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general plex server to replace streaming services?

joined apr 6, 2024

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joined apr 6, 2024

quoting NobodyFix:

Stability issues returned, but I think I accidentally fixed it by unintentionally erasing my cache. A clean install of only the software I need (radarr, sonarr, SABnzdb, Jellyfin, Jellyseerr).

I still need a video card for transcoding, as I misread the chart, and the cheapo one I bought only does decoding, and not encoding.

is there a reason that you are transcoding at all? it is a big drain of system resources and can be averted by just direct streaming everything. if the media is in certain formats though you won't be able to direct stream. most of my stuff is MP4 and direct streams just fine to all my devices

posted 4/6/2024, 3:34 pm

joined jun 30, 2023

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joined jun 30, 2023

quoting cassie:

is there a reason that you are transcoding at all? it is a big drain of system resources and can be averted by just direct streaming everything. if the media is in certain formats though you won't be able to direct stream. most of my stuff is MP4 and direct streams just fine to all my devices

The majority of my streaming goes to my TV, which can't handle certain formats. When the processor was pegged it made the movie skip back in time by upwards of 10 minutes. Very annoying. Also at some point I'm going to be forced to run tdarr to free up some space.

I do think I solved the problem though, looking into some video cards, I discovered that the processor has Intel Quick Sync. After an hour of fishing around in the bios, I turned on IGPU, and set onboard graphics to preferred. Other than one weird hiccup where the video card changed numbers after a reboot, I haven't had any issues since.

posted 4/9/2024, 3:30 pm

joined feb 17, 2023

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SO FRESH. SO KLEEN

joined feb 17, 2023

The way to do plex these days is pay one of the mega providers for insane library size and managing the ball-ache of it all.

Zyf is my go to, most of the others are hosted off Hetzner because: cheap

Until the rights bodies people acquire plex it's a bonanza that far exceeds streamers. Before the Warner/Discovery merger that turned HBO into MAX and lead to the culling of a ton of great programming, piracy was only somewhat justified. Now it's practically a moral necessity. DM if you want an invite to Zyf

Two highly recommended shows you can't really see on streamers (in the US) but can on Plex:

Pantheon Image 🍅Rotten Tomatoes 🎬IMDb

Beforeigners Image 🍅Rotten Tomatoes 🎬IMDb

edit: I've tried everything I can think of and cannot figure out how to embed an image properly. ah well

edited 4/19/2024, 5:38 am

joined jun 12, 2024

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joined jun 12, 2024

quoting orchids:

so i finally got a plex server set up on a tiny little VPS, which is something i've been meaning to do for a long time. to start, I only bought a $5/month server, which has 25GB of storage (obviously going to need to bump it up soon enough).

does anyone else here use Plex? And if so, do you use it to replace streaming services like Netflix or HBO or maybe even Spotify? If so, how do you like it as a replacement? I spent this weekend uploading a bunch of things and am quickly realizing it's going to be a pain in the ass to maintain. I'm typically waiting until night to upload, so my bandwidth isn't congested during peak hours, which is working out pretty good except for the times that it fails during the night. Overall, it's going okay, but going to take a lot of hours to build up a respectable library, and I feel like i might lost interest eventually.

For those who don't know what Plex is, it's a media server that you can either pay for as a service or host yourself and stream your own content that you upload to the service (or pay for content Plex offers). The benefits are a great out-of-the-box streaming experience for a lower cost than if you were paying for multiple different streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.

very late to reply but wouldn't hosting it on a VPS get you in potential legal troubles (worst case) or get you suspended (best case). many VPSes have some anti-piracy rules. so unless its an offshore DMCA-ignore VPS in Moldova, Russia, Vietnam or Seychelles, you're pretty much fucked.

Plex, jellyfin and similar services could be run on a pretty weak spare hardware unless you need on-fly transcoding

posted 6/15/2024, 9:21 pm

joined dec 4, 2022

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joined dec 4, 2022

quoting rina:

very late to reply but wouldn't hosting it on a VPS get you in potential legal troubles (worst case) or get you suspended (best case). many VPSes have some anti-piracy rules. so unless its an offshore DMCA-ignore VPS in Moldova, Russia, Vietnam or Seychelles, you're pretty much fucked.

Plex, jellyfin and similar services could be run on a pretty weak spare hardware unless you need on-fly transcoding

possibly, but it's all locked behind a login wall, so unless the VPS goes looking i might be good? idk i just read a few reddit threads of people asking and seems like it's mostly fine.

posted 6/16/2024, 12:44 am

joined jun 12, 2024

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joined jun 12, 2024

quoting orchids:

possibly, but it's all locked behind a login wall, so unless the VPS goes looking i might be good? idk i just read a few reddit threads of people asking and seems like it's mostly fine.

unless you give them a reason to be suspicious of you, you're likely going to be fine

posted 6/16/2024, 3:26 pm

joined jun 9, 2023

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joined jun 9, 2023

quoting NobodyFix:

First, for some reason a lot of media defaults to French, which isn't a huge deal, since I just have to switch the language over and turn off the subtitles. It's more of a deal for my partner who doesn't retain how to do that no matter how many times I've shown her.

You should be able to set up a quality profile in Sonarr / Radarr to avoid this

quoting NobodyFix:

Fourth, some TV is just a bitch to find, like Seinfeld, it's there, but seems to clog up my queue with files that just hang there forever. I installed an optical drive, and set up MakeMKV and Handbrake, they work great at taking my DVDs and Blu-Rays, and converting them to a useable format, just pop the disc in and let them do their thing. The downside is unlike ripping my CDs back in the day where 99% of the time the track listings were pulled from CDDB, there apparently isn't anything like that for visual media. It's pretty much a crapshoot as to how things are named and organized, so I still have to babysit them on some level.

Ripping your own media is 100% more of a trauma than just sucking it down from the high seas, but most stuff is matching on TheTVDB so you can just name your files S01E01.mp4 or whatever, dump that into Jellyfin and it should pick things up. Private trackers are typically better for older stuff too.

edited 6/30/2024, 1:45 am

general plex server to replace streaming services?