With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.
I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.
I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?
I cancelled Netflix the day they blocked my elderly parents from accessing my account.
I was paying for 4 streams, it shouldn’t matter 1 stream was at my parents house, they were still getting their money.
Don’t worry Netflix, we still get to enjoy your content via torrents and my parents still get a convenient streaming app full media via Plex, so you can eat shit Netflix!
I canceled Netflix, but I stayed on their mailing list so I know about new shows I might like to watch. My frigate is now a submarine that goes beep, beep. (it has sonarr, I guess would be the main point I’m trying to make here)
Check out Overseerr if you use Plex, or Jellyseerr if you use Jellyfin.
It will show you popular and upcoming movies/tv shows, and you can integrate with with the arr suite to have users able to request and download the shows.
It’s fantastic, especially if you’re sharing your media server with others
Thank you so much, I was looking for something like this!
I’m confused. Does this automatically download media?
It will send the request to sonarr or radarr to download it, if you have those set up.
Before ditching Netflix I added all my current shows to a calendar/tracking website, which I check every few days and grab anything new, new new shows, in just rely on word of mouth and/or social media.
Don’t use Plex, use Jellyfin. Plex tracks everything you watch and do. Jellyfin is free, open-source and self-hosted.
Are you going come here and setup my system, then install apps on mine and my kids devices and show them how to use it AND then travel to my parents house, install it on their devices and explain to them how to use it?
No? Guess I’ll stick with the free self-hosted Plex.
I see this argument a lot, and I’m sure you’re right, but I was curious, why don’t people set up a url for jellyfin that your family can access over the internet, then they just have to go to a website and log in? Would work for TVs or any device that connects to the internet
I have a Smart TV (not Android TV) that can access the internet and it works fine through the web interface.
Jellyfin lacks a lot of features that Plex has. It also is prone to a lot more problems. Once it matures some more it’ll be a fine replacement.
Tried Jellyfin and it was a pain to get running on my NAS (the only add on in the Synology store is a random community port that doesn’t work well and the apps for the TV are all janky). Will stay with Plex until they sort it all out.
Yes, I believe they have pretty bad documentation, but I after a lot of pain I was able to get it working too.
Jellyfin still has a lot of catching up to do, unfortunately.
I did the same thing and have the same attitude. I still watch what few Netflix shows are any good. They just aren’t getting any of my money any more 🙂
I do have to thank Netflix for motivating my to try Plex and see what my uplink could handle, about 3 1080 streams, so there’s that positive.
Cancelled all subscriptions apart from Usenet and VPN.
Now I just pirate it all and bang it on Plex. All in one place on all devices, easy peasy
In my experience, Jellyfin is better than Plex in every single way.
I don’t disagree but it was hard enough getting my dad and grandma to work plex. I’m not changing now.
Plex is working really well for me at the moment.
Solid reason to stick to Plex. A few of my friends just stayed with Plex until they moved / their setup broke, and switched afterwards
My entire family uses Plex and I managed to get them using it years ago. I still occasionally have to help them setup a new device.
I’ve toyed with the idea of setting up Jellyfin for personal use, but I’m not ready to set aside the time it’d take me to get them on Jellyfin.
What’s specifically so much better about it? We’ve got years of watchlists and customizations to our Plex and it works flawlessly but if there’s a compelling reason beyond “it’s the new hotness” I’m all ears.
Because it’s FOSS. I’m sure there are other reasons but if I am putting my pirated stash somewhere I don’t want a proprietary program to have full access.
Fair enough, thanks!
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I’m not your down vote, but fuck Plex. Resource-intensive code to start, and also fuck their pushy cloud-first posture. I dropped them like a hot potato when they obfuscated requiring a cloud account to watch streaming locally. Shady stuff, especially when you’re self-hosting.
Jellyfin is WAY less intrusive. It just works for local streaming, and for discreet sharing among trusted affiliates. Maybe not as pooshed or feature complete as Plex, bit it’s far less obnoxious on my resources, and my affiliates
Was looking up Plex and I don’t understand it. For example I looked up a Netflix show and it asked me to subscribe to Netflix.
What makes it better? I’m lost
Plex allows you to host your own media and will match filenames to metadata. You point it to the folders for your movies and TV and it’ll start searching through and adding them to your Plex server as streamable media.
There are ways to automate the searching and downloading of your desired movies and TV. Pair it with Plex and you have your own personalized streaming platform with just what you want to see.
Yeah I run Plex with the Arr dockers.
I use an app on my phone and it’s all just done for you.
Someone recommends a show or movie? Open app, search for show and add it.
In the background the setup will automatically search the download providers you’ve setup (Usenet or torrents), filter them for the quality profile, download the files and place them in the correct folder ready to stream on Plex.
It’s so seamless once working.
Do you have a guide for this? I have Plex with Plex Pass but I haven’t been able to figure out how to get media beyond manually RDPing to my server and downloading a torrent from a private tracker.
I built it up over months.
The simplest setup though I copied from Spaceinvador One on YouTube.
I just did this a month ago on my Synology NAS following this guy’s guides:
It’s done via GUI on Synology’s OS so the process is different (ie longer, more tedious) than just using Docker compose on Linux.
I’m using Overseerr plus the other *rr apps for ppl to request movies and shows via a self-hosted website, and Requestrr so friends can also request via a Discord bot
Because it’s not a streaming service in the sense that it provides the content. The user provides the content; it just provides the streaming functionality.
Well Plex does offer some content too. I was able to watch Sister Sister and some other shows that are not on my server but offered by them.
I have a Plex Pass I pay for monthly, but not sure if that’s the reason I could or if it’s free to anyone with a Plex account.
It’s a self hosted Netflix, so you fill it with your own files (however you obtained them) and it handles everything else
You can also look into Jellyfin, which is a popular open source alternative to it
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I have a toddler who doesnt understand the concept of “We cant watch Gabbys Dollhouse anymore because Daddy is sticking it to the man.”
Nope, few more years before I can think about shitcanning any of them.
Yarr Harr?
One day yes but we’re only just now learning how to deal with compromises, sometimes "How about Bluey? works sometimes it doesnt.
If you need some help on where to begin, msg me. I can get you up and running in under an hour, so long as you have a working computer with some hard drive space (or a portable HDD).
Edit: that goes for anyone else who needs help setting up as well.
Might take you up on that offer once I give it an honest try :))
What kind of a setup do you usually go with?
Hardware doesn’t matter except for raw disk space, since you’d be storing the files yourself.
I use Docker Desktop, Portainer, and docker-compose stacks to run everything. The whole thing will take maybe 1.5 GB RAM and a little bit of CPU. I ran the whole setup from a raspberry pi for a while.
WARNING: This is a rabbit-hole that will eat your wallet alive, and bring you endless joy.
It can be as simple as running a VPN on your computer, and downloading torrents through a torrent app on the same computer. Then you can just watch the videos you download however you like.
If you want a Netflix-like interface for what you’ve downloaded, run Plex or Jellyfin and point them to your downloads. Get the plex or jellyfin app on your tv, tablet, phone, etc as well. The app will see plex running on your computer and you’re good to go.
You can keep getting more advanced depending on what you want. For example you can use apps like Sonarr and Radarr to automatically send movies and shows to your download app as they come out. You can also use things like Bazarr to automatically get subtitles. Tdarr to encode what you download if you want to do something like make sure everything works on your tv and a specific streaming stick (eg: roku).
And on and on.
I use all of that, and have it set up through docker on a server which has access to a giant NAS for storing the files.
Gonna piggyback onto this, my DMS are also open. Ask away if ya need help. Fuck this streaming bullshit, steal everything.
Kid can operate a tv remote to find streaming shows. Yoohooing is a little out of their capability and would need a parent to constantly start shows.
Parent can set up Sonarr, add the shows, kid can watch them via Jellyfin.
We are not rich but the streaming services arent stressing us financially. I am however time poor, the streaming services “just work” and my daughter can navigate them well enough to open the app and pick what she wants.
I know its easy enough to do, but setting it all up and teaching my wife and daughter the new way of doing things… not to mention managing the constant requests for fresh content. Pass.
Okay and when they want a different show….?
Then daddy adds a new series to Sonarr? I admit it introduces some latency.
Okay, now you’re doing it every 5 minutes, and by the time you’re done A, they are already asking for K.
Have you considered maybe that’s not a healthy way to consume media in the first place?
Just download Mr Roger’s and sesame street and let them watch them over and over. Kids will watch the same thing ten times in a row. I know, I’ve seen them do it.
This scenario is highly undesirable, have you ever considered that not all people, especially kids want to watch content in English? (depends on the age ofc).
Most torrents offer original language with subtitles, if you say, let’s search for a kids show that is in Latin Spanish not Spain Spanish this will make the task incredible harder… we are talking about searching private trackers with this, heck even I struggle to find cartoons of my time with natal language, it was fairly impossible to do so, at least before HBO MAX and Pluto TV brought back several classics to life again… you can’t beat easiness of streaming media for that scenarios, not even with softwarr.
Most of us dealing with variations of this theme.
I’m in the same damn boat 😅
Do you think your little one could use something like Popcorn time? Those interfaces are as good as netflix, from my experience
There was a point in time where I paid for Netflix because it was simply easier than downloading everything.
That point has long passed, and I no longer pay for streaming.
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200$ / month is insane, wow. From what I can tell, lots of people seem to start pirating way more. It looks like it’s common to be subbed to your favorite streaming service and put the rest on Plex.
Remember we’re a very small circle here, and the groups we run with are also pretty close knit, lots more in our groups may mean something but compared to everyone else it’s probably less than a blip.
I think it’s more common for people to rotate which service they’re subscribed to each month.
But piracy is still increasing in popularity.
I pirate everything like a chad. Fuck paying for shit like Spotify, Hulu etc
I never had subscriptions. Arr!
I used to pay for Netflix because it was easier to have one service to watch everything, than it was to pirate.
I’ve obviously stopped.
Piracy really is a service problem for me.
I cancelled my Netflix account. I keep Disney Plus around for my stepkid, and Prime Video because it comes with Prime, although I’ll probably cancel that soon too. I’m keeping Funimation.
Streaming is becoming worse than cable. At least if I got cable (which I won’t) I could PVR shit and skip the ads. The idea of paying a monthly fee to get advertised at anyway is nauseating.
Keeping Funimation? Aren’t they migrating us all over to Crunchyroll?
qBittorrent
Cancelled Prime after about a month because fuck ads in a paid service. Other than that I still have all of them*, though considering cancelling Netflix and Disney+.
* I’m in Europe, so “all of them” means like 5 services, not the 50,000 US folks seem to have.
What ads? Is that something recent?
Amazon announced a couple days ago they’re adding ads to all current plans and creating a new, more expensive, plan that will be ad-free.
It’s not really any different from other services simply increasing the price and/or adding a cheaper plan with ads.
I rotate things around, unsubscribe regularly and resubscribe if there’s something there I want to watch.
Already did. Mostly only used Netflix. Then their offering went from shit to “absolutely nothing is ever on there”. Then they started pitching a fit over a VPN that I specifically excluded Netflix from. The major streaming services can blow me.
Already did ages ago, no value to me. I farm and do many other things, mostly outdoors. I watch TV and movies during snowstorms or heat waves. Often I’ll be gaming, programming, designing systems, soldering etc. instead when stuck inside.
As such I don’t need a steady stream of entertainment and I can wait for everyone else to point out the exceptional content. And once I know what I’m looking for it’s ⛵☠️ time
At this point its easier to find new movies through pirating platforms. So many different streaming services and they only allow searching through their own platform, and obviously push all their newest and shittiest shows. I just go to a neutral platform that has everything and no agenda and find great movies in a matter of minutes.
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