Happy to buy hardware if needed. Just trying to avoid large streaming services abhorrent business practices.
Just buy them a subscription to a good Plex server.
This!
I do the same for my parents. $10 a month, no fuss, 5PB of media from all over the world (and growing!), all high quality Bluray Remuxes along with Dolby Vision content and what not. Can even put in requests for something specific using a discord bot.
It’s just like the 2016 era Netflix never died.
The only investment is an Nvidia Shield Pro because it supports any darn format out there. Without it, you’re only limited to 1080p content (or 4k if the device can direct play) since transcoding anything above 1080p is not allowed due to processing limitations.
But yeah, it’s a set up and forget kind of service. Make sure to join a reputed server though. And never pay multi-month in a single go unless you’re absolutely sure of their trustworthiness.
I can’t imagine the electricity cost for 5 PB of storage though, God damn.
I used to have a NAS and run my own media server and honestly at some point it just became more labour intensive for little gain. I found a good Plex share that has more media than I can ever imagine or need and if there’s something missing (which is rare), I just request it and 24h later it’s up. I pay less than $20 for that plus IPTV and I have enough content to last me until I die lol.
+1 again to what Mancy said. I just pay for the convenience. But yeah, if it’s not cumbersome for you to manage your own server then that’s great too!
As for the cost, oof I can’t even imagine. Besides, they have to make use of CDN services and what-not just so that the experience is consistent worldwide.
But then again, the server that I’m a part of has like 100 people paying every month, and this network is a consolidation of many such servers, so I think the costs and labor get distributed.
Probably gonna head out with my boy Rick and shoot some h🏀🏀ps
- Michaelham
You can share your plex library. So the person can stream from your files. Pretty easy to set up.
I have a similar setup. The only strange thing is that one house always seems to have buffer issues while the rest don’t (they’ll start a show and it will buffer every few minutes). What would you recommend in that situation kind stranger?
A better ISP or a better WiFi connection. Most of the time it is bandwidth related. Maybe let them manually select a lower quality stream.
This is what I do. Plex server with storage at home and brother just connects via his app built into his TV. They just text if they want a certain movie or TV show and I add it.
I have the *arr apps running on my homeserver, i manage the backend but everything gets neatly dropped in jellyfin.
Gf is not tech savvy, is very happy about our “homemade netflix”, reverse proxied it so she can watch at work too.
Been using Plex for years as bought the Plex lifetime deal when it was on offer many many moons ago. Is jellyfin any better? (My biggest concern with Plex is that they have a list of all my content I believe so not happy about that).
Should add use a nvidia shield with an external hard drive with all the content on it and stream to other android devices (fire sticks).
You can even give the link for the *arr apps so your SO can add all the movies, tv shows and music they want. I saved them on her phone, in Firefox it’s add to home screen. Chrome should be similar. Probably best to make it only accessible via LAN unless you have a good reason to need it outside of your home.
Do you include Jellyseerr in your definition of *arr apps, because it’s more of an *err or even *rr.
But Jellyseerr/Overseerr are the main apps I would give someone non tech savvy to be able to add their own media.
I find a key part is setting up notifications so that they know when a request is available.
I didn’t know about those, I mainly use nzb360 on android to do the whole requesting and such.
I got prowlarr, radarr, sonarr, jellyfin, homeassistant, archies steam farm, actual budget and bitwarden all hosted on my server. And organizr to have a nice homepage for it all.
For my less tech savvy friends/family I just have a bot in Discord that can do requests to sonarr/radarr https://github.com/kiranshila/Doplarr
Other options can be using something like tailscale and giving them the web access to sonarr/radarr
I’ve found discord to be a bit of a barrier for the less tech savvy friends too. Overseerr has worked great though. Except now it’s too easy and my server has gone from meticulously curated sci-fi and horror and pretentious classic films to include all the big modern trash I don’t care to watch. Oh well.
I use the nzb360 app for android which makes it very user friendly. She wouldn’t dabble with the ui’s and is the kind of person to use her phone for everything and doesn’t want to use pc’s.
I downloaded that to give it a try. Even as the person that set everything up, I’m really liking having everything in one app, and the popular now page reminds me of rarbg ☹️ helping to find new stuff to watch.
Been using Plex for years as bought the Plex lifetime deal when it was on offer many many moons ago. Is jellyfin any better? (My biggest concern with Plex is that they have a list of all my content I believe so not happy about that).
Should add use a nvidia shield with an external hard drive with all the content on it and stream to other android devices (fire sticks).
cloudstream with addons is a good choice on an android tv
