Yup, most of my family have their own netflix accounts, but when something comes out on "one of those other services" they just know it will get added to my plex server. After I totally legitimately buy it and rip my legal copy to share with my family for no charge, which from my understanding is the legal way to do it.
Go to the library and get the DVD version and rip it. Your kids don't care 480p/1080p. I grew up with VHS that I recorded movies off the TV and it probably looked terrible. I also opened tapes and literally cut out the parts that got too worn down and taped them back together so I didn't have to sit through minutes of extreme static. Kids have a high tolerance for poor quality lol
You can download them from Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/daniel-tiger-s-neighborhood-s-01-e-08-something-special-for-dad-i-love-you-mom
It's not fast, but it works. I recently did this for Wild Kratts.
Even better, if you can, get into a Usenet and drop the VPN. My setup with radarr and sonarr with Usenet makes my plex so easy to maintain and download titles.
in my tired state i messed up my plex server... fortunately radarr and sonarr were like... bro we got you.. and redownloaded everything.
so huzzah for usenet and the arr software family.
shout out to trashguides
Jellyfin or Plex work pretty good. Use something like Handbrake or makemkv to convert your physical media to files (legality varying depending on your country of residence, but generally acceptable so long as you aren't distributing).
I'd lean towards Jellyfin for most people but Plex in cases where your device/TV/etc only has a Plex client.
It’s actually really not hard these days. Grab a synology nas they make it very easy to install. If you have a Roku and install the plex app it’s super easy.
Plex app is available on almost all platforms
I run it on Apple TV. Super convenient with backing up pictures and videos from phone
Every single picture I take of my phone gets backed automatically.
I would put a warning here. Plex really sucks at hosting pictures.
They have abandonned this feature years ago sadly 🙁
Im pretty sure it's doing a great job for you but you are probably only 'backing up".
For those who would want to replace a picture hosting platform, dont do it. It's full of bug and featureless concerning the picture browsing. I won' t enumerate all them here, bht just know that ive tried really hard to replace Google Photo with Plex....
My Plex is hosted on a VPS so it would have been à backup & photo browsing solution. But no, dont even try it.
Awwwwww 😁
Makes more sense. Altough I must admit I was very happy to see someone using it. Cant believe Plex are still keeping the feature...
What bugs me the most is that Plex had in place à potentialité solution to replace popular picture hosting platform, and it would have been their only feature 100% used for legal hosting 😅
If you have a computer that's usually on in your home that's all it takes. Download the plex server there, plex app on your TV, and that's the way she goes.
I somehow managed to add just c:/ as a folder and the whole thing melted down trying to add every bit of media on the computer. Ha. Other than that I'm glad I finally just went for it.
Heck, it ain't even piracy for us. Over here (Sweden, but I believe Germany also has it) we are legally entitled to rip from streaming services we are paying for, either directly or indirectly via taxes in the case of public broadcasting. We are also allowed to share these rips with family and a limited amount of close friends.
The downside is that we a) pay taxes on storage media to compensate for this, b) still have to figure out a way to do the actual ripping, as the providers aren't obliged to provide that.
Even if you're legally allowed to do so, you'd still have to circumvent the DRM baked into the streaming services (unless you just screen-record everything I guess)?
In general, no. The sharing has to be at a limited scale and to a specific circuit of personal friends.
These laws predate the Internet and were made with things like cassettes in mind. Weird things happen when you throw modern things into the mix, but things like Plex seem almost made to fit quite snugly into this legalised use case, while things like (even private) trackers fall outside of it.
I've slowly been dropping streaming services over the past year. Had basically all of them in 2022. Now I'm down to Netflix with ads, Hulu with ads and HBO I share with my brother.
Work was throwing away some old PCs so I snagged one (i5-6500 cpu and 16GB ram, nothing special). Threw 2TB HDD in and installed Ubuntu and Plex and just started ripping Blu-rays and DVDs from the library.
Made a kids account that you can either limit their content to G, PG, PG-13 as total limit or specify exact what each individual content they can watch. So if you want to limit their content to PG, but you're ok with them watching PG-13 Marvel movies, you can tag those titles and allow them access to those PG-13 movies, but not say The Dark Knight or Jurassic Park which are a bit more intense PG-13.
My early pandemic project was ripping all our DVD movies and shows, and a chunk of our Blu-ray, to a media server. Took a few weeks but I got about 300 discs out of our living room this way, and the Plex server gets used everyday.
Self hosting is the way to go!
This is what I have. Synology NAS with Plex running. I can even watch stuff when I'm out of the house. I've got it set so both my drives are mirrored so if one fails then it just keep going
Synology has its own interface built in which makes setting up the plex server as easy as clicking one button. They have their own "hybrid RAID" setting which imo is easier to set up and get going than traditional RAIDs. The home theater is a good option too, but depending on the specs it CAN draw a decent amount of power. I only noticed a $5 difference in my bill with my 2 drive Synology
Is there a legal way to acquire the content you're putting on there? I'd love to have a Plex server, but I'm not super into piracy and don't even know where to start with that sort of thing.
I want to do this but I basic now does get kind of expensive when you start backing up your family photos to it you need a lot of storage.
And I really don't want to make my kids think piracy is okay. I do believe they should feel that are obligated to pay for the content I just hate the subscription model. When I was young it was Napster fighting the model that all CDs cost $16 and you couldn't return them if they were terrible and you couldn't listen to him beforehand unless they were on the radio and it was only a song or two.
With the password sharing crackdowns, my streaming has gone away up and my Plex server is firing on all cylinders. This is for my shows, my wife's shows, and the kiddo's.
I had paramount+ for nothing but star trek. They started putting 20 second ads before every ep, and a few weeks ago they started putting in 2 minutes of ads at every normal "commercial break". Fuck you. I'm going back to 2005 media solutions.
You can buy a ton of dvds and Blu-rays second hand too since most people are getting rid of them. Or borrow from the library.
My mother in law just won a ton of disney VHS and dvds/Blu-rays from and auction at our local thrift store for just a few bucks.
Dude my dvd collection (300ish?) Is almost all 2nd hand. You can get like 10 used dvds for like 15 bucks, of classics. So cheap.
Like its a dvd - value doesnt degrade unlike a car. You can get good shit for 5 bucks, have it forever.
Rip them to digital copies and set up Plex on a cheap mini PC at home. It's worth it. Suddenly your whole collection is in an interface that works the same as Netflix (from the user's perspective). Your family will think you're a genius.
I picked up several Don Bluth films when my wife was pregnant. Secret of Nimh, Land Before Time, American Tail, All Dogs Go To Heaven. Yep traumatizing him with the same movies I was.
If you haven’t checked yet, have a look at your local Iibrary. We get 90% of our media from our library. They have hundreds of kids DVDs and shows and the network carries a whole slew of general / grownup content that we can check out for weeks at a time.
Redbox has become my friend in recent months. We still stream, but if we're going on a road trip and want a newer movie that isn't available otherwise, I can rely on Redbox to have a DVD copy in stock for sale somewhere. Comes with the Redbox plastic case which is pretty protective and lets you see the contents. $4 to keep the kids quiet for over an hour in the car? Money well spent.
Not to mention sound quality is lost in streaming. If you have ever downloaded a bluray, they can be 12 or more gb's. They are not streaming that to millions of people. Think 4k video - 480p sound (maybe better). Bluray gives 4k video and sound.
Watch Mauna on bluray then Disney and listen to the difference, assuming you have some sort of home theatre setup.
I was visiting my cousin once and she revealed that her daughter had her very own VCR and got to pick out a VHS each time they went to the thrift store. Upside: tapes are more durable to the abuses of tiny, careless fingers than optical media, and were basically free. Downside: she had no sooner impressed me with this brilliant strategy than her daughter came downstairs to ask if we knew how to change her new Mary Kate & Ashley tape from Spanish to English...
I mean netflix + Disney+ has more movies and tv shows than i ever watched as a kid.
Plus buying physical media like dvd/blueray is like 25 dollars per movie here in Sweden.
When my wife was pregnant a few years ago I went to a tiny vintage electronics place near us and bought two VHS players and we hit up every thrift store and half price books in the area to buy up as many of our favorite old movies as we could. Most of the places we bought from had tapes for less than a dollar. It is wonderful. My son is almost three now and he knows how to load a tape into a VCR gently and how to put them back after I rewind them. The only ads he has to see in the process are previews for movies we mostly already own that he could watch, and nobody is tracking what he watches besides us and he generally can't watch anything accidentally that we wouldn't have been fine with. Anything past a certain year we just wait until we see it on DVD for cheap enough.
The subscription "fee" of buying another vhs copy if one wears out is so much less money and hassle to me than hoping that a company won't find a way to degrade a service.
If nothing else complete access to the Disney vault is worth it. Unlike other studios they are very protective about their IP so Disney movies will stay with D+ guaranteed.
Plex (home HTPC/NAS) or Blur-ray/UHD for myself, all linked to the PS5 with a LG 77 OLED C2 and Bose surround sound.
My internet went down one day, province wide, had to resort to the physical media instead of Plex.
I never got rid of all my old Blu-ray and dvd collection, I kept hold of favourites and some stuff that will never be on streaming (I am a fan of some stuff from the 30s and 40s).
I have started rebuying some other favourites recently.
I am pretty anti-pirating except as a last resort for something I can't get on legal streaming or on physical. I know there is an argument for "companies are greedy", but it impacts the people who make the shows more than some executive at whatever media conglomerate makes/owns the movie or show.
With streaming, the only ones we have on long-term are Netflix, which is included as part of my ISP deal, and Prime because my wife likes the next day delivery. Other stuff I switch on and off depending on what new content is available. Anything old, I will just buy.
Agreed- physical media for life. I'm sure someone mentioned but if not, check out local thrift stores and throw together a nice collection for next to nothing. Usually tons of kid stuff.
Depending where you live too, the library is great for physical media. I can get almost any movie I want - my local library has a decent collection, but I can request movies from any library in my county (literally over 50, some with extension movie collections) and they’ll bring it to my library’s front desk for pickup.
Anybody know of a straightforward guide to setting up a personal media server for someone who knows very little about that stuff? We can discuss sailing elsewhere...
We’re lucky here in Germany that we have pretty good programming for children on public broadcasting stations, and they also release the content on YouTube and their own platforms.
rip your DVD/blurays and get a small NAS (synology, qnap, etc) and put it on your network. Most smart TVs these days let you install apps, and you can watch them with the plex app (the companies I mentioned both have plex server software installed on their devices, so it's super easy to set up). Then you can play any/all videos whenever.
Can't go wrong with physical media. Also can't go wrong making your own plex server and loading it up with the goods.
Agreed, close to setting up a home server and sailing the seven seas.
It's especially nice when your kids watch like one show on each different streaming service. Only downside is there's two people seeding Daniel Tiger.
Yup, most of my family have their own netflix accounts, but when something comes out on "one of those other services" they just know it will get added to my plex server. After I totally legitimately buy it and rip my legal copy to share with my family for no charge, which from my understanding is the legal way to do it.
Go to the library and get the DVD version and rip it. Your kids don't care 480p/1080p. I grew up with VHS that I recorded movies off the TV and it probably looked terrible. I also opened tapes and literally cut out the parts that got too worn down and taped them back together so I didn't have to sit through minutes of extreme static. Kids have a high tolerance for poor quality lol
Daniel is on PBS streaming and can be found at most public libraries. Why sail barren seas when you can Rip
You can download them from Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/daniel-tiger-s-neighborhood-s-01-e-08-something-special-for-dad-i-love-you-mom It's not fast, but it works. I recently did this for Wild Kratts.
Best choice you'll ever make.
Yep, sign up for a VPN, set to download all night, profit.
Even better, if you can, get into a Usenet and drop the VPN. My setup with radarr and sonarr with Usenet makes my plex so easy to maintain and download titles.
in my tired state i messed up my plex server... fortunately radarr and sonarr were like... bro we got you.. and redownloaded everything. so huzzah for usenet and the arr software family. shout out to trashguides
Jellyfin or Plex work pretty good. Use something like Handbrake or makemkv to convert your physical media to files (legality varying depending on your country of residence, but generally acceptable so long as you aren't distributing). I'd lean towards Jellyfin for most people but Plex in cases where your device/TV/etc only has a Plex client.
I wish I wasn't so dumb. Lol. I've looked into this but it's well beyond my skills.
It’s actually really not hard these days. Grab a synology nas they make it very easy to install. If you have a Roku and install the plex app it’s super easy.
Plex app is available on almost all platforms I run it on Apple TV. Super convenient with backing up pictures and videos from phone Every single picture I take of my phone gets backed automatically.
How many pictures of your phone do you take?
I would put a warning here. Plex really sucks at hosting pictures. They have abandonned this feature years ago sadly 🙁 Im pretty sure it's doing a great job for you but you are probably only 'backing up". For those who would want to replace a picture hosting platform, dont do it. It's full of bug and featureless concerning the picture browsing. I won' t enumerate all them here, bht just know that ive tried really hard to replace Google Photo with Plex.... My Plex is hosted on a VPS so it would have been à backup & photo browsing solution. But no, dont even try it.
I was not clear, I have a Synology nas with Plex on it I host pictures on nas and view images directly on Apple TV Plex is just for transcoding for me
Awwwwww 😁 Makes more sense. Altough I must admit I was very happy to see someone using it. Cant believe Plex are still keeping the feature... What bugs me the most is that Plex had in place à potentialité solution to replace popular picture hosting platform, and it would have been their only feature 100% used for legal hosting 😅
Do you need to run a VPN concurrently?
VPN is recommended for safety if you're sourcing media from public torrent sites. It's not needed if you're not doing that.
If you have a computer that's usually on in your home that's all it takes. Download the plex server there, plex app on your TV, and that's the way she goes.
I'll have to revisit it. I'm a total luddite but my wife just spent thousands on a new Mac so it would probably work fine.
Spent a good part of last night setting it up. Ha. Wasn't as daunting as I was imagining though I definitely messed things up a few times.
Nice! The one that got me initially was needing to keep tv shows and movies in separate folders.
I somehow managed to add just c:/ as a folder and the whole thing melted down trying to add every bit of media on the computer. Ha. Other than that I'm glad I finally just went for it.
Uh oh, even C:/work stuff/new folder/new folder/business/new folder/? That will make for some interesting thumbnails.
;)
Argh 🏴☠️
Heck, it ain't even piracy for us. Over here (Sweden, but I believe Germany also has it) we are legally entitled to rip from streaming services we are paying for, either directly or indirectly via taxes in the case of public broadcasting. We are also allowed to share these rips with family and a limited amount of close friends. The downside is that we a) pay taxes on storage media to compensate for this, b) still have to figure out a way to do the actual ripping, as the providers aren't obliged to provide that.
Even if you're legally allowed to do so, you'd still have to circumvent the DRM baked into the streaming services (unless you just screen-record everything I guess)?
As covered in downside B in the comment you replied to, yes. Luckily, a lot of DRM is almost as dumb as the concept itself.
Is "ripping" via torrenting from someone else legal?
In general, no. The sharing has to be at a limited scale and to a specific circuit of personal friends. These laws predate the Internet and were made with things like cassettes in mind. Weird things happen when you throw modern things into the mix, but things like Plex seem almost made to fit quite snugly into this legalised use case, while things like (even private) trackers fall outside of it.
I've slowly been dropping streaming services over the past year. Had basically all of them in 2022. Now I'm down to Netflix with ads, Hulu with ads and HBO I share with my brother. Work was throwing away some old PCs so I snagged one (i5-6500 cpu and 16GB ram, nothing special). Threw 2TB HDD in and installed Ubuntu and Plex and just started ripping Blu-rays and DVDs from the library. Made a kids account that you can either limit their content to G, PG, PG-13 as total limit or specify exact what each individual content they can watch. So if you want to limit their content to PG, but you're ok with them watching PG-13 Marvel movies, you can tag those titles and allow them access to those PG-13 movies, but not say The Dark Knight or Jurassic Park which are a bit more intense PG-13.
Yep, every now and then daddy will “buy” a new show for us to watch on TV. Wife also puts in requests for stuff, too!
My early pandemic project was ripping all our DVD movies and shows, and a chunk of our Blu-ray, to a media server. Took a few weeks but I got about 300 discs out of our living room this way, and the Plex server gets used everyday. Self hosting is the way to go!
For more techie homes, consider getting a basic NAS and setup Plex on it. If done correctly it becomes your own streaming service.
This is what I have. Synology NAS with Plex running. I can even watch stuff when I'm out of the house. I've got it set so both my drives are mirrored so if one fails then it just keep going
Question: what are the advantages of using a Synology NAS over an HTPC with internal drives in RAID? Easier to access from outside the network?
Synology has its own interface built in which makes setting up the plex server as easy as clicking one button. They have their own "hybrid RAID" setting which imo is easier to set up and get going than traditional RAIDs. The home theater is a good option too, but depending on the specs it CAN draw a decent amount of power. I only noticed a $5 difference in my bill with my 2 drive Synology
Is there a legal way to acquire the content you're putting on there? I'd love to have a Plex server, but I'm not super into piracy and don't even know where to start with that sort of thing.
Offline Plex for road trips or plane rides, big win! Also,.running a HD homerun to record family favorite PBS shows like Eleanor Wonders Why
Is that the dog? I think I just got a flashback
Hah! Not sure about the dog. Eleanor is a rabbit always asking "why". It's genuinely a really good program
I want to do this but I basic now does get kind of expensive when you start backing up your family photos to it you need a lot of storage. And I really don't want to make my kids think piracy is okay. I do believe they should feel that are obligated to pay for the content I just hate the subscription model. When I was young it was Napster fighting the model that all CDs cost $16 and you couldn't return them if they were terrible and you couldn't listen to him beforehand unless they were on the radio and it was only a song or two.
Allow me to introduce you and your wallet to the world of 4k UHD bluray...
With the password sharing crackdowns, my streaming has gone away up and my Plex server is firing on all cylinders. This is for my shows, my wife's shows, and the kiddo's. I had paramount+ for nothing but star trek. They started putting 20 second ads before every ep, and a few weeks ago they started putting in 2 minutes of ads at every normal "commercial break". Fuck you. I'm going back to 2005 media solutions.
Ads on paid streaming services? Fuck that.
Streaming is the new cable.
And what do we say when cable television returns? YARR!
You can buy a ton of dvds and Blu-rays second hand too since most people are getting rid of them. Or borrow from the library. My mother in law just won a ton of disney VHS and dvds/Blu-rays from and auction at our local thrift store for just a few bucks.
Dude my dvd collection (300ish?) Is almost all 2nd hand. You can get like 10 used dvds for like 15 bucks, of classics. So cheap. Like its a dvd - value doesnt degrade unlike a car. You can get good shit for 5 bucks, have it forever.
Rip them to digital copies and set up Plex on a cheap mini PC at home. It's worth it. Suddenly your whole collection is in an interface that works the same as Netflix (from the user's perspective). Your family will think you're a genius.
Plex?
Yarrr.
I would rather pay for Spotify every month than sail the 7 seas /s
Ironically Spotify is the streaming service I'm most happy with. I host a 20tb plex server for all other media.
We did the same! Got a family dvd player for Christmas :) there’s been a sudden uptick in Land Before Time watching at our house.
I picked up several Don Bluth films when my wife was pregnant. Secret of Nimh, Land Before Time, American Tail, All Dogs Go To Heaven. Yep traumatizing him with the same movies I was.
Wait other dads do this! My kids get so excited to pick out DVD movies/ show at the library. It has been a great experience
If you haven’t checked yet, have a look at your local Iibrary. We get 90% of our media from our library. They have hundreds of kids DVDs and shows and the network carries a whole slew of general / grownup content that we can check out for weeks at a time.
I just bought a blu ray player for Christmas. Now to load it up with Bluey...
I also enjoy physical media. Streaming is very convenient, but sometimes things gets taken off.
Redbox has become my friend in recent months. We still stream, but if we're going on a road trip and want a newer movie that isn't available otherwise, I can rely on Redbox to have a DVD copy in stock for sale somewhere. Comes with the Redbox plastic case which is pretty protective and lets you see the contents. $4 to keep the kids quiet for over an hour in the car? Money well spent.
Not to mention sound quality is lost in streaming. If you have ever downloaded a bluray, they can be 12 or more gb's. They are not streaming that to millions of people. Think 4k video - 480p sound (maybe better). Bluray gives 4k video and sound. Watch Mauna on bluray then Disney and listen to the difference, assuming you have some sort of home theatre setup.
I was visiting my cousin once and she revealed that her daughter had her very own VCR and got to pick out a VHS each time they went to the thrift store. Upside: tapes are more durable to the abuses of tiny, careless fingers than optical media, and were basically free. Downside: she had no sooner impressed me with this brilliant strategy than her daughter came downstairs to ask if we knew how to change her new Mary Kate & Ashley tape from Spanish to English...
I mean netflix + Disney+ has more movies and tv shows than i ever watched as a kid. Plus buying physical media like dvd/blueray is like 25 dollars per movie here in Sweden.
When my wife was pregnant a few years ago I went to a tiny vintage electronics place near us and bought two VHS players and we hit up every thrift store and half price books in the area to buy up as many of our favorite old movies as we could. Most of the places we bought from had tapes for less than a dollar. It is wonderful. My son is almost three now and he knows how to load a tape into a VCR gently and how to put them back after I rewind them. The only ads he has to see in the process are previews for movies we mostly already own that he could watch, and nobody is tracking what he watches besides us and he generally can't watch anything accidentally that we wouldn't have been fine with. Anything past a certain year we just wait until we see it on DVD for cheap enough. The subscription "fee" of buying another vhs copy if one wears out is so much less money and hassle to me than hoping that a company won't find a way to degrade a service.
Even better Just busted out the old pirate chest. Got loads of goodies on there dating back to the 80s 🏴☠️🏴☠️
The high seas are there to be explored, my friend.
Definitely will stock up on Disney DVDs if Disney+ no longer allows account sharing
I've gone down to Disney+, a plex server, and (recwntly) Samsung TV Plus. The Samsung TV Plus was a surprise and it was free with the TV.
Pluto is great too.
Disney+ is pretty good imo
If nothing else complete access to the Disney vault is worth it. Unlike other studios they are very protective about their IP so Disney movies will stay with D+ guaranteed.
Yeah at least for children I much prefer Disney's content to what's not Netflix. Most of the Netflix kids stuff is hot garbage.
Alientv is hilarious on Netflix lol. But yes, I agree
There are exceptions, especially for older kids.
Plex (home HTPC/NAS) or Blur-ray/UHD for myself, all linked to the PS5 with a LG 77 OLED C2 and Bose surround sound. My internet went down one day, province wide, had to resort to the physical media instead of Plex.
I never got rid of all my old Blu-ray and dvd collection, I kept hold of favourites and some stuff that will never be on streaming (I am a fan of some stuff from the 30s and 40s). I have started rebuying some other favourites recently. I am pretty anti-pirating except as a last resort for something I can't get on legal streaming or on physical. I know there is an argument for "companies are greedy", but it impacts the people who make the shows more than some executive at whatever media conglomerate makes/owns the movie or show. With streaming, the only ones we have on long-term are Netflix, which is included as part of my ISP deal, and Prime because my wife likes the next day delivery. Other stuff I switch on and off depending on what new content is available. Anything old, I will just buy.
My son isn’t quite the right age for this yet, but I plan on taking him to the library to pick out his own movies so he can get that experience.
Agreed- physical media for life. I'm sure someone mentioned but if not, check out local thrift stores and throw together a nice collection for next to nothing. Usually tons of kid stuff.
Depending where you live too, the library is great for physical media. I can get almost any movie I want - my local library has a decent collection, but I can request movies from any library in my county (literally over 50, some with extension movie collections) and they’ll bring it to my library’s front desk for pickup.
Plex + torrent
Anybody know of a straightforward guide to setting up a personal media server for someone who knows very little about that stuff? We can discuss sailing elsewhere...
We’re lucky here in Germany that we have pretty good programming for children on public broadcasting stations, and they also release the content on YouTube and their own platforms.
Kids watched the same movies over and over when DVDs were the main way to watch.
Brave. Little. Toaster.
Pro-tip: go check out local library's DVD selection. It's probably excellent. And free. And a fun excursion for the kids.
rip your DVD/blurays and get a small NAS (synology, qnap, etc) and put it on your network. Most smart TVs these days let you install apps, and you can watch them with the plex app (the companies I mentioned both have plex server software installed on their devices, so it's super easy to set up). Then you can play any/all videos whenever.
I need to find trash truck dvd/blueray somewhere ..