I have been out of the loop for over a decade, where do I begin?
Title, I haven't Yo ho ho'd in forever in internet time.. What/where do I need to start again? I'm tired of ads and 3+ streaming services to watch stuff that's interesting. Running windows. Thanks dudes and dudettes.
Get Qbittorrent and use it's built-in search engine.
The fully automated gay space answer:
Look into selfhosting - (optional but makes it easier/coler)
Look into Plex (or Emby or Jellyfin) - optional but makes it pretty
These are the apps you'll need:
Radarr - Gets movies
Sonarr - Gets tv shows automatically as they come out
Prowlarr - the thing that does the searching for radarr/sonarr.
Overseerr - Makes it simple to request stuff
Qbittorrent - downloads things
(There is also Lidarr for music and Readarr for books)
If all set up correctly, you simply just request something with Overseerr and it shows up in Plex minutes later with artwork and metadata all pulled in and presented nicely. You can configure the apps to look for specific resolutions/file sizes/formats/etc. TV shows are downloaded as soon as a new episode is released. It's better than any streaming service by leaps and bounds.
Does overseer do anything besides let you request from the others? And where does Prowlarr come in?
I more or less have this setup, but I start in Trakt (which I was using before I started with the arrs) and add something to my watchlist. Sonarr and Radarr regularly sync with that and check the indexers I have set up and download via sabnzbd. It unpacks and gets to where it needs to go, and I watch it in Jellyfin.
It all works fine for me. So what I'm really asking, is am I missing out on anything by not using Overseer and Prowlarr or is it just another way of doing the same thing?
Prowlarr allows you to manage all the indexers/trackers in one location. This is helpful if you want to add or remove one or limit things from being automatically downloaded from site A but not B, C, and D like when you join a new private tracker and need to build ratio first.
Overseerr is basically a polished front end for Radarr/Sonarr. It's useful if non-techies are requesting things, and/or you just want a single, dead-simple place to request (video) media. If you want to just try it out it doesn't affect your radarr/sonarr setup at all.
@ShepherdPie@midwest.social gave a good explanation of Prowlarr. Just another simplification/automation tool.
Overseer makes recommendations according your plex/jellyfin views, but don’t know if it is better than trakt (don’t know trakt well..)
Prowlarr is to manage indexer centralised for all the arr services. It is as well a good tool to search releases manually, if the arr services fail to grab a release you want.