This post contains content related to media piracy. I couldn’t find any rules for this community and I don’t know if it’s allowed. I accept the risk of getting this post taken down or being banned without knowing the rules.
With that small disclaimer out of the way, let’s tackle my question.
I’m a simple self hoster: I have single server made out of an Optiplex 3060 Micro (i5 8500T, 32GB, 14TB of storage in one drive), I use duckdns instead of a real domain and I have no supporting infrastructure. I don’t really like watching things, I set up arr stack mainly because everyone says it’s the best thing to use a homelab for.
My family have strong opinions on piracy and I know for a fact they wouldn’t use my jellyfin, even if I tried to manipulate them, which btw is a really bad practice (if it’s as common as responses under posts about getting people to use your homelab suggest).
I also have hard time getting them to even allow me to run my homelab (I’m a teenager, I live with my parents), because it takes space and uses power (for context idle is around 8W).
As I said, I don’t watch things that often and even if I watch, I’m extremely monothematic, I watch basically only AOT and sometimes some random popular movie.
I understand that my situation is quite unique, but I find it hard to argue for Jellyfin+arrs when fmhy and countless reliable streaming sites exists.
I already made my mind, I’ll stop using those services today. I’m interested how others look at this “problem” tho.
Are you hosting arr stack/plex/jellyfin?
How much is it utilized (in watch hours/week for example, mine was less than 2/week)?
Have you considered not using it?
If you stopped using it and went back, what happened, why did you change your mind?
Is your next post going to be in a baking comm asking people if they have considered just buying a loaf at the grocery? Its an important life lesson to get early that its OK that other people have different tastes and priorities than you do.
its OK that other people have different tastes and priorities than you do
There is a great book on this called the ‘The Let Them Theory’ by Mel Robbins. Stop wasting energy on things you can’t control and stop comparing yourself to other people.
That’s an unnecessarily rude response. Even in the baking community, it should be fine to ask what goes into their decision to bake bread, or why they choose to bake bread instead of spending their time baking other things instead. Even if he already made up his mind, it’s fine to be curious about the motivations others.
He didn’t tell you what you can or can’t do, or what you should or shouldn’t do. He didn’t jellyfin is bad or that self hosting in general is bad. He wasn’t rude.
You say it’s an important life lesson to get that it’s ok for other people to have different tastes and priorities, but it’s also healthy to ask people about those tastes and priorities.
Mostly because all of those streaming apps are an absolutely horrendous experience, and many of them aren’t supported on Linux.
They just show you the same shit over and over. They’re filled with ads, even if you pay, and cram a bunch of other subscriptions down your throat every time you open them.
You better use a certified device or you get 480p@16 bits per second.
Ohh and HDCP. When I opened Netflix on my pc 2/3 monitors went blank, back when I still used windows.
Yes that’s what I was getting at.
Fo me, most of this services don’t offer dubbed or good subtitled versions of what I want to watch.
I prefer to have a collection that’s mine that I will be able to use even if they lock down the internet someday.
I have single server made out of an Optiplex 3060 Micro
I’ve got a couple of Optiplex including a 3020 micro. Snappy little machines.
I also have hard time getting them to even allow me to run my homelab (I’m a teenager, I live with my parents), because it takes space and uses power (for context idle is around 8W).
Do a cost analysis. Present your parents with the results. Offer to do odd jobs around the house to offset the incurred cost of power consumption. For instance, generally speaking, that OptiPlex 3060 Micro running 24/7 in my locale would cost me about $3 per month to run 24/7. Which is pretty negligible, but understandable that your parents are concerned with costs and resources. Sometimes parents default to that boomer mentality that ‘I didn’t have a server when I was a kid and I walked to school uphill, both ways, in the snow, barefooted’. LOL However, when presented with some facts, charts n graphs, and a goal to learn a life skill, you might see some leniency.
Are you hosting arr stack/plex/jellyfin?
I do not run the 'arr stack, but I do run about 38 other containers on my Ubuntu Jammy server. I prefer reading to watching.
Not sure why you are getting down voted, but don’t let it get under your skin.
It sounds like it’s just not worth it for you, and that’s totally fine! Plenty of people get by just fine with using random streaming sites.
Personally, I want something more reliable, I want to have copies of what I watch in my possession that cannot be taken down, and I want to share this with others so that my friends can benefit from my time investment instead of using a solution that only works for me. So that if my friends ask me “where do you get your stuff” I can offer to share with them at 0 extra effort instead of telling them “go do all these things that I already did”
As for usage, I only watch a few hours a week myself, but I share with 15-20 friends and family who watch a collective 160 hours a month last year and around 360 hours a month this year (about 15 days of watch time per month).
I have a fairly comprehensive arrstack, torrents and Usenet, seerr, Plex and jellyfin side by side with identical media mounts for maximum user choice, running on a nuc with quicksync so it handles 8+ simultaneous 1080p live transcodes without using much power or increasing CPU usage much more than 5-10%.
I’ve hosted my own media since before Plex existed. But I understand that almost all of my video is “collection”, not actually useful.
My server was useful for about 5 years when my kids were young and it provided all their shows without ads.
I’m starting to delete stuff.
What is AOT? Attack on Titan?
I reccomended maintainerr for deleting stuff
Thanks but as I said, it’s about the collecting, not the watching. I captured/filtered/converted shows like Buzz Lightyear of Star Command for my nephew 25 years ago. I’m not going to delete it despite that no one is watching it or will watch it for decades (maybe when nephew has kids or if I have grandkids). It’s not even available on any streaming.
I think if I ran maintainerr, it would tell me to delete everything except the home videos that my mother in law likes to watch.
Yep, attack on titan, arguably the best show ever made.
Here is a few off the top of my mind:
Streaming services take away content all the time, license expired and goes to another service.
Streaming services do not have everything, they are actually quite limited on content.
Streaming services often remove episodes from seasons, so you don’t even get all the episodes.
Pirate streaming sites go down all the time as governments crack down.
Streaming services cost more and more and more, with less and less content.
Some media is only available on older mediums such as VHS (and never came out on dvd, streaming, etc) but pirates have archived these rare movies.
You might feel like the world is available to you online, but I have been around since the start of the internet and have seen many, many things go the way of the dodo 🦤. Things go away. Websites gone, files gone, laws change, etc. if you’re not archiving it, you may never see it again.
I suppose some people like to collect stuff. You’re right that it’s easy to access mainstream stuff, but once you decide to watch some less known movie - especially an old one - you may struggle to find it. Even with somewhat popular movies there are things like extended/director’s cuts, remasters, re-releases, etc. So I get it.
With that said, I watch on average one movie per week, so android tv with a video player that can browse a samba share is more than enough for me.
Are you hosting arr stack/plex/jellyfin? Jellyfin/VLC
How much is it utilized (in watch hours/week for example, mine was less than 2/week)? 2 hours a day minimum.
Have you considered not using it? Why?
If you stopped using it and went back, what happened, why did you change your mind? Nope
I like having stuff. I particularly like having stuff and not having to go look for it when I want to watch it. 'scuse me, I’m gonna go start a random Doctor Who episode from over 60 years of material. That said, I live somewhere where torrenting is dicey, so free streaming sites are pretty convenient if you know how to use jDownloader.