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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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
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?
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”
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?
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
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 cringe - anything popular enough will have weirdos (from someone’s perspective).
Are you saying that you’re on your home network with your Plex server and it won’t let you play your media without paying? That’s not true if so. You must be outside the network.
.
I’ve had that happen to me with plex, it was probably 100% my fault because I specifically changed things during the setup of the docker file, but apparently Plex can’t figure out that is local if it’s running inside docker with non-host network, it probably only accepts local connections from the docker network, and I was never able to make it treat my actual home network as local.
Under Settings > Network there is a configuration item exactly for this. I’m running host network, but you can add the docker networks here as well.
LAN networks is only available for plex pass users
It all starts to make sense then. I need to set Jellyfin up soon. It’s only a matter of time before they come after the “Lifetime” purchasers like myself. I bought it over a decade ago at this point.
the actual problem here is that OPs network is not configured correctly and that Plex detects that the physical local client is actually accessing the server from a totally other network.
Fairly common when you use docker to run Plex and have the container run in bridge mode. This will put the container in the docker network that will then be different to your local network.
Plex determines if a stream is local or remote based on the network so when your container is in bridge mode, the physical local client will be a remote connection because of the different networks.
And since remote streaming requires Plex pass since end of April, you will see this.
I don’t have that configuration:
As someone else mentioned, this is only available to PlexPass users. Sorry for the confusion! I bought my lifetime sub over a decade ago at this point and forget about these inconsistencies that used to just be part of the product.
Therefore it’s literally impossible for me to watch my media locally, way to go Plex.
Are you running in docker? Change from bridged mode to host mode on your container which should resolve this.
Yes I am, but I don’t want to give full control of my network drive to a closed source application because it paywalled me out of being able to access my media on my local network. It’s ridiculous that I have to do that. It breaks ECI, and is a security risk. And yeah, it’s a bit paranoid, but the fact that they can fix it with a simple config and put that behind a paywall is VERY worrisome, so I now need to pay if I want to isolate Plex from the host where it’s running.
That is exactly the case. It is absolutely true and accusing me of lying is not okay.
You’re not lying, you’re just not good at networking and/or setting up Plex.
Plex does NOT charge for streaming on your own network. If it is saying that you need to pay it’s because you’ve set your network(s) or Plex up wrong.
And the next wrong assumption. It’s beginning to get really tiring. Maybe try to stop individualizing systemic problems. I know it is counter to our society but it is the only healthy way.
I’m building networks for a living. The situation I’m in has zero to do with my skills and assuming so is highly disrespectful.
But yes, as others have pointed out, it is likely that a configuration back when setting the service up years ago led to it using an outside connection which has only now become an issue because of plex’s switch to blocking remote streaming.
No matter because plex works just as well.
Cool, so you can finally admit you set Plex up wrong. Good job.
But somehow it’s still Plex’s fault
