4 ms·

I've gone back to pirating content, but via usenet instead of torrents. Once you've got Sonarr, Radarr, Omni, NZBget and Plex all playing happily together, it's

I've gone back to pirating content, but via usenet instead of torrents. Once you've got Sonarr, Radarr, Omni, NZBget and Plex all playing happily together, it's a sublime experience compared to dealing with multiple streaming sources. I have a web portal (Ombi) my family can use to request content that we don't have downloaded. From there it gets pushed over to Sonarr / Radarr depending on whether it is a movie or tv show. Those then search for the show or movie you're interested in via usenet indexers. If the content isn't available yet (hasn't released on streaming / bluray to get a quality rip) it will track it and download as soon as it is available. This goes for ongoing tv shows too. Usually less than a couple hours after a show has been aired, it will be found and downloaded automatically. These tools also take care of moving the content around to the right location for Plex to find it and renames them so it's all consistent. I can request a movie from my Ombi website and have downloaded and ready to stream on all my devices in less than 10 minutes. TV shows download at around 1-2 minutes per episode. The other huge benefit over streaming services is that Plex allows you to cache media on mobile devices which has been crucial for road trips with three kids. It's really not about the money aspect for me. I pay for usenet connections and indexers. I pay for the Plex Pass. I pay for the gigabit internet connection to facilitate those download speeds. I paid for the NAS and disks to store terrabytes of content and host all the software I need to get it. I'm okay paying. I just want a better experience and switching between half a dozen streaming services without a consistent search mechanism or offline viewing option just isn't cutting it.

darkwizard42 7y ago
I’m trying to set this kind of thing up. Any guides you can share? Plex is all setup but all the other stuff (integrating torrenting safely) I’m having trouble with!
- tstrimple 7y ago
  I don't have much advice in the way of torrents. As I said, I am using usenet now instead. It's a direct download instead of p2p, so you're not seeding and you don't need a VPN to hide you as long as you're using SSL connections to usenet. Since it's a direct download and I pay for the connection to usenet provider, I can almost saturate my gigabit fiber connection pulling new content instead of waiting for enough peers to trickle kbps to me. To get started, you'll need at least one Usenet provider (paid) and at least one usenet indexer (usually paid) to help you find content. I'd recommend checking out the /r/usenet subreddit for more details. Especially their FAQ (https://www.reddit.com/r/Usenet/wiki/faq https://www.reddit.com/r/Usenet/wiki/faq). For my stack, I've got a Synology NAS device which is running docker versions of the download managers Sonarr and Radarr, the download client NZBget, Ombi for user requests and Plex for streaming to devices.
  - leonroy 7y ago
    Which Synology NAS are you using? Any SSDs on it? I tried a similar Dockersetup with a Atom C2000 based NAS and spinning disks and it was really easy to setup and maintain but painfully slow.
    - tstrimple 7y ago
      I'm using the Synology DS1019+. No SSDs for disk or caching. I did have a lot of trouble when using SABnzbd as the download client. It would take much longer to unpack and verify files than it would to download them. After switching to NZBget I didn't have any more performance issues. Which aspect is slow for you?
      - leonroy 7y ago
        Plex transcoding mainly and yeah SABnzbd would take an eternity. The DS1019+ has no issue with transcoding from what I’ve read, and can handle even up to 4K right? I since switched to an Intel NUC running Ubuntu + Docker. I was able to use bash scripts to auto update everything nightly so it’s thankfully (almost) zero maintenance now that it is setup and it stores everything on my Synology. Running outta space though... To be honest I’ve been slowly replacing my Plex library with iTunes purchases. A lot of movies come up on sale for £2.99. Apple even upgrade HD purchases to 4K for free and I don’t have to worry about hosting anything. Think given how many £££s I’ve spent on my Plex homelab vs buying from Apple I’d come out even and if factoring in time spent curating a digital library (a lot of time) I’d probably be somewhat ahead. Still hedging my bets by keeping my Plex library though!
        tstrimple 7y ago
        Yep, I can stream 4k without any issues. I don't see any reason why you couldn't run the same stack on the Intel NUC though. I'd be happy to purchase iTunes movies if I could play them back over Plex, so I can still access my content from one place and have consistency of features across devices. I don't think any commercial platforms really support that though. It's one of the reasons I don't use Lidarr and pirate music too. I'm okay paying for Spotify because it's my one source of music and with the family account everyone can sync songs with their devices. If I had to go to multiple platforms for music the way we do for streaming and movies I wouldn't hesitate to start downloading music again.
thegabriele 7y ago
Nice set-up, really smooth. What stops me on doing the same is that pirating through torrent via some adblock website seems a little bit less "despicable" than paying a service (usenet in this case) to enrich someone at the expense of someone else for my viewing pleasure/needs.

darkwizard42 7y ago

I’m trying to set this kind of thing up. Any guides you can share? Plex is all setup but all the other stuff (integrating torrenting safely) I’m having trouble with!

tstrimple 7y ago
I don't have much advice in the way of torrents. As I said, I am using usenet now instead. It's a direct download instead of p2p, so you're not seeding and you don't need a VPN to hide you as long as you're using SSL connections to usenet. Since it's a direct download and I pay for the connection to usenet provider, I can almost saturate my gigabit fiber connection pulling new content instead of waiting for enough peers to trickle kbps to me. To get started, you'll need at least one Usenet provider (paid) and at least one usenet indexer (usually paid) to help you find content. I'd recommend checking out the /r/usenet subreddit for more details. Especially their FAQ (https://www.reddit.com/r/Usenet/wiki/faq https://www.reddit.com/r/Usenet/wiki/faq). For my stack, I've got a Synology NAS device which is running docker versions of the download managers Sonarr and Radarr, the download client NZBget, Ombi for user requests and Plex for streaming to devices.
- leonroy 7y ago
  Which Synology NAS are you using? Any SSDs on it? I tried a similar Dockersetup with a Atom C2000 based NAS and spinning disks and it was really easy to setup and maintain but painfully slow.
  - tstrimple 7y ago
    I'm using the Synology DS1019+. No SSDs for disk or caching. I did have a lot of trouble when using SABnzbd as the download client. It would take much longer to unpack and verify files than it would to download them. After switching to NZBget I didn't have any more performance issues. Which aspect is slow for you?
    - leonroy 7y ago
      Plex transcoding mainly and yeah SABnzbd would take an eternity. The DS1019+ has no issue with transcoding from what I’ve read, and can handle even up to 4K right? I since switched to an Intel NUC running Ubuntu + Docker. I was able to use bash scripts to auto update everything nightly so it’s thankfully (almost) zero maintenance now that it is setup and it stores everything on my Synology. Running outta space though... To be honest I’ve been slowly replacing my Plex library with iTunes purchases. A lot of movies come up on sale for £2.99. Apple even upgrade HD purchases to 4K for free and I don’t have to worry about hosting anything. Think given how many £££s I’ve spent on my Plex homelab vs buying from Apple I’d come out even and if factoring in time spent curating a digital library (a lot of time) I’d probably be somewhat ahead. Still hedging my bets by keeping my Plex library though!
      - tstrimple 7y ago
        Yep, I can stream 4k without any issues. I don't see any reason why you couldn't run the same stack on the Intel NUC though. I'd be happy to purchase iTunes movies if I could play them back over Plex, so I can still access my content from one place and have consistency of features across devices. I don't think any commercial platforms really support that though. It's one of the reasons I don't use Lidarr and pirate music too. I'm okay paying for Spotify because it's my one source of music and with the family account everyone can sync songs with their devices. If I had to go to multiple platforms for music the way we do for streaming and movies I wouldn't hesitate to start downloading music again.

thegabriele 7y ago

Nice set-up, really smooth. What stops me on doing the same is that pirating through torrent via some adblock website seems a little bit less "despicable" than paying a service (usenet in this case) to enrich someone at the expense of someone else for my viewing pleasure/needs.