Comment by y-c-o-m-b | Hacker News Reader

Comment by y-c-o-m-b | Hacker News Reader

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I have Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Prime TV. I will search through all of those before resorting to the high seas. If I didn't have a family though, I would cancel all of those services because it takes me less overall effort to download from torrents.

It's amazing how ridiculously easy it is to pirate these days. I didn't know jack shit about anything other than a handful of torrent sites and qBittorrent until recently. Yet it took me only 15-30 minutes to set up a full media-server stack for the whole thing.

Here's my full stack:

- ProtonVPN at $120 for 2.5 years of service, approx $4/mo

- qBittorrent: torrent download client. Free

- Jellyfin Server (PC) + Jellyfin Roku Channel (Roku device): similar to Plex media server, it's like a Netflix-style UI for your local content. Free

- Sonarr: searches for TV shows and can automatically download them into qBittorrent. Free

- Radarr: searches for movies and can automatically download them into qBittorrent. Free

- Jackett: search indexer so you can search all your favorite torrent sites through one service. Integrates into Sonarr and Radarr. Free

EDIT: Oh I use Spotify for music since that one is reliable and all the music I want is there. Plus they have offline download options.

As I'm a complete 0 at IT, would you mind explaining how one gets started with this? I have VPN, I've torrented before.

How does Jellyfin work and what do I need? Does it sit locally on a laptop/PC (so takes up space) and if it uses the same WiFi as my TV I can play it? That's the bit I really don't understand...

I'm only using it in the most basic form (streaming to my roku from my PC), so hopefully someone with more experience with it can chime in here, but I'll do my best.

I saw the software mentioned on reddit a while back, and then I just Googled each product to learn more or download/install it. They are all pretty straight-forward click and launch products with minimal configuration for which you can find guides by a quick search.

Honestly if you already have the content downloaded or don't want to tinker with other software too much, you only need Jellyfin to serve that content. Jellyfin server runs as a service on the device housing your content. This server has a URL that you will provide to whatever device is connecting to it. For me, my home PC is my server. In its most basic form, yes, it uses the same WiFi as your TV. Most home WiFi routers allow communicating with other devices on the WiFi (typically referred to as your "local network") easily.

Serving Jellyfin outside of your local network (e.g. if you wanted to share with extended family across the internet) requires configuring your router for it and that can be a bit more tricky (and poses security risks), but there's a bunch of guides out there that help you do this safely without compromising your local network's security.

When you install Jellyfin, you're presented with a screen asking you to create an admin login. You can then create additional user logins in the software (which launches its UI in your default browser), so you can use it when connecting to it on your network. The way you "consume" it on your TV is through the Jellyfin client software. They have software available for the popular OSes like Windows and macOS as well as phone software for Android and iOS, but also Roku, Android TV, FireTV, etc. Lots of options on how you consume it. My Roku was able to automatically detected it running on my network, so all I had to do was input login info.

Really appreciate it! I'll have to look into it in a bit more detail. I'm a little tired of having to plug my laptop in via HDMI every time I want to play a movie I can't find on netflix.

The only problem is, I don't have a PC and I really don't want to mix my mac I use for work with torrented movies. So I would have to look into getting a cheap windows machine :)

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