What should I watch? is now a much easier question than How do I watch it?
Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate | What should I watch? is now a much easier question than How do I watch it?::<em>What should I watch? </em>is now a much easier question than <em>How do I watch it?</em>
I've heard a lot about setting up a Plex or a Jellyfin server locally, but from what I can tell they are just media storage platforms and in order to watch anything you would have to add your own content. In this age of digital content, it is very unlikely for a simpleton like me to go out and purchase hundreds of movie disks separately and manually load them into my CD drive to even have a fraction of the catalogue these streaming services combined provide. Also torrenting really isn't a viable option for me as I personally use a free tier Proton VPN which doesn't allow P2P, and even if I did get a proper one, I would still be limited to availability of seeds for movies I want to watch, which may or may not exist depending on the popularity of the said movie. I currently use a niche streaming site to watch my movies without any issues. Are self hosted plex/jellyfin servers really for a person like me?
Jellyfin is the way to go. Yes, you'll have to download your own content. It's more work, but I definitely think it's worth it. Use qBitTorrent as your client, and sites like yts.mx are great for movies.
This is exactly my problem. Downloading music (even crappy mp3) is basically impossible if you are not in the right, sometimes paid, tracker. In a way, copyright holders actually won their war against piracy.
limited to availability of seeds for movies I want to watch,
Unless you're into SUPER niche stuff, that's not an issue. If you ARE into super niche stuff, it wouldn't be on streaming services anyway. Anything on streaming services is mainstream and easily downloadable.