Hi, I’m fairly new to the self-hosted universe but I like the idea of self-hosting media (I’ve looked at Jellyfin and Plex). But as I understand this requires quite some money and a lot of work. I don’t think it’s worth it if I put in all that effort just for myself but I’d love to build a small private streaming between me and my friends. We used to share and swap blu-rays after all, so it would be cool to build a shared collection.
My question is if that’s possible and if anyone has experience with this? I’ve read that Jellyfin and Plex are meant as home-media-servers and I’m not sure what limitations that implies. Can people access the library from outside networks and will that affect the streaming quality/speed? What specs would the server need to ensure it can handle a bunch of users? Is there a software that is better suited for this use-case?
Thanks in advance for any help!
I have been really happy with Emby. The setup was easy, library tags updated more reliably than plex, and remote access was simple to get setup with a user account. I am not using a vpn to access it, just give it the server details and user credentials and it works. I did opt for the paid lifetime version though.
IIRC the free version of Emby doesn’t throttle in any way, you can still have up to 10 concurrent active devices and the only thing you miss out on really is OpenSubtitles. But I’ve recently upped my game with Sonarr and it’s a dream. One day I’ll put my movies into Radarr.