5 ms·

This is why in my circle we set up the town pump plex server. Originally it was for streaming older movies (pre 1970) which you can't stream from any major serv

by eyegor 7y ago

This is why in my circle we set up the town pump plex server. Originally it was for streaming older movies (pre 1970) which you can't stream from any major service but the new era of fragmentation has drastically expanded it. We bought a retired datacenter rack and everyone contributes a few bucks a month to cover running costs. Then we have scripts scraping the top x movies/shows from torrent sites once a week and a little web ui for adding individual magnet links or uploading files directly. It's so much easier to find things when they aren't changing availability every 2 months (netflix et al).

vinceguidry 7y ago
This makes me wonder if there's a luxury service somewhere providing the kind of access people want at an expensive, but reasonable price. So I don't have to go about building and maintaining a public resource.
- jowsie 7y ago
  r/plexshares on reddit is a sort of open secret.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - missosoup 7y ago
    Delete this.
    - switch007 7y ago
      Oh Come on, it’s the second result on google for “Plex reddit”.
      - fragmede 7y ago
        Sure, but unless you use Reddit on a regular basis, why would you even consider adding "reddit" to the search query? To be fair, just searching for "plex" does return Reddit results, though not on the first page (for me anyway, Google personalizes search results). It's no longer the Wild West of Internet, and it turns out information doesn't want to be free, it wants to live in invite-only areas who's members are vetted before invitation. DMCA take-downs can't be sent if the material can't be found.
        switch007 7y ago
        Let me turn it around: who are you trying to hide it from? Anyone with a tiny bit of Internet knowledge is going to know how big a site Reddit is (#6 on Alexa for the US).
        fragmede 7y ago
        Easy: The MPAA and every other organization that views copyright infringement as an evil that must be quashed and would seek to shut it down. To be clear, I'm willing to pay for content, and have a small library of shows and movies sprawled across Google, Amazon, and Apple's offerings that I "own", it's just far more convenient to have all my media in one place: Plex.
        jazzyjackson 7y ago
        subreddits can be made private & invite only if they wish not to be found on the open web
navigatesol 7y ago
>We bought a retired datacenter rack and everyone contributes a few bucks a month to cover running costs. Everyone does a bit of pirating here and there, and I think the media companies realize it's a cost of doing business. But something tells me they wouldn't look too fondly on an organised, multi-user pirated content distribution platform... Here in Canada there are some big chains (Best Buy, Staples) being sued for telling people at point-of-purchase that they can watch free content on an Android box.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  I somehow doubt that streaming platforms will finally be the ones to end piracy once and for all via lawsuits.
  - navigatesol 7y ago
    There's a difference between pirating something, and distributing pirated content, both ethically and legally.
    - ArnoVW 7y ago
      Mind you, most peer-to-peer sharing protocols work by having everyone be distributor and downloader at the same time. This is why they are "peer to peer". The bittorrent protocol for example downloads files in fragments, and every fragment that you have downloaded becomes available for other clients (i.e. you start becoming a server as soon as you have downloaded one fragment)
    - AimForTheBushes 7y ago
      You mean like the pirate bay?
      - alanh 7y ago
        we're in the weeds now, but: sort of. the pirate bay doesn’t distribute anything — it just indexes it — but actually getting content via the pirate bay involves torrenting the content. and torrent is a tech that makes every downloader also an uploader to peers.
rhodo 7y ago
what are you using to run this code-wise? I was thinking of making something similar.
- eyegor 7y ago
  Freenas + plex, deluge and openvpn for torrenting (inside a container), iris to host the web front-end, scripts are all just python. I'm sure there are more legit solutions for web scraping but I just parse the html and it hasn't broken on me so far. One set of sites to query for "top x sites", pass titles along to torrent aggregator searches when there are no magnets. Then the important practical step is a background queue to re-encode the video to a standard format and bitrate. I'd rather not open source it because of how dirty the setup is, I just hacked something together one weekend and it's been running for almost 5 years now with minimal maintenance. Edit: I think iris was something I did more recently, I don't remember what it was using originally. I just wanted to play with go a little bit. The "front end" itself is a single page with an upload button and a box to paste a magnet link, it's not like it's doing much. Plex does all the real work here.
  - mrjeremyt 7y ago
    Sonarr & Radarr + torrent client and come kind of front end for users to request content are the typical go-tos for Freenas + Plex setups.
anewguy9000 7y ago
that is an awesome grassroots solution :) btw if anybody wants to add some goodies to plex, i created browser extensions that add trailers and random sorting. check them out! https://github.com/conceptualspace/metatrailer-for-plex https://github.com/conceptualspace/metatrailer-for-plex https://github.com/conceptualspace/shuffle-for-plex https://github.com/conceptualspace/shuffle-for-plex
CivilianZero 7y ago
“It’s easier to setup and purchase and manage a shared server, write and manage scripts, and develop a frontend for managing the content than it is to search an app/a couple apps.” Can you just admit you don’t want to pay services out of spite? No one could possibly rationalize this as being easier.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  When effort is required is as important as how much effort is required. Sure, if I want to watch something on my Plex server I have to have put the content on the server in the first place, but I can do that at my leisure. When I want to watch that content, it’s there, and I don’t have to spend 10 minutes with my dinner getting cold while I try to find the thing I want to watch.
- eyegor 7y ago
  Like I said, the original goal was to have something to stream old movies. There is no service I could reliably find things pre-1970, especially the cardboard era of special effects. I'm a huge fan of the hammer horror films and every now and again I'll want to watch Mothra or Metropolis. Good luck finding anywhere to stream them outside of the "watch x online" sites which generally have poor quality or are mislabeled. The torrenting features were tacked on later, and honestly I don't think it was much work at all. Setting up a proxy credit card just to sign up for another subscription service is more annoying to me than playing with server gear for a weekend.

by eyegor 7y ago

vinceguidry 7y ago

This makes me wonder if there's a luxury service somewhere providing the kind of access people want at an expensive, but reasonable price. So I don't have to go about building and maintaining a public resource.

jowsie 7y ago
r/plexshares on reddit is a sort of open secret.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- missosoup 7y ago
  Delete this.
  - switch007 7y ago
    Oh Come on, it’s the second result on google for “Plex reddit”.
    - fragmede 7y ago
      Sure, but unless you use Reddit on a regular basis, why would you even consider adding "reddit" to the search query? To be fair, just searching for "plex" does return Reddit results, though not on the first page (for me anyway, Google personalizes search results). It's no longer the Wild West of Internet, and it turns out information doesn't want to be free, it wants to live in invite-only areas who's members are vetted before invitation. DMCA take-downs can't be sent if the material can't be found.
      - switch007 7y ago
        Let me turn it around: who are you trying to hide it from? Anyone with a tiny bit of Internet knowledge is going to know how big a site Reddit is (#6 on Alexa for the US).
        fragmede 7y ago
        Easy: The MPAA and every other organization that views copyright infringement as an evil that must be quashed and would seek to shut it down. To be clear, I'm willing to pay for content, and have a small library of shows and movies sprawled across Google, Amazon, and Apple's offerings that I "own", it's just far more convenient to have all my media in one place: Plex.
      - jazzyjackson 7y ago
        subreddits can be made private & invite only if they wish not to be found on the open web

navigatesol 7y ago

>We bought a retired datacenter rack and everyone contributes a few bucks a month to cover running costs. Everyone does a bit of pirating here and there, and I think the media companies realize it's a cost of doing business. But something tells me they wouldn't look too fondly on an organised, multi-user pirated content distribution platform... Here in Canada there are some big chains (Best Buy, Staples) being sued for telling people at point-of-purchase that they can watch free content on an Android box.

throwaway2048 7y ago
I somehow doubt that streaming platforms will finally be the ones to end piracy once and for all via lawsuits.
- navigatesol 7y ago
  There's a difference between pirating something, and distributing pirated content, both ethically and legally.
  - ArnoVW 7y ago
    Mind you, most peer-to-peer sharing protocols work by having everyone be distributor and downloader at the same time. This is why they are "peer to peer". The bittorrent protocol for example downloads files in fragments, and every fragment that you have downloaded becomes available for other clients (i.e. you start becoming a server as soon as you have downloaded one fragment)
  - AimForTheBushes 7y ago
    You mean like the pirate bay?
    - alanh 7y ago
      we're in the weeds now, but: sort of. the pirate bay doesn’t distribute anything — it just indexes it — but actually getting content via the pirate bay involves torrenting the content. and torrent is a tech that makes every downloader also an uploader to peers.

rhodo 7y ago

what are you using to run this code-wise? I was thinking of making something similar.

eyegor 7y ago
Freenas + plex, deluge and openvpn for torrenting (inside a container), iris to host the web front-end, scripts are all just python. I'm sure there are more legit solutions for web scraping but I just parse the html and it hasn't broken on me so far. One set of sites to query for "top x sites", pass titles along to torrent aggregator searches when there are no magnets. Then the important practical step is a background queue to re-encode the video to a standard format and bitrate. I'd rather not open source it because of how dirty the setup is, I just hacked something together one weekend and it's been running for almost 5 years now with minimal maintenance. Edit: I think iris was something I did more recently, I don't remember what it was using originally. I just wanted to play with go a little bit. The "front end" itself is a single page with an upload button and a box to paste a magnet link, it's not like it's doing much. Plex does all the real work here.
- mrjeremyt 7y ago
  Sonarr & Radarr + torrent client and come kind of front end for users to request content are the typical go-tos for Freenas + Plex setups.

anewguy9000 7y ago

that is an awesome grassroots solution :) btw if anybody wants to add some goodies to plex, i created browser extensions that add trailers and random sorting. check them out! https://github.com/conceptualspace/metatrailer-for-plex https://github.com/conceptualspace/metatrailer-for-plex https://github.com/conceptualspace/shuffle-for-plex https://github.com/conceptualspace/shuffle-for-plex

CivilianZero 7y ago

“It’s easier to setup and purchase and manage a shared server, write and manage scripts, and develop a frontend for managing the content than it is to search an app/a couple apps.” Can you just admit you don’t want to pay services out of spite? No one could possibly rationalize this as being easier.

cgriswald 7y ago
When effort is required is as important as how much effort is required. Sure, if I want to watch something on my Plex server I have to have put the content on the server in the first place, but I can do that at my leisure. When I want to watch that content, it’s there, and I don’t have to spend 10 minutes with my dinner getting cold while I try to find the thing I want to watch.
eyegor 7y ago
Like I said, the original goal was to have something to stream old movies. There is no service I could reliably find things pre-1970, especially the cardboard era of special effects. I'm a huge fan of the hammer horror films and every now and again I'll want to watch Mothra or Metropolis. Good luck finding anywhere to stream them outside of the "watch x online" sites which generally have poor quality or are mislabeled. The torrenting features were tacked on later, and honestly I don't think it was much work at all. Setting up a proxy credit card just to sign up for another subscription service is more annoying to me than playing with server gear for a weekend.