Not the parent poster, but I'm running a stack of Sonarr (series crawler) + Radarr (movie crawler) + Lidarr (music crawler), + Bazarr (subtitle crawler) + some torrent client (Deluge) + Jellyfin (you could also use Plex, but Jellyfin doesn't ask for money) + Jackett (indexer) + a VPN. I've also configured a Telegram bot to send me updates about download progress. You add the content you want to *arr, those programs query your indexer(s) for sources, and pass them on to your download client(s). Downloaded files are automatically moved to the right place with a useful folder structure so that media servers (Plex, Emby, Jellyfin) can pick them up. Non-torrent sources for *arr (newsgroups etc.) are also available, but I haven't tried them.

There are various pre-designed docker-compose scripts available online [0] that basically allow you to create such a setup by simply entering your VPN username and password and specifying a storage path. If you have any experience with Docker, they're dead easy to set up and they work flawlessly.

In my experience, Netflix honestly works better and streams more reliably than Plex or any other self-hosted alternative. The Jellyfin project has been making progress, but your mileage may vary.

[0]: https://github.com/sebgl/htpc-download-box

Not the person you're asking, but I run the same thing. Here's my setup:

Plex/Jellyfin for watching content.

Sonarr(TV)/Radarr(Movies)/Lidarr(Music)/Readarr(Audio/Books) - For searching/organizing/starting downloads, monitoring for new releases and so on

nzbget/qbittorrent - for doing the actual downloads

prowlarr - to handle various indexers/search providers between *arr apps and downloaders

overseerr - to make everything foolproof for people who are not tech savvy. They can see what's downloaded, and request new stuff and they get an email once its been downloaded.

On top of that I have watchtower which does automatic updates, as everything is running as docker containers.

Honestly it seems like complicated setup, but it's really not, and once set up it runs without any issues. I've had this for a few years now, and there's been maaaybe a handful of times where I needed to fix something.

Piggybacking on a reply to this comment, if you want to go an alternative (or additive) route of Usenet you can look to add NZBGet (or SABnzbd) with NZBHydra to manage Usenet downloading and indexer search respectively.

In respect to this my setup for this (on Docker) looks like: radarr, sonarr, nzbget and nzbhydra. I serve my media using Plex (there are a lot of great alternatives to Plex out there also but I'm still very happy with Plex even as a non-paid user).

Fedora on an old gaming machine in the lounge and a wireless kb/mouse.

I've messed around with Plex but honestly find using a computer easier. Watch a lot of YouTube too but almost prefer the tv app for that.

Gigabit internet helps, everything is watchable almost instantly.

Plex is ok but feels like it's trying to meet Plex's need for revenue moreso than providing software people want. But for better or worse they're the 1,000 lb gorilla in the space.

The real game changer is getting a reliable sonarr&radarr set up going