I’m kind of a noob at this so I just want to make sure I’m on the right track. Most of my experience is centered around using public trackers and qbitorrent with a VPN on my laptop and Android phone (using flud).
I would like to get started using Jellyfin to serve up media in my house and occasionally remotely with my phone. I have an older HP desktop that was formerly a business PC. I am currently resetting it back to a fresh install (probably Windows 10). I was thinking of putting Jellyfin on there and setting up Tailscale. I have already tested setting this up on a different computer just to learn the setup process and I got it working and was able to remote connect with my phone. I have Cox cable internet and I’m using their provided modem/wifi gateway so I probably don’t have many options for customizing that other than port-forwarding. I also don’t really need to set up any automation to download media automatically at this time. I basically want to be able to download movies the way I currently do and put them on the Jellyfin machine. What else do I need to know/do? What am I missing? and will I be able to just pull up Jellfin on my phone and cast media to my smart TV’s (they do not have Roku btw)?
Internal to your LAN/WLAN Jellyfin will work right out of the box it collects content from whatever folders you tell it too. Phone, smart TV, etc. You might need local clients on some devices.
Outside your local network it gets complicated, has security concerns. Certainly doable, but outside my expertise. If you want to serve outside your local network, PLEX is a similar, close source, software that can take care of the web for you.
You probly could use tail scale. To acses jellyfin remotely. And automaticly sort /download things trough sonarr/radarr. If Windows is not a must I would probly recommend using ubuntu-kde on your laptop. There a script cald yams.media. That can do the install of all thing for you.
It looks like setting up casting is possible, but a giant pain in the ass according to this guide. I would see if your TV has a Jellyfin app (they have apps for Android TV, FireTV, LG WebOS, and Apple TV), otherwise you might need to just buy a cheap Roku.
In terms of watching outside your house, that will probably be difficult. Because we ran out of IP addresses, most ISPs use NAT which basically bundles a bunch of different users behind a single IP address, making port-forwarding impossible unless you pay extra for a static IP. You’ll have to figure out whether this is the case for Cox.
Also…I’m wondering about that guide you linked for setting up Chromecast, because the Android app has a chromecast button on it. That guide says “Chromecast requires that HTTP traffic be encrypted into HTTPS with a valid certificate.” but I can cast media directly from my phone with an app called Local Cast and I can cast directly from my laptop with VLC. Are those using HTTPS with a cert? I will test this out once I get it up and running.
That’s a good question. That guide is specifically for a Chromecast, but maybe casting to another type of device works different, I’m not too familiar with the protocol. Definitely agree that just testing it out to see what happens is the best route
Linux would be best for reliability. Nothing’s better than untimely windows updates. Also, less power usage. If you do decide to go with Linux you should look into running jellyfin via docker. Makes it super portable and best of all makes it simple to run other docker services from the same machine (nextcloud, trillium, pihole).
You can set up duckdns for free domain names (with a docker service for dynamic IP) and use nginx as a reverse proxy to all your services (if you plan on streaming outside your house)
I have this exact use case too. I use Linux Mint with Jellyfin installed from the built in software hub. You cannot find it from the command line because it’s a snap. The software app works and provides one click installation. Clicking on the jellyfin icon in your start menu brings up a browser tab that you can use to configure http access if you want. I use a raspberry pi running pihole and pivpn for a VPN and the wireguard app on my phone to connect to that VPN. This works on my cellphone over the network and allows me to access the jellyfin media via the jellyfin app. I think it works nicely. I have jellyfin media player on the laptops and the streaming works on the lan. I will caution that I haven’t been able to easily set up wireguard on the laptops. I use phone to stream, so this might just be a motivation problem on my part.
Note that this requires port forwarding. Tailscale doesn’t require port forwarding but, you have less control over it. Do with this information what you will…
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Internal to your LAN/WLAN Jellyfin will work right out of the box it collects content from whatever folders you tell it too. Phone, smart TV, etc. You might need local clients on some devices.
Outside your local network it gets complicated, has security concerns. Certainly doable, but outside my expertise. If you want to serve outside your local network, PLEX is a similar, close source, software that can take care of the web for you.
You probly could use tail scale. To acses jellyfin remotely. And automaticly sort /download things trough sonarr/radarr. If Windows is not a must I would probly recommend using ubuntu-kde on your laptop. There a script cald yams.media. That can do the install of all thing for you.
Thanks!
Swizzin is another good ‘all-in-one’ option.
It looks like setting up casting is possible, but a giant pain in the ass according to this guide. I would see if your TV has a Jellyfin app (they have apps for Android TV, FireTV, LG WebOS, and Apple TV), otherwise you might need to just buy a cheap Roku.
In terms of watching outside your house, that will probably be difficult. Because we ran out of IP addresses, most ISPs use NAT which basically bundles a bunch of different users behind a single IP address, making port-forwarding impossible unless you pay extra for a static IP. You’ll have to figure out whether this is the case for Cox.
Also…I’m wondering about that guide you linked for setting up Chromecast, because the Android app has a chromecast button on it. That guide says “Chromecast requires that HTTP traffic be encrypted into HTTPS with a valid certificate.” but I can cast media directly from my phone with an app called Local Cast and I can cast directly from my laptop with VLC. Are those using HTTPS with a cert? I will test this out once I get it up and running.
That’s a good question. That guide is specifically for a Chromecast, but maybe casting to another type of device works different, I’m not too familiar with the protocol. Definitely agree that just testing it out to see what happens is the best route
Linux would be best for reliability. Nothing’s better than untimely windows updates. Also, less power usage. If you do decide to go with Linux you should look into running jellyfin via docker. Makes it super portable and best of all makes it simple to run other docker services from the same machine (nextcloud, trillium, pihole).
You can set up duckdns for free domain names (with a docker service for dynamic IP) and use nginx as a reverse proxy to all your services (if you plan on streaming outside your house)
Thanks. I’ll consider that. I used to run Ubuntu on a laptop but it’s been years since I’ve done anything with Linux.
I have this exact use case too. I use Linux Mint with Jellyfin installed from the built in software hub. You cannot find it from the command line because it’s a snap. The software app works and provides one click installation. Clicking on the jellyfin icon in your start menu brings up a browser tab that you can use to configure http access if you want. I use a raspberry pi running pihole and pivpn for a VPN and the wireguard app on my phone to connect to that VPN. This works on my cellphone over the network and allows me to access the jellyfin media via the jellyfin app. I think it works nicely. I have jellyfin media player on the laptops and the streaming works on the lan. I will caution that I haven’t been able to easily set up wireguard on the laptops. I use phone to stream, so this might just be a motivation problem on my part.
Awesome! Seems like none of this is too difficult. I was also looking at Plex but I decided to go with Jellyfin because it’s FOSS.
Note that this requires port forwarding. Tailscale doesn’t require port forwarding but, you have less control over it. Do with this information what you will…