🏴☠️
Arrr!
Wow! I only realized now why the *arr software (radarr, sonarr, bazarr …) are named like that despite using them for years.
Thanks for the epiphany.
Sail the High Seas Matey!
Ahoy mate
Hmm, pay $20 a month apiece for 20 different shitty streaming services that use ads, or $6/month for Usenet access and $1/month for indexer access, and get every movie and TV show for nothing extra…
Choices, choices.
What’s the easiest/best way to start with UseNet? I’ve wanted to give it a try for the longest time - but it just feels like such a daunting task to try and figure out…
It’s not complicated. The Usenet provider gives you access to Usenet, and the indexer lets you search it for whatever you want. You then download it with a Usenet client. You can do it manually, much the same way as you download a torrent from any site. if you’ve downloaded a torrent before, you would be able to manage Usenet with no issues at all.
Or, if you’re willing to spend a few hours setting up the Servarr apps on an old computer like I did, you can automate the whole thing. I recommend this option, because you do it once and then you have a seamless way to fetch files from torrent and Usenet both without ever doing anything more than typing in the name of the show/movie. The Servarr apps search for, download, and import media into my library so that I can stream them to all my devices using Jellyfin (or Plex, if you like corpo apps). They even fetch proper subtitles for everything, and I also have it set up so after I’ve watched an episode, it’s deleted to make room for something else. It’s as easy as Netflix, at a fraction of the cost.
Sonarr & Radarr
Exactly. Movie? Enter name, wait a minute, watch. Series? Enter name, wait a while longer, watch.
My understanding is that not everything is available that way though. I had a friend say they tried to get star trek the motion picture. And while it was there. A month later he still only had half of it. Thats a pretty big name movie to be so hard to get.
Depends. I never have had anything that’s not available. Except one older series that wasn’t available anywhere, not even streaming legally. And for dubbed shit it can be more complicated. But i rarely consume that. I use usenet btw with only two indexers. Could add more and even torrents too, that might even make it better. But i would already be fine with just one indexer at all.
I’ve heard of usenet. Never understood how they can exist legally. Or how people pay them legally.
It’s just as old as the internet itself. Primary reason was communication. A gargantuan federated forum. The binary-part was just there but not that extensively used. Now it’s the other way round (sadly). Communication is down, binaries are up. As to the legality: It’s federated, worldwide. Some providers do take DMCAs, but (as with the rest of the net) it doesn’t do much. Because first most pir8-content is obfuscated and pwd-protected. And second, the moment something was taken down, someone else re-ups it again :-) Benefits to torrent and debrid and all: Retention. So a thing from 10yrs back you can still get with absolute maximum speed your line can do (and your provider gives you ofc). Fuck seeders and upload-ratio and co. Just get it as fast as anything could be. I usually download with ca. 250mb/s. 100 parallel connections. Only some group’s FTP can beat this. But they’re not for the public.
As to legally paying: It’s just a service that gives you access to something. like debrid. You can have usenet access just to communicate with people or download linux-distros or anything else legal. Also, even in my very restricted country, downloading is legal. Uploading is not.
So it’s federated like lemmy? Interesting. So you pay an instance I assume. But does that get you access to all other instances like lemmy? That seems odd, but possible.
not exactly like lemmy. It’s more like ONE base of content they all share. But it’s not like instance A only gives you interracial gay midget-porn, and instance B only farming-simulators and C only linux-apps :) But yes, you pay one of the providers and usually have it all. There’s a chart somewhere to which one is backed by whom, and hence the best retention you could get. AFAIK Eweka is one of the root-providers (I use them and they have regularly cheap deals). For automated easy downloads you’d also need an indexer. There are free ones but they aren’t offering API-acccess. You can get those very cheap to moderatly cheap. I pay like 20 bucks a year for two indexers (where one would really totally suffice). Kinda like the same you’d need for torrent too. A site to get your torrent from.
The problems I have are for very specific categories. A lot of the reality tv isn’t available because they are meant to be watched during the time period they air. The more popular ones are still there, jersey shore for example. Documentaries can be hit or miss, especially the ones that were released for free already on a random site or YouTube. You can always download those directly from the web page though.
Sometimes I have trouble with very old seasons of shows. Usually its easier to find an entire show torrent, but sonarr can’t handle multi-season downloads so you have to do it manually.
I have more trouble with things that should be automated requiring manaual intervention than the things not being available at all.
Dont forget jellyfin and on mobile ruddarr to control them
This is why pirating isn’t an option to most people, you need like 4 apps and a dedicated pc running as a server to match the one click ease of streaming services, it’s ok for me but I get why my parents or less tech savvy people would be unable to figure it out
Yes this is true today but dont forget that linux is just generally slow. As each app is a docker there is one day the possibility of someone rolling all 4 or 5 apps into a preconfigured single docker or app that can be a one click install, easy to use. It just hasnt happened yet due to time/lack of effort and so on. Open source is slow like that. Its a voluntary thing so these things always take years.
someone rolling all 4 or 5 apps into a preconfigured single docker or app that can be a one click install
The reason each program does its own thing is for legal liability. One downloads what media you search for, it’s up to the person operating the software to choose media for which they can legal download. The next manages the metadata and organization of media but is up to the user to supply media for which they hold appropriate licenses to. Etc. Etc.
By putting all of the pieces together into one package you lose that deniability of software which has legal usecases but happens to be able to be combined to do something illegal.
You know how normies pirate? They find free/cheap streaming sites and hop from one to the next as they get shut down
PopcornTime. Problem solved.
Same issue, only popular and new titles. But I do use it
Do you happen to know of guides, that teach how to use that setup securely?
Yo ho!
Blocked on .world.
It’s really time to switch.
If I want to pay money, I’ll buy the DVD. If I just want it one time, I have ways and means.
I dont like having DVDs everywhere.
if they offered DRM free paid downloads so i could give them my money and just host it myself i probably would give them my money.
but they don’t, so i sail
That is fair. But I’ve had more HDD failure than DVD disc rot so far. I prefer physical media which doesn’t require engaging my computer.
Physical media is the way
You can mitigate against HDD failure with RAID and backups.
I have two 8TB HDDs in a RAID1 configuration. if one dies i can remove the dead one and add a new one to the array and the data will sync back across from the good drive. I also have two 10TB drives in rotation going to offsite storage. every now and again i backup my server to one of these drives, take it to the place i store them and swap them over.
Only thing i’m missing from the 321 rule is different mediums, considering the amount of data i’m dealing with though the cost of backing up to tape though was prohibitative
I swear when I first heard 321 it was “at least 3 copies of the data in at least 2 physical locations with at least one copy being offline” but now I’m hearing of different storage mediums instead of different locations
I may be wrong but my understanding was 3 copies of the data, across two storage formats, with one offsite
Given that physical media comes with DRM I can’t see that happening
Steam is DRM but is invisible enough that i haven’t pirated a game since i was a teenager.
As always Piracy is a service issue
DVDs are like 480p quality
At least get regular blurays
Blu-Ray is a pain to play in VLC, for the times I do want to play it on PC. Besides, I can’t much see beyond 480i and roughly 30fps. And I can’t rip it as easily.
You don’t read them into Jellyfin? I just assumed you used MakeMVK.
Market trends have inspired me to make my own plex server on raspberry pi. It will be a fun project. :)
While you’re at it, set that Lil guy up as a pi-hole. Best things I’ve ever set up on my raspberrypi
Use kodi instead.
Don’t do that
Performance will be bad
Yeah. I just moved my Plex server to my newly rebuilt and Linuxized old gaming machine, a 9700K (8 core Intel) with 32 gigs of ram and a GTX1080 GPU. It is so nice having all that performance available, especially the GPU if somebody needs to transcode while watching.
I can use that machine like normal without affecting anything streaming from the box. Next time I need to encode a video I’ll have to try watching something 4K transcoded to lower bitrate 4K/1080p at the same time to see if I notice anything.
yarrr matey
This service is not available in your country.
Anyone who still forks money to billionaires for entertainment might be stupid.
I agree with the sentiment but if a large majority would stop using these services and pirating wouldn’t it result in either less entertainment or more crackdowns?
Nope. It resulted in the original Netflix, aka a service that actually worked and had everything we wanted for a time. Direct reaction to mass piracy and actually reduced it by 90℅ iirc.
You also can’t crack down on non centralized services and the more decentralized nodes, the harder the job becomes and the more expensive. At some point it will become uneconomic to go after pirates.
And, yes there will be massively less movies & shows which is very good. We live in a fresh hell where billionaires push out half baked shit every week and the only way to tell them is to not buy it.
Good points, thanks for taking the time to explain your point. I strongly agree with the on about the quantity of slop churned out nowadays.
The slop is an unfortunate consequence of the streaming model.
Because there is so much content on streaming and it’s so readily accessible, watching a movie isn’t an “event” anymore in the way it was when DVD or VHS was the only option. And when you pair this with second-screen devices (phones) then it all adds up to people treating movies as background entertainment while they scroll their phone or do something else.
And because of that, the way shows and movies are produced has changed, too. The reason everything seems like homogenous cookie-cutter crap is because it is. In fact Netflix have specifically been asking producers to dumb content down so viewers can still understand it even when they are only paying half attention.
Of course, there are still talented people out there making great movies and shows, but they are increasingly drowned in a sea of copy-paste mediocrity.
And I do feel sorry for all those perhaps equally talented but less senior writers, directors, editors and artists who might never get to produce a movie they are truly proud of, because they’ve been captured by the streaming content factory that demands of them only a constant treadmill of dumbed-down slop, cheap and quick and instantly forgettable - and that people will only ever half-watch.
This is indeed a crying shame. I do not understand the concept of watching a movie while scrolling on my phone but maybe that’s just because I grew up with VHS and normal TV programing.
Again, thanks for the detailed reply, it was very interesting!
I found a VHS player at a second hand shop and got into buying and watching VHS before the pandemic and it was actually relaxing. Even with DVD/Blu ray I can’t get as immersed as I was with watching VHS. I would know that at night I was going to watch D.A.R.Y.L and just kick back and not get off the couch. It was a whole thing…power surge fried my player and haven’t found another one yet
Sad to hear about your player, sounds like you had good thing going. There’s something different about the experience, I agree with you.
They really should have just built their own Netflix but profits get split amongst the copyright holders. Every single one of their analysts was warning them what would have happened if they couldn’t solve this real world game theory problem.
The current model has its own issues. The amount of series that are cancelled after the first or second season is ludicrous. Also, and I’m not sure if it’s related to streaming or the constant writer’s strikes, but series have reduced from 16-26 episodes per season from the height of the piracy-era to 6-10 nowadays.
If the reduction in piracy led to this deterioration in quality, then I can’t imagine it could get any worse if everyone started pirating again.
Personally, I reckon it will incentivise the numbskulls in charge that no one is going to pay for 48 separate streaming services and they’ll be forced to adapt (likely via packaging/merging streaming services together).
They just need to start bundling with other things
Or you can buy it for $30, but no you can’t have a digital copy. And if, in the future, the service folds, then you can no longer watch it.
I only have one streaming service, and it’s got pretty much everything.
Arrrr
Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid
You can thank me later
Why later? I’ll thank you right fucking now!
Thank you kind sir.
Enjoy! Debrid can also unrestrict file sharing sites like katfile, scribd, etc.
Wait what? I have RD and I didn’t know I could use it for scribd!
I didn’t know for months either until I was trying to help someone find an elusive pdf only available there. Were close to just making a scribd trial when I thought to try.
Haven’t tried recently but it likely still works.
Edit: still does!
Even after RD’s massive anti-piracy swing?
I tried put.io and Torbox but they throw errors even when I can see they downloaded the torrent
I didn’t know about any swing and started using it for the past month with no issues so far
French gov recently went after them and they made a big thing about not hosting copyrighted content, but as far as I can tell nothing’s changed.
Their entire reason to exist is to host copyrighted content. They’re just telling the French what they want to hear to get them off of their asses.
What do you mean? I use solely use it as an off-site Linux iso cache.
anti-piracy swing?
All bark, no bite
Never had any issues. It works perfectly when I use it with 1337x and TBP.
Dont know why they’re beefing with those trackers specifically, but it doesn’t affect Stremio’s operations one bit. I can still stream any movie or show I want instantly to my TV.
Alas, you can always use a different Debrid service. I simply prefer R-D because it’s the most popular, which means that tends to have more content available for instant stream rather than having to wait for seeds. Almost every torrent I want has already been cached by another user for instant download.
stremio and RD are not the same. if RD goes down stremio app/site won’t be affected just the addon
Yes I understand that. I never said that they were the same. You don’t need R-D to use Stremio, but it’s a much smoother experience if you do, cause you can stream instantly without waiting for seeds.
gotcha
I only have one streaming service and it has literally everything.
Streamio ?
Self hosted jellyfin
