I canceled my subscriptions to Netflix etc and trying to find a good way to watch movies on my laptop.

  • Ericthescruffy [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Plex server. There's an up front cost to buying your own storage space and server but its not that bad depending on how crazy you want to go and there's so many benefits.

    -Storage wise you can get terrabytes of storage for under $100. I have a totally dedicated Network Attached storage system with RAID that also works as a torrent server, but you can absolutely just have it all exist on the server itself. -For the actual computing power to run a plex server its also astoundingly cheap these days TBH. Honestly streaming video, even 1080p today, over the internet isn't that insane. Go to https://www.cpubenchmark.net and you can check the requirements but the rule of thumb is like a score of 2000 per 1080p stream. IE, 4 people watching 1080p at once equals a requirement around 8000.....AND that's only for remote streaming outside your network where it needs to convert and compress the video. IE: if you're at a friends house and you want to watch the revengers infinity war part 2 on their tv from something on your home network. If you are doing direct play on your local network with no transcoding you can practically have a potato of a CPU.

    Basically, go to your discount computer store, snag a cheap ass Dell with an I7 or even an I5 from two years ago, slam a 4 tb hardrive in it and install plex you should be ready to rock and roll. Its honestly the best way to handle movies/shows these days so you don't have to constantly worry about sites being shut down and losing access, or things getting taken down, or your ISP monitoring your pirate streams.

    • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
      ·
      2 years ago

      btw, you can get HDDs for $13-$18/tb if you keep an eye out.

      https://diskprices.com/ scans amazon, but if you see a deal, check that the price hasn't gone up since the bot scraped it.