From bouncing around my favorite corners of the Internet, I get the impression that large numbers of people have “a guy” (of any gender), akin to a weed dealer in furtiveness and legality, who is hooking them up with an underground, probably Plex-based (but increasingly moving to Jellyfin), streaming service. I get the impression that there are hundreds to thousands of these little “Plex server” operations, each serving a couple dozen to a hundred or so users out of the goodness/vileness of each “guy”'s heart and the hobby budget of that “guy”'s homelab. This isn’t all Plex gets used for or even necessarily the main use case, but I think they’re out there.
Obviously no “guy” will admit to doing this, but my “Plex Server Guy Theory” neatly explains this post announcing that general discussions of piracy are allowed in the Lemmy.ml Plex community and this post by someone apparently serving enough new Plex user volume that a webhook would be convenient to have. I’ve also seen people discussing Plex refer to “my users”, as if they have a user base of friends and trusted or semi-trustred acquaintances rather than just a household or family.
I personally neither have nor am a “Plex Server Guy”, nor do I know anyone who has admitted to me that they do have or are one, so I can’t be sure they really exist. But I have suspicions.
Are “Plex Server Guys” as I imagine them real and common and I am just too square to have ever been invited to do crimes with everyone else? Are they rare in real life but enriched in the dubious/cool corners of the Internet? Does it depend on your country? What’s the deal?
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Dated a guy last year who had access to a giant plex library. He just told me a friend let him log in tob theirs. So ya, plex guys do exist.
I am a Jellyfin server guy, and I Iet family and friends use it for free. I also am not shy about telling people that I do this, as I don’t see any moral issue with it and will happily defend piracy as not only completely fine, but a net moral good. I see it as a tiny bit of anarchist calisthenics.
I’m a Plex server guy for friends and family, I have about a dozen users and maybe 3-4 at a time at the peaks. I charge nothing, it’s just a hobby. We’re out there.
I’d switch to Jellyfin but my users need transcoding and Plexamp is my favorite audio player since Winamp.
I’ve been wondering about this, how does hiding the activity from your ISP, as well as the ISP of the person streaming from your server, work?
I have friends I’d like to share my library with but am always nervous about the risk.
TLS/https will be enough to hide your streaming activity. They’ll be able to see that you’re streaming something based off of the traffic patterns, but won’t be able to see what specifically is being streamed.
Why would that matter? It just looks like HTTPS traffic if you set it up right. And even if they fingerprint it as Plex, they can’t see what exactly is playing. Yes, my Plex library only has public domain content of course.
With P2P file sharing, your client is sharing the files with random people on the internet and you’re identified by your IP address (or a VPN IP address / seedbox IP address / etc). MPAA hires companies to check for popular content and log the IP address, time, and content shared, and then sends that to the ISP. The risk and issue is sharing content with anyone randomly, since that is how your ISP is informed of the activity.
With media servers, unless you’re somehow sharing publicly, it’s safe to assume your members aren’t going to report you to your ISP. I guess in theory the ISP could see high upload bandwidth and investigate, but more likely than not, if there are limits, automated systems will just throttle the bandwidth, and no deep packet inspection or other forensics is performed.
HTTPS
I’m transcoding on a HD770 without an issue on jellyfin.
Does Jellyfin not do transcoding? I’ve been using it with transcoding for almost two years, so if it doesn’t, man that’s gonna be quite the shock.
It definitely does do transcoding.
I dunno, maybe it didn’t when I was first setting up my server a few years back. It doesn’t have Plexamp though and that’s a deal breaker.
It has finamp though right
Doesn’t have the excellent Plexamp automix nor ability to add all my friends shares to my radio stations.
I appreciate the efforts but I’m very happy with my current setup. It works, it’s almost zero maintenance, and I got lifetime plex pass for like $50 years ago.
By radio are you referring to proxying internet radio streams, rebroadcasting OTA using an SDR, or an endless playlist stream?
None of the above, well maybe the last one. Plexamp has algorithmically generated playlists based off song/album/artist, decades, genres, top rated tracks, etc. including auto mixing with crossfading, and ability to choose tracks not only from your own libraries, but from all libraries shared with you.
This feature has done wonders for library discovery as I have an absolutely massive music stash. It’s completely replaced music discovery via streaming apps for me.
I really do appreciate all the efforts to inform me of JF features but I am quite happy with my setup currently, and I don’t want to reconfigure all my shit AND get 12 n users to switch apps. It was hard enough as it is.
I’m a Jellyfin Server Guy, and same deal. Around a dozen friends & fam, no charge.
I’m not sure why needing transcoding would keep you off Jellyfin though, Jellyfin transcodes just fine.
How do you share it? I assume you don’t expose it to the Internet as is?
iirc you can set a username and password
You can, but it’s also not a very hardened piece of software so relying on just that isn’t recommended.
I’m that guy as well, but can’t get family to use it. So when they complain they can’t steam something, I just ignore them. I do it for myself, they just get it because. But I’m not going to keep offering, fuck it. Go spend your money on shitty atreing services. I’ve got 7000 movies now and almost 300 series.
I love wireguard for this. If they can’t get that working, then no jellyfin for them. Filters out the PEBKAC people wonderfully.
Thanks for introducing me to PEBKAC, great term.
I just learned the expression “layer 8 problem”
I’m specifically doing this to get family and friends to cancel their streaming subscriptions. Not to save them money, to hurt the corporations more than I can do just myself.
Can’t make someone do something they don’t want to, even if it benefits them financially. I stopped trying.
Wild to me that people are that stubborn. I am lucky that a friend gave my access to their server. I just feel bad asking for stuff even though they tell me all the time to ask for anything I want.
I offer to pay or buy some hard drive space but they say it’s okay.
Do you know if I can join more than one server? Do you guys think people will offer stuff like that? What do you guys think about IPTV people?
I’ve seen a few friends boast about their IPTV but as far as I’m co concerned the content is low quality and mostly filled with so much unnecessary content and the UI is very janky.
My Plex Guy (Jellyfin Guy, technically) made a discord bot for our server so we can request movies/shows and have them autodownload. I’m also constantly asking my family on my own local Jellyfin server to suggest more movies. Don’t be afraid to ask your Guy for anything, we get a dopamine hit from it.
Doesn’t Jellyseer take care of this? It integrates with your arr stack and suggests content based on your views and media. You can set it to auto approve or wait for your ok. I just finished building me a server 2 weeks ago because my initial testing with an old laptop and Jellyfin went so well. Hooking up my parents this week (again, with better performance).
Do you have a link or some keywords I can use to look into this? I have heard of jellyfin before. Jellyfin server?
True that. I don’t pressure them into it.
I just wanted to be able to watch my movies on the TV. And then…I have like a dozen users with only 1-3 accessing the server at any given time. Now it is something special. I seriously need to get a NAS.
👋
Most of us run systems for friends, family, even a few coworkers; but there are those out there that sell access to their systems to anyone willing to pay. This is explicitly forbidden by the TOS of Plex/Emby, and I’m pretty sure Jellyfin as well (haven’t checked that one), but it still happens.
There’s even tools like Ombi to automatically manage requests from users passing them to Radarr/Sonarr to be retrieved.
Jellyfin doesn’t have a TOS, it’s open source license allows using the software in any way you want
Well that answers that question. Thanks :)
first, id like to say… fuck plex. friends dont let friends use plex.
that said, im the guy youre talkin about. i have a massive personal video library i push into a front-end that i share with friends and family… even some coworkers.
the fact is, storage is very cheap now… throw in the very mature applications for obtaining/servicing the stuff stored therein it becomes trivial for guys like me to spread the wealth.
data hoarders are people that dont appreciate having to rely on other people for our shit… streaming? only from our own servers. there are lots of us
the fact is, storage is very cheap now…
Lmao maybe a year ago… Storage costs have skyrocketed recently. In some cases, storage prices have increased by more than 200% in just a few months. Fuck the billionaires and their AI data centers.
friends dont let friends use plex
Emby and Jellyfin still don’t have Apple TV Apps. Many of us bought a Lifetime Plex Pass ages ago and it still does what it’s supposed to. Migrating / starting over with something else is quite an undertaking when what you already have is working fine.
storage is very cheap now
In what universe? I bought two refurbished 12TB enterprise HDDs for $80 USD each back in 2024. The same type of disks are now $250+ each.
im runnin 3 sets of 6x4TB. cheap.
i wouldnt use apple products if they paid me, so ya got me there
Jellyfin does have Apple TV apps. Two.
Jellyfin still don’t have Apple TV Apps
I can heartily recommend Infuse for accessing both Plex and Jellyfin on Apple TV.
I do have Infuse and the pro subscription!
It’s not really a “first party” (for lack of a better term) solution so the UI is not consistent with the other apps.
Personally, I don’t really like Infuse’s UI arrangement and use it exclusively for content that has Dolby Atmos.
Many of my friends / family aren’t all that techy, usability is key and having access to that content through a single app / single name is pretty important.
i love this post
I run a Jellyfin server for anyone who has VPN access to my internal network.
However, there’s “plex server” posters with QR codes on them on telephone poles in my area, that seem to have a subscription portal you have to go through to get an account.
So there are definitely people attempting to make some money off of pirate plex servers.
I mean, Kaity and I run a Jellyfin server for our family to access, as well as a couple of friends. But that’s about as public as it gets…
I am that guy. I got pissed off that there was no way to buy all of the episodes of Good Eats legally. Next thing I knew, I had a dual xeon server and 60TB of hard drives. Of the 50 or so people using my server I think 6 have servers of their own.
Good Eats radicalized me too. Not for plex but for cooking.
How so
Alton Brown’s enthusiastic and educational way he did the cooking show helped bring home cooking to a lot of people. For me, we watched it in my middle school’s cooking class
Oh I see, thank you
Alton showed me a few things and taught me that if I was patient I could figure it out the rest of the way. That was almost 20 years ago. Now I happily share cooking duty with my wife.
I named a dog after him. It didn’t stick, and my daughter named the dog after a kid in class’s little brother, but the through was there.
Yeah, everyone in my family has cooked professionally for at least a few years. My wife’s family lived off of microwaved food. As I was teaching her that food could have flavor, she started asking questions about cooking that were easier to answer with a clip from good eats. Eventually, I went looking for a boxed set of it, and one hadn’t been released. So I spent the $600 I was willing to spend on it on a server.
I spent forever looking for Mythbusters on DVDs, the only 2 DVDs I ever found were “collections” and not seasons. So weird they don’t want my money.
For me it was buying star trek the next generation on blu-ray and getting annoyed with having to flip through fifty disks to watch an episode.
Did you find a good source for good eats? The only one I found was low quality TV rips.
Usenet
I grabbed the low quality complete rip, and have sonarr set to upgrade episodes. Even a decade later, I think I still have a few 480p/720p episodes.
I don’t do any of this stuff, but it’s really interesting to me.
Do you mean that sonarr is always looking for a better version of content you already have, and that over time your library gets upgraded? that’s pretty cool. Can you specify versions in your “shopping list”, like the special edition or director’s cut or even a VHScopy?
Generally it looks for a higher resolution. Sonar also has the ability to look for anything listed for a show in tvdb’s “specials”. That’s usually things like extended cuts of episodes, or interviews.
Interesting, thank you. sounds like a pretty well developed set of tools.
yes but usually at the family and friends distribution level
Sounds like a solid theory. Most are probably Jellyfin servers, but “I have a Jellyfin Guy” doesn’t have the same ring.
Me and a relative jointly host and manage a server. Over the years we’ve slowly allowed in a handful of trusted friends and family. By now we probably have 20ish connected. Most use it as a supplement to their main streaming services, primarily used for exclusive content like the star wars shows. Some, like those of us hosting, have cancelled every streaming service and use it exclusively.
Yes, there’s even a subreddit dedicated to people advertising their Plex servers. Lots of them are paid, it’s wild.
What sub? Divisions by zero, the piracy Lemmy instance, is very against paid plex shares and I think bans it.
Apologies, I meant on Reddit.
I thought the sub communities here were called Sublemmys :p
I’m a jellyfin guy. I share with roughly 6 friends just for fun.
