Media Servers (Jellyfin, Plex, Emby)

[monkun]

In recent years, I’ve grown pretty dissatisfied with streaming services, especially since around 2020. One of the main reasons is that many of the popular platforms keep removing shows I enjoy. On top of that, a lot of the anime I watch is obscure and hard to find on streaming services.

Thankfully, there’s an easy solution: running my own media server! I’ve been using a NAS to host my server for about two years now, primarily to watch anime and 35mm film rips on the TV in my living room.

Do any of you run a media server? What apps do you use? I haven’t met many people into this, so I’m really curious to hear your experiences

 

[beefbowl]

I tried jellyfin before, it's super cool and I'm interested in my own media server but currently I have no disk space and need for it.

 

[Yousef]

Unrelated but cool avatar

 

[ATenderLad]

Never, I'm a good girl I am! Games, movies, and comics that breeze my way was purchased all legal-like.

...but if I weren't, I'm sure I'd say Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, and Kavita are all pretty cool. Just don't extend it to older relatives or you'll be tech support for the rest of your days (or have to make up an excuse for why it doesn't work for them anymore...)

...but that's all hypothetical, of course!

 

[Patches]

I used to daily for years when Microsoft didn't hate their consumers. I used the windows media center server functionality to stream to my xbox 360 and other devices. Unless you're running something older than win10 or 'The offline xbox experience' this is no longer able to be done in this fashion. Its been painful to watch technology move backwards in so many ways this past decade.

 

[vulonkaaz]

my "media server" is an old mini PC i bought from a guy who stole it from some government office (there's a sticker on it that says "propriété de l'État" so I assume that's how he got his hands on it)

all I have on there is a torrent client and a samba server (the thing for windows shared folders), not even using linux i installed netbsd on that thing (don't do this every day i regret my life decisions of installing autistic OSes)

don't need more than that i'd have no use for a jellyfin or whatever i can just click the video files in the folder
if i had an android TV (i don't cause smart tvs are haram) the SMB folders would show up in VLC so I'd have no problem there either

---

isn't it weird how nowadays when people wanna get into piracy, the first thing they think about is building a whole-ass server full of software instead of just playing some files on their desktop PC ?

idk i kinda grew up on windows vista with mega upload, mega video, emule, bittorrent, VLC and nowadays it feels like for many people it's either Netflix or some weird-ass free software that has to be hosted on servers and stuff that emulates the feel of Netflix and I'm like bros can't you just plug your laptop to the TV or something ?

 

[Gorse]

I'm like bros can't you just plug your laptop to the TV or something ?

A lot of modern laptops don't have HDMI ports.

 

[vulonkaaz]

A lot of modern laptops don't have HDMI ports.

they probably have USB C ports that can output HDMI

and if they don't bro wtf are you even buying ???????????????

 

[Ian Naxieas]

My boyfriend has us set up with both a Plex and Jellyfin server that his friends dump content into. There's also a friend group Funkwhale bursting at the seams with music.

Look, I was a good boy for a really long time, but this streaming service bullshit is out of control. Now streaming services have ads and you have to pay double for ad free streaming. What's with them all having this premium bullshit too? And I'm not even going to get into the constant rotation of good content and everything being split up everywhere. Netflix brutally destroyed cable by being cheap and having lots of options on one platform. Now you'll be paying way more for streaming services if you want their handful of good movies/shows amidst all the slop.

Also, fuck Disney+ in particular. I haven't given Disney any money for decades and that's not going to change.

 

[Gorse]

What's with them all having this premium bullshit too?

I know, this is such a fucking grift. It's a paid streaming service – the entire thing is premium! Why do I have to deal with "tiers"? Just give me all the content and features, and you'll still be getting my money every month! I have zero idea how anyone has the funds or time to entertain all this BS.

And I'm not even going to get into the constant rotation of good content and everything being split up everywhere.

This is even worse if you live outside the U.S. because, in addition to dealing with shows constantly swapping around a million different platforms, you also have to deal with a lot of shows simply becoming inaccessible due to lapsed copyright contracts. (Which, of course, are different for every show, streaming platform, and country.) I could theoretically deal with all the BS of streaming if it was entirely region-free and you had access to every show and movie from the past 80 years, but the fact that you don't makes it worse for actually watching older content than VHS!