This post contains content related to media piracy. I couldn’t find any rules for this community and I don’t know if it’s allowed. I accept the risk of getting this post taken down or being banned without knowing the rules.
With that small disclaimer out of the way, let’s tackle my question.
I’m a simple self hoster: I have single server made out of an Optiplex 3060 Micro (i5 8500T, 32GB, 14TB of storage in one drive), I use duckdns instead of a real domain and I have no supporting infrastructure. I don’t really like watching things, I set up arr stack mainly because everyone says it’s the best thing to use a homelab for.
My family have strong opinions on piracy and I know for a fact they wouldn’t use my jellyfin, even if I tried to manipulate them, which btw is a really bad practice (if it’s as common as responses under posts about getting people to use your homelab suggest).
I also have hard time getting them to even allow me to run my homelab (I’m a teenager, I live with my parents), because it takes space and uses power (for context idle is around 8W).
As I said, I don’t watch things that often and even if I watch, I’m extremely monothematic, I watch basically only AOT and sometimes some random popular movie.
I understand that my situation is quite unique, but I find it hard to argue for Jellyfin+arrs when fmhy and countless reliable streaming sites exists.
I already made my mind, I’ll stop using those services today. I’m interested how others look at this “problem” tho.
Are you hosting arr stack/plex/jellyfin?
How much is it utilized (in watch hours/week for example, mine was less than 2/week)?
Have you considered not using it?
If you stopped using it and went back, what happened, why did you change your mind?
Here is a few off the top of my mind:
Streaming services take away content all the time, license expired and goes to another service.
Streaming services do not have everything, they are actually quite limited on content.
Streaming services often remove episodes from seasons, so you don’t even get all the episodes.
Pirate streaming sites go down all the time as governments crack down.
Streaming services cost more and more and more, with less and less content.
Some media is only available on older mediums such as VHS (and never came out on dvd, streaming, etc) but pirates have archived these rare movies.
You might feel like the world is available to you online, but I have been around since the start of the internet and have seen many, many things go the way of the dodo 🦤. Things go away. Websites gone, files gone, laws change, etc. if you’re not archiving it, you may never see it again.