This post contains content related to media piracy. I couldn’t find any rules for this community and I don’t know if it’s allowed. I accept the risk of getting this post taken down or being banned without knowing the rules.
With that small disclaimer out of the way, let’s tackle my question.
I’m a simple self hoster: I have single server made out of an Optiplex 3060 Micro (i5 8500T, 32GB, 14TB of storage in one drive), I use duckdns instead of a real domain and I have no supporting infrastructure. I don’t really like watching things, I set up arr stack mainly because everyone says it’s the best thing to use a homelab for.
My family have strong opinions on piracy and I know for a fact they wouldn’t use my jellyfin, even if I tried to manipulate them, which btw is a really bad practice (if it’s as common as responses under posts about getting people to use your homelab suggest).
I also have hard time getting them to even allow me to run my homelab (I’m a teenager, I live with my parents), because it takes space and uses power (for context idle is around 8W).
As I said, I don’t watch things that often and even if I watch, I’m extremely monothematic, I watch basically only AOT and sometimes some random popular movie.
I understand that my situation is quite unique, but I find it hard to argue for Jellyfin+arrs when fmhy and countless reliable streaming sites exists.
I already made my mind, I’ll stop using those services today. I’m interested how others look at this “problem” tho.
Are you hosting arr stack/plex/jellyfin?
How much is it utilized (in watch hours/week for example, mine was less than 2/week)?
Have you considered not using it?
If you stopped using it and went back, what happened, why did you change your mind?
Honestly, as a teenager who doesn’t own the building and doesn’t pay the electric bill, don’t worry about building infrastructure for yourself and the people around you. Taking on that kind of responsibility is actually going to be kind of annoying because once people rely on it, you can’t play anymore – so just use it yourself, and enjoy it, and maybe you get a chance to show it off, but maybe not. Infrastructure you own but don’t have to answer to anyone for is important for that purpose. After all, maybe you don’t want jellyfin in the end, and you can just kill it.
My family uses our jellyfin all the time, because it’s set up exactly how we want. It has all my wife’s favorite DVDs ripped and on it, it has my son’s favorite movies, it even has strange stuff like the video of me driving in a demolition derby or baby photos or comic books – it’s my thing, I can put whatever I want on there and that’s what makes it great. We have a great workflow – we have android TV, and the jellyfin for android TV app, so we just open it up and everything is right there. It’s well-done enough that if you didn’t know it’s something I host in my basement in the rafters right above the washer and dryer you’d never know it isn’t just a normal streaming service.
Some people won’t see the benefit of having this thing you control and own and are responsible for. But did you know that you can’t buy the original Star Wars anymore, only the modified editions from later on? Did you know that there are movies you can’t watch anywhere because the licensing is in limbo? Did you know there’s public domain movies that are important to cinema history that you won’t find on movie streaming sites? So it’s not so cut and dry.
Keep playing. When you find really cool things that nobody else knows about or sees the value in, it’s like a secret door in your house nobody else believes is there, you can sneak in and go on this adventure.