Disney is raking its customers over the coals with a 75% price hike for their annual subscription (originally $80.) People wonder why piracy is on the rise.
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Stuff like this is the reason I built a NAS a few years ago.
...and now I'm paying for power, usenet, search, hardware upgrades, and so on.
I regret nothing - I'm in control now.
I'm sure it's cheaper to maintain overall too, not including the one-time costs of hardware. Plus as you said, control is very valuable - and you get privacy, too! Nobody selling your usage data.
TBH, it would depend on how many services I'm theoretically replacing, and whether you count the people I've shared my library with. Before I went down the rabbit hole, cost was the motivation, but I'm long past that.
Between the usenet subs, paid search engines, power for a 24 bay server running 24x7, and adding a new drive every few months, I can't really defend it on a cost basis for my own use (though that's not to say it can't be done considerably cheaper).
Similarly, I'm giving my data to a handful of usenet search engines and 2 usenet providers my data (though I trust all of them more than the likes of Disney and Netflix)
With all that said, I've never looked back. It's a hobby project for me, I have total control, can help out my friends and family, and use the server for other stuff like private cloud hosting, home automation, network ad-blocking, etc...
Yep, looking at doing the exact same thing myself, albeit smaller scale to start with. I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the ride despite the cost, because I know I'm headed down the same path, lol. Cheers.
Welcome to the fun!
If you need any guidance from this idiot, feel free to reach out.
The best general advice I can give is if you want something reasonably large and flexible is to start with Unraid from the outset - I mucked around with a good number of alternatives, with all the hassle that involves before finding this straightforward, super-flexible solution. Otherwise, maybe look at a synology-type appliance for something smaller-scale and less versatile.
Thanks! If I can be candid, I almost asked for your best piece of advice in my previous comment, so I appreciate it. I've heard great things about both - Synology especially people always seem to have good things to say. Still doing the research and deciding the best hardware path for the use case at the moment, so I'll be sure to keep you in mind and pick your brain sometime!
No worries!
The upside of synology (and I say this without having used them) is simplicity, and low power usage at the cost of flexibility.
On unraid, I can toss in extra drives when I like (or remove them with slightly more hassle), and spin far more up, including VMs.
Feel free to check in whenever though.
How does NAS help with that?
🏴☠️Yar
But you don't need NAS for that. Why do you want to store stuff that you watch once? Just stream it.
A) I often rewatch things, especially shows like Family Guy just to make noise while I do something else.
B) there's lots difficult to find media like the 1960s Dr Who series or the entire works of Buster Keaton that can't just be streamed whenever.
C) I share with several friends and family, just because I've seen it doesn't mean they have.
D) Control/security over my collection. When I want to watch a piece of media, I know its there and available. It hasn't disappeared from whatever service (free or paid) had it last I looked.
And finally
E) No internet access required. If my internet is out, or I want to go somewhere I won't have internet: I still have full access to my media. (files can be freely moved to mobile devices that won't have network whenever I feel like it)
/edit. As a side note; I've also automated media acquisition via radarr+sonarr. I just open a self-hosted web page, search for a title, click 'add+search' and 20min later it's been found, downloaded and is available to watch. My users can even request media via Ombi without having to ask me. I don't have to spend any time looking for media ever (be that a streaming link or a torrent).
Well, I use Russian streaming services. All the media imaginable is instantly available to me and I can download it for offline use if I need it. No need for NAS at all.
If that works for you, cool.
I will not support a Russian service, nor will it accommodate my needs.
The biggest reason for this route is that, once setup, finding/watching whatever I or my family wants is as close to effortless as It can be. I don't have to deal with shady services, nor am I at their mercy (referring to access and content availability). This is particularly important when sharing with friends/family that are not tech savvy. If they have an issue, I can actually do something about it and don't have to hold their hand through some shady third party site or worry that they've gotten themselves into trouble. Once it's been downloaded, everyone I've shared with can access it at anytime hassle and worry free. I (and the rest of my users) don't have to use caution browsing or streaming from my platform, while I do with random sketchy services. A problem made much worse with alcohol.
It's not effortless, you have to search for content somewhere and download it. Instead of going to a known service which has everything for you in one place at all times. This is particularly important for non tech savvy people - you just tell them streaming service address and login/password and they can watch anything they want without waiting for you to download stuff.
No I don't. Now that my server is setup (which it has been for 7+ years), I spend 0 time or effort searching for media files or sources for them.
As I said, I open my own self-hosted web page, search for a title (results from IMDB, The TVDB, and TheMovieDB), and click 'add'. The software does all the rest: from finding a download link to actually downloading the files, to renaming and sorting them into my media library, even grabbing all the metadata like synopsis, cast, ratings, posters, and a trailer to present it in a netflix-style interface.
My users can also open a webpage hosted by me and request media with the same lack of effort, to be acquired automatically, typically ready to watch in under 15min.
Half the time we don't even have to do that as the software is also monitoring various lists from IMDB, automatically adding media that gets added to those lists, as well as grabbing every new episode of every show in my library as they release.
My library literally builds/expands itself. Most of the time whatever we wanted to watch has already been grabbed, and the few times it hasn't, it'll be available in as little as 3min once requested. (note: just because it's been downloaded, doesn't mean it's gotta be kept forever. Some stuff does get rotated out.)
I am the known service my users come to. They don't have to trust a third party, deal with their restrictions/whims, or worry at all.
That third party could at anytime remove your access, disappear/go offline, decide to (intentionally or accidentally) host malware, fall prey to the law, remove the content you wanted, or any other plethora of problems with dealing with third parties.
As long as I've got power; I've got literal years (played back to back, no breaks) of content to entertain me and my family. I'm dependant on nobody in that aspect.
Unless all you ever watch is newly released mainstream media this is blatantly false. I have never ever encountered a streaming service with anything close to the range of media my cricle enjoys.
Ontop of all this; my server will also transcode between formats and quality settings on the fly so users with poor connections or device's that can't directly play the stored format can still stream without buffering. I've never known a service outside the big name streaming platforms to do this (YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc). Several of my users have garbage internet, but will happily watch media in a reduced quality to avoid buffering. Awesome for mobile data too; I regularly watch media on my bus ride home from work.
Lol ok
That's because you don't know where to look. I watched all of the original Doctor Who without any issues. It's not Netflix, lol.
That's the power of usenet. My downloads are limited by disk speed, not my connection. Didn't believe it myself until I had it running. I used to use torrents which were slow af.
Exactly the damn problem; you have to look for, depend on, and trust some other service to have it available to stream when you want to stream it.
I just throw names at my server whenever I happen to hear of something interesting to watch (often while I am at work) and it finds it for me. I can then watch and share it with as many people as I like without involving anyone or anything else whenever I want to.
/edit: for the record, I'm not the one downvoting you.