by jasonvorhe 14 hours ago
I cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions everywhere inside their apps I would've cancelled any remaining subscription at the latest.
Usenet + the *arr stack + Plex or Jellyfin make it completely effortless to watch any movie or TV show I can think of.
And I don't have to play the 'which service has this?' game.
This, but Real-Debrid. No need to self-host TBs of content and manually download them.
This slightly outdated guide helps you set it up pretty easily - instead of Zurg+ Black hole, use Decypharr
https://savvyguides.wiki/sailarrsguide/
Real-debrid == imagine a huge cloud storage service. You have 1000 people trying to download Burgonia.4k.mkv. it downloads the torrent once to the shared server, then gives each user their own access to it via a WebDAV mount.
WebDAV == trick you server into thinking a cloud server is a local folder. You use RClone to mount this and it's accessible from your local drive so you can stream all your stuff directly.
What this means: you add a show in Sonarr or a movie in Radarr. Prowlarr searches Torrentio or Zilean for torrents. The best match is chosen. It sends to Decypharr (or black hole) to say "download this torrent to my real debrid box". It finds the cached version of the file, which is instantly available in your drive. It's symlinked so Plex can pick up the file.
Basically the lead time from requesting a movie/series to watching it on your tv is about 10 seconds, with no storage overhead required.
I'm sorry, "the *arr stack"?
Radarr (movies), Sonarr (tv), etc.
If only there was an easy setup/tutorial for Usenet. I have no idea what I am supposed to pay for and what client program to use for acquiring files.
Having figured it out myself, I agree. And it's not obvious that you need both a Usenet _indexer_ (who tells you what content is available) and a Usenet provider (who actually serves you the content).
FWIW, and I'm not sure if this is against terms here, but I use newsgeek for the former and giganews for the latter. Both are paid services but reasonably priced imo. When I can find something on Usenet, it typically downloads with speeds > 10MBps vs. torrenting which can exceed that but is usually much slower.
You can use whatever client you want. I have the *arr stack mentioned elsewhere in this thread as well and SABnzbd is the recommended option there.
Are the downloads through http/tcp or some other protocol?
Between you and your provider the downloads are over HTTP. The distribution of content between the Usenet providers is over the Usenet protocol which predates HTTP and the WWW.
I bet if you Google "how to get started with Usenet", someone has written about this.
Sounds like a feature, not a bug
the garden without the wall is trampled
PAR2 files have their beauty
i was in Bend, Oregon last weekend at the last Blockbuster, and it was really appealing.
- blu ray rentals were 99¢ / wk
- a vast trove of content
- no lock-in or monthly fees
sure, you actually have to make it to the store... but, 2007 never looked better.
now, Netflix was distributing by mail, and i think the promise was for them to stream all their content into homes. but, then it got messy.
but yeah, for 99¢ / movie, I'm happy to pay. i'll even occasionally pay to rent through AppleTV.
Turns out going outside and interacting with strangers is actually quite good for you too.
I torrent too, but I think it makes sense to buy/rent or sub to a service in many cases. Companies look at views and revenue to decide what content to actually make. So, especially for ongoing series that I'm enjoying I want them to keep renewing it.
I subscribe to ad-free versions of services so I don't really run into ads a lot unless I'm trying to watch something live on TV.
Irrelevant to me. The amount of TV shows I enjoyed that got canned after S01 has burnt me so much that I wait until I know if there's a sensible finale at the end or if it ends on a cliffhanger that'll never be resolved before I even dive into a new show.
Firefly *cries*
How did good movies and TV shows get made before the panopticon? How did we get Casa Blanca when there were no Nielsen ratings?
>Companies look at views and revenue to decide what content to actually make.
Social discourse is also heavily weighted
> I torrent too, but I think it makes sense to buy/rent or sub to a service in many cases. Companies look at views and revenue to decide what content to actually make. So, especially for ongoing series that I'm enjoying I want them to keep renewing it.
I wonder if any of them track torrent metrics for this reason.
I also collect discarded physical media, there's still lots of people who want to get rid of their collections for nothing because of "Dude, there's streaming now, duh."
Buying used media could also a viable option. My kid likes to watch the same thing over and over, subscription content does not make sense for her. You just have to buy it slowly.
Best sources to start accumulating? Just ebay?
eBay, yard sales, Goodwill, local thrift stores, Facebook Marketplace, etc.
Likely Facebook Marketplace or maybe Craigslist. eBay is pretty rough these days by all accounts.
> back to torrenting
lots of people have, and we've come now full circle. I wonder if it was inevitable.
In a society that’s built on the foundations of perpetual profit growth it is. Sometimes you just can’t innovate, so instead of improving the product you cut the costs and enshittify. We’re in an enshittification regime right now.
Why are there alternating cycles of innovation and enshittification? I think it’s because investors are always trying to pull forward profit, but because they only have a 10 year horizon on investment strategy they tend to create cycles that are around that same period. If there was less investment, the innovation would be slower but the reactionary enshittification would be lessened too.
I do the following: www.yandex.com MOVIENAME direct streaming
And that is it... I have prime + netflix + hulu and such, but I use "yandex.com" as it does not have ads - even if sometimes it takes a bit to load and rarely it gets stuck for a second, it is less time than the stupid ads.
It’s better than ever with stuff like jellyfin/plex and all the sonarr/radarr… apps. I’ve been running bitmagnet too which has been great for actually finding torrents.
I'm using Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid now that I have money to actually pay for it.
yeah I'm back to Torrenting too. I was more than happy to pay for Prime, Netflix, and maybe Apple TV+ a few times a year but now they expect me to pay for HBO & Crave & x & y & z & a... I might as well get a cable package.
The funny thing is, between a NAS & a monthly VPN subscription & usenet subscriptions I probably could have paid for all those streaming services for a few years :D
you haven't priced out the streaming services (ad free tier) lately have you?
I'm almost back there at this point given how annoying streaming services are getting.
Hard agree. My read on the whole situation is that this is R.I.P. for Netflix as a tech company.
We're going to see something like the way Boeing was hollowed out by taking over McDonnell Douglas I'd guess. I have no insider knowledge but WB doesn't seem like a poison pill you can take without adverse impact.
One only has to look at the word of mouth reputation of Plex these days to know what's going on. I'd say more of my circle knows about it than doesn't, and a solid 15% run one or use someone else's, including my non-techie friends.
Shoutout to Jellyfin it's great, but it is not nearly as turnkey, so Plex is clearly the dominant player for folks hosting their own media.
I found Jellyfin was super easy but I came from XBMC/Kodi which was a big struggle.
isn't Plex literally an XBMC fork? And Jellyfin a Kodi fork? Something like that.
Jellyfin is a fork of Emby. Can't speak for Plex.
I think what trips people up with jellyfin is making sure they aren’t exposing their network. Getting it to work at home is one thing, getting it to work outside your home is a different beast