I want to use Jellyfin because of its awesome open source and how much effort the devs obviously put into it, but when I use Plex (lifetime pass for $80 back in 2020) I don’t have to do any of this crazy looking text you’ve typed here. I sign into my account, and it’s off to the races.

So, with that being said, for the people in the back like me who this may look like the most complicated stuff in the world just to get some streaming started, are there ANY easy methods to achieve this such as with Plex?

[–] Mountaineer@aussie.zone 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Short answer no.
Plex works by having a centralised server run by Plex themselves, that facilitates your client connecting to your server.

The external facing part of Jellyfin server is basically a web server, and it's a bad idea to expose that to the internet without putting a reverse proxy in front of it (hence the mention of NGINX above).
Another option is to have a VPN connection to where you are running Jellyfin and then only access Jellyfin pseudo locally (so potential security problems aren't a big concern). This introduces other complications if you want to access it remotely via things like Roku or Chromecast, especially if you have multiple external (and probably not tech savvy) users.

I want to stress that none of this is prohibitively expensive or hard, but doing it involves learning and effort.
All the information and programs you need are available online for free.

If you only wanted to use Jellyfin at home (server in the cupboard, client on the tv), none of this other stuff matters. If you want to access Jellyfin remotely, and the idea of running a reverse proxy or a vpn server with the corresponding exposed ports and domain configuration sounds scary, Jellyfin is probably not for you.

[–] LucidNightmare@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago

That is unfortunate. Thank you for the in depth explanation for those of us on Lemmy who don’t know all there is to know about Linux/CLI/Networking!

I’m the only one who uses my Plex, so the real issue is that I don’t want to fiddle around with settings, proxies, or VPNs just to stream an audiobook through my phone while driving to work. Maybe in the future there will be a more simple self host setup for people like me. I’ll keep an eye on it to see how it progresses. Thanks again! 😁