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!
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The circlejerk of “Plex bad get JellyFin” always happens here.
JellyFin doesn’t have as many features and if you want to access your library away from home safely it is more complicated to setup.
I love PlexAmp. It has really reintroduced me to so much of my library I forgot I had.
Depending where you live you can find reasonably priced workstations on https://www.govdeals.com/ that can handle of being nothing but a media server.
I got a used thinkpad x1 carbon for under 200 a year ago from a used electronics store in my area. It’s running Debian and the YAMS stack, I found it easiest for me to get running as a docker noob
Avoiding Plex for something like Jellyfin is a start.
Past that, it doesn’t take a lot to run such a service unless it needs transcoding which is where it gets dicey for realtime streaming.
If you have a standard expected output you might get away with bulk stranscoding ahead of time and then run things on some little nuc or an old laptop.
There was nothing in the question about jellyfin.
I’m on the jellyfin side, but you people have to chill, this is becoming Ford vs Chevy in here.
Got an old laptop? I recommend that. Put linux on it.
This. Plex doesnt need a lot of resources, I ran it from a raspberry pi 3 for years without issue.
If you want it to transcode stuff it might need some. I run it on an old laptop that has a 1050m in it.
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.
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.
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.
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…
Google gets tons of stuff wrong now it has AI. Did you confirm it was a known issue listed on the Jellyfin support site?
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.
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.
The Jellyfin clients for Apple TV are not very good in my opinion and use case. Thankfully there are a lot more than there used to be 6 months ago. But, at least for me, they are lacking in features. I keep trying to them every so often hoping they have improved so I can finally make thr switch.
On the Apple tv just use infuse. Sure it sucks paying for an app, but it works.
Glad it works for you, but it is missing live tv, which is the biggest thing all the Jellyfin apps either do poorly or don’t do at all. I went through all 19 ish apps I could find a few weeks ago and none of them checked off all my boxes. But I will keep looking and hoping.
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/
Do you have any old/spare hardware you can use?
An old laptop or get hold of a Dell Optiplex with at least 7th gen Intel.
I haven’t used Plex in a while, but I presume it would go similarly to my Jellyfin migration this year.
I pulled out a 10 year old laptop from my pile of scrap, installed a light-weight Linux server that can run containers, and I’ve been running LinuxServer.io’s Jellyfin container on it. Updates are pretty easy and I don’t have to worry about cluttering the host box’s packages with dependencies that may or may not conflict with the other things I run in it.
If you have the time to figure out how to run apps in containers, I highly recommend doing so. There’s a lot of documentation for Docker, and Docker Compose files make managing the containers pretty easy.
Jellyfin is the way. It’s not that complex to set it up either.
