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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 6th, 2023

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  • Interesting project. Thanks for the link and I do appreciate it and could see some very good uses for that but it’s not quite what I meant.

    Unfortunately as it notes it works as a companion for reverse proxies so it doesn’t solve the big hurdle there which is handling secure and working flow (specifically ingress) of Jellyfin traffic into a network as a turn-key solution. All this does is change the authorization mechanism but my users don’t have an issue with writing down passwords and emails. Still leaves the burden of:

    • choosing and setting up the reverse proxy,
    • certificates for that,
    • paying for a domain so I can properly use certificates for encryption,
    • making sure that works,
    • chore of updating the reverse proxy, refreshing certs (and it breaking if we forget or the process fails), etc

    Which is a hassle and a half for technically proficient users and the point that most other people would give up.

    By contrast with Plex how many steps are there?

    1. Install (going to skip media library setup as Jellyfin requires that too so it’s assumed)
    2. Set up any port settings, open any relevant ports on firewall, enable remote access in setting with a tickbox
    3. Set up users
    4. Done, it now works and doesn’t need to be touched. It will handle connecting clients directly to the server. Users just need to install Plex client, login to their account and they have access.

    By contrast this still requires the hoster set up a reverse proxy (major hassle if done securely with certificates as well as an expense for a domain which works out to probably $5 a year), to then have their users point their jellyfin at a domain-name (possibly a hard to remember one as majesticstuffbox[.]xyz is a lot cheaper than the dot com/org/net equivalents or a shorter domain that’s more to the point), auth and so on. It’s many, many, many more steps and software and configurations and chances for the hosting party to mess something up.

    My point was I and many others would rather take the $5 we’d spend a year on a domain name and pay it for this kind of turn-key solution for ourselves and our users even if provided by a third party but that were Jellyfin to integrate this as an option it could provide some revenue for them and get the kinds of people who don’t want to mess with reverse proxies and certificates into their ecosystem and off Plex.



  • Jellyfin needs to partner with someone people can pay a very low and reasonable and/or one-time fee to enable remote streaming without the fuss of setting up either dangerous port-forwarding or the complexity of reverse proxies (paying for a domain-name, the set-up itself including certificates, keeping it updated for security purposes).

    And no a VPN is not a solution, the difficulty for non-technical users in setting up a VPN (if it’s even possible, on smart-tvs it’s almost always not, and I don’t think devices like AppleTV and other streaming boxes often support them) is too high and it’s an unwanted annoyance even for technical users.

    I’m not talking about streaming video’s through someone else’s servers or using their bandwidth. I’m talking about the connection phase of clients and servers where Plex acts like an enhanced dynamic DNS service with authentication. They have an agent on the local media server which sends to the remote web service of the third party the IP address, the port configured for use, the account or server name, etc. When a client tries to connect they go to this remote web service with the servername/username info, the web service authenticates them then gives them the current IP address and any other information necessary. It then sends some data to the local Jellyfin server about the connecting client to enable that connection and then the local media Jellyfin server and the client talk directly and stream directly.

    Importantly the cost of running this authentication and IP address tracking scheme would be minimal per Jellyfin server. You could charge $5/year for up to 20 unique remote clients and come out ahead with a slight profit which could be put back into Jellyfin development and things like their own hosting costs for code, etc. Even better if they offer lifetime for this at $60-$80 they’d get a decent chunk of cash up-front to use for development (with reasonable use restrictions per account so someone hosting stuff in Hetzner or whatever and serving 300 people with 400 devices will need to pay more because they’re clearly doing this for profit and can afford to throw some more money at Jellyfin).

    Until Jellyfin offers something that JUST WORKS like that it’s not going to be a replacement for Plex, whatever other improvements they offer to users it’s still a burden for the server runner to set up remote streaming in a way that isn’t either incredibly dangerous (port forwarding) OR either involves paying money to third parties AND/OR the trouble of running your own reverse proxy and/or involves walking users through complicated set-up process for each device that you have to repeat if you change anything major like your domain name when using a VPN.



  • Look less suspicious. Be fingerprintable easily. Look unique but in a normal way. Be logged in. Look like a “normal” web user not using a hardened browser. That’s what tends to trigger them and what tends to escalate them to demanding more work to get past them.

    There’s no turn-key solution that fakes all of this flawlessly I’m afraid.





  • can they be added to the search function in qbittorrent?

    Nearly all can. All the one’s you’d want anyways work with Jackett. They don’t work via direct plugins but just run Jackett, follow its instructions and connect it to qBittorrent and you’re good to go searching just the same as before. Some annoying ones occasionally require setting up another software like Flaresolver but for the most part the big easy to get into ones that open their doors annually work without that.

    While there will likely be some openings throughout the year the fact is most trackers open in the period from Thanksgiving/late November through early January. TL opens then basically every year, a number of more exclusive trackers do open signups then, some for only 24 hours so get an RSS feed of that and remember to sign up IMMEDIATELY as soon as you see a post as the post on reddit may have been made 22 hours into a 24 hour open window, you just don’t know. TL though at least tends to stay open for several days. So if you have no luck before then, wait until that time of the year and then check daily or even twice daily if you can, once before bed, once earlier when you get up or lunch or after work, whatever.


  • If by mainstream channels you mean major streaming services then there is no perfectly private option. But I would recommend an AppleTV as the closest thing (it also doesn’t have ads which I really appreciate).

    Other than that your options are devices that can’t access major streaming services at greater than 720p and are hackily put together on multiple levels but are fine for streaming local media you host yourself or more expensive than ATV devices and modding them with alternative launchers.



  • I doubt they would be allowed to hand out keys (which they do not hold) to another government that would compromise American businesses, agencies, etc.

    Um, yes they would. The very point of eyes agreements is they allow countries intelligence agencies which aren’t allowed to spy on their own people to spy on each other’s people then pass each other the data. Snowden revealed this all a decade ago.

    The CIA and FBI do not store classified sensitive info on iPhones that are backed up anywhere. At least not anything that would come as a surprise to the British or be a risk. Nothing they wouldn’t have access to via the existing intelligence sharing.

    The UK and the US are thick as thieves and have been since the end of WW2.


  • This is frightening.

    They do not have the ability to just remove e2e back-ups in the UK alone and walk away from this, that’s not how the law is written as I understand it.

    The snooper’s charter gives the UK government the RIGHT to DEMAND access to encryption keys of any user GLOBALLY. The law is that they can force the cooperation of Apple to decrypt the account of an American user, of a German user, of a Russian user, of a South African user, of a Brazilian user, of a Japanese user who have never stepped foot in the UK.

    So they’re claiming that this protects their users, that they haven’t complied but the only way to avoid complying with these secret gag orders for compromising encryption GLOBALLY at the demand of the UK government is to remove themselves entirely from the jurisdiction of the UK. Is to remove all executives and technical personnel from UK soil, to not hire such people who live in or are citizens of the UK as technical personnel as they could be gag ordered and compelled to cooperate. To basically entirely pull out of any presence but maybe storefronts in the UK and take steps to prevent the arrest and pressuring of their executives and key technical people with access from being subject to UK coercion.

    That they haven’t done that means all users globally are still at risk. This may be a big PR stunt to convince people they haven’t caved when in fact they have in secret and will hand over data of global users to the UK which shares it via eyes agreements with the US, with France, Australia, etc. This has the added benefit of allowing the UK to keep such access secret by acting annoyed with Apple but not actually pressing any case. If they try and actually prosecute or pressure Apple that’s a sign that they haven’t cooperated globally, if they only offer angry words to the press IMO that’s a sign that in secret they’ve given access globally and only informed UK users that their cloud data isn’t protected.




  • As an extra step you can block DNS requests to external services from within your network to prevent devices trying to reach hardcoded for example Google DNS servers to bypass your filtering which isn’t uncommon with some IoT/streaming devices. Best to both block the known IPs as well as have DNS redirects for the urls that point back to your firewall at whatever IP it’s using to serve DNS from. There is a list called DoH servers by name or something like that which you can add to the blocklist to try and prevent usage of any DNS but your own.


  • Majestic@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlAndroid TV Boxes
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    3 months ago

    at least 12GB of RAM,

    Doesn’t exist and frankly not necessary. At present nothing needs this much RAM and I say this as a power user who runs a local media server and is familiar with concepts such as running Plex with remote transcoding on devices such as the Shield. The only things that come close to this much RAM might be recent generation gaming consoles like Xbox or Playstation but they don’t run Android and aren’t built for streaming, remote controls are third party accessories.

    Other problems: I’m unaware of any devices even without the high RAM request that exist that fulfill all of those asks. Particularly 4k 120hz seems to be something no one has any interest in putting in a streaming box despite plenty of them having HDMI 2.1. I checked and even Apple TV 4K’s do not support 120hz despite having the right hardware for it.

    Fact is commercial streaming services which these devices exist to cater to have no interest in 120fps/hz content, even 60fps with dolby vision is kind of more bandwidth than they like using and they upcharge premiums for it.

    Basically your choices are (all these assume giving up the RAM ask):

    • Run two devices, one for local streaming of things like games and 120fps content, one for watching streaming services that’s Android TV certified and will get you 4k content from them (at only 60fps). Cost is probably going to be north of $300. You can with this option get a mini-PC and kind of hack together a game streaming solution and if you want you can put 12GB of RAM in it but you won’t need them.
    • Buy something that ticks most of the boxes but either give up the ability to stream 4K content from commercial services (because no Android TV certification) OR give up the 120fps demand. If you’re willing to give up the 120hz you might look into the Dune-HD premier 4k pro which has full Android TV support and certification for 4K streaming from all the major services, does 4k 60fps, has very impressive specs for a streaming device (top of the line) and is $200 and you can add an SSD to increase the storage from acceptable 32GB to well over a TB if desired. Otherwise if you’re willing to give up 4K from commercial streaming services and get only 1080p from them they have a few 8K devices that do have support for 120fps but the price doubles and if you want 4k on the major streaming services you’ll need another device.

    Other options if you’re willing to give up the 120hz demand would be the Nvidia Shield Pro. As to a remote that controls everything, I believe the Dune-HD remotes do have that capability but honestly your wants are really specific and high end. Most people would use two boxes if they HAD to have all you’ve asked for.

    You might also consider waiting to see if Valve does release a streaming device like they’ve teased. If Valve does something like that it might finally be the golden one that has 120hz support though you’re still not going to get 12GB of RAM. But you’re looking at waiting a year at least I think even if that does materialize and it may not.


  • What they told you is misleading.

    Transcoding and burning in subtitles for Plex and similar only happens in some cases if your streaming device doesn’t support image based subtitles. Plex themselves could fix this on a lot more devices but don’t.

    10 years ago it was the case that there were a LOT of issues with anything but text subtitles. These days it depends. If you’re running it directly off a smart tv (bad experience anyways, not recommended) it’s likely to be an issue. If you’re using an Android streaming device or Apple TV or gaming console there’s a good chance the subs just work.

    Truth is lots of things can force transcoding with Plex including using certain audio formats in certain media containers. Most of these days picture subs work. If you can get text subs it’s not a bad thing but I wouldn’t go through the hassle of doing flawed OCR unless you can confirm it’s an issue you’re experiencing with your setup.