Interesting, maybe they check whether it’s a domain/remote IP on the client side to prevent usage of a reverse proxy.

didn’t have to

Now you do have to, unless you pay for Plex and its convenience.

You need to properly name your media with a proper scheme (including tmdbid/imdbid).

Yes, after I set up the server properly (reverse proxy). With this change the same setup on the server side is necessary for remote streaming with free Plex.

My mum puts in the domain, username and password and starts streaming.

I don’t think Jellyfins focus is currently to support irregular naming schemes. Naming media correctly with a proper scheme is the way to go.

Just so you know I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Yes. There’s AudioBookShelf for audio books.

Roku is also a thing in Europe.

Though I also gave up trying to set up Tailscale for people and just exposed Jellyfin (behind a reverse proxy).

“Good luck setting up remote streaming with free Plex.”

Yes, Jellyfin does not forward ports for you. Same as free Plex. With this change both are the same difficulty to set up for free, the only difference is with Plex there’s a shortcut: Buy Plex.

Jellyfin does not host anything. With this change free Plex users behind a reverse proxy (or VPN) and Jellyfin users behind a reverse proxy (or VPN) work the same for remote access.

The only difference is that Plex no longer provides expensive services for free, while Jellyfin never provided them.

Roku is really simple and locked down. There’s ads on one side but nothing else. My 80yo grandma uses it.

Otherwise Projectivy is an Android TV launcher that can be configured to be really stripped down. It takes a bit of time but if you do it right it’d show less options than even Roku (it’d show only the apps you select, no launcher settings etc).

As a box I’ve heard good things about Onn (Walmart) if your in the US. If not, Homatics is great but pricey. Kick Pi KP1 is more affordable (but still way more expensive than Onn).

This. The blue line is the watched progress and the orange line is the transcoding progress.

Unless the media also uses HDR in which case the server will still be required to transcode.

Ugreen NAS support other OS. You could put TrueNAS or Proxmox on there, so no, there’s no security concerns (beyond all computer hardware being partly manufactured there in some way).

Emby also seems to be able to automatically merge different versions of shows/movies.

I’ve asked someone and MergeVersions does not change the file/directory structure/naming.

Though the same person also mentioned issues with duplicates even after removing the second library with UHD.

In general plugins like IntroSkipper and PlaybackReporting work flawlessly but I’ll stay away from MergeVersions for now and handle movies with mergerfs for the moment.

You’re right, it’s possible to login without internet if local network access without login is enabled in settings beforehand.

Well yes, it might be a simple feature, but it’s still work someone has to do, and there’s many requested features - as well as maintaining the current feature set. I do expect Jellyfin to get this feature at some point, but it might take another 5 years.

As we’re talking about existing/missing features: Sadly there’s an internet connection required to login to Plex, which is a no-go for me.

And I’d really love a feature to be able to share my library with someone while being logged in the same account. I.e. a kind of federation without duplicating content. Iirc Plex has something like this, by keeping the Plex server and user account separate.

It does work for movies if they’re in the same directory and have the same name before a -.

For shows there’s sadly now way iirc.

E.g. Movie Name (2025) - 1080p x264.mkv and Movie Name (2025) - UHD HEVC.mkv would make Jellyfin show a video selection in the same way they do for audio currently.

Jellyfin in general requires proper naming for media to get detected, which is not problem with automation but not that great for a collection grown over time.

It won’t save you from doing a bit of work but you could use podman. There’s systemd integration so you can still start/stop/enable your services with systemctl while using docker/container images. You won’t be able to use docker-compose directly, but it’s usually not that hard to replicate the logic with systemd (Immich was a PITA at first (because they had so many microservices split into multiple images, but it improved considerably over the first two years).

I do this with NixOS quite a bit, and I’ve yet to use docker compose (although the syntax is different, it’s still the same process).

Given OP mentioned torrent and watching media in the same sentence I assume they didn’t rip their own media, and pirated it instead.

If my assumption is wrong, I apologize.

Especially anime often use the superior .ass subtitle format, which many devices don’t support. Sadly Crunchyroll is switching to .srt which has broader support, so it likely won’t require burning them in the video (transcoding), which is the only positive thing (still a shame imo).

https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1nuxuzs/crunchyroll_has_downgraded_their_subtitles

Given they use a N100, I’d suggest redownloading instead of transcoding for time, energy and quality savings (i.e cost).