EP 31: PLEX VS JELLYFIN: THE REAL COST OF SELF-HOSTING MEDIA
DESCRIPTION
Plex just tripled its lifetime pass price and put remote streaming of your own files behind a paywall, so this episode digs into what it actually takes to switch to something like Jellyfin instead. Tyler walks through the real headaches of self-hosting, from CG-NAT and Tailscale to Synology's drive lock-in and QNAP's ransomware history. It's a grounded look at what owning your media really costs in time, money, and know-how, and why that matters for digital ownership in general.
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TRANSCRIPT — EP 31
A buddy of mine had texted me last month with three dreaded words. I knew this was coming too, because I had seen the stories. I knew what Plex was doing and I dreaded it, but I got it. And his message said, Plex wants money. And he was, he's right. But you know, let me, let me back up and give you the full story here. He was sitting in a hotel room trying to watch a movie off of the server that he owns that is in his basement Again his movie his server his electricity bill his internet bill and plex stopped him at the door and asked to pay up asked for that dreaded
subscription and you know I had to tell him yeah, man, that's that's real now and that's been rolling out since last spring and then he asked me the question I really didn't want to didn't want to be asked I dreaded this question for a year since Plex started making these changes he asked okay so what should I use instead now I run my own home media server I set it up over an afternoon. It's been rock solid. And I mean, I still really didn't have a good answer for him. This is the
Tyler Woodward project. And today I'm talking about why running a whole media server, even in 2026, is still a pain in the ass for normal people. These opinions are my own. Everything here is from my point of view and nobody else's. Let's start with the Plex thing first because It's impressive how fast they burned 20 years of goodwill with their user base April 2025 the first price hike in over a decade The lifetime
pass it goes from 120 bucks to 250 bucks fine Whatever companies raise rates we may not like it but they do raise prices that same day they put remote streaming of your own files behind the paywall stuff that had been free for the entire history of the plex platform you want to watch your own media away from home that's a plex pass or your viewers each pay a couple of bucks a month for something called remote watch pass which already went up 50 % by the way September 2025 they get breached emails usernames
hashed passwords their third one and next month July That lifetime pass triples, again, $750 for software that sits there and organizes files you already own. Meanwhile, the actual product is 600 ad -supported streaming channels and a social network with emoji reactions. The personal media server part. The reason anybody showed up to Plex in the first place is now the thing
they monetize hardest and developed. I mean, the least. So everybody says the same thing. Just switch over the jellyfin. I love jellyfin. It's free. I mean, actually free, not freemium, not, you know, it's it's open source. no phone home to a central server. Hardware transcoding costs nothing, which is the one feature Plex always held hostage. The TV apps used to be rough and they're genuinely pretty good now. The Roku app went from this broken piece of dumpster fire
to pretty solid in about two years. If you run it, it's the better product. I mean, full stop. So why isn't this episode over? Well, remote access. That's the problem. Plex's whole magic trick was the relay. Their servers brokered the connection. So streaming from grandma's house, it just worked. No router settings, no networking degree was needed. Jellyfin doesn't have that. And I guess it's sort of on purpose. It's fully self -hosted. So you are the relay company now.
Your options are a reverse proxy with SSL certificates, a VPN your whole family has to remember to turn on before movie night or tailscale installed and signed in on every device, which, I mean, tail scale is great. I use it. It's also a sentence that means nothing to probably 95 % of people who just want to watch a movie off of their home computer. Even if you do nothing, right? Your internet provider can kill it anyway. A lot of ISPs now stick you behind carrier grade NAT, CG NATing, where you don't even get your own
public IP address anymore. Port forwarding, it just doesn't work on CG NATing. It's hard, not that it's impossible, and no setting on your router is going to fix that, because the problem lives on equipment you don't get to touch. So the free option requires a little bit of networking knowledge. Most people are not going to have You know to solve a problem Their ISP might make unsolvable anyways fine, so You tell people skip all that buy an appliance I Don't want to reckon
recommend Synology, but you know, maybe a Synology maybe a QNAP Little box that just works But yeah, let's talk about that Synology part because April 2025 Synology announces their new plus models will basically require Synology branded hard drives third -party Seagate or WD drives the ones everybody actually owns got you some sort of cryptic warning Disabled features and in some cases you couldn't even install the operating system and that at all Drives that cost more for the stupid sticker that's on them because
Synology doesn't make drives. They're just rebranding them Sales as you can imagine they cratered reviewers walked away in an October they backed down mostly The walk back only covers the 2025 models and VME drives are still locked and They have flat -out refused to promise the 2026 Hardware won't do it all over again. They didn't learn a lesson. They learned a timing lesson Cuneaps problem is a little different ransomware deadbolt hit back in 2022 and infected thousands of internet exposed qnap boxes over 13 000 at its peak a
thousand bucks a box to get your files back and qnaps official advice boils down to don't expose your nas to the internet disable upnp patch immediately which let's be honest is correct advice it is exactly the discipline that the person buying appliance was trying to avoid needing the appliances was supposed to be the easy button the device button that now comes with vendor lock -in on one brand and ransomware history on the other you know and i want to be honest my media server
took me an afternoon Docker containers hardware transcoding on Intel quick sync tail scale for remote access a used mini PC can do this for I don't know about 150 bucks and it'll push multiple 4k streams while Barely sipping on power It has needed almost nothing from me since except the occasional update but that afternoon was easy because of my extensive years of Linux experience standing behind me. I knew what a compose file was. I knew what CG netting was. I knew why the cheap Atom chips were a trap and the N100s weren't.
An afternoon for me is a month of frustrated weekends for someone else and there's a real chance their ISP fails them at the finish line anyways and no fault to their own because right now is when normal people finally want this. Six streaming price hikes in 2025 alone. The average household is paying probably like 70 bucks a month and I'm sure plenty are paying over 100 bucks a month. Shows you paid to watch get deleted now as tax write -offs. A 90 million dollar movie get erased before anyone even even saw the damn thing. People are fed up. They're ripping their DVDs and their blu -rays again.
They're CDs people are buying CDs ripping them and streaming it that way instead of paying for even Spotify or Apple music and Yeah, don't get it twisted people are selling sailing the the high seas again I'm not gonna tell you what to do with your evens, but whether it's your own legally purchased collection or media of more Flexible whatever, you know the desire to own a shelf of stuff that can't be repriced or Deleted is the I think the most reasonable consumer Instinct of the decade The demand is here. The hardware is getting cheaper except those damn RAM prices
the the software it's free and it's good and the bridge the day that Jellyfin or anyone show ships a built -in secured zero config remote relay. I know there was a lot of words something something that can work behind CG netting without an account and an app on every device this entire episode becomes obsolete I would love for this episode You know to become obsolete until then here's Where I land on all this if you only watch at home plexus free tier or Jellyfin on your local network either works local streaming is
still free if you want the remote access and you're not a technically inclined person your honest options are unfortunately paying the company that just tripled its prices or finding a friend like me We are the relay now Be the friend with the server or go find one in 2026. That's the install guide I wish after all of that I could have get you know gave you better news and maybe we'll do a deep dive at some point where I don't know I do a YouTube video on how to Set up jellyfin. Actually, I don't need to do it. There's plenty
of creators out there who show you how to set up a Jellyfin server, but it's not only just setting up Jellyfin and saying, cool, done. I mean, you got to do. You got to mess with the CG netting or tail scale or setting up a VPN to get access into the stuff or doing reverse proxy through engine X. there's a lot of layers to it. And unfortunately, Plex is still the easier way to go, even if they are charging a little bit more money. And at least that way you still have access to files, both that you may have got somewhere else that's a little questionable or your own media collection. Subscribe on Apple
Podcast or Spotify. Also, I'm over on iHeartRadio, rate and review the show. Follow me on Facebook and YouTube at Tyler Woodward Project. Instagram threads and blue sky. I'm over there at Tyler woodward .me reach out and say hello Also, subscribe to the sub stack sub stack dot Tyler woodward .me. I put a blog up there for almost every episode with a few more details This is all independent. This is my own work. I don't have any sponsors. It's just me Talking about nerdy stuff that I like share it subscribe to it And that's all I got for you today. I'll catch you guys next week