this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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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?

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[–] lustrum@sh.itjust.works 87 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

[–] pensa@kbin.social 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

In my experience, Jellyfin is better than Plex in every single way.

[–] lustrum@sh.itjust.works 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago

Solid reason to stick to Plex. A few of my friends just stayed with Plex until they moved / their setup broke, and switched afterwards

[–] Zikeji@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] SeedyOne@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] pensa@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] SeedyOne@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Fair enough, thanks!

[–] solidgrue@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

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

[–] ieightpi@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] lustrum@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] lustrum@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

I built it up over months.

The simplest setup though I copied from Spaceinvador One on YouTube.

[–] dditty@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I just did this a month ago on my Synology NAS following this guy's guides:

https://drfrankenstein.co.uk/

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

[–] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago

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