meirl

Exactly. Movie? Enter name, wait a minute, watch. Series? Enter name, wait a while longer, watch.

My understanding is that not everything is available that way though. I had a friend say they tried to get star trek the motion picture. And while it was there. A month later he still only had half of it. Thats a pretty big name movie to be so hard to get.
- The problems I have are for very specific categories. A lot of the reality tv isn't available because they are meant to be watched during the time period they air. The more popular ones are still there, jersey shore for example. Documentaries can be hit or miss, especially the ones that were released for free already on a random site or YouTube. You can always download those directly from the web page though.
  Sometimes I have trouble with very old seasons of shows. Usually its easier to find an entire show torrent, but sonarr can't handle multi-season downloads so you have to do it manually.
  I have more trouble with things that should be automated requiring manaual intervention than the things not being available at all.
- Depends. I never have had anything that's not available. Except one older series that wasn't available anywhere, not even streaming legally. And for dubbed shit it can be more complicated. But i rarely consume that. I use usenet btw with only two indexers. Could add more and even torrents too, that might even make it better. But i would already be fine with just one indexer at all.
  
  I've heard of usenet. Never understood how they can exist legally. Or how people pay them legally.
  
  It's just as old as the internet itself. Primary reason was communication. A gargantuan federated forum. The binary-part was just there but not that extensively used. Now it's the other way round (sadly). Communication is down, binaries are up. As to the legality: It's federated, worldwide. Some providers do take DMCAs, but (as with the rest of the net) it doesn't do much. Because first most pir8-content is obfuscated and pwd-protected. And second, the moment something was taken down, someone else re-ups it again :-) Benefits to torrent and debrid and all: Retention. So a thing from 10yrs back you can still get with absolute maximum speed your line can do (and your provider gives you ofc). Fuck seeders and upload-ratio and co. Just get it as fast as anything could be. I usually download with ca. 250mb/s. 100 parallel connections. Only some group's FTP can beat this. But they're not for the public.
  As to legally paying: It's just a service that gives you access to something. like debrid. You can have usenet access just to communicate with people or download linux-distros or anything else legal. Also, even in my very restricted country, downloading is legal. Uploading is not.
  
  So it's federated like lemmy? Interesting. So you pay an instance I assume. But does that get you access to all other instances like lemmy? That seems odd, but possible.
  
  not exactly like lemmy. It's more like ONE base of content they all share. But it's not like instance A only gives you interracial gay midget-porn, and instance B only farming-simulators and C only linux-apps :) But yes, you pay one of the providers and usually have it all. There's a chart somewhere to which one is backed by whom, and hence the best retention you could get. AFAIK Eweka is one of the root-providers (I use them and they have regularly cheap deals). For automated easy downloads you'd also need an indexer. There are free ones but they aren't offering API-acccess. You can get those very cheap to moderatly cheap. I pay like 20 bucks a year for two indexers (where one would really totally suffice). Kinda like the same you'd need for torrent too. A site to get your torrent from.

Do you happen to know of guides, that teach how to use that setup securely?

Dont forget jellyfin and on mobile ruddarr to control them

This is why pirating isn’t an option to most people, you need like 4 apps and a dedicated pc running as a server to match the one click ease of streaming services, it’s ok for me but I get why my parents or less tech savvy people would be unable to figure it out
- PopcornTime. Problem solved.
  
  Same issue, only popular and new titles. But I do use it
- Yes this is true today but dont forget that linux is just generally slow. As each app is a docker there is one day the possibility of someone rolling all 4 or 5 apps into a preconfigured single docker or app that can be a one click install, easy to use. It just hasnt happened yet due to time/lack of effort and so on. Open source is slow like that. Its a voluntary thing so these things always take years.
  
  someone rolling all 4 or 5 apps into a preconfigured single docker or app that can be a one click install
  The reason each program does its own thing is for legal liability. One downloads what media you search for, it's up to the person operating the software to choose media for which they can legal download. The next manages the metadata and organization of media but is up to the user to supply media for which they hold appropriate licenses to. Etc. Etc.
  By putting all of the pieces together into one package you lose that deniability of software which has legal usecases but happens to be able to be combined to do something illegal.
  You know how normies pirate? They find free/cheap streaming sites and hop from one to the next as they get shut down