meirl

Exactly why I run Kodi on my firetv

Hmm, pay $20 a month apiece for 20 different shitty streaming services that use ads, or $6/month for Usenet access and $1/month for indexer access, and get every movie and TV show for nothing extra...
Choices, choices.
- What’s the easiest/best way to start with UseNet? I’ve wanted to give it a try for the longest time - but it just feels like such a daunting task to try and figure out..
  
  It's not complicated. The Usenet provider gives you access to Usenet, and the indexer lets you search it for whatever you want. You then download it with a Usenet client. You can do it manually, much the same way as you download a torrent from any site. if you've downloaded a torrent before, you would be able to manage Usenet with no issues at all.
  Or, if you're willing to spend a few hours setting up the Servarr apps on an old computer like I did, you can automate the whole thing. I recommend this option, because you do it once and then you have a seamless way to fetch files from torrent and Usenet both without ever doing anything more than typing in the name of the show/movie. The Servarr apps search for, download, and import media into my library so that I can stream them to all my devices using Jellyfin (or Plex, if you like corpo apps). They even fetch proper subtitles for everything, and I also have it set up so after I've watched an episode, it's deleted to make room for something else. It's as easy as Netflix, at a fraction of the cost.

Would you like to see a film? It's $60 to enter the movie theater. A chair to sit in is $10. You wanted to see the film? You need the glasses to unscramble the screen image. $40. Audio? That's for due paying subscribers $4.99/mo. You want to exit the theater? $120. In case of fire? Cleaning up your ashes generates a $200 fee.

- Huge library of [legally acquired] digital media is nice too
  
  What are you talking about? Of course I got the BIOS from my PS2 using a flash drive. Of course I manually backed up physical games I own. I would never illegally download.

the lemmy comment section 🔥
- We may have our differences, but we are all very anti-corporate.

Yes, remember it is totally immoral to pirate things from corporations who actively make everything worse for everyone.
Here’s a guide to what sites you should avoid so you don’t accidentally get movies, shows, books, music, etc. without paying FMHY.net
- yeah, i avoid such sites a lot. Especially brocoflix.com . It's an atrocious site that lets u watch movies for free.
  
  I'm a bit old school with things like this.
  I'd much rather avoid downloading a 4k rip and watching it offline.
  But I'll be sure to avoid these sites, too, if I'm ever in the mood to watch something when I'm away from my 'linux iso storage and acquisition' machine.

The average US household spent over $500/yr on streaming services in 2024, which was actually down YOY!
At that sort of expense, you would be much better served buying (or if you’re technically minded - building) a NAS at home and then just..
.. yaaar! 🏴‍☠️
That way, you keep access to the media without having to worry about licenses expiring or the internet going out.

Or you can buy it for $30, but no you can't have a digital copy. And if, in the future, the service folds, then you can no longer watch it.

- That reminds me, I love the hannya/jolly roger fusion on Majima's flag in the upcoming Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii! (Which I would not be pirating even if it weren't Denuvo)
- Sure, but let’s not pretend like it’s just a one click like streaming legally. My wife and kid would have zero clue how to go about it. But I agree, every time I wanna watch something in particular it’s never on any of the networks, or in one of the ones I don’t have.
  Also you can’t get everything through torrents, only popular stuff or current stuff, anything else you might be lucky to get one seeder or two
  
  If you setup streamio it's literally as easy as using Netflix. And it has everything, it's extremely rare that i find anything that i can't watch
  
  Personally Ive got a pirate streaming service which has a mobile app and desktop website to stream anything from Netflix, apple, Disney, Hulu, prime, etc pretty much every service out there and new episodes pop up within a day. It's no different than opening up the Netflix app. It's pretty damn easy and convenient. Not perfect as sometimes it lags and you need to watch in lower quality but so much more convenient having everything in one spot than needing to search 5 different apps for something to watch.
  
  Another guy in this thread linked an amazing resource for learning:
  https://fmhy.net/
  
  My wife and kid love watching stuff on Plex. We might even watch some Dog Man tonight if we have time, then maybe I’ll get to continue The Expanse with my wife after the kid goes to bed.
  I set some stuff up automatically, but still do a bunch more manually because it’s easy enough. Once I’ve set it up, the user experience and the A/V quality are excellent.
  I’ve even started putting a bunch of FLAC albums into Plex to use it for my music streaming. We Get YouTube music for free but it can get obnoxious to actually use throughout the day.
  
  My wife and kids have a clue - they just tell me to download it. The little ones will learn their piracy lessons on coffee shop wifi, not at our home.
  
  If you are tech savy you can get almost whatever you want with a one click, just like legal streaming, and eve with more quality
  If you aren't you can hook up a plex server from a friend or use things like magisTv or similar

🏴‍☠️
- Arrr!
  
  Wow! I only realized now why the *arr software (radarr, sonarr, bazarr ...) are named like that despite using them for years.
  Thanks for the epiphany.
- Sail the High Seas Matey!

This service is not available in your country.

yarrr matey

!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Blocked on .world.
  It’s really time to switch.

!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com (blocked by lemmy.world instance)
- Damn, I'm on world. Where should I move to? Been getting tired of world's bs
  
  I mean lemmy.dbzer0.com, the instance that is hosted on. I mean, an intance that allows that probably doesn't have much bullshit authoritarianism. The instance owner is a self-declared anarchist, although, if you are a "right-wing anarchist" (or other right-wing ideologies) you might not like it here.
  Other options are:
  sh.itjust.works
  lemmy.ca
  sopuli.xyz
  
  I went from world to shitjustworks. Big worth.

Sometimes it isn’t even available to rent, but you can buy for $30
- Unless you read the fine print, which redefines buying as "not buying, but give us the money anyway"

Anyone who still forks money to billionaires for entertainment might be stupid.
- I agree with the sentiment but if a large majority would stop using these services and pirating wouldn't it result in either less entertainment or more crackdowns?
  
  Nope. It resulted in the original Netflix, aka a service that actually worked and had everything we wanted for a time. Direct reaction to mass piracy and actually reduced it by 90℅ iirc.
  You also can't crack down on non centralized services and the more decentralized nodes, the harder the job becomes and the more expensive. At some point it will become uneconomic to go after pirates.
  And, yes there will be massively less movies & shows which is very good. We live in a fresh hell where billionaires push out half baked shit every week and the only way to tell them is to not buy it.
  
  The current model has its own issues. The amount of series that are cancelled after the first or second season is ludicrous. Also, and I'm not sure if it's related to streaming or the constant writer's strikes, but series have reduced from 16-26 episodes per season from the height of the piracy-era to 6-10 nowadays.
  If the reduction in piracy led to this deterioration in quality, then I can't imagine it could get any worse if everyone started pirating again.
  Personally, I reckon it will incentivise the numbskulls in charge that no one is going to pay for 48 separate streaming services and they'll be forced to adapt (likely via packaging/merging streaming services together).

Aaarrr, really? Now what is one supposed to doaaaarrr?

Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid
You can thank me later
- Why later? I'll thank you right fucking now!
  Thank you kind sir.
  
  Enjoy! Debrid can also unrestrict file sharing sites like katfile, scribd, etc.
- Even after RD’s massive anti-piracy swing?
  I tried put.io and Torbox but they throw errors even when I can see they downloaded the torrent
  
  Never had any issues. It works perfectly when I use it with 1337x and TBP.
  Dont know why they're beefing with those trackers specifically, but it doesn't affect Stremio's operations one bit. I can still stream any movie or show I want instantly to my TV.
  Alas, you can always use a different Debrid service. I simply prefer R-D because it's the most popular, which means that tends to have more content available for instant stream rather than having to wait for seeds. Almost every torrent I want has already been cached by another user for instant download.
  
  anti-piracy swing?
  All bark, no bite
  
  I didn't know about any swing and started using it for the past month with no issues so far

If I want to pay money, I'll buy the DVD. If I just want it one time, I have ways and means.
- I dont like having DVDs everywhere.
  if they offered DRM free paid downloads so i could give them my money and just host it myself i probably would give them my money.
  but they don't, so i sail
  
  That is fair. But I've had more HDD failure than DVD disc rot so far. I prefer physical media which doesn't require engaging my computer.
  
  Given that physical media comes with DRM I can't see that happening
- DVDs are like 480p quality
  At least get regular blurays
  
  Blu-Ray is a pain to play in VLC, for the times I do want to play it on PC. Besides, I can't much see beyond 480i and roughly 30fps. And I can't rip it as easily.

Sail the seven seas! 🏴‍☠️

🏴‍☠️

Sonarr & Radarr
- Do you happen to know of guides, that teach how to use that setup securely?
- 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.
- 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

Ahoy mate

Aar...
- *Arr
- 'rent > rent

Market trends have inspired me to make my own plex server on raspberry pi. It will be a fun project. :)
- While you're at it, set that Lil guy up as a pi-hole. Best things I've ever set up on my raspberrypi
- Don't do that
  Performance will be bad
  
  Yeah. I just moved my Plex server to my newly rebuilt and Linuxized old gaming machine, a 9700K (8 core Intel) with 32 gigs of ram and a GTX1080 GPU. It is so nice having all that performance available, especially the GPU if somebody needs to transcode while watching.
  I can use that machine like normal without affecting anything streaming from the box. Next time I need to encode a video I’ll have to try watching something 4K transcoded to lower bitrate 4K/1080p at the same time to see if I notice anything.
- Use kodi instead.

https://youtu.be/J0e9UiXbd5o

Yo ho!

I think you missed a 1 in front of that 9

We’re back to cable. Buy the channel packages (streaming services) and now you have ads and pay-per-view.

Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing (Official Music Video) | Warner Vault

I only have one streaming service and it has literally everything.
- Streamio ?
  
  Self hosted jellyfin

Sail out on the grand line for that movie.
Mullvad, iVPN and protonVPN all make good...ships, to sail with

VPN subscriptions are about $5/mo (Mullvad for example)

I only have one streaming service, and it's got pretty much everything.
- Arrrr

Me: Well alrighty then, what other thing do I want to watch...

Even the sweetest fruit once you begin to consume it turns to shit.

No "Dogma". No one has ever streamed Dogma.

Debrid-link* + Stremio
*or any other debrid service (Real-Debrid shut down)
- Wait what, when did they shut down?
  I'm still using them afik
  
  Just looked into it a bit more, turns out they're still working, but:
  RD received a formal notice from the National Federation of Film Publishers (probably law suit) so RD has to comply and strengthen anti piracy measures.
  That started with the deactivation of the API endpoint /instantavailability which is what 3rd party app add ons like torrentio and Fen Lite/Cocoscrapers used to scrape streamable cached links (I think)
  The notice also included a blocking of torrents and purge of the cache of specific media, we don't know the full extent of this yet but it seems many links are already being blocked
  The reason torrentio is working with RD again is because the torrentio dev built a workaround so that it will still use RD to pull links we just aren't able to see if they are cached or not, I do not know if this is a permanent fix but as far as I can tell, things will continually get worse for RD, not better.
  Reddit
  Non-Reddit link
- Can you elaborate or redirect to further investigate how this could be used?
  
  Seems like this explains it pretty well, though Stremio has basically an app for every device, not only the firestick:
  https://champagne.pages.dev/piracy-guides/firestick/#stremio--trakt
  Also, I don't remember doing the "Trakt" part when setting up, just used Debrid and Torrentio to connect it to Stremio.

Having no blue ray player and a desperate desire to watch anything studio ghibli ruined me. Thank god hbo picked it up but now I'm desensitized and relieved when the things I want to watch appear on amazon or apple TV.
- I picked up a Blu Ray player not all that long ago, and even there selection is kind of surprisingly limited.
- You'd be less depressed if you got some sea air into.
- Do you not have a PS3? Or a PS4? Or a PS5? Or a PS6?
  Wait, are you a time traveler?
  
  Someone stole it.

You pay to watch stuff? Why?
- I like the cinema and it’s £5 and you can take your own munchies.
  
  Ik have a beamer and an automated download system on my NAS. I have my own cinema but with a comfy couch, I can pause when I need a new drink or for a toilet break, watch anything I want and I have my own snacks too. Plus, 3 kitties fighting for my lap.
  A fiver is a good deal though, cinema over here is expensive. €20 for a ticket. Snacks and drinks are also expensive AF.

I have Netflix, Prime & Hulu. I'm ready to drop all 3 but my wife enjoys some of their trash. I'm tolerating it, for now.

i have seen this meme the third time the last few days and i'm always like: rent where?
i don't get it. does it mean, the movie isn't available within the services subscription, but costs additional money or does it mean it's not even in any service and you rent it somewhere else?
- iTunes, Amazon Prime or Youtube has movies to buy and rent. Lots of newer movies take a long time to appear on streaming if at all. I rent quite a lot on iTunes. It’s a fiver and no hassle. Some are a bit special, like Nosferatu costs 16 just to rent it, yeah no I’ll wait.
  Also buying on iTunes has been worth it for me as they will give you higher quality versions later on without additional cost. Way back I got Home Alone for free in the advent calendar in SD and now I can watch the same in 4K.
  Downside of course is you don’t really own anything.
- On some services like Amazon Prime you can rent a movie for 24h (or something like that)
  You can also "buy" movies, but I've seen so many times that they take away the movie that you "bought" and you don't get a refund.
  
  You can also rent on YouTube, and even buy there, so you can always access your cherished movies in reliable and enduring Google Services.
- It costs additional money and only for a 1 time viewing, example Bringing Out The Dead (1999)

Show the Pain Harold

What options do you guys have where you are? In UK we have:
Now/Sky Amazon Prime Netflix Paramount + Apple TV Britbox Disney+ Free ones are BBC, ITV/STV, Channel 4, My5
May have missed some.
- Only using jellyfin and it has everything I pirate

All you did with this post was show everyone you're an idiot, and you not realising that before posting just increases the level of stupidity. And we're on lemmy, a place where almost everyone is more tech literate than most and generally less dumb too, yet here you are. It's a miracle how you managed to get here and figure out instances etc.
- Are you young and have no assets? Because managing risk is an adult thing to do. I used to pirate, but decided the risks outweigh the rewards for me at this time. I might again someday, but not today.
- Some people have less free time than you do and the convenience is worth it to them.