For me, it’s worked out for plex. What it offered at the time was more than worth the price and I’ve felt a little bad about it being a once and done payment.

That being said they’ve hurt some of the good will with the changes they’ve made, but also I imagine they’re struggling to find a sustainable path for development.

I think the easiest way would be to have two vlans on your local network. One that is connected to the internet and another that is local only. I think you’d have to switch networks when wanting to access the jellyfin server in that instance, but would negate the main issue, which is your VPN.

Edit: that’s about the most secure you can get I think. If you bought a different physical router to host it, you’d have about as secure a setup as possible.

I thought that was only the rumored price. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a price revision before release up to $500, unless they had already priced tarrifs in.