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Today is a no better time to set up a storage machine and loaded with Jellyfin. You can pirate whatever shows, including ones that can't even be legally sold,

Today is a no better time to set up a storage machine and loaded with Jellyfin. You can pirate whatever shows, including ones that can't even be legally sold, and run your own service. If you add the Arrs suite, then you can also get dynamic additions of shows you watch, and just have them show up. And well, if Meta and ilk can use pirate libraries in a commercial setting, I see nothing wrong in piracy in a non commercial setting.

digdugdirk 1y ago
Do you have any recommendations for resources to learn how to do this correctly/well? Subreddits, forums, etc?
- mystraline 1y ago
  Nah, I've been doing piracy since the '80s. I've always been on the edge of 'interesting' stuff. Getting a machine with lots of storage is first step. Make sure you also get an Intel graphics card. A380 I think. They're amazing at transcoding and color mapping (10bit->8bit). Transcode is very important to support with hardware, since it allows realtime resolution change, colorspace conversion, and pretty much every video file format to mp4. Can be done in CPU but not recommended. I'd recommend Linux, but Jellyfin works with damn near everything. Use whatever youre comfortable with. Getting content? First, use Firefox with Ublock Origin. Turn on all filters. Pirate websites are VERY hostile. Get a VPN that can port forward. PIA and Proton can both do so, and are reasonable priced. VPN keeps simple copyright scanners from attacking your network, legally speaking. Sites to look for goods: thepiratebay.org still exists. /r/piracy reddit has loads of links. Yandex search of "show torrent" has all completely relevant links. If you have a Usenet subscription to alt.binaries then you can use that method to grab stuff. I also grab DVDs and Blurays and rip myself. Doing this is great since you may be able to find shows, but special features are almost never included. I use this tool to quickly rip: https://github.com/xenomachina/dvdrip/blob/master/dvdrip.py https://github.com/xenomachina/dvdrip/blob/master/dvdrip.py https://www.bfloeser.de/posts/bluray/ https://www.bfloeser.de/posts/bluray/ covers Linux Bluray ripping, including where to download the AACS keys.
  - zrail 1y ago
    You don't even need a dedicated GPU. Any Intel Core-series CPU past 5th gen has a built-in quicksync engine that can handle many simultaneous transcodes.
  - alabastervlog 1y ago
    I just got an old used workstation that can’t transcode for shit, bumped the ram up and filled it with disks, then made sure my client devices can all handle whatever I throw at them (appleTV) so I never need to transcode.
  - username135 1y ago
    qbittorrent (qT) is a great client with equally great search capabilities. you'll want to install jackett along with it so you can search through a large swath of torrent sites from the qT search. https://www.qbittorrent.org/ https://www.qbittorrent.org/ https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett | https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/How-to-configure-Jackett-plugin https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/How-to-co...
  - massysett 1y ago
    OMG after I do all of this, I could have just paid for Netflix and spent that time actually watching content, or doing something other than nursing all this tech. I abandoned MythTV and rented DVR from Comcast for just that reason.
    - yahoozoo 1y ago
      Except Netflix has a limited catalog compared to being able to pirate pretty much everything ever made.
    - DonnyV 1y ago
      Your that dev customer that pays for another service to handle their authentication aren't you?
    - alabastervlog 1y ago
      It’s for the (far) superior UX and having some things on it that either practically or literally cannot be purchased legitimately.
- glimshe 1y ago
  I built my Jellyfin server on $180 PC from Amazon and an old USB HDD. It was basically installing it from the downloadable installer and configuring parts. You will need a client to access it, and Roku works great. I'm running it on the Windows Pro that came with the device. I'm not saying you should use Windows, I'm just pointing out that you don't need much to run it.
- mystified5016 1y ago
  There servarr docs are pretty good, if you already know how to set up Linux servers. Otherwise look at the homelab subreddit
- Mashimo 1y ago
  r/selfhosted could be a starting point. Also search for "arr stack", something like this: https://github.com/Rick45/quick-arr-Stack https://github.com/Rick45/quick-arr-Stack You don't have to use this, but maybe it inspires you. If you go the torrent route, there are also subreddits about trackers.
- infecto 1y ago
  I am going to go counter to the other reply. Pay for a seedbox and get access to a single private tracker site and that’s all you need.
- smirgel 1y ago
  These guides are usually recommended on reddit: https://trash-guides.info/ https://trash-guides.info/
- chneu 1y ago
  https://awesome-selfhosted.net/ https://awesome-selfhosted.net/ Huge list of self hosted stuff. I personally run Plex(TV/Movie/music), Audiobookshelf(podcasts), Immich(Google photos), along with a bunch of other unrelated stuff like Home Assistant, Apache, etc. It's all run off an beelink n100 and some NAS drives. Super cheap and useful.
lm28469 1y ago
Even manually downloading torrents and watching them from my laptop plugged into a projector like it's 2006 is more convenient than netflix at that point. People who grew up after the peak of piracy really don't know what they're missing
- thatguy0900 1y ago
  Piracy is still peak, there's 0 reason to download anything or install any special software. Just go to yandex and type watch (show/movie) online.
  - mystified5016 1y ago
    Sure if you want a unknown quality stream with extra ads and malware loading down the website. Who is paying for that bandwdith? (It's you)
    - amarcheschi 1y ago
      Not that I have done it, but I've heard that usually the first results from yandex torrents are from reputable sites or forums that are quite known to the pirate community. At least regarding torrent, I haven't heard much about streams
    - kalleboo 1y ago
      What you describe also matches the legal video services
    - thatguy0900 1y ago
      We're literally commenting on a article about how Netflix will inject Ai ads lol. And besides that if you're pirating content I assume you don't have any moral qualms about using a ad blocker. Bandwidth is also basically free?
  - alabastervlog 1y ago
    If it’s just you watching on your laptop, true. Add family and a decent home theater and there are reasons to set up Jellyfin and use torrents.
bayarearefugee 1y ago
> Today is a no better time Agreed. And anyone creating or supporting generative AI built from massive unfettered internet scraping that wants to lecture me on the ethics of violating copyright to sidestep the monstrosity they have built can take a flight to Hypocrite Island and go fuck themselves.
- joquarky 1y ago
  Copyright is unnatural anyway. Soon it will be obsolete.
gchamonlive 1y ago
I honestly gave jellyfin a try but it didn't work for me for several reasons. The server wouldn't find some shows or movies no matter what I did, and I had countless issues with subtitles. I'd recommend giving jellyfin a try because it's a worthy project, but it's not even a competition, Plex is hands down much more user friendly, if you can excuse the fact that it's closed source. Now for findability I can't recommend Kagi enough. You can find virtually anything there, no filters and no bullshit results.
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  You do have to follow the naming scheme, though 95% of the time I don’t need to touch the names of tv show episodes, just stick them in the correct folders. The exceptions are mostly anime and shows I could only find on internet archive, as, for some reason, those often come with just the episode number in the name, not the full “s01e14” that basically everyone else uses. I rename my movies but that takes maybe ten seconds per one I add, tops, and the result is easier to read when managing files later than leaving them as “www.torrenting.com The.Matix.ita.eng.1999[rarbg]” or whatever insane file names they usually come with.
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    But it also means I can't seed it, right?
    - chneu 1y ago
      I've been running a Plex/jellyfin server for years and never had to rename any files. Don't do that. Match them in Jellyfin and leave the original filenames intact.
      - alabastervlog 1y ago
        If you rename them, you can re-create the whole library with auto scan, which is nice. Do you mean you let it auto-scan the wrong id, go find that wrong movie in your library, then manually provide an e.g. IMDb id, for every one?
ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
With Chromecast getting more and more unstable (and not working on LineageOS, forcing me to use Chromium on a laptop) and now streaming services turning to engagement optimizing ad monsters, I guess I'll start doing that. I had really hoped that the streaming era would have ended up in a better future where I could buy movies and TV shows in the same was as I buy them on Bandcamp: Watch some of it, maybe all of it, for free, and after payment you can either stream it OR download it and play it however the fuck you want on whatever device you want, with whatever software you want. Ads are not just a question of whether you can pay to turn them off. The mere presence of ads on a platform is pure poison for its content curation, and further gives the streaming vendor incentives to control you as a user and take away your freedom.
johnbatch 1y ago
I just shut down my NAS and PC that was running Sonarr/Radarr SABnzbd etc. I setup stremio and a debrid service, and it's much easier for me to not deal with all that. I used this guide - https://guides.viren070.me/stremio https://guides.viren070.me/stremio
myvoiceismypass 1y ago
Are there equivalents for live streaming (sports in particular)? Some of the backout laws are still fucking absurd in the year 2025.
- chneu 1y ago
  Just Google "reddit sport streams" So "reddit NBA stream" and you'll get results. Or duck duck go it. Find one or two you like, then use Unlock Origin to block all the annoying UI stuff and ads. The websites come and go so you have to stay on top of the new domains.

digdugdirk 1y ago

Do you have any recommendations for resources to learn how to do this correctly/well? Subreddits, forums, etc?

mystraline 1y ago
Nah, I've been doing piracy since the '80s. I've always been on the edge of 'interesting' stuff. Getting a machine with lots of storage is first step. Make sure you also get an Intel graphics card. A380 I think. They're amazing at transcoding and color mapping (10bit->8bit). Transcode is very important to support with hardware, since it allows realtime resolution change, colorspace conversion, and pretty much every video file format to mp4. Can be done in CPU but not recommended. I'd recommend Linux, but Jellyfin works with damn near everything. Use whatever youre comfortable with. Getting content? First, use Firefox with Ublock Origin. Turn on all filters. Pirate websites are VERY hostile. Get a VPN that can port forward. PIA and Proton can both do so, and are reasonable priced. VPN keeps simple copyright scanners from attacking your network, legally speaking. Sites to look for goods: thepiratebay.org still exists. /r/piracy reddit has loads of links. Yandex search of "show torrent" has all completely relevant links. If you have a Usenet subscription to alt.binaries then you can use that method to grab stuff. I also grab DVDs and Blurays and rip myself. Doing this is great since you may be able to find shows, but special features are almost never included. I use this tool to quickly rip: https://github.com/xenomachina/dvdrip/blob/master/dvdrip.py https://github.com/xenomachina/dvdrip/blob/master/dvdrip.py https://www.bfloeser.de/posts/bluray/ https://www.bfloeser.de/posts/bluray/ covers Linux Bluray ripping, including where to download the AACS keys.
- zrail 1y ago
  You don't even need a dedicated GPU. Any Intel Core-series CPU past 5th gen has a built-in quicksync engine that can handle many simultaneous transcodes.
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  I just got an old used workstation that can’t transcode for shit, bumped the ram up and filled it with disks, then made sure my client devices can all handle whatever I throw at them (appleTV) so I never need to transcode.
- username135 1y ago
  qbittorrent (qT) is a great client with equally great search capabilities. you'll want to install jackett along with it so you can search through a large swath of torrent sites from the qT search. https://www.qbittorrent.org/ https://www.qbittorrent.org/ https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett | https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/How-to-configure-Jackett-plugin https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/How-to-co...
- massysett 1y ago
  OMG after I do all of this, I could have just paid for Netflix and spent that time actually watching content, or doing something other than nursing all this tech. I abandoned MythTV and rented DVR from Comcast for just that reason.
  - yahoozoo 1y ago
    Except Netflix has a limited catalog compared to being able to pirate pretty much everything ever made.
  - DonnyV 1y ago
    Your that dev customer that pays for another service to handle their authentication aren't you?
  - alabastervlog 1y ago
    It’s for the (far) superior UX and having some things on it that either practically or literally cannot be purchased legitimately.
glimshe 1y ago
I built my Jellyfin server on $180 PC from Amazon and an old USB HDD. It was basically installing it from the downloadable installer and configuring parts. You will need a client to access it, and Roku works great. I'm running it on the Windows Pro that came with the device. I'm not saying you should use Windows, I'm just pointing out that you don't need much to run it.
mystified5016 1y ago
There servarr docs are pretty good, if you already know how to set up Linux servers. Otherwise look at the homelab subreddit
Mashimo 1y ago
r/selfhosted could be a starting point. Also search for "arr stack", something like this: https://github.com/Rick45/quick-arr-Stack https://github.com/Rick45/quick-arr-Stack You don't have to use this, but maybe it inspires you. If you go the torrent route, there are also subreddits about trackers.
infecto 1y ago
I am going to go counter to the other reply. Pay for a seedbox and get access to a single private tracker site and that’s all you need.
smirgel 1y ago
These guides are usually recommended on reddit: https://trash-guides.info/ https://trash-guides.info/
chneu 1y ago
https://awesome-selfhosted.net/ https://awesome-selfhosted.net/ Huge list of self hosted stuff. I personally run Plex(TV/Movie/music), Audiobookshelf(podcasts), Immich(Google photos), along with a bunch of other unrelated stuff like Home Assistant, Apache, etc. It's all run off an beelink n100 and some NAS drives. Super cheap and useful.

lm28469 1y ago

Even manually downloading torrents and watching them from my laptop plugged into a projector like it's 2006 is more convenient than netflix at that point. People who grew up after the peak of piracy really don't know what they're missing

thatguy0900 1y ago
Piracy is still peak, there's 0 reason to download anything or install any special software. Just go to yandex and type watch (show/movie) online.
- mystified5016 1y ago
  Sure if you want a unknown quality stream with extra ads and malware loading down the website. Who is paying for that bandwdith? (It's you)
  - amarcheschi 1y ago
    Not that I have done it, but I've heard that usually the first results from yandex torrents are from reputable sites or forums that are quite known to the pirate community. At least regarding torrent, I haven't heard much about streams
  - kalleboo 1y ago
    What you describe also matches the legal video services
  - thatguy0900 1y ago
    We're literally commenting on a article about how Netflix will inject Ai ads lol. And besides that if you're pirating content I assume you don't have any moral qualms about using a ad blocker. Bandwidth is also basically free?
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  If it’s just you watching on your laptop, true. Add family and a decent home theater and there are reasons to set up Jellyfin and use torrents.

bayarearefugee 1y ago

> Today is a no better time Agreed. And anyone creating or supporting generative AI built from massive unfettered internet scraping that wants to lecture me on the ethics of violating copyright to sidestep the monstrosity they have built can take a flight to Hypocrite Island and go fuck themselves.

joquarky 1y ago
Copyright is unnatural anyway. Soon it will be obsolete.

gchamonlive 1y ago

I honestly gave jellyfin a try but it didn't work for me for several reasons. The server wouldn't find some shows or movies no matter what I did, and I had countless issues with subtitles. I'd recommend giving jellyfin a try because it's a worthy project, but it's not even a competition, Plex is hands down much more user friendly, if you can excuse the fact that it's closed source. Now for findability I can't recommend Kagi enough. You can find virtually anything there, no filters and no bullshit results.

alabastervlog 1y ago
You do have to follow the naming scheme, though 95% of the time I don’t need to touch the names of tv show episodes, just stick them in the correct folders. The exceptions are mostly anime and shows I could only find on internet archive, as, for some reason, those often come with just the episode number in the name, not the full “s01e14” that basically everyone else uses. I rename my movies but that takes maybe ten seconds per one I add, tops, and the result is easier to read when managing files later than leaving them as “www.torrenting.com The.Matix.ita.eng.1999[rarbg]” or whatever insane file names they usually come with.
- gchamonlive 1y ago
  But it also means I can't seed it, right?
  - chneu 1y ago
    I've been running a Plex/jellyfin server for years and never had to rename any files. Don't do that. Match them in Jellyfin and leave the original filenames intact.
    - alabastervlog 1y ago
      If you rename them, you can re-create the whole library with auto scan, which is nice. Do you mean you let it auto-scan the wrong id, go find that wrong movie in your library, then manually provide an e.g. IMDb id, for every one?

ulrikrasmussen 1y ago

With Chromecast getting more and more unstable (and not working on LineageOS, forcing me to use Chromium on a laptop) and now streaming services turning to engagement optimizing ad monsters, I guess I'll start doing that. I had really hoped that the streaming era would have ended up in a better future where I could buy movies and TV shows in the same was as I buy them on Bandcamp: Watch some of it, maybe all of it, for free, and after payment you can either stream it OR download it and play it however the fuck you want on whatever device you want, with whatever software you want. Ads are not just a question of whether you can pay to turn them off. The mere presence of ads on a platform is pure poison for its content curation, and further gives the streaming vendor incentives to control you as a user and take away your freedom.

johnbatch 1y ago

I just shut down my NAS and PC that was running Sonarr/Radarr SABnzbd etc. I setup stremio and a debrid service, and it's much easier for me to not deal with all that. I used this guide - https://guides.viren070.me/stremio https://guides.viren070.me/stremio

myvoiceismypass 1y ago

Are there equivalents for live streaming (sports in particular)? Some of the backout laws are still fucking absurd in the year 2025.

chneu 1y ago
Just Google "reddit sport streams" So "reddit NBA stream" and you'll get results. Or duck duck go it. Find one or two you like, then use Unlock Origin to block all the annoying UI stuff and ads. The websites come and go so you have to stay on top of the new domains.