I’ve been putting off having a local copy of the series and movies I watch because I still can access them quickly and cheaply enough in some streaming service, I think it’s time to plan ramping up my selfhosted setup.
An alternative to self-hosting and piracy, if there’s something you really want to watch, just buy a month, then immediately cancel the subscription to whatever service has that show, after all the episodes has aired. I usually spend between $30-$50 in total on streaming services in a year this way, and as a principle, I call it “buying a month” as opposed to “subscribing.” Right now I’m waiting for Secret Wars to finish on Disney+. Will probably watch the last few MCU movies and some other stuff during the same month so that’s probably up to 10 shows/movies for $whatever-a-month-goes-for these days. Might do a month of Netflix later in the autumn, as I have a few things I want to watch there now that didn’t quite justify buying on their own. And no, I very rarely rewatch anything, so I don’t really worry about loosing access to them in the future.
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Then I would definitely dig out my old eye-patch and captains hat again 🏴☠️
Yarrrrr!
A lot of other services usually offer a yearly discount, and I can see Netflix offering that. However, I don’t see Netflix choosing to get rid of the monthly market entirely.
They could just make the monthly price so high that people will always get the yearly plan. For example, make the yearly plan cost the same amount as three months on the monthly plan.
They could, but it appears that stream switching is becoming a way that people are consuming streaming media. It becomes a business decision as to whether to go for that market segment or not.
No doubt this is coming in the near future
If that happens…mass exodus don’t think they are that stupid! The service, the company are on a cliff edge…it would be equivalent of slitting their throat and bleeding out fast!
We wanted to axe one of our two streaming services next month. This makes the choice pretty easy. The netflix catalogue sucks balls anyway
F
Enshittification 101. Usenet is cheaper, torrent indexers can be free. Remember, “Information wants to be free”, also remember the 5th of November…
SSDs are very cheap these days
HDDs are even cheaper and you really don’t need an SSD for movies. You can get a 4tb HDD for less than 50 bucks and that will hold more than enough movies/shows for the majority of people.
You can get a 4tb HDD for less than 50 bucks
[citation needed]
Couldn’t find them (or some that are close), at least not in the EU.
Edit: But I’d be happy to see US examples as well.
You can get refurbed drives for under $50.
New ones that aren’t white label (which, nothing wrong with that) for 4 TB are about $100.
WD Red 4TB drives are only around $70 new, and they’re built for constant use in NAS devices.
Those would be the SMR drives, if you don’t want that you’re looking at about $84.
I see, I got a WD Red Plus for myself for around that price, and it looks like that’s CMR. The base WD Red is SMR, though.
Yep! The Plus/Pro line is the good shit. The base models of WD drives are not great now, especially if you’re going to set up a RAID array of some sort.
I admit my mistake, I just quickly looked up the cheapest HDDs on google and saw some for 40 USD but it looks like they aren’t for sale anymore or something. Still, a WD Red goes for 70 bucks, which is half the price of a SSD of that size while also being more than good enough for movies.
The cheapest Sata HDD i can find in the US thats 4TB is $60. So maybe if they go on sale they could be less than $50. But OP was probably just exaggerating.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XK45S8B?tag=pcpapi-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1
If you look at price per TB 4TB drives are a bad choice.
Plexshares are soon going to be the only thing people will need as less money and value without bs politics and taking customers for granted and as fools…
If you use a “public” Plex share (one that you find online and pay a monthly fee for), Plex will eventually find you and suspend your account.
A safer approach with Plex is to get a cheap server (assuming you can direct play on most client systems), get an unlimited Dropbox team account for storage, use rclone to mount Dropbox on the server, and auto-download via Usenet using Radarr, Sonarr and Lidarr. Split the cost across a bunch of friends.
Or just use Weyd or Syncler plus a Real Debrid account. Real Debrid caches torrents so they’re instantly available to stream at full speed over an encrypted (TLS) connection.
@dan @cyberpiggy is Plex really that much better than say Jellyfin?
I’m not sure if either one is definitively better; they both have their pros and cons. Plex is probably the most popular at the moment, so colloquially the term “plex shares” is the most common term used for systems where you pay someone to share their media collection with you.
real debrid might be a good option
Getting to the point where they aren’t worth the money, it is one increase away from being a dead loss of a service
They’re just driving us to self hosted content quicker. Honestly if you can afford a NAS like a Synology or an Asustor, setting up Plex is so easy.
Some edits to this comment:
- It’s surprisingly easy to do this versus most other custom configurations. You don’t even have to build a PC and setup holds your hand.
- This is NOT including obtaining content, I was simply saying “Getting Plex running”.
- There are other configs you may need to get Plex the way you want, but watching your content on your local network effectively is complete once you complete the standard setup.
You still need to get content generated.
Yep you do and some may argue that, depending on how you obtain that content, it’s even easier than the setup of the NAS and Plex itself.
You vastly over estimate the willingness of people to learn how a computer works.
I self host so much stuff but like… the amount of time and effort that’s gone into that… maybe $10 or $20 a month totally makes sense after all to most people haha
I’m definitely not saving money by self hosting, but it’s a fun way to drain my bank account.
Definitely time and learning curve. I’ve really wanted to self host some apps for 1–2 months now. Currently taking basic sql and python courses so that I can do the installations and databases correctly. App documentation is usually lacking and YT tutorials lead to more products and terms I’ve never heard of. There’s a big learning curve for non-programmers.
Well, I mean on those vendor NASes it’s pretty much just chuck in a hard drive or two, follow prompts for setup, install the Plex app from said vendor’s app marketplace, make a login, and add your content to the specific TV, Music, or Movie folders…Admittedly this doesn’t get you setup with running Plex outside the network, but as a basic setup it’s fairly easy.
I’m also confident someone would mess those instructions up, but if you even understand what self hosting is I’m fairy confident someone could follow the above instructions to add their content. Obtaining content is a different story, but if you already have your content it is easy.
Even though many people suggest that, I don’t believe you can compare any off-the-shelf streaming service with a self-hosted Plex.
You have to find and download content to your Plex. You don’t get recommendations. You don’t get a built-in interface on your smart TV. You have to deal with network configuration, VPN, private trackers, seeding ratios etc.
How on earth is that comparable to pressing the Netflix button on your TV and selecting a recommended show? Even my boomer parents managed to do this on their own.
Plex gives recommendations and has apps for smarts TVs.
Agreed that obtaining the content can be difficult but the user experience is top notch. It even skips credits and jumps to next episodes for tv shows now too.
For obtaining content, Nefarious is my go to solution. It’s nearly as seamless once you get past initial setup (which is not simple)
I think we gotta work on building community if we want to see people really move away from streaming services. One person with a NAS in a small apartment building could help a lot of their neighbors out with entertainment. It would be more work for the person hosting, but if the folks who benefit help their friend out too it might end up being less work overall.
I’d give someone access, teach them how to use the software, and download some of their favorite shows if they let me borrow their truck when I needed, shared dinner sometimes, or helped me clean house. I think a lot of folks would benefit from that kind of thing, but it would require us making friends with our neighbors. Which, on reflection, is actually really really hard. I imagine it would be kinda awkward to start the conversations around this, but you’d get around the step of everyone getting their own NAS at least!
I remember in the zeroes everybody knew a guy who sold burned dvd’s. At first they came as a bare dvd in an envelop, but eventually they came in an actual dvd case with a copy of the original sleeve as welll. Some guys would even sell from a stand in public markets.
I could see these guys sell local hosted streaming services to their neighbours, friends and anyone else through word of mouth.
If you take the time to RATE everything you watch in Jellyfin the recommendations start getting pretty good.
I have a built-in interface on my smart TV for Jellyfin, and I had one for Plex.
I didn’t have to deal with any network config, just login once.
Your concerns over obtaining the content are valid, but concerns around the user experience are not.
Well, there is also this news https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/netflix-subscribers-up-q2-earnings-1235673960/ showing that apparently many people just pay up to keep their access.
ONE DEFINITELY SHOULDNT LOOK INTO RADARR OR SONARR OR QBITTORRENT WITH THAT NICE SEARCH BAR THAT SEARCHES MULTIPLE TORRENT SITES.
No one should ever know about the torrentio addon for Stremio!
When I downloaded streamio it couldn’t find that add-on
That’s because it is not tied to stremio, otherwise it would be illegal, you have to search for it :P
How about I do it anyway
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FYI, Proton free tier doesn’t support P2P traffic.
Also there definitely isn’t a VPN called cryptostorm that offers a nice free tier.
Ideally you should only use a VPN that supports port forwarding to download torrents, like AirVPN. Your IP is still hidden, but you can also seed the torrents. Don’t be a leecher! Sharing is caring.
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1.0 ratio leggoooooo
Oh well, there’s not much worth watching on netflix anyways. I hardly ever use the free account that came with my cell phone plan.
The next step is for the ad-tier to go to $7.99, $8.99, $9.99
The strategy was always to make the ad-free options more valuable by comparison.
In no more than 36 months, the ad-tier will cost the $9.99 it was intended to replace, making Netflix having successfully added ads to the base tier, for no discount.
Maybe they noticed that most people don’t want the most expensive Plan if they are not allowed to share anymore
pirateshipnoises
You’ll find me in the Drunken Slug tavern.
YO HO AHOY AND AVAST BEING A PIRATE IS REALLY BADASS RAISE THE BLACK FLAG AT THE END OF THE MAST YOU ARE A PIRATE
First rule of the sea:
Never place your rear end on a pirate’s face.
This is exactly the sort of stuff we predicted way back then; this is why I’ve never touched this stuff.
I remember commenting on Reddit that the ad tier would start chiseling away the solid ad free tiers. I had absolute vitriol spew at me for saying that. And here we are.
Honestly, I was expecting them to try this a lot earlier then now.
The vitriol meant you were right.
Just don’t fall into the trap to think that receiving backlash automatically means you’re in the right. Otherwise, u/spez and Putin would need to be considered heroes for their bravery of doing their thing despite protests.
Strange how that works out isn’t it?
