I use tailscale and NPM to reverse proxy.

When I want to watch, I turn on the VPN and go to the app. Easy peazy

It’s not easy trying to set up VPN or a reverse proxy, dynamic DNS and so on if you want secure access for more than yourself l, that is true. I hope they can figure out a way to make that process a lot easier.

Actually, using an LLM to walk you through the process of setting up jellyfin inside a docker container (and setting up the arr stack) and all of that makes things a lot easier than trying to figure it all out on your own.

That was a big reason I went with Emby. Not open source, but wasn't necessary to me, and I wanted a cloud connect function that it handled well. And not all devices have a Jellyfin app that's easy to install. My TV would require it to be rooted.

Bro win 10 computers are essentially free thanks to microsoft's windows 11 requirements and any of them can keep up with transcoding. Add onto that any second hand sata drives and a sata controller than handles multiple parity drives for raid 5 and you've got a solution that is under the yearly subscription fee of ad-free netflix and a fun weekend project.

Cheaper than a netflix subscription. Especially if you repurpose the last PC you upgraded as a server. Jellyfin will run fine on 15 year old hardware.

If you're happy with FHD (1080p) res, the requirements for both server and client are very low.

So long as you don't need to stockpile old shows you never watch, you can get by on an old laptop and possibly an external drive.

My homelab started out on a Raspberry Pi 2b. Most of the hardware Ive brought online were dumpster specials someone else didn't want. It can be done on the cheap. Won't necessarily be reliable, but it can be done cheap.

Jellyfin isn't too demanding. I'm still running my whole media stack on a Raspberry Pi 4.

Smarttube...is a hero!