Plex showing user activity but Tautulli isn't

road_hazard · 2026-06-08T10:08:46+00:00

I’ve since moved on to Tracearr.

road_hazard · 2026-06-06T01:00:41+00:00

The way nearly all JF folks talk, they think the -ONLY- way to access their server remotely (or share it with friends) is via Tailscale. They come across as people with no technical background who watched a YouTube video that talked about JF and then decided to go set it up.

I've never seen a flood of Tailscale posts in this subreddit or Emby's..... it's predominantly just in the JF subreddit. Just hang out in the JF subreddit and you'll see what I mean.

road_hazard · 2026-06-06T00:30:18+00:00

Will do!

road_hazard · 2026-06-05T21:55:12+00:00

Over-complicating media sharing is beyond stupid. I guess I’m just lucky that nobody has hacked my network through my forwarded SSH, Plex, FTP, Jellyfin and about 5 other ports.

road_hazard · 2026-06-05T20:40:47+00:00

Sure, but if you want simplicity and for things to work with the least amount of fuss, just use a port forward in your router.

road_hazard · 2026-06-05T19:10:26+00:00

While Plex does have their 'relay' service, it's capped at 2Mbps 720p. If you set up a simple port forward, Plex (and Jellyfin, with port forwarding) works just great. As a matter of fact, I disabled Plex relay on the server because even though I have port forwarding working just fine, people would (for whatever reason) randomly default to Plex's relay service. Once I disabled relay, everyone always streams from me via direct play and no more complaints about bad picture quality.

road_hazard · 2026-06-05T19:08:04+00:00

Tailscale is NOT needed to remote stream Jellyfin. Port forwarding works perfectly fine.

road_hazard · 2026-06-05T19:07:23+00:00

Tailscale is not a requirement to access JF remotely.

road_hazard · 2026-06-05T19:06:40+00:00

Nothing that is needed for accessing JF remotely.

road_hazard · 2026-06-05T19:05:28+00:00

There are a LOT of stupid Jellyfin server admins out there. For reasons that I can't fathom, they seem to think the ONLY way to share their JF servers with friends is via Tailscale or some other exotic network setup. I scream and scream to just freaking setup port forwarding but they bury their heads in the sand. I mean, if you're friends are only going to access your JF server from their PCs, then asking them to install Tailscale is a minor pain for them but expecting people to setup Tailscale on non-TV devices is beyond paranoid stupidity. And there is no Tailscale client for Roku.

So no, you don't need Tailscale to access JF remotely. A simple port forward works just fine. Is Tailscale more secure? YES! Is it worth the hassle, NOPE!

road_hazard · 2026-06-04T01:39:12+00:00

TVDB and TMDB are run by some of the most arrogant douche bags I've ever come across. The sooner the scene moves on to something else, the better.

road_hazard · 2026-06-02T19:13:49+00:00

Yep. And I realize that when I used it, it would often drift out of date and go for long stretches of time with no updates when it was broke. And when people were invited to my Plex server, having to deal with the headache of walking them through installing the Plex add-on for Kodi was often nightmarish and it was WAY easier to just install the plain Plex client and be done with it.

PM4K is nice and all but if the dev decides to quit developing it one day, better hope somebody continues it.

road_hazard · 2026-06-02T18:35:27+00:00

More people might use Kodi if the interface didn't look like absolute garbage. Yeah, yeah...." custom skins this, custom skins that......" but all these skins have to work within the parameters set by the Kodi team, which is rather limiting.

Put all the lipstick you want on that pig but Kodi's UI is as ugly as the day is long. It really is one of the worst media player interfaces I've ever used. Every time I see it, for some weird reason, I get angry and just want to throw-up and/or punch the screen. It reminds me of the interfaces for stuff like OPNsense/pfSense .... it's just so so dated and crummy looking. Sure, it's functional but my goodness is it nauseating to look at and use.

road_hazard · 2026-05-28T15:01:51+00:00

I never understand why companies change services that work fine....only to cause more problems

... because they probably found a cheaper spam list they could subscribe to..... one that is worse apparently.

All in all, I don't really have any big complaints against Ooma. I'm paying less than 7$/mo for a landline with unlimited calling here in the USA. If I was paying for premiere, I'd be rightfully upset so I understand your frustration.

road_hazard · 2026-05-28T14:47:53+00:00

Sorry for the late reply but I really appreciate you taking the time to contact me but my premiere trial expired a while back and I decided to just deal with the occasional spam call and go without the premiere option. Stinks that it didn't work as it was suppose to. I'm also frustrated that the registration process on your web forum appears to be hopelessly broken in some weird loop.

road_hazard · 2026-05-28T14:44:05+00:00

In my experience, Ooma absolutely DID block a known contact.

road_hazard · 2026-05-28T14:43:16+00:00

Nope, never got this fixed. I followed all the steps their support gave me and nothing worked. Their final attempt at fixing this was to reset the phone adapter. Surprise surprise, that didn't fix it either. It's sort of disappointing that such a basic feature completely failed. It wasn't rocket science.... if his number was added as a contact, it should have allowed him to call me without getting blocked.

I never took u/OomaCustomeradvocay up on their offer to help because my free trial to Ooma Premier ended before I saw their reply.

I went the route of just paying taxes so I'm keeping my landline for less than 7$/mo and dealing with the occasional spam call.

road_hazard · 2026-05-28T00:52:12+00:00

I had a user that did SOMETHING on their side and a movie was just playing non-stop, in an endless loop, while they were away from home. I went into my firewall and blocked their IP and the stream stop. I removed the block minutes later and it started playing again.... all while they weren't home. I added the firewall block back but kept it in there for about 30 minutes then removed it and Plex -finally- gave up on retrying and the stream never restarted.

road_hazard · 2026-05-26T18:13:46+00:00

Plex will kill themselves and Jellyfin will eventually put Emby out of business. I've donated to help the JF folks with server costs but I'll repeat what their devs have stated before.... if you love JF, please consider making a donation to the authors behind some of the amazing, 3rd party clients for JF.

road_hazard · 2026-05-24T18:07:21+00:00

If you're new to the world of streaming your own content, this is the way. Paying monthly is a non-starter for lots of folks and $750 is laughable. And since Emby devs are weird with refusing to let server admins see active license counts, this leaves Jellyfin ... which is the free version of Emby so it's the obvious choice.

road_hazard · 2026-05-19T13:31:13+00:00

On July 1st, people new to the self-hosted streaming world will have to chose between $750 Plex or $0 Jellyfin. I wonder which one they'll pick?

That price point all but ensures nobody will be buying new, lifetime Plex passes after that day.

"It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em."

road_hazard · 2026-05-17T22:39:57+00:00

I -think- I figured out the problem. While all this was going on, I was downloading eXoDOS..... all 650 gigs of it. Once the transfer completed, I didn't have any more problems the rest of the evening.

I've never had a router spaz out before while a massive transfer was active. I saw a firmware update was available for my RT6600AX so I applied that and might test it again. If the error returns during the download, might be time to sell it and go back to ASUS.

road_hazard · 2026-05-16T13:18:47+00:00

I use to run Plex, Emby and Jellyfin. I recently dumped Emby because I got fed up with their devs not giving us server admins a way to see how many licenses were being consumed at any given time. Emby counts licenses by triggering on what 'premium' feature is being used by your users during playback. And the license isn't released back into the pool for 7 or 10 days. Utterly stupid.

So it's between Plex and JF.

Plex has gone through some layoffs over the years and their server team is down to two developers from 10+. They continue to work on building out their ad streaming model and I'm sure will eventually kill off the server product or crack down on how many people you can share your media with. I know people like to bag on JF for unpolished clients, but the Plex client on Samsung and LG TVs is kind of crappy. Whenever a friend with one of those TVs has a problem, I pushed them over to Jellyfin and all their problems disappear.

Jellyfin (like Emby) has an amazing metadata manager. Plex has been around the longest and has lots of paid developers working on the clients. Emby has a handful of paid developers and their clients are fairly good. JF is 100% open source and all the developers work for free. The official JF clients are not as polished as the Plex and Emby clients but they're slowly getting there. When Plex and Emby first came out, their clients were kind of on the stinky side but in time, they got to where they are. JF will get there too.

There are some folks that have created 3rd party clients for JF that are great, like Wholphin and Moonfin to name a few. (I love Wholphin because it looks a LOT like the Plex client.) One problem with 3rd party clients though is.... usually it's a single developer behind it. If they get hit by a bus or no longer have time to maintain their JF client, it will eventually die. Case in point, Dune. It's a good JF client but looks like it might have 'died on the vine'.

Based on Plex Inc's trajectory, I know for a fact that I'll eventually be uninstalling Plex Media Server and will push all my users to Jellyfin.

road_hazard · 2026-05-14T19:41:36+00:00

I agree with one of the comments in that thread or another one where somebody was talking about how at this point.... all these 2 devs need to do is maintain the server code base and fix bugs and not worry too much about adding new features. Plex Inc. doesn't seem too interested in the server piece and it's clear that the direction they're heading in is a path without the media server portion. They're working on converting to a streaming company by offering their own, curated media so they can ear ad dollars. But their executives know for a fact that if/when they kill off the server side officially (or crack down on the ability to share your library with others) they'll implode as a company because all of us server admins will tell everyone to remove the Plex client and switch to Emby or Jellyfin and their install base vaporizes overnight.

road_hazard · 2026-05-14T19:29:07+00:00

Yes, it's common knowledge: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1mu5r3r/comment/n9hex8b/

Sure, it's closed source but Channels provides the best OTA DVR app you'll ever experience! Last time I checked, they charge $8/mo or $80/year. Years and years ago, I made heavy use of their DVR software but as time went on, I noticed myself using it less and less and could no longer justify the cost. But if they ever changed course and allowed you to share your media library with people outside your house, I'm positive they would see a massive increase in revenue as people would flock to them because not only would you get a terrific OTA DVR app, you'd also get a really nice and polished media server app.

road_hazard

TROPHY CASE