• blackstampede@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I should probably thank Netflix for helping me save money. Their shenanigans pissed me off enough that I’ve entirely withdrawn from all paid streaming - I have a media server and a VPN now. Total media cost, $70 /year or ~$5.83 /month. For that, I have:

    • Access to any movie or t.v. show any streaming service has ever provided
    • No ads
    • Shows/films don’t get removed from from the platform without warning.
    • moe93
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      1 year ago

      Interesting, do you mind elaborating? I’ve been contemplating something similar but not sure where to start.

    • blackstampede@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      A couple of people have asked for more info about my setup, so here’s what I did. I’m on mobile, so forgive any typos:

      1. I bought a refurbished Dell mini PC from some website or other - if you Google “refurbished Dell mini PC” it’ll probably be the top result. It doesn’t need to be fast or have too much memory, but I’ve got a 2TB hard disk in mine, which is surprisingly cheap. Also needs at least one HDMI port.

      2. I installed Ubuntu 20.04, and made a single user with no password, then set it to boot straight to the desktop. Plugged it directly into the t.v. with an HDMI cable.

      3. I bought a cheap wireless keyboard with a roller ball in it that (barely, need a better one) can be used from my couch.

      4. Installed Jellyfin and set it to run as a background service on boot. It has two directories it cares about: ~/Videos/Film and ~/Videos/Television

      5. Set up ssh so that I can use scp to push files from my personal laptop to the server without having to dick around with thumb drives etc. I also have a script that checks how much disk space is available on the media server so I don’t run out (that 2TB drive fills up fast).

      6. Got a NordVPN subscription and use Transmission on my personal laptop to download anything I want to see, push it to the server.

      For a while, I also had an external domain name and IP so I could watch my videos on my phone while travelling, but I switched routers recently and something broke. I haven’t set this back up, but there are services that will give you a static IP and route requests to your actual IP so you can have a static domain name without having to pay your ISP for a static IP.

      EDIT: also, you can set commands to run at login, so it boots directly to Firefox running in kiosk mode on the Jellyfin web app. The end result is that on boot, I get the Ubuntu symbol, a brief flash of desktop, and then I’m browsing my media library full screen.