• @toastmeister@lemmy.ca
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      1519 days ago

      I pay for an emby share personally.

      Plex/emby/jellyfin, there are a ton of paid shares out there that are cheap.

      • Oniononon
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        2019 days ago

        Aliexpress summer sale started. Getting a 150 eur ryzen mini pc and slapping some hdds onto it for a cheap media server/nas with 4 digit nas specs.

          • Oniononon
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            19 days ago

            So far it’s; genmachine 5500u pc barebones, will get random ram and steam decks 256gb ssd, fedora server and some rabdom twin drive hdd enclosure with used 4tb disks to start with. 8gb of ram should be plenty as going 16gb ddr4 to 32gb ddr5 made no difference at all on my main gaming/dev/3d rig.

            Total cost: 158 for mini pc, twin drive enclosure 60, 4tb drives: 50 eur each, ram 15 eur or around entry level twin drive nas price.

            Id if there’s any build thread to post about “i shoved an external drive up the ass of a chinese mini pc and labelled it homelab”

            • Honestly, those are the most interesting builds to me. As an American, I’m waiting for tariffs to die before buying stuff of AliExpress, but one can hope.

              • @rbamgnxl5@lemm.ee
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                117 days ago

                I have built and maintained all manner of home servers using inexpensive used hardware. Any PC or old laptop can do this stuff. Unless you’re doing something crazy on them, I’ve not encountered a lot of situations that I could not sort out. Usually throwing some more memory and storage into them solves most issues.

                I ran a used desktop machine with an i3 processor (retired school system) for YEARS as my NAS with zero issues beyond adding a little cooling. Did the same with a firewall, worked for ages with no issues.

                Getting a mini pc is nice if you are putting it in your living room, but there are still many choices for small form factor devices. Not quite as small, but still pretty small. Lots of them were used as POS terminals at stores. Wipe 'em, reload and start fresh.

        • @Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          719 days ago

          That’s pretty much the self-made home media system I’ve upgraded to some months ago, only mine has an N100 CPU (which is nicer from a power consumption point of view for an always on system since its TDP is 15W).

          It’s wired to my TV, running Kodi on the foreground, runs qBittrorrent on the background over an always on VPN and serves as my home NAS.

          From Aliexpress I got a wireless remote that let’s me control Kodi as if it was a TV box, so from my sofa I handle it as a TV box whilst from my PC I can ssh to it and to any computer kind of management.

          Probably one of my best purchases ever.

      • I pay for an emby share personally.

        I read this as “enby share” and thought, “Is that like a queer polyamorous social group? If so, I want in.”

        (BTW I use emby share to pirate too, so no need to explain. My brain just expects the word “enby” first.)

      • @Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml
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        319 days ago

        Do I misunderstand emby or does it just not seem like a good deal on the basis of it being an ongoing subscription? I use the free version of emby and it’s really great. There was at least one feature that required payment to unlock. I like emby already and when I tried using jellyfin, the core features that were on both it and the free version of emby worked far less reliably and the paid feature on emby that was free on Jellyfin, worked extremely unreliably. Obviously resources and development had been spent to make something that worked very well and their paid feature probably would too. I use emby to make it easier to cast media locally to my chromecast and to access media on my computer, from my phone in my bedroom, so for me, it’s a fancy file browser and media player. The feature I wanted was to do with free to air tv streaming and I was thinking I’d be happy to pay for the Emby software to unlock this since they made good software that works. But here’s the thing, it’s FREE to air TV and yet they want me to pay, ongoing, in a perpetual arrangement to use it. I don’t get it. I use it to play media, but the media is my media stored on my machines. I understand software development isn’t free, I was happy to pay ONCE, but why would I keep paying when they don’t actually produce the media I use it to play? That seemed unjustifiable.

        • @AtariDump@lemmy.world
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          318 days ago

          Now with paragraphs.

          Do I misunderstand emby or does it just not seem like a good deal on the basis of it being an ongoing subscription?

          I use the free version of emby and it’s really great. There was at least one feature that required payment to unlock.

          I like emby already and when I tried using jellyfin, the core features that were on both it and the free version of emby worked far less reliably and the paid feature on emby that was free on Jellyfin, worked extremely unreliably.

          Obviously resources and development had been spent to make something that worked very well and their paid feature probably would too.

          I use emby to make it easier to cast media locally to my chromecast and to access media on my computer, from my phone in my bedroom, so for me, it’s a fancy file browser and media player.

          The feature I wanted was to do with free to air tv streaming and I was thinking I’d be happy to pay for the Emby software to unlock this since they made good software that works. But here’s the thing, it’s FREE to air TV and yet they want me to pay, ongoing, in a perpetual arrangement to use it. I don’t get it.

          I use it to play media, but the media is my media stored on my machines. I understand software development isn’t free, I was happy to pay ONCE, but why would I keep paying when they don’t actually produce the media I use it to play? That seemed unjustifiable.

  • Feydaikin
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    3119 days ago

    It’s the way of all subscription based entertainment. To increase profit eventually the choice comes down higher subscription fees or introduce ads.

    And once ads are there, it’s a one-way street. Until adpocalypse.

    • @Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 days ago

      If it’s in your systems in an open format it’s yours, if it’s outside your systems or wrapped in some kind of locked format that forces you to go through somebody else’s software it’s de facto theirs.

      Due to my own experience in software development with 3rd party solutions from way back, I never adhered to Streaming solutions (even though I was tempted) and always stuck to getting my entertainment in a media format I controlled (legitimately for a long as I could, not so much once even physical media started having DRM) because I was aware that it’s risky to outsource so much control over one aspect of what you do (in this case entertainment) to an entity which, frankly, sees you as nothing else that microscopic fraction of their bottomline.

      (The funny bit is that if Netflix would sell me their Series in an open file format that I could download and at a reasonable price, I would have sent lots of money their way, same as I spent lots of money on DVDs and even VHS tapes back in the day. In fact all throughout that period I was doing something like that for games: as soon as I discovered GOG with their DRM-free downloadable installers, I started acquiring all my games by buying them from GOG)

      In the fullness of time, my caution seems to have been proven right.

      • @utopiah@lemmy.ml
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        118 days ago

        I agree and I think games are a good example, especially with the Cloud Gaming trend that is trying to apply the same model from video streaming including both the advantages (to be fair, in particular instantaneous start, in theory) but also huge disadvantages (privacy, connectivity needed, no sovereignty, price increase, etc).

  • Ardens
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    2618 days ago

    Well, it’s not that difficult to cancel a subscription…

  • @onlooker@lemmy.ml
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    1218 days ago

    Previously, on Best of Netflix: price increases, flip-flopping on their account sharing stance (currently on “don’t do that”), removing shows without warning, iffy show recommendations by their algorithm, inability to watch shows offline etc.

    So, if you’re not already pirating at this point I have to ask: what are you waiting for? Seriously, why are you giving these companies money?

  • @pineapple@lemmy.ml
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    518 days ago

    Piracy isn’t the only alternative to streaming! Please consider putting a side a certain amount of money each month to buy physical disks, making films isn’t free and buying disks is the best way to suport them. Then you can pirate the rest.

  • @Paddy66@lemmy.ml
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    114 days ago

    Is there not a service like Bandcamp, but for movies and TV?

    I want to pay for stuff, so the creators are rewarded, and then I own a copy.