(Disclaimer: yes, I bought a $180 4TB Crucial SSD too, but my family split the cost with me since they're going to use my Jellyfin server. Whether that counts towards the final cost is up to you. And the electricity cost is pretty negligible to run a Le Potato as a server, but I guess you can count that too.)
So this all started rather innocently. I was fed up with all the ads being shoved in my face with everything I do, so I finally decided that it was time to set up a Pi-hole on a single board computer. For me, it ended up being a Le Potato. I had never even touched Linux prior to this, so it took me a day or so to get everything set up. I love learning new things so I kind of got hooked on learning my way around Linux basics and decided that I was going to upgrade my setup to a Pi-hole + VPN using wireguard. That was kind of a beast to configure as a novice but I got that to work after about a week. Now I was getting ad free content anywhere I wanted on my phone. I rode that high for a few weeks until I realized that I was just scratching the surface of what I could do with my little $30 Linux server setup and this is where I really got to upgrade.
I had learned of Jellyfin from LTT and decided that I was going to test it out. I set up the Jellyfin server on the Le Potato and I was off to the races. Now I just needed content. I read through some of the wiki and settled on Mullvad+qbittorrent to find the content I wanted. With everything configured it still didn't really feel complete, so I set up profiles for my family members and gave them their own passwords to access the content. I quickly realized that 64 GB was not nearly enough (without a rolling library) and I was getting annoyed with having to constantly swith the flash drive I was using between the Le Potato and the laptop where I was downloading my content. So I went out and bought a 4TB USB SSD from Crucial and set up access as a NAS on Ubuntu with Samba.
It's just now finally set up. My family texts me to let me know what it is they're wanting to watch, I torrent it, upload it to my NAS, and Jellyfin streams that content to my family 100% free. I've turned my 6 family members into pirates and they barely even realize it.
Gotta give it to you, you plugged away, learned, plugged away some more and got a really nice starting base for a setup. Now it's time to start burning time and money on ever increasing space, a docker stack, a more powerful server (leaving the pihole to handle the ads), and on and on lol. Welcome to the hobby!
Thanks man! I think I'm going to let this setup sit for awhile before I do anything else to upgrade.
My hobbyist interests follow my fire making skills. I find a new and interesting hobby (kindling), then I do a little bit of research (stack twigs around the kindling), get started on this new hobby (use a match to light the kindling), discover just how deep the hobby can go(limbs and split logs), explore the advanced portions of this new hobby(toss the best looking wood onto my small fire in no semblance of order), be pleasantly surprised with my results(let the fire burn and go start a new one).
The next step is usually come back to a smoldering pit of ash and half-burned firewood, be annoyed, put the unburned wood in a pile, pour some diesel fuel over it, and flick a match onto it lol.
... or you could pay approx $2.70 / month for real Debrid. Replace jellyfin with stremio + torrentio and your family can immediately stream whatever shows they want w/o asking you and without needing to wait for the torrent to download.
This would be my preferred option, but: I do applaud OP's enthusiasm and dedication. He's learnt a lot of things about it, whereas because of my setup (as you described) I know fuck all. Plus, having his sort of setup gives you your own library over time (should that be desired).
Yeah, it was a fun hobby over the course of the last couple months and I learned a ton about linux, networking, server infrastructure (kinda), and troubleshooting!
I don't like to be reliant on someone else's software or hardware either, so that played a part as well. The library part is good as well because my family is much more likely to give a TV show or movie a try if they see that I added it and we can talk about it when I visit.
I see no reason to not use both. Got a show you're watching that has new releases? Have Sonarr track it and auto download them as they release. Want to try a new show but not sure you'll like it or just a single season? Debrid.
I will say, Jellyfin with Infuse on apple tv is rather easy to use for non technical people where they would struggle with stremio a little more.
Still a far cry from the early XBMC/Kodi days where you had to manually try like 20 sources before you could watch both options really are great
Has anyone read their privacy policy?
We may be required to disclose Users personal data in order to protect our legal rights or where disclosure of Users personal data's are required of us by the judicial authorities only when legal procedures are followed.
Files links that Users download are stored in a database for legal concerns and our internal use. All saved links are erased within 1 month for security reasons and service needs. However all requests made on our site are stored for 1 year, the legal retention period.
I would prefer they had a no-logging policy. This sounds fishy af like a honeypot.
You have a valid point, and if your using this service to download dark web "illegal to possess" content (like CP) - then, yeah, you probably don't want to use it.
However, if you "find" the random movie/tv-show: The copyright holders are usually chasing people who are distributing content (like you do with torrents) as opposed to the people who may accidentally consume the content. ... but IANAL
head over to !selfhosted@lemmy.world and watch any perceived savings evaporate into thin air. along with your spare time.... seriously, its great.
All that and you still went with torrents? I'm surprised you didn't go with Usenet.
I'd rather use torrents, since they are p2p which I really like (decentralized, not possible to take down, etc). The reason I'm downloading through Usenet is that there just isn't dual language content on public trackers. And I don't know the private trackers that have german dl, and neither do I have ratio on any trackers except %30 with a few hundred gb upload on torrenleech thanks to a seedbox.
Any issues yet with not being able to play certain types of media or are you sticking to something like x264 to avoid transcoding?
Not yet, but if I encounter anything I'll try to come back and let you know. I've not used it extensively yet. I'll admit I'm ignorant to different video transcoding formats too. I think I've used AV1, HEV, and x264 so far. If that makes sense? I may be able to answer you better if you walk me through what you mean, but I think it's been pretty stable all around.
Cool, ya I'm not sure which format is the best, but I believe almost anything will play x264. If you end up using a device that doesn't support certain formats you're using, you'll need a GPU to perform the transcoding or it will be hella slow.
