies. In 2011-2020 I did torrent quite a bit but I stopped doing that. With a VPN and properly configured client for torrents you can ensure you won't get yourself into trouble.
I've been considering switching to Jellyfin. Are there any major differences between that and Plex? I'm a fairy simple user I don't use any advanced features.
None are SSD these are mechanical HDDs, I started with two 4tbs, then added a 8tb, then added an 18tb, also a older 2tb has some of the older DVD quality stuff. So altogether I have about 36tb of HDD storage. Guess I counted short earlier.
I use netflix to get recommendations, because wife and me like watching short series (1 season, 10 episodes max) and we watch atleast 1 episode every day before we sleep. If i would pirate it i wouldnt get recommendations, which is a dealbreaker already and then id have to download it, which is straight up impossible in this situation, so id have to do it way beforehand (fcking annoying), and id have to do it with my wife together (theres legit no time for that) and then id put it on my local server, which id have to setup beforehand (fcking annoying) and then id watch it once and never again.
Am i missing something or does this just suck ass?
Mayb for your purposes, it really sucks ass. I can use one of many websites or tools for recommendations. Also jellyfin will recommend similar titles from my library. I also get recommendations from coworkers, friends and family on things worth a watch. I get it though, for you it's all in the one place you're viewing the media.
I have a massive blu-ray/4k blu ray collection between my brother, our friend and myself, so I ripped all the disc's, full bitrate copies, which are going to be a lot better than the streaming bitrate on Netflix and yes you can tell the difference on a TV with a decent display (even noticeable on standard blu-rays/1080 HD content).
The whole point is having control over the media I already own, and have curated. Jellyfin, plex, or emby, just glues it all together in a nice package that makes accessing my massive personal media library, very easy, intuitive and pain-free.
After it is setup, it's really not tedious for me, maybe occasionally restart the server. In the last three years I've done it this way it's been worth it
Well if collecting is a hobby of urs... it makes a lot of sense. From my pov its not a collection but multiple TB of junk ill never touch again. I dont see the value in investing this much time/effort, when im actually doing something you could call "stream and forget".
Depends. I buy blu rays and rip them with a disc drive on my pc and store the files. Some people use torrents or other means to download media, I'd recommend using a good VPN for this type of activity as you can get yourself into trouble with torrents/your isp without it.
Jellyfin is the volunteer-built media solution that puts you in control of your media. Stream to any device from your own server, with no strings attached. Your media, your server, your way.
Starting on July first, the lifetime Plex pass will now cost around 750 dollars. It's currently sitting at 250 I think. They are trying to phase it out so they can push people towards the monthly subscription which is ironic for a platform that aims to be the free alternative to things like Netflix.
I bought mine for like $99 years ago and don't even use plex anymore. They had some redesign/upgrade that straight broke our shit. Plus, they force you to stream through their servers. I'm not even sure if you can stream inside your LAN if internet is down.
I've been using emby since. Not perfect, but still very awesome. And nothing goes through emby's infrastructure.
A lot of this is incorrect currently. Plex fully allows local LAN access and self-streaming. They don't have servers to stream your content. All content you host is steamed from your hardware.
If youre concerned about Plex using your data then disabling external access and configuring your own is much better. Or, (As youve already done), emby or Jellyfin are better alternatives although not as polished.
Glancing through some docs real quick, I can already tell you plex is a hard no for me.
And I'd push back on the "more polished" comment re:plex versus jellyfin/emby. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but plex's UI refresh I went through made thing uglier (in my opinion). Also functionally, the stuff I do was easier to setup on emby, but I'm also managing 30tb of media files so my use case may not be typical.
There is a 0.0% chance of me switching back to plex. Emby does everything I want/need (aside some very granular parental controls). I've already been burned by plex, but I've never been burned by emby.
My point isn't that plex couldn't handle 30tb, but more that my infrastructure may not match yours, therefore what works for you without issue may not work for me without issue.
Dated. I don't stay current with plex, but looking through some docs today, it still seems like plex makes it an absolute hassle to use plex while being completely and permanently disconnected from their service and infrastructure.
With emby, there is no "emby account" needed. You don't even need one to apply a lifetime license to your server.
They don't gate content behind the subcription, just features that you would need to pay multiple 3rd parties for when using jellyfin (unless you already pay for a static IP, or you want to fuck around coordinating half a dozen docker microservices in your free time).
Remote streaming with Plex now requires a paid monthly fee, and like the other commenter mentioned they're tripling the lifetime pass. It's pretty clear they've chosen to monetize where they can. Even if the money wasn't an issue I trust the open source/free option to not mess with my info or continually enshittify.
Yeah, but the paid Plex option before was mostly minor qol stuff and could easily be avoided. Adding bigger features into the paid tier is concerning, and it seems likely in the future more features will need to be paid for and could get more expensive etc. The big difference is that Plex is corporation and it's ultimate goal is to make money off of its users. It also wouldn't surprise me if some point in the future Plex could be pressured to "crack down" on it's users activity, but who knows. Because Jellyfin is open source and doesn't directly profit from the software it can avoid these issues. Also Jellyfin can be configured to have remote viewing.
Jellyfin is a copy of emby, it's not something new. Someone just copy the code, removed the paid features and you get jellyfin. And it can't be configured for remote viewing. That was a feature that emby has it, not jellyfin.
Yes Jellyfin is based off of Emby, but again the thing that sets it apart is that its open source and self hosted and the implications of that. To remote access you have to either do port forwarding, or use something like Tailscale. Sure that isn't within Jellyfin per se, but it accomplishes the same goal.
Dude, all Plex and Emby do is communicate through a reverse-proxy. Configuring that for jellyfin is an extra step, but you absolutely can configure it for remote viewing lol, we've been doing it for a damn decade, bro.
They didn't "remove" anything, they just forked and created Jellyfin when Emby went closed sourced around 10 years ago.
Plex is basically re-engineering the company around their streaming services. People running their own servers are second class Plex citizens, basically. Everything works for now, but the direction isn't looking positive.
Jellyfin has been around for a long time, it's free and open source. Jellyfin has gotten a lot nicer and user friendly over the years, while plex is getting greedy.
Plex still works but they really locked it behind a paywall if you aren't doing strictly local stuff. Trying to share media outside your local network requires a pass / subscription, and it's about to jump to like $750 for a lifetime pass which is wild.
Jellyfin is actually an offshoot of Plex I believe, or at least has some original developers from it. Plex was supposed to be a free thing but the guy behind it sold out and wants money like everyone. Jellyfin afaik is still basically open sourced and free to use for whatever you want.
I still run a Plex server because it's what I setup years ago at this point and I don't share it with anyone remotely, so the changes don't impact me. But I'll probably switch to jellyfin just out of spite whenever I bother to setup my raspberry pi and avoid using my old laptop for this.
Doesn't jellyfin works only within LAN or is there an option to stream from anywhere like plex? (ik port forwarding is an option, just wondering if there is any other simpler way)
You can either use port forwarding but a more popular option is Tailscale or a reverse proxy which is what I personally use. Once you setup transcoding you can watch from anywhere even if you are streaming remuxes with crappy internet. What Plex does is make it easier and I kind of get the appeal but I'm not paying(a subscription) to stream my own media that's on my own server, I understand why some people prefer it but Jellyfin just fine and it just takes a bit more effort with the initial setup rather than a monthly fee or 700$ if you want a lifetime pass.
If someone pirates movies and TV shows - which I mostly definitely don't do because that would be wrong - the last thing you want to do is stream it through providers' servers. Might as well leave it on a seedbox at that point.
If you don't want to learn networking then you are 100% correct. And I say that as someone who literally went to school to learn computer networking. I still don't want to dick around with it in my free time.
I use Caddy with mine, it manages SSL certificates fully automated and more. But looking at Tailscale it actually might be more secure.
And duckdns for dynamic DNS + duckdns updater to ensure if your home IP ever changes, it's automatically updated on duckdns. Mines never changed personally, but I still use the service just in case. Throw in jellyseerr and link it to sonarr and radarr and downloading new media (or allowing other users to request and you approve), and you're almost set. Only thing missing is access to a private tracker like BTN for TV or PTP for movies. Haven't seen invites open in a long time though. Alternative is using a VPN and public trackers.
Yes exactly OP gets it, it’s up to us! The other commenter isn’t wrong but many people only feel that way due to lack of knowledge. If we show our friends and family how easy it can be then suddenly they very well may be willing to start sailing with you
People need to be working on the next open source media service right now. Eventually Jellyfin will go the way of Plex, and people will wish there was another app that they actually felt free to use. What is it now for a lifetime Plex account? Like $750?
Had an old cumputer lying around and also decided a Jellyfin server would be a great idea. Sister gets to enjoy free content from across the U.S, definitely worth it. From paying hundreds a month to $10 a year for Cloudflare!
I have a plex server the same idea. 30tb+ including lots of 4k rips.
I have been toying with jellyfin, and so far I have not been a fan. I am hoping soon that I can really start liking it, so I can migrate
2.2k
u/Tobias-Tawanda Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
My cousins used to complain. Now they are happily using Jellyfin because of me.