I accidentally set up a home server running Plex/Jellyfin, and now I control all my media without paying £18 per month to a company that regularly takes away content and prevents account sharing.
You wouldn’t want someone else to accidentally do that, would you?
Right exactly it can be as expensive as you want it to be. I have 2 12TB drives going. But you absolutely could just buy a $200 mini PC with a 1TB drive in it. Write a simple shell script that purges content first in first out. Cheap.
I host not only all the Servarr apps, but about a dozen more miscellaneous ones on an old unused workstation I stole out of the attic at my old job. It has a shitty quadcore and 16gb of ram that I cobbled together from a couple other workstations I nabbed. The thing wouldn’t even be able to run Minecraft, but it has no issue fetching media from private trackers and Usenet, and then streaming them to my other devices. The only thing I wish I could upgrade is the shitty network card, that can only handle 10mb/s. It’s not too bad, because I only let it download at night when I’m asleep anyway.
Just goes to show you can make a really good setup with whatever old PCs you have laying around. Or steal.
(For legal reasons, I’m not suggesting other people steal computers from work)
Same thing happened to me, but with an Overseerr frontend for my older parents (with my domain just routed to my house with nginx), with a backend of Sonarr, Radarr, Jackett, Unzipperr (not sure if this is the name but it’s vital)…
So many accidental automations like being able to just wishlist something on plex when I’m out and about and have it ready when I get home.
Im slowly wrapping my head around the jellyfish thing …very slowly. But lets not pretend the server space isnt the price issue. I couod spend 5 years of netflix subs to get to a decent raid protected level.
yes, now I’m paying 10 times more.
Don’t mind it though, experience is better in every way possible besides occasional maintenance need, but it’s definitely not for everyone.
Could be done cheaper, but it’s tradeoffs all the way as with everything in life.
Yeah i bought a small computer off of eBay, installed Proxmox and all this weird software started downloading and categorizing media. It was terrifying.
Weird. Similar thing happened to me. One day I was thinking, “Damn. These streaming services are getting too expensive. I may have to get back to sailing the high seas if this keeps up.” I shit you not, all of a sudden my home server is sucking up all kinds of movies and TV shows and streaming them to my living room. It’s like The Brave Little Toaster if the toaster were actually a Dell PowerEdge and it went on a long journey to find the master (me) as much high quality media as possible.
Pirating is not really much cheaper TBH…my media server, including power, has to run for something like 6-7 years without upgrades or repairs to break even with what Netflix would cost in that same time frame. It’s not about saving money, it’s about not giving it to them.
Do you compare it to a cheap Netflix subscription, do you compare it to the 4K subscription? Do you compare it to Netflix with the multiple locations extra fee they charge now?
Do you add the cost of Disney+, Prime Video, and god-knows what else?
The costs can quickly add up.
And it’s not like you need a beefy server. I could host Plex on an Nvidia shield (which I have anyway for my TV), in which case the cost would only be that of a USB drive or external HDD, and a trivial amount of extra power.
Running a media server with bulk storage from an external HDD is just a terrible experience and recipe for issues, and doesn’t give a nice experience with a full library to select from at a whim anywhere in the world (like what streaming provides). Also, depending on library size, not even possible.
I have ~20tb of media on my server, which isn’t even that much, no chance that’ll run well in that configure you mention. It’s by no means a beefy server either, it’s a small ITX mobo in a case with a shitload of HDD bays.
My time also has a price…downloading movies, finding the right subtitle files, managing a VPN, managing the hardware/software on the NAS, etc. I choose to spend my valuable time on that stuff but I can totally see how lots of people say “fuck it” and just pay the monthly streaming fees.
to break even with what Netflix would cost in that same time frame
Sure, if you only watch Netflix stuff, but not Disney, Hulu, Peacock, Max, etc etc etc.
But also, if you’re willing to give up a little content and a some quality, it’s cheaper than Netflix. A lot cheaper, if you insist on not having ads in Netflix.
You shouldn’t joke about these things, man.
I accidentally set up a home server running Plex/Jellyfin, and now I control all my media without paying £18 per month to a company that regularly takes away content and prevents account sharing.
You wouldn’t want someone else to accidentally do that, would you?
Right exactly it can be as expensive as you want it to be. I have 2 12TB drives going. But you absolutely could just buy a $200 mini PC with a 1TB drive in it. Write a simple shell script that purges content first in first out. Cheap.
I host not only all the Servarr apps, but about a dozen more miscellaneous ones on an old unused workstation I stole out of the attic at my old job. It has a shitty quadcore and 16gb of ram that I cobbled together from a couple other workstations I nabbed. The thing wouldn’t even be able to run Minecraft, but it has no issue fetching media from private trackers and Usenet, and then streaming them to my other devices. The only thing I wish I could upgrade is the shitty network card, that can only handle 10mb/s. It’s not too bad, because I only let it download at night when I’m asleep anyway.
Just goes to show you can make a really good setup with whatever old PCs you have laying around. Or steal.
(For legal reasons, I’m not suggesting other people steal computers from work)
Same thing happened to me, but with an Overseerr frontend for my older parents (with my domain just routed to my house with nginx), with a backend of Sonarr, Radarr, Jackett, Unzipperr (not sure if this is the name but it’s vital)…
So many accidental automations like being able to just wishlist something on plex when I’m out and about and have it ready when I get home.
Im slowly wrapping my head around the jellyfish thing …very slowly. But lets not pretend the server space isnt the price issue. I couod spend 5 years of netflix subs to get to a decent raid protected level.
yes, now I’m paying 10 times more.
Don’t mind it though, experience is better in every way possible besides occasional maintenance need, but it’s definitely not for everyone. Could be done cheaper, but it’s tradeoffs all the way as with everything in life.
Yeah i bought a small computer off of eBay, installed Proxmox and all this weird software started downloading and categorizing media. It was terrifying.
Weird. Similar thing happened to me. One day I was thinking, “Damn. These streaming services are getting too expensive. I may have to get back to sailing the high seas if this keeps up.” I shit you not, all of a sudden my home server is sucking up all kinds of movies and TV shows and streaming them to my living room. It’s like The Brave Little Toaster if the toaster were actually a Dell PowerEdge and it went on a long journey to find the master (me) as much high quality media as possible.
Pirating is not really much cheaper TBH…my media server, including power, has to run for something like 6-7 years without upgrades or repairs to break even with what Netflix would cost in that same time frame. It’s not about saving money, it’s about not giving it to them.
Depends, no?
Do you compare it to a cheap Netflix subscription, do you compare it to the 4K subscription? Do you compare it to Netflix with the multiple locations extra fee they charge now?
Do you add the cost of Disney+, Prime Video, and god-knows what else?
The costs can quickly add up.
And it’s not like you need a beefy server. I could host Plex on an Nvidia shield (which I have anyway for my TV), in which case the cost would only be that of a USB drive or external HDD, and a trivial amount of extra power.
Running a media server with bulk storage from an external HDD is just a terrible experience and recipe for issues, and doesn’t give a nice experience with a full library to select from at a whim anywhere in the world (like what streaming provides). Also, depending on library size, not even possible.
I have ~20tb of media on my server, which isn’t even that much, no chance that’ll run well in that configure you mention. It’s by no means a beefy server either, it’s a small ITX mobo in a case with a shitload of HDD bays.
My time also has a price…downloading movies, finding the right subtitle files, managing a VPN, managing the hardware/software on the NAS, etc. I choose to spend my valuable time on that stuff but I can totally see how lots of people say “fuck it” and just pay the monthly streaming fees.
If you do it right, you can do all that once.
Opensubtitles on plexus pretty smooth. You just have to wait a day or two for most things to be ready and clean.
Sure, if you only watch Netflix stuff, but not Disney, Hulu, Peacock, Max, etc etc etc.
But also, if you’re willing to give up a little content and a some quality, it’s cheaper than Netflix. A lot cheaper, if you insist on not having ads in Netflix.
If I still watched TV, I the risk of me doing that accidentally is very high.