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I may (or may not) have built my own Netflix competitor. It had more content than all of the major providers combined. Legal buffer: I will not say what the co

I may (or may not) have built my own Netflix competitor. It had more content than all of the major providers combined. Legal buffer: I will not say what the content was. It may have all been non-copyrighted cat videos ;) The service was available cross region. Stored videos in multiple resolutions for streamability in low-bandwidth situations. No DRM bs. It cost me under $400/month to run the whole service, and I could access it from any device, anywhere I had internet. I gave access to a few friends and family and they all chipped in to help cover expenses (it was never profitable). I ran it for a few months before I started to lose interest in maintaining it - it was mostly just a proof-of-concept, and fell back to Netflix/HBO/other subs for convenience. I applaud Netflix, HBO, etc for offering competitive solutions to monopolistic cable companies and other restrictive media outlets, but this will always remain a problem. Once you create a piece of art and put it out for the world to see, you cannot control how/when/where it will be shown. Stop trying... Just make it more convenient for people to pay to view it. Going after people for low-level copyright violation, like sharing a password, is childish.

quineoa 7y ago
I am curious to know about the infra / tech stack, if you're comfortable with sharing any information.
- diminoten 7y ago
  He's (possibly) overselling his accomplishment here a little bit. You can achieve what he's describing using a combination of Plex, Sonarr, Jackett, and a private torrent site. You also need a torrent client that can work with Sonarr (Synology's torrent client works great in "watch this directory" mode). It's a truly self-running system. Other than the upgrades, you're able to select whatever shows you want to follow, and that's it. They automatically get downloaded, sorted into the right directory structure, picked up by Plex, and on-demand streaming around the world is yours, with all kinds of cool features like bandwidth optimization, offline show downloads, etc. More or less feature parity with Netflix, without any of the restrictions. Of course it's 100% illegal, though honestly I've never heard of a prosecuted case in the US.
  - nannal 7y ago
    Anyone want a docker compose file? Would take about 30 minutes to actually get everything up if you have most of an idea of what to do and a sloppily written guide.
    - rovr138 7y ago
      Sure, post a GitHub/Gitlab link.
      - nannal 7y ago
        https://github.com/nannal/Tortuga https://github.com/nannal/Tortuga
- kempbellt 7y ago
  Sure. As @diminoten mentions, legality is questionable here, so I do not recommend. If you do dabble, restrict access, and encrypt everything so that if you lose your keys, they only option is to destroy the stack and start over. Cloud provider of your choice Plex media server running on a high-throughput instance, with cloud storage mounted locally for reading. (Redundantly created in multiple regions depending on where the service is being accessed from) A separate master instance responsible for downloading content from a private torrent site, with cloud storage mounted locally for writing. Multiple on-demand background workers that are spun up when new content is available to be reformatted in various resolutions. They pull the original video from cloud storage, create various versions, and re-upload it to the cloud storage. The largest cost is in data usage, and storage. @diminoten Not sure what I did to "oversell" it. I used off-the-shelf tech components, and some cloud-enginuity from experience, to build a proof-of-concept competitor. I didn't build the entire interface from scratch, or write my own OS, if that's what it sounded like.
  - sorenjan 7y ago
    $400/month and multiple cloud instances sounds like overkill though. The same could probably be achieved with a Raspberry Pi or Intel NUC on your home network. Maybe an RPi wouldn't be great for multiple reencodings, but I don't think that's really needed. How often do you really want to watch low resolution TV-series on your mobile data connection? One feature I haven't seen on any commercial service is the ability to integrate with your IMDb watchlist, and automatically download "Linux ISOs" when they become available.
    - jorvi 7y ago
      You can rent a Hetzner server for ~€25 bucks (has local storage and a good Intel CPU for live transcoding streams if needed), get infinite cloud storage for ~€10 and Plex Pass for ~€5 bucks. Add in a private domain for ~€5 per year and you're done. Total cost ~€40.50 per month. Hetzner gives you infinite ingress and a few TB egress bandwidth per month. As long as you only give access to your box to family/close friends you'll never hit that cap. And all they need is a Plex account. Then you just invite them and the setup is done, zero technical finnicking for them.
magduf 7y ago
>Legal buffer: I will not say what the content was. It may have all been non-copyrighted cat videos ;) Cat videos are far more enjoyable to watch than the dreck that Hollywood is putting out these days.
- seph-reed 7y ago
  I don't know how pervasive the act of trying to fit into rules for a Chinese audience is, but the fact that all of cape-movies are made to fit in gave me some tangible reason to say why I find them so empty and lame (and you should to!). It's also really strange given how much the opposite web content is becoming. With patreon, we're starting to get some seriously fringe content, and the streaming services don't seem to be too afraid of having an opinion either.
  - lukifer 7y ago
    I don't think it's just the "rules" for a Chinese audience (though that doesn't help); I think it's the economics of making movies primarily for a global audience, rather than a particular language, culture, or even sub-culture. This was an "aha" moment in realizing why so many movies over the last decade contain seemingly lazy, blunt dialogue, lacking subtlety or subtext: the meaning needs to come across clearly in subtitles and dubs, divorced from English idioms, cultural context, and intonation.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      It's quite simple: mass market content is made for the lowest common denominator. See also, Jack of all trades, master of none. It's not a phenomena unique to movies, or the modern international economy, it's a pattern that pops up all over the place. Look at multi-tool pocket knives: capable of doing many things, but mediocre at everything.
      - aptwebapps 7y ago
        And as you expand to a global audience, the lowest common denominator gets lower.
WhiskeyJack55 7y ago
I use the free version of plex. Only pain in the ass is having to pay the ~$5 to authorize for a new android device to use the app. It does everything I need to watch my...personal home videos. I'm sure I could use a completely FOSS setup, but plex is convenient especially paired with...other services.
- Hitton 7y ago
  If you want completely FOSS setup, check out Jellyfin [0], it keeps steadily improving. [0]: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
  - LeoNatan25 7y ago
    Interesting, thanks for sharing!
  - stock_toaster 7y ago
    Is jellyfin any good yet? Last time I looked they didn't really have much for client apps yet.
    - awill 7y ago
      It is not ready yet. I hope it one day can compete with Plex, but I wonder if a community OSS project like this will take off and create high quality native apps per platform.
      - stock_toaster 7y ago
        Thanks for the update. I'll keep my eye on it though -- maybe it will get there eventually.
      - basch 7y ago
        isnt that sort of Plex? It came from a political fork of XBMC for OS X. Some of plex is still open source, despite it having no XBMC/Kodi code anymore.
michaelmrose 7y ago
It's not even a copyright violation it's at best a violation of tos.
- loeg 7y ago
  Are ToS violations still considered a CFAA violation?
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    In theory but this would be a great way to see how many customers you can lose in a quarter.
maxerickson 7y ago
So let's rephrase that. "Expecting people to pay for your service is childish." They aren't going after people, they are just resetting passwords.
rosybox 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NinjaVideo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NinjaVideo It did not end well for NinjaVideo for what it's worth so maybe it was good you lost interest.
comeondude 7y ago
Dude ... This comes off as incredibly self-entitled and arrogant. That piece of art? It takes years and tremendous amount of people hours to bring these films into existence your enjoyment. I grew up in Hollywood, in family of filmmakers. My friends are actors, producers, and well anybody else who is involved in the business - and we all dedicate unbelievable hours of love and labor into the “non copyrighted cat videos” Yes. The system isn’t perfect, but ... what you’re doing is quite frankly, stealing. It’s offensive. We’re entitled to our livelihoods as much as you are. Show some gratitude please.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sp332 7y ago
  It's not that you can't make money. It's that this particular business model doesn't jibe with reality. There's a reason iTunes switched to DRM-free formats early on. For video games, piracy can actually increase profits, because people really like a try-before-you-buy model. (Piracy is not as helpful for movies.) It's possible, actually not super difficult, to make money for "bringing films into existence" without trying to keep 100% control over distribution. Check out all the Patreon accounts that put out freely-available YouTube videos for a trivial example.
  - LanceH 7y ago
    Or, you could just not watch what you haven't paid for.
    - sp332 7y ago
      That's one option among several. For example, don't take money for content the user hasn't experienced yet.
      - bitwize 7y ago
        It's also the only legal option for the audience to take. The companies who own the copyright make the content available under certain terms. Don't like the terms? DON'T WATCH THE FUCKING CONTENT. If you do somehow contrive to watch the content despite not accepting the terms, then you are stealing and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Capisce?
sp332 7y ago
Would you pay for a service that physically stores your DVDs, but rips them and makes the content available via Plex? It would be less of a copyright violation since the copy is made for personal use. You'd have your library available anywhere in the world and it wouldn't take up space in your house. the content would be available permanently and not subject to contract disputes with publishers. What do you think?
- awad 7y ago
  Not quite relevant to OP but apropos of the concept introduced above...apparently, quite a few people do pay for such a service as VidAngel (https://www.vidangel.com https://www.vidangel.com) is still running. I have not kept up with their developments but it was created by Mormons to help families stream movies while filtering out content deemed not appropriate. IIRC at one point and possibly to this day the tech included a massive farm of physical disks being spun and streamed to end consumers with skip points programmed in.
  - sp332 7y ago
    They used to stream DVDs kinda like my description, but there were several kinds of copyright complaints which is why they stopped doing DVD-based content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VidAngel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VidAngel
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      Yup, and now they only support filtering as an add-on to other streaming services, which is a completely different business. I was interested because they had a way to rent movies for $1, which I think is a fair price for older titles (I'd actually pay $2 for older titles). I feel like their business was essentially Redbox, but with a more efficient way of transferring product from one person to another, with a layer of customizable filtering on top. That seemed completely legit to me, but apparently copyright law doesn't agree.
manigandham 7y ago
> "Just make it more convenient for people to pay to view it" > "I... fell back to Netflix/HBO/other subs for convenience" Seems like they're doing a fine job then.
kerng 7y ago
Sounds like you ran a plex server - amazing tech, always makes me wonder what companies like Netflix, HBO, and now Disney spend all their money on... Users would probably be better of, if these systems would be distributed rather then centralized. Like a plex server per household or something, where family owns all the stuff they bought and can freely watch it. What I'm looking for is a future proof stack. DRM has failed many times to deliver that.
mantoto 7y ago
You did something wrong if that cost you 400$ a month
- beatgammit 7y ago
  We don't know how much content OP had stored. Do you know how much public domain, 4k cat videos exist on the internet? I'm sure with enough storage, a proof-of-concept VPS with cloud storage could run that much per month.
  - kempbellt 7y ago
    I had about 15TB of content stored in readily available cloud storage. This was the largest cost.

quineoa 7y ago

I am curious to know about the infra / tech stack, if you're comfortable with sharing any information.

diminoten 7y ago
He's (possibly) overselling his accomplishment here a little bit. You can achieve what he's describing using a combination of Plex, Sonarr, Jackett, and a private torrent site. You also need a torrent client that can work with Sonarr (Synology's torrent client works great in "watch this directory" mode). It's a truly self-running system. Other than the upgrades, you're able to select whatever shows you want to follow, and that's it. They automatically get downloaded, sorted into the right directory structure, picked up by Plex, and on-demand streaming around the world is yours, with all kinds of cool features like bandwidth optimization, offline show downloads, etc. More or less feature parity with Netflix, without any of the restrictions. Of course it's 100% illegal, though honestly I've never heard of a prosecuted case in the US.
- nannal 7y ago
  Anyone want a docker compose file? Would take about 30 minutes to actually get everything up if you have most of an idea of what to do and a sloppily written guide.
  - rovr138 7y ago
    Sure, post a GitHub/Gitlab link.
    - nannal 7y ago
      https://github.com/nannal/Tortuga https://github.com/nannal/Tortuga
kempbellt 7y ago
Sure. As @diminoten mentions, legality is questionable here, so I do not recommend. If you do dabble, restrict access, and encrypt everything so that if you lose your keys, they only option is to destroy the stack and start over. Cloud provider of your choice Plex media server running on a high-throughput instance, with cloud storage mounted locally for reading. (Redundantly created in multiple regions depending on where the service is being accessed from) A separate master instance responsible for downloading content from a private torrent site, with cloud storage mounted locally for writing. Multiple on-demand background workers that are spun up when new content is available to be reformatted in various resolutions. They pull the original video from cloud storage, create various versions, and re-upload it to the cloud storage. The largest cost is in data usage, and storage. @diminoten Not sure what I did to "oversell" it. I used off-the-shelf tech components, and some cloud-enginuity from experience, to build a proof-of-concept competitor. I didn't build the entire interface from scratch, or write my own OS, if that's what it sounded like.
- sorenjan 7y ago
  $400/month and multiple cloud instances sounds like overkill though. The same could probably be achieved with a Raspberry Pi or Intel NUC on your home network. Maybe an RPi wouldn't be great for multiple reencodings, but I don't think that's really needed. How often do you really want to watch low resolution TV-series on your mobile data connection? One feature I haven't seen on any commercial service is the ability to integrate with your IMDb watchlist, and automatically download "Linux ISOs" when they become available.
  - jorvi 7y ago
    You can rent a Hetzner server for ~€25 bucks (has local storage and a good Intel CPU for live transcoding streams if needed), get infinite cloud storage for ~€10 and Plex Pass for ~€5 bucks. Add in a private domain for ~€5 per year and you're done. Total cost ~€40.50 per month. Hetzner gives you infinite ingress and a few TB egress bandwidth per month. As long as you only give access to your box to family/close friends you'll never hit that cap. And all they need is a Plex account. Then you just invite them and the setup is done, zero technical finnicking for them.

magduf 7y ago

>Legal buffer: I will not say what the content was. It may have all been non-copyrighted cat videos ;) Cat videos are far more enjoyable to watch than the dreck that Hollywood is putting out these days.

seph-reed 7y ago
I don't know how pervasive the act of trying to fit into rules for a Chinese audience is, but the fact that all of cape-movies are made to fit in gave me some tangible reason to say why I find them so empty and lame (and you should to!). It's also really strange given how much the opposite web content is becoming. With patreon, we're starting to get some seriously fringe content, and the streaming services don't seem to be too afraid of having an opinion either.
- lukifer 7y ago
  I don't think it's just the "rules" for a Chinese audience (though that doesn't help); I think it's the economics of making movies primarily for a global audience, rather than a particular language, culture, or even sub-culture. This was an "aha" moment in realizing why so many movies over the last decade contain seemingly lazy, blunt dialogue, lacking subtlety or subtext: the meaning needs to come across clearly in subtitles and dubs, divorced from English idioms, cultural context, and intonation.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    It's quite simple: mass market content is made for the lowest common denominator. See also, Jack of all trades, master of none. It's not a phenomena unique to movies, or the modern international economy, it's a pattern that pops up all over the place. Look at multi-tool pocket knives: capable of doing many things, but mediocre at everything.
    - aptwebapps 7y ago
      And as you expand to a global audience, the lowest common denominator gets lower.

WhiskeyJack55 7y ago

I use the free version of plex. Only pain in the ass is having to pay the ~$5 to authorize for a new android device to use the app. It does everything I need to watch my...personal home videos. I'm sure I could use a completely FOSS setup, but plex is convenient especially paired with...other services.

Hitton 7y ago
If you want completely FOSS setup, check out Jellyfin [0], it keeps steadily improving. [0]: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
- LeoNatan25 7y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing!
- stock_toaster 7y ago
  Is jellyfin any good yet? Last time I looked they didn't really have much for client apps yet.
  - awill 7y ago
    It is not ready yet. I hope it one day can compete with Plex, but I wonder if a community OSS project like this will take off and create high quality native apps per platform.
    - stock_toaster 7y ago
      Thanks for the update. I'll keep my eye on it though -- maybe it will get there eventually.
    - basch 7y ago
      isnt that sort of Plex? It came from a political fork of XBMC for OS X. Some of plex is still open source, despite it having no XBMC/Kodi code anymore.

michaelmrose 7y ago

It's not even a copyright violation it's at best a violation of tos.

loeg 7y ago
Are ToS violations still considered a CFAA violation?
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  In theory but this would be a great way to see how many customers you can lose in a quarter.

maxerickson 7y ago

So let's rephrase that. "Expecting people to pay for your service is childish." They aren't going after people, they are just resetting passwords.

rosybox 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NinjaVideo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NinjaVideo It did not end well for NinjaVideo for what it's worth so maybe it was good you lost interest.

comeondude 7y ago

Dude ... This comes off as incredibly self-entitled and arrogant. That piece of art? It takes years and tremendous amount of people hours to bring these films into existence your enjoyment. I grew up in Hollywood, in family of filmmakers. My friends are actors, producers, and well anybody else who is involved in the business - and we all dedicate unbelievable hours of love and labor into the “non copyrighted cat videos” Yes. The system isn’t perfect, but ... what you’re doing is quite frankly, stealing. It’s offensive. We’re entitled to our livelihoods as much as you are. Show some gratitude please.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sp332 7y ago
It's not that you can't make money. It's that this particular business model doesn't jibe with reality. There's a reason iTunes switched to DRM-free formats early on. For video games, piracy can actually increase profits, because people really like a try-before-you-buy model. (Piracy is not as helpful for movies.) It's possible, actually not super difficult, to make money for "bringing films into existence" without trying to keep 100% control over distribution. Check out all the Patreon accounts that put out freely-available YouTube videos for a trivial example.
- LanceH 7y ago
  Or, you could just not watch what you haven't paid for.
  - sp332 7y ago
    That's one option among several. For example, don't take money for content the user hasn't experienced yet.
    - bitwize 7y ago
      It's also the only legal option for the audience to take. The companies who own the copyright make the content available under certain terms. Don't like the terms? DON'T WATCH THE FUCKING CONTENT. If you do somehow contrive to watch the content despite not accepting the terms, then you are stealing and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Capisce?

sp332 7y ago

Would you pay for a service that physically stores your DVDs, but rips them and makes the content available via Plex? It would be less of a copyright violation since the copy is made for personal use. You'd have your library available anywhere in the world and it wouldn't take up space in your house. the content would be available permanently and not subject to contract disputes with publishers. What do you think?

awad 7y ago
Not quite relevant to OP but apropos of the concept introduced above...apparently, quite a few people do pay for such a service as VidAngel (https://www.vidangel.com https://www.vidangel.com) is still running. I have not kept up with their developments but it was created by Mormons to help families stream movies while filtering out content deemed not appropriate. IIRC at one point and possibly to this day the tech included a massive farm of physical disks being spun and streamed to end consumers with skip points programmed in.
- sp332 7y ago
  They used to stream DVDs kinda like my description, but there were several kinds of copyright complaints which is why they stopped doing DVD-based content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VidAngel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VidAngel
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    Yup, and now they only support filtering as an add-on to other streaming services, which is a completely different business. I was interested because they had a way to rent movies for $1, which I think is a fair price for older titles (I'd actually pay $2 for older titles). I feel like their business was essentially Redbox, but with a more efficient way of transferring product from one person to another, with a layer of customizable filtering on top. That seemed completely legit to me, but apparently copyright law doesn't agree.

manigandham 7y ago

> "Just make it more convenient for people to pay to view it" > "I... fell back to Netflix/HBO/other subs for convenience" Seems like they're doing a fine job then.

kerng 7y ago

Sounds like you ran a plex server - amazing tech, always makes me wonder what companies like Netflix, HBO, and now Disney spend all their money on... Users would probably be better of, if these systems would be distributed rather then centralized. Like a plex server per household or something, where family owns all the stuff they bought and can freely watch it. What I'm looking for is a future proof stack. DRM has failed many times to deliver that.

mantoto 7y ago

You did something wrong if that cost you 400$ a month

beatgammit 7y ago
We don't know how much content OP had stored. Do you know how much public domain, 4k cat videos exist on the internet? I'm sure with enough storage, a proof-of-concept VPS with cloud storage could run that much per month.
- kempbellt 7y ago
  I had about 15TB of content stored in readily available cloud storage. This was the largest cost.