Hi, all. So I want to set up a media server using my Raspberry Pi. It will be used by me and my partner, who is very much tech illiterate. She knows how to use Plex, but I’m tempted by the open nature of Jellyfin. How steep is the learning curve there? Should I just go with Plex and keep it simple? Or is Jellyfin manageable if I set it up for her?
neither, the raspberry pi doesn’t have a gpu to deal with transcoding so it’s gonna be frustrating when ur trynna watch or listen to anything (its gonna keep buffering). i highly recommend checking out your local auctions from big business or government that are giving away old mini computers and use that as a self-hosting measure instead (no more than 100$). raspberry pi is kind of a scam ngl since you can get much better hardware for cheaper, ur paying for a brand image
What are you on about? I’ve been hosting Plex on my raspberry pi without issue for literal years lol
what sort of stuff do you play on plex? and do you use the pi for other hosted services?
I play 4k and 1080p HD stuff all the time with 5.1 surround at home and when I travel. It also runs my pihole and I have a rudimentary raid 1 (def not real raid 1) running with the rsync command to mirror my media drive that backs my data up every day at midnight. It’s a punchy little fucker.
I don’t disagree that you’re generally paying for the name but it my 4b w/ 8GB ram I got as a gift kicks ass. There are definitely better machines out there but the pi can handle lots of what I ask of it.
I have an old 2 something I’m thinking of using to host my cloud storage on, too. I don’t mind if it’s slower uploading.
incheresting im not really sure what was wrong with my pi4 w/ 8gb ram then since it kept buffering every 3 seconds for 1080p stuff on jellyfin and it was frustrating af! i saw many others dealing with the same thing online and after seeing https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/post-install/transcoding/hardware-acceleration/#raspberry-pi-hardware-acceleration-support-deprecation I thought it was a hardware problem but it could be something else or plex does things different im not sure. nevertheless im glad that happened to me since ive moved on to superior cheaper hardware and it made me careful of branded products when it comes to hardware in general. im glad that set up u have is working for you :3
For a perfect FOSS route? Jellyfin. It isn’t difficult to use at all for a normie — just select and play. Even my mom uses it.
But I wouldn’t put either on a raspberry Pi if you have media in formats like AV1 and/or in 4k and gonna play it on screens older than 5 years old. Transcoding will be extremely sluggish even on the newer Pis. Instead get a 11th gen (intel), ryzen 6000 (amd) cpus or newer OR rtx 40 series or newer GPU (dedicated gpu is faster with 4k). You can get powerful hardware if you plan to expand your self hosted stack.
I got a N100 mini PC with 16 GB RAM 6 months back thinking I will be running only Jellyfin, Vaultwarden, Nginx Proxy Manager, Pihole, arr stack and Firefly iii. Now I have Immich, Paperless-ngx, Yamtrack, Baikal, Authentik, Calibre Web — around 40 containers. So my RAM is at 70% usage at this point. I learnt my lesson that self-hosting is a rabbit hole and I should have gotten beefier hardware.
friends don’t let friends use plex.
its paywalling yourself
Conversely, letting friends use your Jellyfin is complicated.
Tailscale and share the jellyfin node with friends. No need to have ports open or any DNS stuff. Clients are available for all systems.
Can you explain to my mom how to install tailscale on her Roku and that she has to turn it on each time she wants to use Jellyfin but then back off again when she wants to watch something on a different app?
Why exactly would they ever need to turn VPN off again? It’s not like all their traffic will go through it if it’s on, unless you specifically configure stuff that way (exit node, routes).
And one option to do the VPN stuff is on their router too, so it’s totally transparent to them. More stuff to configure though, unless running owrt or some other router software compatible with Tailscale.
As far as I understand, Tailscale (being a Wireguard network) doesn’t need you to flip it off and on - if you’re connecting to the relevant endpoint it gets routed through that, otherwise it just goes the normal way.
Not gonna pretend that means the setup is trivial to nomies, but you could probably set it up for them and not have to worry about it.
Yeah but it doesn’t auto connect on a lot of devices. So if you restart the device you have to reconnect. Tech illiterate people struggle with this concept.
Have zero knowledge of Roku but for example with AppleTV boxes it is totally fire and forget, Tailscale is always on in the background and apps will find my media servers through it.
And I’ve noticed even tech illiterate people will learn to become literate when there is some motivation, like a huge movie archive :) Flipping a preference like VPN on if they want to use certain app is certainly within realm of possibility.
eh, maybe. for me it was opening a port and adding a dns record. took me all of 4 minutes
im kinda lucky in that my isp uses ‘sticky’ ips so while its not static, ive had the same ip for 5 years
But now you’ve exposed your network to the open internet without any sort of security.
No you haven’t. The security is the Jellyfin login prompt, then Jellyfin itself, then the Jellyfin container, and if you’re really paranoid, that container won’t be in your LAN.
oh noes! im so ddead!
Peak “bad things only happen to other people” energy here. Ignorance and flippancy will surely protect you!
yes my world will burn when they crack into my jellyfin instance and magically break out of its docker container and then what? goo nowhere on its vlan?
literally thousands of self-hosted jellyfin/emby instances and the support forums are just chocked full of people getting hacked via it! so many!
oh wait, no there arent
