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?
It seems everyone here misunderstood your post then spam downvoted you.
For pirating streams versus pirated selfhosted the biggest reason for the latter besides just being a fun hobby is reliability. Internets out? I can still watch whatever I want and know it’s ready to go :)
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.
Y’all looking for a reason to be mad
im a simple user
I don’t really like watching things
then this shit aint for you. just because you can do something doesnt mean you have to want to do it.
im old and have been doing this for almost 30 years. long before jellyfin; my kids never suffered commercials, never had to worry about some streaming service going up or down. they never had to care whether some source had the show they wanted. even when away from home, they were streaming my shit.
my very large curated collection may be less random than some iptv streams, but sure as fuck is more reliable, dependable, quality controlled and well, i dont even need to have fucking internet access for my shit (my library) to work for me.
I just like actually owning all my stuff and don’t want to deal with sites randomly shutting down, moving, having an incomplete or miss-organized library, bad quality, etc. My own collection certainly isn’t prefect but if there is issues I can fix them, it’s all in one place (no different sites for movies, tv shows, anime, music, etc) and it tracks all my watch-history which most free sites don’t. I can one-click download stuff to my laptop or phone for offline-watching (guess you can do that with yt-dlp for most sites, but again more effort)
Are you hosting arr stack/plex/jellyfin?
Yup.
How much is it utilized (in watch hours/week for example, mine was less than 2/week)?
I get about 3 days of watch-time between my 10ish active users per week.
Have you considered not using it?
Nope, I’m so done with the free streaming site whack-a-mole, not going back.
I never had any issues with the entire site whack-a-mole thing. I just go to fmhy, select some of the starred services and watch.
Because you’re a child who can’t have been at this for more than a couple years. Most of the sites you use now probably won’t be there in 5 years.
And? The indexes are constantly updating, based on working sites. It might have benn different back in 2000s or 2010s, but now it’s pretty easy to find a new site when the old one closes
…which is the whack a mole you claim wasn’t an issue for you.
No one said it was hard. It’s annoying. And unnecessary with an arr setup.
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?
Yep, attack on titan, arguably the best show ever made.
Streaming services exist, and i used to use them faithfully, here are some issues with streaming services:
- not all content is high definition. Some older sttuff is bad quality and better quality can be found elsewhere like bluerays
- if the subtitles suck then you are stuck with them. When selfhosting you can download better ones for those shows.
- licensing changes and a show you’re watching will be moved to another provider… or not at all. It’s just gone.
- for a family wanting to watch different shows at the same time, 1 service may not be enough. You may need 2 or 3 or even 5. That adds up $$.
- ad-free experience, quality of streams, number of simultaneous streams, etc are monetized under streaming services. This does not happen when you selfhost
- You are giving money to large companies that will use their wealth and power to screw you over.
Those are just some that come to mind.
I’m talking about piracy streaming sites. I never even considered paying a subscribtion, thar’s why I don’t have a real domain
So piracy streaming sites are ok for you and your family, but pirated copies are not. Did I understand this right?
No, for my family no piracy is okay and for me all piracy is okay. They use their streaming services and I use my free streaming sites
I only use Jellyfin because we want to watch it on the TV and not on the laptop.
So ,use HDMI cable or mirror cast
Some people don’t want their living room to look like set decoration in an 80s hacker film. Not all of us are single dudes who sleep on a mattress on the floor
Welcome back from the coma, grandpa! We stopped calling computers “mainframes” a good while ago and started shrinking them so they’d comfortably fit behind a TV screen, in a drawer or some place else that’s out of sight. You’ll be amazed once you see it all…