Frankly, as shitty is a lot of that stuff was, DVDs were like the last form of media distribution that I would actually call tolerable in terms of consumer friendliness. You still got a physical disk with the actual movie that was easy to rip and share, no internet required. If it weren't for the quality limitations, I'd still collect them as the primary physical backup to my media server.
4k Blu Rays exist. Aside from the pain of having to get a special cracked drive to rip them they are my primary backup for my movie server.
You just made me realize I could probably do this myself with a library card
the only big shortcoming to DVDs was the region locking …
That's why we had a market for region-free DVD players!
Some of these players even skipped the unskippable intros and always started at the main menu. The best thing for legit buyers and enthusiasts back in the day. And don't forget the (S)VCD support and DivX/Xvid support. Good old times.
This fucking hurt to read.. thank fuck for piracy
I don’t use piracy for convenience. I watch movies and series together with my girlfriend (in a remote way) and we haven’t found a way to watch together (Like Teleparty for Netflix or Disney Plus native “Watch Party”) the content without the remote partner watching it in 320p (using Plex “Watch together” functionality). It simply doesn’t work.
As someone who recently got girl und panzer on DVD I was pretty surprised by the lack of ads idk of it's a anime thing or the shop changed me a pirate copy idk I only ever buy DVDs when I the anime I want to watch isn't on zoro
It's been said to death but at heart, I've always felt that when it comes to piracy, it's a service issue, not a cost issue.
Except for you Adobe. That's a cost issue.
Except for you Adobe. That's a cost issue.
AutoDesk had entered the chat
I found out the other day that LibreOffice Draw has a full pdf editor built in.
I know adobe makes many more products, but boy do I like telling people they don’t have to pay for Acrobat!
Streaming companies are lucky that not more people know about Stremio + Torrentio + Real Debrid. That combination is a game changer and allowed me to get rid of all streaming services.
This sounds interesting. I even have a Real-Debrid account but don't know anything about those other two things. Guess I'll be doing some researching tonight.
This is a guide that someone on Reddit wrote and it helped me a lot. It looks complicated with the first glance, but when you do the steps it takes less than 15 minutes. I changed the order of the original slightly and added a few infos to make it easier:
"Guide installing Stremio with Torrentio and Real Debird on your desktop.
Stremio
Go to https://www.stremio.com/
Download the relevant client for your platform (Windows/Mac/Linux)
Open Stremio and sign up with email or facebook
Real Debird
Go to https://real-debrid.com/
Sign up
Go to Premium Offers ($3 for one month, $16 for 6 months)
Choose a package and subscribe
Torrentio
Go to https://torrentio.strem.fun/configure
Choose your options for providers, quality, foreign language etc
You can now choose to install Torrentio without a Debid Provider. Personally I use Real Debrid to connect directly to a server vs having my IP shared in peer to peer and to speed up performance. Torrentio has a slot for a possible API key (the Real Debrid key)
To install with Real Debrid follow the next steps:
Go to the API key with this link: https://real-debrid.com/apitoken
Copy the API Key and go back to Torrentio and paste it under RealDebird API Key
Install
Stremio with Torrentio installed
Check the addon installed correctly
Click the puzzle piece up on the top right that says 'Show All Addons'
Click My Addons and scroll until you see Torrentio
Test stream a movie or TV show
Go to Discover
Click on a Movie or TV show and click 'Show'
You should now see [RB+] Torrentio - Quality
Enjoy streaming"
If I buy one of those Android TV boxes off Amazon, can I install all this stuff on it?
I found out the hard way those boxes have an expiration date. The manufacturers don't really bother to get the custom boards updated to newer versions of android, so its quite a headache to keep them operational. Theres forums that do custom firmware for them, but ymmv depending on what box you get.
Yeah, for safety and convence, the best way is still casting from a computer.
I have bought two of them that have both been rendered useless due to lack of updates.
I think it depends which one you take, how open they are for external software. But with Firesticks or cubes you can do 100%. With others it might be worth googling beforehand, if Stremio can be installed on that specific tv box you choose. On those boxes you just need Stremio as an app. The app on your box then syncs with the settings and addons you have in the desktop version, so no hassle.
Can you also use alldebrid with this?
It’s very easy to set up.
So true! Killer combo, have it on my nvidia shield TV works perfect almost as good buffer time as the streaming services with the real-debrid service with no loss in quality, I do have vpn on it also just to be sure.
Yeah same, I got it on my Firestick and it works like a charme! Got my vpn on the Firestick active as well and I could not be happier!
I use a VPN too, mostly so I don't have to worry when I switch over to iptv. The VPN just stays on all the time
Shhh... but for real. I don't even bother switching over to my payed paid subscription apps anymore.
The fact that it's all in one is amazing. I don't have to manage 5 different libraries.
What are the pros/cons of this vs a Plex setup?
I think local storage and access to hardware. Stremio rewuires little storage and uptime for 1 user vs. a computer being on and storing the media to push to different devices.
Well what a fun rabbit hole you sent me into. Seriously though thanks, now I need to figure out the best way to make it show up on my samsung tv (no android, samsung os or whatever it runs) otherwise it wont be adopted by my girlfriend ...
The easiest would probably getting a FireStick and just putting stremio as an app there. So your girlfriend can always go to the same place and find all of her shows/movies in great quality in one spot.
Going with a cheap Xiaomi Mi TV Gen 2 box. (Android TV) Costs about 40$ which with a year of Real Debrid still costs less than a Year of Netflix payments.
I am in the same boat. I managed to sideload jellyfin on my samsung but stremio seems a whole different cup of tea
The issue with streaming companies is the exclusivity. I would happily pay for Netfix if I could watch Ted Lasso (= Apple+) and Halo (= Paramount+) on it.
But if you want access to original series you have to buy the platform. I pay around €45 total in VPNs, Seedboxes, Usenet indexers... per month. I would happily pay for Netfix if I had access to everything in the world for up to €50/month. But with netflix you get access to a shitty catalogue on only one device for €8/month... That's not okay for me.
See they're doing you a favor by not letting you waste your time on that garbage that is the Halo show. What a farce.
It's not even worth pirating, lol
real Halo fans waited yeeeaaarrs for that show to come out. i mean i remember being a little kid in middle school and thinking "i can't wait for the halo movie/show to finally come out". Fast forward years later, and i have a house, 2 kids, I'm married and the Halo show is finally out and it's garbage. i hate what happened to that franchise
Trust me. You do not want to watch Halo.
Ugh, there has not been a TV show that has disappointed me as much recently as "Halo" has... It's a disgrace that it is even called Halo.
The disappointing thing is there were small tidbits of S1 where I said "Hey, if there was more of this then I'd be excited to for the next episode to air!" ... But no.
I like to joke and say "My disappointment is immeasurable" but this was certainly a case where I actually meant it.
I'm still only using legit services right now. For us the biggest thing we miss is the ability to actually find something specific. They work "ok" for just choosing something to watch from the algorithm, and that's only because we got like 4 services total. But if you want to watch a specific film? 9 times out of 10 it's not on any of them.
It’s why I pay for Spotify, convenience and pretty much everything in one place. For TV/Movies it’s Plex and the high seas.
I pay for music, videogames, software... but not movies and shows. I wonder what those do differently
Check out Plexamp when you want to start an mp3/flax collection. :)
I've posted as much here in three weeks as i did on Reddit in three years. That's one post, but still.
I am trying to be more active though to keep lemmy active and because it just feels more meaningful here.
It's weird that we have "capitalism" and there are people, who clearly have desire for a drm-free content. Hell, we even have a gog, where you can buy drm free games. Yet the market does not want to provide legal option to obtain films/shows that are not locked into the service.
And even with the gog there are still many games that are impossible to get drm-free in a "good" way. Not to mention emulation where things get kinda grey, depending on the system you are emulating
It is the same for eBooks imo. There are some sources of DRM free eBooks, but they don’t tend to have the popular books. I’m always buying on kindle, because it is so laughably easy to circumvent their DRM as long as one has a kindle serial number attached to their account.
It's a little bit embarassing to admit, but I never purchased eBooks at all. Only "legal" copies I have are in the form of paper books. One interesting thing, that just struck me, is that my SO the other day purchased one of the books in the form of eBook on one of the "local" online book stores. And from what they told me it's completely DRM free, even though it's something that was written by a foreign writer. From what I know this marketplace does not have every book in the digital format nor it is certain that all of the digital copies are DRM free there. But my guess is that some regional marketplaces might have some legal DRM free content, just not being vocal about this
My game changer was going to bflix.gg and downloading the android app from there (OnStream).
Every episode of anything can be streamed! If I get problems I can download an episode str8 on my phone. I use xcast to then chromecast it directly on my tv.
For anime, I go to 9anime.
LITERALLY FREE
Okay, this bflix thing is amazing. How is it legal?
It ain't legal but all these streaming services and their greed shouldn't be legal either
How does it compare to paying someone for a plex server?
Because you don't pay for anything. You basically store on your phone and cast to tv there. On laptop the website streams. On phone itself you're streaming.
Just make a Plex server. Easy. Only thing I pay for is a VPN. Can download and watch whatever I want. Build my own library. I do need to upgrade the PC though, it's a pretty shitty box that I put it on.
Okay, this bflix thing is amazing. How is it legal? How do they pay for it?
With Sonarr/Radarr and Jellyfin, that convenience has effectively been trumped. I don't know how they can compete
Can I make that work on Android TV
Edit: went to read up a bit, it circles back to getting into indexers/private trackers, which is where I usually give up. I've tried to get going on torrentleech from when I got an invite way back, but when I couldn't get ratio I gave up, I just don't have time for this kind of stuff... Any solutions where private trackers aren't required to get quality content? I care about getting 4k/Atmos etc.
Check out usenet. It takes a bit of money and research but its much more reliable than torrents seem to be. You will need an indexer and a provider. Good luck.
I’ve found almost no movies that have a 4k version I haven’t been able to get through the few most popular public trackers (133x, bitsearch etc). Atmos can be trickier, but I’ve consistently been able to find them. Dolby vision has almost always been available when applicable.
After reading around this thread, I think I'm going to give that stremio+torrentio setup a go, add some public trackers and then maybe pay for that real debrid thing. I'm excited.
Pretty sure AllDebrid (RealDebrid competitor) offers a 7 day free trial, might be worth a look
Ah well I went for RD, it's not that much money. I'm extatic, haven't been that excited about setting up streaming stuff since WinMX days haha. I'm even setting up all the Trakt stuff so now I have a bunch of custom feeds and automated tracking.
Id look into plex_debrid as well. Might not fit your use case, but it’s been great for me. It allows you to use a plex watchlist or overseer to search for movies, and torrents are found and added to your debrid. It can get multiple versions (1080p, 4k).
Mostly I use it because of the skip intro button I get from it, so might just be unnecessary overhead for others
I can't imagine any streaming service ever being more convenient.
If I wanted to drop my Netflix, Prime, and Disney+ and still have lots of options for stuff to watch, what would you guys suggest. Please explain like I have the IQ of a half eaten apple that's been sitting out in the sun for a week, I can barely figure out Lemmy having come over from Reddit.
Kodi + Real-Debrid. Or like top comment says you could also use Stremio + Real-Debrid. I recommend using a Trakt account too to keep track of everything you watch/episode progress. Real-Debrid costs about $3 a month but has just about every torrent cached to their servers (it’s never needed to buffer for me), and if they are missing one you can cache it yourself. Setting up kodi/stremio with RD is definitely worth a Google!
You can checkout the community's wiki for tips on getting started.
in that IQ range I would suggest Amazon Streaming.
But you made it here so qbittorrent + jellyfin server is probably bare minimum
Piracy is the only viable option. The problem isn't the concept of a streaming subscription service, the problem is how many of them there are. A couple would be fine I guess but if we consider the fact that all the content is divided in more than 10 major services, it's no longer a viable option.
Do you really want everything centralized to a single actor, though? If Netflix had complete monopoly, that would have been catastrophic.
That's not what I'm saying. Take cable tv subscriptions for example. Multiple companies offer different subscription tiers at different prices but you can get the highest tier subscription which includes all the channels.
Now imagine having to subscribe individually to each Channel, this is essentially what these streaming services are doing.
And then there's the problem with stuff suddenly disappearing or never being there in the first place.
The first time my kid came to me crying because his favorite series was pulled off of Netflix, and I went to try to find any other legal way to get it at the time and it simply wasn't available. It was done.
100000000%, beyond the fact that I don't want to pay a thousand different subscriptions, I also much prefer having everything in jellyfin or Plex. I don't want to mess around with all these crappy streaming apps, each with their own set of limited functionality or handicaps.
Also, why would I want to watch low bitrate streams when I can get full quality Blu-ray rips. Hopefully someday streaming platforms will offer full bitrate video, as physical media will probably go away over time.
Concerns with shitty players is such a frustrating issue, too. The Paramount+ website is such hot garbage, it frustrates me anytime I try to watch anything on it.
Forget about that, spotify despite it's size is still capped at MP3 quality maximum...
I have discover streaming from my phone plan (I don't pay anything for it) and it's absolute trash. Takes forever to load, buffers constantly, quality sucks. I got fed up and went to the high seas for the same show and it was beautiful with no bs. How can you mess something up so bad? I don't bother with discover or prime anymore, high seas for everything even though I legally have the two of them.
At this point it 100% is. I could bother and use nonsense apps, and their poor players. But now that I need 5 subscriptions and it's still like 40% chance that I find movie i want to see there it's simply stupid. Also consistency with plex and much better quality, not to mention frequently found bonuses like deleted scenes or interviews with creators / actors.
Another thing, it's sad to see people switching to streaming lose their interest in exploring filmography by genre, director etc and only come down to brainlessly watching any garbage recommended by netflix.
Plex is so good at finding trailers, shocks me how many streaming services don’t include trailers for their movies, seems like a no brainer
Definitely not bro. I got a server running the arr suite with download clients and have to buy HDDs to store the content and run maintenance and updates and and and and and. Don’t get me wrong, I am a nerd and love doing that, but I wouldn’t call it “convenient”.
It’s definitely the case for my wife though 🤣 she only has 2 apps, one to request content, the other to watch it.
I don't know, you don't have to complicate it that much really. For me buying a hard drive every few years and downloading things I, or my brothers and sisters I share Plex with, want to watch really isn't that complex.
"Can you get X" "ok Plex is updated" is as difficult as it's been for me.
You don’t even have to do that if you use something like Overseerr. You could even have them request media themselves.
Dropped Netflix and got a Plex share with tens of thousands of movies and TV shows. Costs less than their 4K plan for several streams. Now they’re doing the “you can’t login in more than one location” bullshit? Back to sailing the high seas for me and hopefully many others
Same, we have a nice little community on discord and everyone suggest movies and tv series which get added right away most of the time from the many, active uploaders. It’s great and feels better than these faceless streaming services where you get shoved stuff down your throat you probably never want to watch anyway…
Why should I ever switch back at this point? Let’s hope stuff like this keeps running under the radar and never gets too public.
I got no problem with streaming services competing and putting exclusive content on platform. What do I have problem with is them backing off from the things they advertised as when they were starting. Netflix literally rose in populating with ads saying "love is sharing the password" and other bullshit. Premium accounts were more expensive just so you can share your password with others. Nowadays they say it's no longer possible and you have to pay extra.
I pay for Amazon Prime, but still get less buffer time by streaming torrents with Stremio, which also never fails to remember where I left a movie at (even if I change the torrent source, which is crazy)
Amazon video is an absolute trash heap. Worlds behind even other streaming services.
I think they're already over the tipping point.
Because of their enshittification to chase pandemic profits, it's just so much better to pirate now.
One day piracy will catch up and everyone will be trading episodes of family guy, just like they used to with scanned disk and vhs cassets.
For me it hasnt been for along time. The site I use has everything as soon as its available, stores which episodes and at which time I was last time, has intro skip, autoplay and autonext. When i want to watch a series i just type the name in my browser, auto-complete the URL and i'm done. On netflix i have to tap through multiple menues, have to login and might even get blocked because im not on my home device. I get a better service in every aspect for free.
Care to share a link? Or PM, if that's a thing here.
We traded ownership (physical media) for convenience. I was a matter of time until that came biting us in the ass
PS: I love the convenience of everything being in my computer without having to lift my ass to change media, so it's possible to have ownership AND convenience.
This reminds me of the meme subreddit called r/Piracy. That was quick.
I'm so glad to see people other than me annoyed by this.
I don't use piracy for convenience. I watch movies and series together with my girlfriend (in a remote way) and we haven't found a way to watch together (Like Teleparty for Netflix or Disney Plus native "Watch Party") the content without the remote partner watching it in 320p (using Plex "Watch together" functionality). It simply doesn't work.
Have you tried a “private” PleX instance? You find those on shady facebook groups. Basically you pay 10 bucks a month for a “server” but it’s no other than a PleX user (with 1 or more screens) and billons and billions and billions (of hours of content)
Fmovies is more convenient than many streaming services though
Pay $100+ to get all streaming services or use my favorite site through my smart tv with adblock from my phone for free and get it all....... hmmmm
Spotify and audible are the only ones I pay for. Too convenient. I would be open to dropping audible if there was a good alternative.
If your UK based try BorrowBox Library, it's free to rent audiobooks, all borrowed from your local Library.
It has its limitations; like only a certain number of people can borrow a book at any given moment, but you can't beat free!
Their entire existence is based on the monopoly of violence throwing you in jail when you make piracy more convenient
I pay more for my personal setup each month than I would have to pay for all streaming sites combined.
Yet it's the ease of having Arr's and a personal server with almost zero limits to stream any content I want.
My setup includes :-
Dedicated Server
Usenet Indexers and Private Trackers
The only time I wouldn't find a movie or show I want would be a really old obscure media which doesn't seem to exist anywhere.
Everything else is grabbed from both via my Arr's and life is chill.
I pay 0 and get everything I want streamed with 0 limits to my tv 😂 wtf why pay for all that bs💀
Because it is fun running it and and be a bit more independent.
Now that stremio + torrentio exist piracy is MORE convenient than streaming.
Go on
Has everything on Netflix, Prime, etc., plus
Even though I paid for Prime, I would get an ad before every show. No ads with Stremio.
With streaming service I get some seasons of shows but not others. With Stremio I get the entire series.
I’ve used Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Videos and each service got worse and more expensive with time so now I’m back to the sea 🏴☠️
Indeed.
As one of the top comments said Stremio+RealDebrid is just awesome, install on your phone and cast to your tv or install on lets say Nvidia Shield which is what I do, phone while traveling. Can use your RealDebrid account inside Kodi using The Oath or Seren add ons but I think you will get the same torrents/quality as Stremio in terms of torrents but if one goes down you have a backup of sorts.
I have a FreeNas server with thousands of dollars worth of hard drives full of linux ISO's and I don't even turn it on as I can find everything on Stremio although if you find an obscure doco that only one person intermittently is seeding then downloading the old fashion way is the way to go.
The only downside I find with using Stremio is audio lipsync issues which drives me a bit crazy. I usually try another torrent and cross my fingers.
Wow that's old.
Frankly, as shitty is a lot of that stuff was, DVDs were like the last form of media distribution that I would actually call tolerable in terms of consumer friendliness. You still got a physical disk with the actual movie that was easy to rip and share, no internet required. If it weren't for the quality limitations, I'd still collect them as the primary physical backup to my media server.
4k Blu Rays exist. Aside from the pain of having to get a special cracked drive to rip them they are my primary backup for my movie server.
You just made me realize I could probably do this myself with a library card
the only big shortcoming to DVDs was the region locking …
That's why we had a market for region-free DVD players!
Some of these players even skipped the
unskippableintros and always started at the main menu. The best thing for legit buyers and enthusiasts back in the day. And don't forget the (S)VCD support and DivX/Xvid support. Good old times.This fucking hurt to read.. thank fuck for piracy
I don’t use piracy for convenience. I watch movies and series together with my girlfriend (in a remote way) and we haven’t found a way to watch together (Like Teleparty for Netflix or Disney Plus native “Watch Party”) the content without the remote partner watching it in 320p (using Plex “Watch together” functionality). It simply doesn’t work.
As someone who recently got girl und panzer on DVD I was pretty surprised by the lack of ads idk of it's a anime thing or the shop changed me a pirate copy idk I only ever buy DVDs when I the anime I want to watch isn't on zoro
It's been said to death but at heart, I've always felt that when it comes to piracy, it's a service issue, not a cost issue.
Except for you Adobe. That's a cost issue.
AutoDesk had entered the chat
I found out the other day that LibreOffice Draw has a full pdf editor built in.
I know adobe makes many more products, but boy do I like telling people they don’t have to pay for Acrobat!
Streaming companies are lucky that not more people know about Stremio + Torrentio + Real Debrid. That combination is a game changer and allowed me to get rid of all streaming services.
This sounds interesting. I even have a Real-Debrid account but don't know anything about those other two things. Guess I'll be doing some researching tonight.
This is a guide that someone on Reddit wrote and it helped me a lot. It looks complicated with the first glance, but when you do the steps it takes less than 15 minutes. I changed the order of the original slightly and added a few infos to make it easier:
"Guide installing Stremio with Torrentio and Real Debird on your desktop.
Stremio
Go to https://www.stremio.com/ Download the relevant client for your platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) Open Stremio and sign up with email or facebook
Real Debird
Go to https://real-debrid.com/ Sign up Go to Premium Offers ($3 for one month, $16 for 6 months) Choose a package and subscribe
Torrentio
Go to https://torrentio.strem.fun/configure Choose your options for providers, quality, foreign language etc You can now choose to install Torrentio without a Debid Provider. Personally I use Real Debrid to connect directly to a server vs having my IP shared in peer to peer and to speed up performance. Torrentio has a slot for a possible API key (the Real Debrid key) To install with Real Debrid follow the next steps: Go to the API key with this link: https://real-debrid.com/apitoken Copy the API Key and go back to Torrentio and paste it under RealDebird API Key Install
Stremio with Torrentio installed
Check the addon installed correctly Click the puzzle piece up on the top right that says 'Show All Addons' Click My Addons and scroll until you see Torrentio Test stream a movie or TV show Go to Discover Click on a Movie or TV show and click 'Show' You should now see [RB+] Torrentio - Quality Enjoy streaming"
If I buy one of those Android TV boxes off Amazon, can I install all this stuff on it?
I found out the hard way those boxes have an expiration date. The manufacturers don't really bother to get the custom boards updated to newer versions of android, so its quite a headache to keep them operational. Theres forums that do custom firmware for them, but ymmv depending on what box you get.
Yeah, for safety and convence, the best way is still casting from a computer.
I have bought two of them that have both been rendered useless due to lack of updates.
I think it depends which one you take, how open they are for external software. But with Firesticks or cubes you can do 100%. With others it might be worth googling beforehand, if Stremio can be installed on that specific tv box you choose. On those boxes you just need Stremio as an app. The app on your box then syncs with the settings and addons you have in the desktop version, so no hassle.
Can you also use alldebrid with this?
It’s very easy to set up.
So true! Killer combo, have it on my nvidia shield TV works perfect almost as good buffer time as the streaming services with the real-debrid service with no loss in quality, I do have vpn on it also just to be sure.
Yeah same, I got it on my Firestick and it works like a charme! Got my vpn on the Firestick active as well and I could not be happier!
I use a VPN too, mostly so I don't have to worry when I switch over to iptv. The VPN just stays on all the time
Shhh... but for real. I don't even bother switching over to my payed paid subscription apps anymore.
The fact that it's all in one is amazing. I don't have to manage 5 different libraries.
What are the pros/cons of this vs a Plex setup?
I think local storage and access to hardware. Stremio rewuires little storage and uptime for 1 user vs. a computer being on and storing the media to push to different devices.
@Glunkbor
Well what a fun rabbit hole you sent me into. Seriously though thanks, now I need to figure out the best way to make it show up on my samsung tv (no android, samsung os or whatever it runs) otherwise it wont be adopted by my girlfriend ...
The easiest would probably getting a FireStick and just putting stremio as an app there. So your girlfriend can always go to the same place and find all of her shows/movies in great quality in one spot.
@Glunkbor
Going with a cheap Xiaomi Mi TV Gen 2 box. (Android TV) Costs about 40$ which with a year of Real Debrid still costs less than a Year of Netflix payments.
I am in the same boat. I managed to sideload jellyfin on my samsung but stremio seems a whole different cup of tea
The issue with streaming companies is the exclusivity. I would happily pay for Netfix if I could watch Ted Lasso (= Apple+) and Halo (= Paramount+) on it.
But if you want access to original series you have to buy the platform. I pay around €45 total in VPNs, Seedboxes, Usenet indexers... per month. I would happily pay for Netfix if I had access to everything in the world for up to €50/month. But with netflix you get access to a shitty catalogue on only one device for €8/month... That's not okay for me.
See they're doing you a favor by not letting you waste your time on that garbage that is the Halo show. What a farce.
It's not even worth pirating, lol
real Halo fans waited yeeeaaarrs for that show to come out. i mean i remember being a little kid in middle school and thinking "i can't wait for the halo movie/show to finally come out". Fast forward years later, and i have a house, 2 kids, I'm married and the Halo show is finally out and it's garbage. i hate what happened to that franchise
Trust me. You do not want to watch Halo.
Ugh, there has not been a TV show that has disappointed me as much recently as "Halo" has... It's a disgrace that it is even called Halo.
The disappointing thing is there were small tidbits of S1 where I said "Hey, if there was more of this then I'd be excited to for the next episode to air!" ... But no.
I like to joke and say "My disappointment is immeasurable" but this was certainly a case where I actually meant it.
I'm still only using legit services right now. For us the biggest thing we miss is the ability to actually find something specific. They work "ok" for just choosing something to watch from the algorithm, and that's only because we got like 4 services total. But if you want to watch a specific film? 9 times out of 10 it's not on any of them.
It’s why I pay for Spotify, convenience and pretty much everything in one place. For TV/Movies it’s Plex and the high seas.
I pay for music, videogames, software... but not movies and shows. I wonder what those do differently
Check out Plexamp when you want to start an mp3/flax collection. :)
I've posted as much here in three weeks as i did on Reddit in three years. That's one post, but still. I am trying to be more active though to keep lemmy active and because it just feels more meaningful here.
It's weird that we have "capitalism" and there are people, who clearly have desire for a drm-free content. Hell, we even have a gog, where you can buy drm free games. Yet the market does not want to provide legal option to obtain films/shows that are not locked into the service.
And even with the gog there are still many games that are impossible to get drm-free in a "good" way. Not to mention emulation where things get kinda grey, depending on the system you are emulating
It is the same for eBooks imo. There are some sources of DRM free eBooks, but they don’t tend to have the popular books. I’m always buying on kindle, because it is so laughably easy to circumvent their DRM as long as one has a kindle serial number attached to their account.
It's a little bit embarassing to admit, but I never purchased eBooks at all. Only "legal" copies I have are in the form of paper books. One interesting thing, that just struck me, is that my SO the other day purchased one of the books in the form of eBook on one of the "local" online book stores. And from what they told me it's completely DRM free, even though it's something that was written by a foreign writer. From what I know this marketplace does not have every book in the digital format nor it is certain that all of the digital copies are DRM free there. But my guess is that some regional marketplaces might have some legal DRM free content, just not being vocal about this
My game changer was going to bflix.gg and downloading the android app from there (OnStream).
Every episode of anything can be streamed! If I get problems I can download an episode str8 on my phone. I use xcast to then chromecast it directly on my tv.
For anime, I go to 9anime.
LITERALLY FREE
Okay, this bflix thing is amazing. How is it legal?
It ain't legal but all these streaming services and their greed shouldn't be legal either
How does it compare to paying someone for a plex server?
Because you don't pay for anything. You basically store on your phone and cast to tv there. On laptop the website streams. On phone itself you're streaming.
Just make a Plex server. Easy. Only thing I pay for is a VPN. Can download and watch whatever I want. Build my own library. I do need to upgrade the PC though, it's a pretty shitty box that I put it on.
Okay, this bflix thing is amazing. How is it legal? How do they pay for it?
With Sonarr/Radarr and Jellyfin, that convenience has effectively been trumped. I don't know how they can compete
Can I make that work on Android TV
Edit: went to read up a bit, it circles back to getting into indexers/private trackers, which is where I usually give up. I've tried to get going on torrentleech from when I got an invite way back, but when I couldn't get ratio I gave up, I just don't have time for this kind of stuff... Any solutions where private trackers aren't required to get quality content? I care about getting 4k/Atmos etc.
Check out usenet. It takes a bit of money and research but its much more reliable than torrents seem to be. You will need an indexer and a provider. Good luck.
I’ve found almost no movies that have a 4k version I haven’t been able to get through the few most popular public trackers (133x, bitsearch etc). Atmos can be trickier, but I’ve consistently been able to find them. Dolby vision has almost always been available when applicable.
After reading around this thread, I think I'm going to give that stremio+torrentio setup a go, add some public trackers and then maybe pay for that real debrid thing. I'm excited.
Pretty sure AllDebrid (RealDebrid competitor) offers a 7 day free trial, might be worth a look
Ah well I went for RD, it's not that much money. I'm extatic, haven't been that excited about setting up streaming stuff since WinMX days haha. I'm even setting up all the Trakt stuff so now I have a bunch of custom feeds and automated tracking.
Id look into plex_debrid as well. Might not fit your use case, but it’s been great for me. It allows you to use a plex watchlist or overseer to search for movies, and torrents are found and added to your debrid. It can get multiple versions (1080p, 4k).
Mostly I use it because of the skip intro button I get from it, so might just be unnecessary overhead for others
I can't imagine any streaming service ever being more convenient.
If I wanted to drop my Netflix, Prime, and Disney+ and still have lots of options for stuff to watch, what would you guys suggest. Please explain like I have the IQ of a half eaten apple that's been sitting out in the sun for a week, I can barely figure out Lemmy having come over from Reddit.
Kodi + Real-Debrid. Or like top comment says you could also use Stremio + Real-Debrid. I recommend using a Trakt account too to keep track of everything you watch/episode progress. Real-Debrid costs about $3 a month but has just about every torrent cached to their servers (it’s never needed to buffer for me), and if they are missing one you can cache it yourself. Setting up kodi/stremio with RD is definitely worth a Google!
You can checkout the community's wiki for tips on getting started.
in that IQ range I would suggest Amazon Streaming.
But you made it here so qbittorrent + jellyfin server is probably bare minimum
No need to be rude, they're asking for help here.
Piracy is the only viable option. The problem isn't the concept of a streaming subscription service, the problem is how many of them there are. A couple would be fine I guess but if we consider the fact that all the content is divided in more than 10 major services, it's no longer a viable option.
Do you really want everything centralized to a single actor, though? If Netflix had complete monopoly, that would have been catastrophic.
That's not what I'm saying. Take cable tv subscriptions for example. Multiple companies offer different subscription tiers at different prices but you can get the highest tier subscription which includes all the channels.
Now imagine having to subscribe individually to each Channel, this is essentially what these streaming services are doing.
And then there's the problem with stuff suddenly disappearing or never being there in the first place.
The first time my kid came to me crying because his favorite series was pulled off of Netflix, and I went to try to find any other legal way to get it at the time and it simply wasn't available. It was done.
I think piracy is more convenient
100000000%, beyond the fact that I don't want to pay a thousand different subscriptions, I also much prefer having everything in jellyfin or Plex. I don't want to mess around with all these crappy streaming apps, each with their own set of limited functionality or handicaps.
Also, why would I want to watch low bitrate streams when I can get full quality Blu-ray rips. Hopefully someday streaming platforms will offer full bitrate video, as physical media will probably go away over time.
Concerns with shitty players is such a frustrating issue, too. The Paramount+ website is such hot garbage, it frustrates me anytime I try to watch anything on it.
Forget about that, spotify despite it's size is still capped at MP3 quality maximum...
I have discover streaming from my phone plan (I don't pay anything for it) and it's absolute trash. Takes forever to load, buffers constantly, quality sucks. I got fed up and went to the high seas for the same show and it was beautiful with no bs. How can you mess something up so bad? I don't bother with discover or prime anymore, high seas for everything even though I legally have the two of them.
At this point it 100% is. I could bother and use nonsense apps, and their poor players. But now that I need 5 subscriptions and it's still like 40% chance that I find movie i want to see there it's simply stupid. Also consistency with plex and much better quality, not to mention frequently found bonuses like deleted scenes or interviews with creators / actors. Another thing, it's sad to see people switching to streaming lose their interest in exploring filmography by genre, director etc and only come down to brainlessly watching any garbage recommended by netflix.
Plex is so good at finding trailers, shocks me how many streaming services don’t include trailers for their movies, seems like a no brainer
Definitely not bro. I got a server running the arr suite with download clients and have to buy HDDs to store the content and run maintenance and updates and and and and and. Don’t get me wrong, I am a nerd and love doing that, but I wouldn’t call it “convenient”.
It’s definitely the case for my wife though 🤣 she only has 2 apps, one to request content, the other to watch it.
I don't know, you don't have to complicate it that much really. For me buying a hard drive every few years and downloading things I, or my brothers and sisters I share Plex with, want to watch really isn't that complex.
"Can you get X" "ok Plex is updated" is as difficult as it's been for me.
You don’t even have to do that if you use something like Overseerr. You could even have them request media themselves.
Dropped Netflix and got a Plex share with tens of thousands of movies and TV shows. Costs less than their 4K plan for several streams. Now they’re doing the “you can’t login in more than one location” bullshit? Back to sailing the high seas for me and hopefully many others
Same, we have a nice little community on discord and everyone suggest movies and tv series which get added right away most of the time from the many, active uploaders. It’s great and feels better than these faceless streaming services where you get shoved stuff down your throat you probably never want to watch anyway…
Why should I ever switch back at this point? Let’s hope stuff like this keeps running under the radar and never gets too public.
I got no problem with streaming services competing and putting exclusive content on platform. What do I have problem with is them backing off from the things they advertised as when they were starting. Netflix literally rose in populating with ads saying "love is sharing the password" and other bullshit. Premium accounts were more expensive just so you can share your password with others. Nowadays they say it's no longer possible and you have to pay extra.
I pay for Amazon Prime, but still get less buffer time by streaming torrents with Stremio, which also never fails to remember where I left a movie at (even if I change the torrent source, which is crazy)
Amazon video is an absolute trash heap. Worlds behind even other streaming services.
I think they're already over the tipping point.
Because of their enshittification to chase pandemic profits, it's just so much better to pirate now.
One day piracy will catch up and everyone will be trading episodes of family guy, just like they used to with scanned disk and vhs cassets.
For me it hasnt been for along time. The site I use has everything as soon as its available, stores which episodes and at which time I was last time, has intro skip, autoplay and autonext. When i want to watch a series i just type the name in my browser, auto-complete the URL and i'm done. On netflix i have to tap through multiple menues, have to login and might even get blocked because im not on my home device. I get a better service in every aspect for free.
Care to share a link? Or PM, if that's a thing here.
We traded ownership (physical media) for convenience. I was a matter of time until that came biting us in the ass
PS: I love the convenience of everything being in my computer without having to lift my ass to change media, so it's possible to have ownership AND convenience.
This reminds me of the meme subreddit called r/Piracy. That was quick.
I'm so glad to see people other than me annoyed by this.
!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
I don't use piracy for convenience. I watch movies and series together with my girlfriend (in a remote way) and we haven't found a way to watch together (Like Teleparty for Netflix or Disney Plus native "Watch Party") the content without the remote partner watching it in 320p (using Plex "Watch together" functionality). It simply doesn't work.
Have you tried a “private” PleX instance? You find those on shady facebook groups. Basically you pay 10 bucks a month for a “server” but it’s no other than a PleX user (with 1 or more screens) and billons and billions and billions (of hours of content)
Fmovies is more convenient than many streaming services though
Pay $100+ to get all streaming services or use my favorite site through my smart tv with adblock from my phone for free and get it all....... hmmmm
Spotify and audible are the only ones I pay for. Too convenient. I would be open to dropping audible if there was a good alternative.
If your UK based try BorrowBox Library, it's free to rent audiobooks, all borrowed from your local Library.
It has its limitations; like only a certain number of people can borrow a book at any given moment, but you can't beat free!
Their entire existence is based on the monopoly of violence throwing you in jail when you make piracy more convenient
I pay more for my personal setup each month than I would have to pay for all streaming sites combined.
Yet it's the ease of having Arr's and a personal server with almost zero limits to stream any content I want.
My setup includes :- Dedicated Server Usenet Indexers and Private Trackers
The only time I wouldn't find a movie or show I want would be a really old obscure media which doesn't seem to exist anywhere.
Everything else is grabbed from both via my Arr's and life is chill.
I pay 0 and get everything I want streamed with 0 limits to my tv 😂 wtf why pay for all that bs💀
Because it is fun running it and and be a bit more independent.
Now that stremio + torrentio exist piracy is MORE convenient than streaming.
Go on
Has everything on Netflix, Prime, etc., plus
Even though I paid for Prime, I would get an ad before every show. No ads with Stremio.
With streaming service I get some seasons of shows but not others. With Stremio I get the entire series.
I’ve used Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Videos and each service got worse and more expensive with time so now I’m back to the sea 🏴☠️
Indeed.
As one of the top comments said Stremio+RealDebrid is just awesome, install on your phone and cast to your tv or install on lets say Nvidia Shield which is what I do, phone while traveling. Can use your RealDebrid account inside Kodi using The Oath or Seren add ons but I think you will get the same torrents/quality as Stremio in terms of torrents but if one goes down you have a backup of sorts.
I have a FreeNas server with thousands of dollars worth of hard drives full of linux ISO's and I don't even turn it on as I can find everything on Stremio although if you find an obscure doco that only one person intermittently is seeding then downloading the old fashion way is the way to go.
The only downside I find with using Stremio is audio lipsync issues which drives me a bit crazy. I usually try another torrent and cross my fingers.