What's up with "Plex Servers"?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Ah OK, TIL
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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 that guy as well, but can't get family to use it. So when they complain they can't stream 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 streaming services. I've got 7000 movies now and almost 300 series.
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.
True that. I don’t pressure them into it.
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?
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 transcoding on a HD770 without an issue on jellyfin.
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.
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.
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.
HTTPS
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.
I can't say how many people are trying to make money on it, but there are plenty of folks running Plex or Jellyfin servers that they'll allow friends and family to access. And I would estimate that a fairly low percentage of those have no pirated content on them. So even for the small-group servers, discussions of piracy are often relevant.
I do run a Jellyfin server, but only locally on my own network.
there any guides you'd recommend for setting up and starting your own jellyfin server (as well tips for combing/curating new stuff for your library, ideally). am tech literate enough to follow guides but not enough to figure out automation process entirely myself
The Jellyfin Documentation has info on setting it up and installing it. I have it running on an odroid hc4, but pretty much anything with enough storage will be fine (an old laptop laying around is a great way to experiment with server stuff).
I don't have much in terms of automation--I have a script that syncs local files with my server. What else did you have in mind?
Oh, I also have some commands documented for normalizing audio and removing unneeded audio/subtitle tracks.
Depends what industry you're in, I guess
I'm in tech and there are more Plex guys than people looking for Plex guys
I am Plex Guy, my friend is Plex Guy, between the 2 of us we share our servers to over a dozen people. My mom and grandma use my server in another state, I don't charge anyone access. In total I have 8 users on my server, my friend has probably the same on his, with both of us giving access to a different friend meaning he has access to double the amount of content.
I got absolutely fed up with subscription services raising prices and removing content (I only ever had Hulu and Netflix) so I just built my own service. My only subscription now is a Tidal family plan for myself, my wife and my mom.
Also it's interesting how between these 2 servers, they're built differently. I built mine using TrueNAS and housed it in a dedicated PC case large enough for all the drives, my buddy made his as a Windows server, and has everything wall mounted with custom 3D printed brackets.
Also, when I go to Brazil for vacation, my content isn't region locked, it's at home in a box on my living room that I just access with no VPN or any bullshit needed.
I have a Plex server guy. He is one of my oldest and best friends although we don't get to hang out much anymore. I know he has other friends he shares the Plex server with but I have no idea who or how many. I've been using it since Plex was new, not sure how long exactly but more than a decade. I occasionally buy him nice hard drives because the library is ridiculously huge and always growing. As someone who loves weird and obscure shit, it's my favorite streaming service by far and he's my hero for running it.
👋
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.
![email protected]
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 :)
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'm a Plex guy. I share my library because it's a bit of fun and scratches my IT interest itch. I actually run Plex and Jellyfin in parallel but pretty much everyone prefers the Plex interface (and most smart TVs have it ready to go, even the silly ones with off brand app stores).
Mostly it's just an excuse to play with cool toys, and a reason to work out how to run things I wouldn't otherwise bother with.
I've always downloaded stuff, since the dialup days. Originally it was for things that were region locked / "unrated" in Australia and thus not available... but now it's just so much more convenient than paid options that it's a no-brainer. Like I literally can't pay any legit service for the level of access and convenience I have now.
It's not even about money anymore. Between the purchase price and power consumption of my dual Xeon rack server and JBOD, the 1000/400Mbps fibre connection, and the time I spend on it I'm paying enough to cover half a dozen subscriptions or so with change... But the convenience! I can watch anything, anywhere, on any device. No jumping between services to find stuff, no episodes/movies going missing, no login restrictions, no player that won't work because your HDMI cable is lacking a decimal place or whatever the hell they're doing now.
Anytime someone we know in real life complains about having issues with their legitimate streaming service I offer access to Plex. I think there's 40ish users, but only a dozen or so that use it with any real frequency. Maybe 4-5 concurrent streams at peak times, outside of that is usually occasionally the work from home "workers" / the night shift people, or me streaming music at work or similar. I think the most I've had is 7 or 8 at once.
I run an Emby server, but just for family. Two of my kids use it, one doesn't. I posted previously that my daughter doesn't have anything that can play a DVD, but she still gets them and I add them to my server so she can watch them.
I added my parents to it, and they watched some stuff, but they can't remember how to use it. Every time I show them, my dad will watch things for a few days, then he forgets how.
I appear to be unique among the people running streaming servers in that I only add things if I own the DVD (or if they're in the public domain). I also only have about 1300 movies.
I visit thrift stores to get cheap DVDs. There's one near me that charges $1/DVD, but they have a 50% off sale on the last weekend of every month.
I'm trying to be more particular about what I add. I had started thinking that for 50¢, I can buy a shittier movie, but now I'm only getting the movie if I know it's worth it, or if it's got > 7 IMDB rating.
Today's haul included True Grit (the remake), Capote, and Ready Player One.
Plenty of sub 7 IMDb cult classics :) you’re missing out
Good on you, but I would never pirate Ready Player One, let alone pay $0.50 for it.
I have a Plex guy. He runs a server and invites anyone he considers a friend, but also gives access to most who ask. He has a giant rig that costs him a lot in electricity bills. But he doesn't mind and doesn't want any money, because he's a sweet person and it's just something he does.
Edit: I'm in Europe; also he always honors requests.
I was the Plex guy until all my non-paying family members embraced being fascist dicks. Enjoy paying $200/month in shitty subscriptions, dicks.
Hell yeah, ethical Plex guy!
In a lot of countries, you could legally share copyrighted content to your "private and relative" circle. So it's not actually illegal. Your theory seems correct, even if we do have ftp-siblings too
I'm a plex guy and I know a bunch of other plex guys. There is dozens of us!
I'm a jellyfin guy. I share with roughly 6 friends just for fun.
I am the Plex guy in my group of friends and family. I think there's probably a bit of confirmation bias at play. Being on Lemmy alone puts you into a niche area of Internet already, which is going to make hearing about geeky things like home labs more common.
So yes, they exist.
yes but usually at the family and friends distribution level
I've ditched all streaming services in favour of a friend's 40tb Plex server, running from the server room of the university where he works. It's rock solid and has everything I want to watch.
Anything he can't find, or that I personally want my own access to goes in my own Jellyfin server.
It's great. Better than spending £50 a month on a couple of services.
Sounds like a great way to get fired from a job. Mirror as much as you can from him while he still has it up, but also probably limit it so that the bandwidth doesn't raise any alarms.
I believe he does it with the full consent of his boss.
But does his boss have the authority to allow it?
i love this post
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.
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.
My ex is 'the guy' for mine and my sister hooked me up with her friend so now I have two of them. It's glorious like the old days of copying Netflix DVDs and buy-copy-resell at Hastings. I haven't paid for streaming in forever.
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
There was a community when I first moved to Lemmy where people could advertise their Plex/Jellyfin servers that they were willing to share, either for a fee or free. No idea if it is still around or active.
I'm that guy. I run my own plex server and administer one remotely for a freind.
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 prefer the term “dude”, but yeah, if you’re not on one, you just don’t have the right friends. It does take a fair bit of work, but I don’t really mind sharing the fruits if I’m doing it for myself anyway.
do you hate the eagles?
I fucking hate the eagles!
?
you're obviously not a golfer
Or El Duderino if you're not into that whole brevity thing
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 am a Plex guy and host Jellyfin along with other various services that aim to de-Google my family members and friends.
I give out Plex access pretty readily and don't charge for it. Honestly, companies and governments are more focused on the "big fish" IPTV private providers than randos like us hosting media servers.
Still working on de-Googling people...
Why would people do that? People don’t do that.
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.
Sounds like a solid theory. Most are probably Jellyfin servers, but "I have a Jellyfin Guy" doesn't have the same ring.
Seems like a good way to implement massively distributed piracy. The comapnies can't possibly make a case against all of them, there are too many. I like it.
Why should they not be able to do that...? Even if there are 100'000?
Well for starters, those 100k would be spread all over legal jurisdictions, like even different countries. So you would need a representative certified to practice law in each of those jurisdictions. And of course the laws are different, so each case would be different. And the people you are suing have relatively little money to pay in compensation. The number of people needed to pull that off would be so high that the cost would be drastically larger than the potential financial gains. And since the board of directors have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, they would have to put a stop to it. The shareholders care little for the long term potential gains of such an enormous expense.
I think you massively underestimate how much money you can make with cease and desist cases. And how little it costs to send letters in bulk to people it could apply to.
You can trick people into paying... but if you are talking people who pirate media, your sucess rate will be pretty low. Legally, cease and desist letters do nothing on thier own other than prove you notified them. Any free defense lawyer would argue that thier client didn't believe the sender had any right to make the request, and the send provided no legal proof. But again, even ifnthey could get say 100k from each person running one of these. It wouldn't pay they law firm bills, not even close. It would be a major expense.
These are copy and paste letters, they take a few minutes per case top. You act as if once such letter costs more than a freaking murder case defense.
What do you think happens when you get such a letter and argue like that? They just drop the ball?
You don't have to respond to the letter at all. That's my point. It has virtually no meaning other then to allow them to say "I told you so" in court. And for that to have any meaning, they would have to show that you knew the letter came from the legit rights owner. Since the name is likely something none of us have actually heard of, you could argue you didn't think it was legit. But to even get to that point they have to file a suit and pay lawyers and all that. I can send you a cease and desist letter claiming the right to tell you to stop doing anything I want. It's just a scare tactic. Plenty of companies have been caught sending them when they had no legal right to make the demand. Most pirates know this, and will just ignore it.
You do not have to respond to any invoice you get. And of course that tends to end up in court. What makes you think you could win the case? Just that perhaps they did not actually have the rights in the first place and thus it does not go any further than some letters? How often does that happen? 1 % of all such cases? Do you have the number?
I really need a better *arr setup. Mine keeps breaking with the VPN setup and indexers that don't find shit
I would probably be this guy if I ever got around to doing the research into how to make my Jellyfin available over the internet safely.
If you haven't heard of it, tailscale is great for this. You can create a VPN with all of your self hosted stuff for you to access from anywhere, plus you can share specific machines with other users.
I'm really trying to avoid using for-profit 3rd parties. CURRENTLY I could sign up as a free user and probably be fine. But Tailscale could wake up any day and decide to start charging, or put restrictions on the free tier that would force me to a paid tier.
Part of the reason I bought a Blu-Ray drive, some big HDD's, and started collecting discs in the first place was to take back control from tech companies. It's why I chose Jellyfin over Plex. Going with Tailscale would defeat the principal.
Fair enough, you could always manage your own VPN to accomplish the same goal. I didn't want to deal with the headache of authentication or dealing with keys, so something like tailscale is perfect.
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
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.
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.
Jellyfin does have Apple TV apps. Two.
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.
im runnin 3 sets of 6x4TB. cheap.
i wouldnt use apple products if they paid me, so ya got me there
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.