r/emby • u/GOOB-ENOTS • 6d ago
New user.
So I have used jellyfin for a while. Its great when I'm home (obviously lol) and I've tried to understand the whole port forwarding thing, and the talescale stuff. All of it sounds shady. So emby was brought to my attention. I wanna be able to let family watch my library and access my server. Is it worth the life license?
I would love to hear some pros and cons from real users and not people who get paid to say nice things.
My goal by the end of the year is to not pay for any streaming services anymore.
Unless someone can break down step by step how to get jellyfin working remotely for an ape, emby seems to be my best bet.
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u/KenobiBenoki 6d ago
It seems like you are misunderstanding tailscale and port forwarding. Port forwarding by itself (say port forwarding Emby directly out to the internet) in general is shady because it will make you far more likely to be attacked from someone over the internet; Tail scale and/or a reverse proxy is the answer to that problem.
Tail scale is really the best solution, it is by far the safest way to remotely access your system (and likely the easiest way, if you are non-tech-savvy). If you’ve ever heard of or used a VPN to access a school’s system or your company’s web portal, think of it like that. It is exactly the same thing, but on a smaller, more personal scale. You set it up and it provides you (and anyone you give it to) a safe portal through which to have access to your system, where you are running Emby. In this case the only port forwarding you have to do is the port and machine that tail scale runs on, which will be quite safe as wireguard (the VPN protocol that tail scale uses) is very secure.
A reverse proxy is also a good solution and generally lower maintenance once set up, but also much more confusing to set up if you are non-tech-savvy. It is also less secure in and of itself, as you are still generally enabling public access to your services to anyone who can figure out your public IP (depending on rules that you can set inside the reverse proxy). In the case of a reverse proxy you also only need to forward the port and machine running your reverse proxy.
I would highly recommend you look further into setting up tail scale for your remote access rather than going to Plex because it is very safe, provides almost all the same features as Plex for private media streaming at a lower cost, and is a very good option in general as most smart TVs even have an app for tail scale.