I guess now that I have a Shield versus a PS5 in my living room, I should give it another try, but I really have never cared much about all the features I don’t use as long as the ones I do are still there, and they are.

I pay for the monthly subscription and still feel like it’s a good value. I cringe at the people who say stuff like “I bought a lifetime pass in 2014 for $60 but don’t like all the new features!” like that kind of unsustainable consumption isn’t exactly what pushes them towards more monetization and Plex is still the only company I can think of to have ever actually honored that purchase. No shame though, it was a great deal for early adopters.

And PlexAmp alone justifies putting up with some of the BS, at least for now.

Just my thoughts

Hmmm, sorry to hear that. What kinds of lists are you trying to make? Are you making sure to “enable” the filter when creating it in Radarr?

Firstly, the core *arr suite is not a streaming service, whatsoever. It’s a media file manager meant to help with running a private server streaming app, like Plex or Jellyfin. With that out of the way:

I imagine sitting on coach, searching for show. Then you want to watch some, and then you have to wait half an hour for full episode (or even season?)

Download speeds depend on your own setup. IMO, a Usenet connection is the only way to use *arr. Downloads happen at the maximum speed and don’t rely on some other person’s seed rate. You, conversely, don’t need to worry about seeding.

When you manually add a show to Sonarr, you can select it to only pick up the pilot episode of the show, which could cut down on DL times by focusing bandwidth. You can also select a lower definition. With Usenet and something like a 720p quality, there’s no reason why this should take more than 5 minutes to be in your library.

I’ll also paste my comment I left below about connecting to lists:

You can connect your *arr profiles to monitor external lists of new titles by pointing the list manager to something like MDBList. They might not be as instantaneous as you might like, with a 24hr refresh period, but it’s pretty much a 0.99:1 Netflix replacement for me

I’ll also add that I’m not some CompSci nerd, either, so don’t be scared to give it a shot. My server runs off Plex on my Windows 10 desktop because I don’t know how to do any better but I’ve never had an issue watching what I want to watch

You can connect your *arr profiles to monitor external lists of new titles by pointing the list manager to something like MDBList. They might not be as instantaneous as you might like, with a 24hr refresh period, but it’s pretty much a 0.99:1 Netflix replacement for me

Yt-dlp is the way. J-Downloader is okay too if you need a good interface but dlp is just too damn powerful to not use

As I said, I’ve yet to find a selfhosting solution half as good as PlexAmp. It’s very, very good and arguably a better service than normal Plex

For me it’s PlexAmp and the few tech-illiterate friends I have who use my server for video streaming. 99% of the time, I just watch movies on my desktop with VLC player but I’ve yet to find a self-hosting music player half as good as PlexAmp

Counterpoint: when I worked at Panda Express, I used to leave fake reviews on our store about how helpful and professional pp_boy_ was because I wanted a raise. Never did it on any accounts attached to my name though.

All fair points, just depends on where your motivation to self host comes from. $7 for a monthly sub to Plex is frankly nothing to me, I don’t even have the charge linked to my budget spreadsheet. Between Plex, VPN, my usenet provider, private tracker memberships, electricity, etc., I’m not even sure I’m saving much money versus having one or two streaming subscriptions. In other words, I don’t do it to save money.

PlexAmp alone justifies the cost even before some features got put behind a paywall but the fact that all my tech-illiterate friends can just download an app on their phones/consoles and watch whatever they want in a high bitrate off my computer makes it worth it for me. 9/10, I just watch films off VLC player anyway.

That isn’t true. A Plex pass from the server owner will cover access for all users

Indeed. The entitlement that some folks online have towards Plex is embarrassing sometimes.

You can selfhost for free however you want but software developers have the right to ask for money to use their software. I selfhost about 60tb of media and have paid for Plex monthly for about 10 years now. They are still so far above the competition for ease-of-use that I wouldn’t even consider switching at this point, even to save $7/month.

This was announced several months ago

Oh that’s fantastic! Thanks

Yeah lol I spent the morning on PC parts picker/Amazon trying to find how tf I could even get a case, mobo, and cpu for under $200. Question still stands, what kind of miniPC do you recommend?

What kind of components would you recommend starting with for a $200 build? Any links would be appreciated

If it replaced my current media player (PS5), then it would be used about 95% for streaming media and 5% playing games, so I consider it more of a Windows HTPC than a gaming console replacement.

I would just be 1/3rd of the people using the console and don’t believe anyone would touch it if it wasn’t an OS that the other users are comfortable with.

Appreciated. It may be worth it to just build a SFF after all. Never heard of massgrave before. QRD?

Not OP but nobody likes price hikes and locking once-free features behind a paywall without adding anything to the features is pretty wack