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Plex Security Incident

(links.plex.tv)
104 points andyexeter | 2 comments | 08 Sep 25 22:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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whiterook6 ◴[08 Sep 25 22:54 UTC] No.45175178[source]▶
I am a faithful Plex lifetime user and have never had problems.

That said, I shouldn't be blinded by convenience. I hear jellyfin is a good alternative. Can someone share

- how easy is it to administer for clients outside of my network or possibly even outside my country?

- how good is the app support? I transcode all of my media to AAC and h264 for compatibility

-what about for streaming music? I really like Plex amp

- what do you like the most about jellyfin

- what do you miss most about Plex?

Thank you.

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1. IAmBroom ◴[09 Sep 25 15:34 UTC] No.45183447[source]▶
Plex mysteriously began refusing remote connections, so I couldn't share with my friend outside my home LAN. Manually port forwarding didn't solve anything, and my firewall isn't the problem. That's as far as Plex help goes...

I went to Jellyfin (plus Tailscale VPN). Some things are really nice, but others... well, it's an open-source project, and people only fix what they see as broken. So, I've tried restarting, only to lose every single customization I did. It's not worth my time to fill out their tickets and play that lottery, so I just accept the UI issues.

Then, mysteriously, Jellyfin also quit broadcasting remotely. A month later, its server wasn't even visible on my own LAN to my TV.

So I uninstalled BOTH Plex and Jellyfin, and reinstalled both. Jellyfin still doesn't connect right. And Plex works... until suddenly it doesn't, and I have to cycle through Off/On with "Allow remote connections", until it works again, mysteriously.

PRO'S OF EACH:

Plex: Much better support in TV libraries. No need for a VPN. Simpler UI.

Jellyfin: Ability to create Collections, which are basically filter-defined libraries. Without rearranging any files, you can build a Collection of Star Wars movies, or all movies directed by Scorsese, or any arbitrary bunch of media files at all, really. Optionally, you can reduce your library clutter with these Collections: a library named Science Fiction can have all of your Star Wars movies listed as a single item (that Collection). Basically, sub-libraries, but they aren't restricted to one library's contents (Star Wars might contain a documentary on "The Making Of" that isn't actually stored in Science Fiction).

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2. rstuart4133 ◴[09 Sep 25 22:09 UTC] No.45190006[source]▶
> Plex mysteriously began refusing remote connections, so I couldn't share with my friend outside my home LAN.

Same issue for me. The client app used to have a "remote servers" configuration option. You had to manually set up port forwarding and get the configuration perfect, which I suspect was beyond your average Joe. But once you did it was rock solid.

They now have some automagic arrangement based on uPnP which anybody can use, when it works. But it doesn't always work and because they've removed the old manual option when it doesn't work, there is no remote access for you. You would hope they would add some debugging and doco to give you some visibility into what it depends on so you can isolate the problem, but no, they provide nothing.