Glossary
Everyday meanings for the jargon this documentation uses. Each entry is one plain sentence; linked pages tell the full story.
ABR (adaptive bitrate) — the player automatically stepping video quality up or down to match your connection, so a stream keeps playing instead of buffering when the line gets busy. See Stream quality / ABR.
Bearer (token) — "whoever bears this string gets in": the way Phlix apps attach their login token to each request, like showing a wristband instead of an ID. See Token below.
EAC3 (Enhanced AC-3) — a surround-sound audio format (the "E" version of Dolby Digital). You'll see it in client codec lists; a TV or speaker that can't decode it needs the server to transcode the audio.
Federation — hubs talking to other hubs, with cryptographic handshakes, so a person on one hub's address book can reach servers shared from another. Advanced; a hub administrator can switch it off.
Hub — a separate, optional service that acts as your address book and remote door: you claim your servers on it, and it helps your devices find and reach them from outside your home. Your media never lives on the hub. See What is the Hub?.
Invite link — a one-time URL you create on the Hub that lets one person join your server as a user or collaborator without you typing out a password. After it's used (or you revoke it) it stops working. See Invite links.
Mount — attaching a folder or disk (a drive, a NAS share, a Docker volume) so the Phlix server can see the files inside it. A library scans a mount; if nobody mounted the drive, Phlix can't watch it.
NAT — the address-translation your home router does so twenty devices can share one public IP. Its side effect: computers on the internet can't simply knock on your server's door — which is exactly the problem the Hub's relay was built to avoid. See Remote access.
OPDS — Open Publication Distribution System: a standard "catalog feed" format that ebook readers (Ubooquity, KyBook and friends) use to browse and download books over the internet. Phlix's book library serves its shelves as an OPDS 1.2 feed. See Books.
Relay — the Hub's long-lived connection trick: your server dials out to the hub and keeps the line open, and remote browsing flows back over that already-open line. No ports opened on your router, no public IP needed. See Remote access.
Reverse proxy — a front-door web server (nginx, Caddy, Traefik…) that owns your domain name and HTTPS certificate and forwards requests to Phlix behind it. You visit https://phlix.example.com; the proxy talks to 127.0.0.1:8096 so you never have to. See Reverse proxy.
SSDP — the local-network shout ("anyone here who serves video?") that lets DLNA devices and some apps discover your server without you typing an address. Home-LAN only; it's the first thing that stops working when you leave the house.
Token — the login receipt your server hands the app after the right password: a signed string (JWT) that says "this is Maya, expires at 9pm." Apps show it with every request instead of your password. It can expire and be refreshed — and anyone holding it holds the access, so it's kept in secure storage. See Bearer (token) above.
Transcode — re-encoding video while you watch so a picky device can play it, or shrinking it to fit a slow connection. Costs the server real CPU; a direct connection that "just works" skipped transcoding. See Hardware transcoding.
Tunnel — inside a relay connection, each browsing session gets its own private pipe (a "tunnel" multiplexed over one socket) so your server's HTTP responses find their way back to the right remote device. You'll mostly meet the word in logs.
Watch group — the everyday name for what the tech calls a SyncPlay room: a group of people watching the same title, with play/pause kept in sync. One person hosts; the rest follow. See Watch Together (SyncPlay).
WebSocket — a phone-call connection (the internet kind): unlike ordinary web requests that ask-and-hang-up, a WebSocket stays open both ways, which is how watch groups deliver "someone just paused" a quarter-second later instead of on page refresh.
Related pages
- What is the Hub?
- First run — where most of these words first appear
- Troubleshooting