The quality was probably bad because you were routed through Plex Relay services which have a bandwidth limit. It is honestly quite a nice free service because it means it will work pretty much regardless how your network is setup but the quality will be bad. If you want to directly connect to your server you need a public IP so CGNAT won’t do you might also have to open some ports.
Comment on Jellyfin is not just good... but *better* than Plex now?!
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It’s curious that I’m almost in the opposite boat, have been using Jellyfin without issues for around 5 years, but recently was considering trying Plex because Jellyfin is becoming too slow on certain screens (probably because I have too much stuff, but it shouldn’t be this slow).
lud@lemm.ee 6 days ago
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Even though they’re both on the same LAN? That sounds stupid, why would I need my videos to travel half across the globe to go from one room to the next?
lud@lemm.ee 6 days ago
No, that should work straight out of the box. Maybe you have some network configuration that stops that, like a firewall.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Nope, Jellyfin works directly same as always has
MSids@lemmy.world 6 days ago
You should not be using NAT to access your Plex externally, I will explain.
App.plex.tv and the apps use Plex services to generate a point to point connection from remote clients through your router to the server. This is important because you never need to expose a private IP to the Internet, and the authentication can be protected with something robust like a Google account which support 2FA and even phishing-resistant 2FA.
The combination of more advanced security and secure/convenient SSO authentication are one of the biggest benefits of Plex in my opinion.
lud@lemm.ee 5 days ago
If you enable the “remote access” in Plex you are essentially port forwarding you server to the internet using UPnP (by default. You can also port forward manually if you’d like).
It’s indeed a point to point connection but a point to point connection the same way your connection to normal websites are point to point.
If you knew the public IP of anyone that’s using Plex you can likely go to [IP]:[Random PORT] and access their server. You still need to login though.
Source: My own tests and …plex.tv/…/200931138-troubleshooting-remote-acces…
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 6 days ago
This is more about familiarity than difference in ease of use. I’ve used both, they are both super easy.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Some of it yes, the claim for example, but the rest is still pretty bad UX (and even that is stupid, I shouldn’t need a claim to watch locally), I’m an experienced self hosing person and I’m getting frustrated every step of the way, imagine someone who doesn’t know their way around docker or is not familiar with stuff… Jellyfin might be less polished as some claim, but setting it up is a breeze, never had to look at documentation to do it.
amorpheus@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I set Plex up as an inexperienced selfhoster and it was easy.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I would bet that the problem is with Plex being inside docker. Might be one of those situations where being more experienced causes issues because I’m trying to do things “right” and not run the service on my server directly or with root or on network host mode.
But being inside a container causes these many issues I can’t even begin to imagine how it would be to get it to do more complex stuff like be accessible through Tailscale or being behind authorization.