[Arainach]

It means access from anywhere.

Want to watch an episode of that series while you're sitting at work waiting for a long test pass? Plex.

You're hanging out with friends and they want to watch that movie you own? Plex.

You're at the gym and want to watch The Wire instead of whatever reality show is on the gym TV? Believe it or not, straight to Plex.

To your direct point, it doesn't have to be a terrible vacation. Any time I plan a vacation longer than a week it includes down day(s) with no itinerary, just recuperating. Sometimes that involves staring at a screen. Sometimes I've been out for 10 hours, it's only 7PM and I don't want to go to sleep, but I want to chill out in my room (maybe I'm overstimulated, maybe I'm just tired, doesn't matter).

[prmoustache]

I guess we are a different breed. I didn't even knew there were TV in gym clubs (I am exercising outside, never understood paying for exercising either). I don't really understand why someone would be so little engaged on his exercising/training/sport that they would need a screen to entertain themselves to be honest.

That is interesting to hear, a completely foreign concept to me that sounds a bit like addiction to be honest.

[Arainach]

If exercise was pleasant you wouldn't have to remind people to do more of it. The only thing worse than running for an hour is running for an hour and actually paying attention to the complaints your body is sending while doing so.

[theshrike79]

> I am exercising outside

Doing deadlifts outside when it's -30C is pretty hardcore.

Also what's "engaging" in running? You put one foot in front of the other, it's not exactly something that needs 100% of your brain power to execute.

[prmoustache]

Well I'll give a pass to those who live in Siberia, Ulaanbataar or anywhere else with permafrost then ;-)

My experience in cold places, especially those with a lot of snow and ice, is that there are usually enough chores to do that skipping deadlifts day is not really a problem though.

> Also what's "engaging" in running? You put one foot in front of the other, it's not exactly something that needs 100% of your brain power to execute.

I guess that is the difference between running or cycling outside and doing it on a machine.

[entropicdrifter]

I can do all of this stuff with my Jellyfin server for the yearly cost of a domain name

[Arainach]

This thread was a "why does remote access matter", not a comparison of Jellyfin and Plex.

I run both and Jellyfin is very clearly an open source project.

By that I mean that the interesting technical problem (streaming) is implemented rather well and there is a UI that technically has buttons to expose the things it does while simultaneously not being good at many of the things people use Plex for.

Jellyfin's remote access story is "set up a VPN or Tailscale". Plex's remote access story is "it works".

Jellyfin's story for accessing content from multiple servers doesn't exist. Neither does a global auth system for sharing access to your library, having friends, etc.

Jellyfin's sorting, filtering, and searching are just OK. Its web UI is nowhere near as nice for libraries of O(1000).

Real world example: I was at an AirBnB last week that had a Roku TV. To get to my Plex library I installed the Plex app. There was a Jellyfin app but I couldn't use it because there was no VPN client for the TV, and I don't feel the need to set up and run Tailscale when I already have Wireguard.

[entropicdrifter]

I use a reverse proxy for Jellyfin remote access, people saying you need a VPN or Tailscale (which is also a VPN) are unnecessarily paranoid IMO. That said, I'm a software engineer with more than 10 years of experience and a lifelong tinkerer, and I've set up an OpenWRT One as my primary router, so my firewall is more up to date and useful than 99% of consumers and I'm comfortable restoring a PC if it gets hacked.

But maybe more importantly IMO, Jellyfin doesn't have a central server that would serve as a high-priority target for hackers. Plex may have funding and full-time devs, but they're also relying on security through obscurity, which is hardly best-practice. Their central servers were hacked 10 months ago and passwords were leaked. For that to happen to me, hackers would have to be interested in my little Intel N100-powered server running from my house with maybe 10 daily active users. On top of that, Jellyfin's team have generally been quite fast at addressing all known high severity vulnerabilities because the project is open source. Everyone can see the code, so anyone can fix an exploit as soon as it's found.

As far as sharing access with my friends, I just ask them to put in the username/password they'd like on my phone in person for account creation, then I text them all the details about the URL for my Jellyfin instance, how to set up their smart TV app for it, etc.

I can access my Jellyfin instance from almost any smart TV in the world with the official apps because I followed their official guide and set up with a reverse proxy instead of Tailscale.