Arrrrr! Welcome Aboard The Good Ship Matey 🏴‍☠️

I dont even try at this point. 11 dollars for shit I dont wanna watch, and there's ads anyway? Yeah, no, I'm getting in the boat.

Really wish I knew about Jellyfin 5 years ago. So much of my money I could've redirected to a seedbox or a decent vpn service. Fuck streaming services
- Just got mine set up this weekend, really works a treat! Utterly painless. Even put the client on the Roku I apparently don't own, hope the pricks somehow notice lol
And then they only deliver up to 720p because your device hasn't been blessed by capitalism
Not just for the high seas. "Noah, get the boat"..... for video streaming because that's beyond redemption.
Why would you try to watch something you don't wanna watch?
- You'd be surprised how many people nowadays just leave random shows or movies on in the background while they're on their phones.
  Even my Dad does it, I ask what he's watching on Netflix, etc and half the time he has to check even tho he was the one who clicked on it in the first place...
- I think he's talking about all the other shows and movies on the platform, that he doesn't watch

How about you Prime Video subscription?

Yes, we have it

Great! Let's watch

You have to pay £12.99 for it

What? I already pay you monthly! Why?!

Because fuck you.

Even the stuff that prime has available. I still torrent, just because their player is pure garbage (the X-ray thingy is a nice feature, tho)
- yep. I no longer pay for prime, but in the last few months of having it, I just torrented it anyways. whoever designed that app for the Apple TV should be forced to use it for 2 years straight
Same with Apple TV. They are both a subscription and a rental.
- Corporate spit roasting! Nice.
To fucking rent it at that.
That's for things that aren't on Prime but are available on Amazon
- Yes, that's the point being made. One could already paying for a Prime membership, yet still needs to pay more money for shows that should already be included in said Prime membership.

Since the whole tariffs thing lead to boycotting of many American products, visiting the nearest version of Tortuga is downright patriotic

With Radarr, Sonarr, and Plex, I get a better TV and movie service than anything I could pay for. I can afford to pay, and I would, but they won't offer anything reasonable. I ditched Netflix years ago when they removed the rating system to promote their low quality schlock. They kept removing content. Content would auto-play. Discovery broke as they kept trying to make me watch things I didn't want to watch. If they make their products worse, and keep charging me more every year, they shouldn't be surprised when I leave.

Pro-tip: Plex is slowly enshittifying, a good open source alternative is Jellyfin.
- Strongly agreed, from the owner of a dust covered lifetime Plex Pass.
  Even if we eliminate all the other reasons you might not want to use Plex or might want to use FOSS, just the performance and UI responsiveness alone makes it worth the switch.
  And I do have some non-techy family that watches remotely on smart TVs and uses phone apps.
- Jellyfin is literally all I watch not to mention the BEST alternative to all the centralized AD riddled garbage (Now in forced foreign languages) 'Tubi, Pluto, Prime Video'! Crazy cause being a "Prime" member isn't enough nowadays cause they want you to DOUBLE Pay on top of a Membership Subscription to remove ads which is sooo counterintuitive?!
  Straight out of that (Black Mirror) episode called (Common People) Season 7 Episode 1... Predictive Programming at it's finest.
- Plex is still MUCH easier to share with my friends and family. I’ll be sticking with Plex until the UX on Jellyfin is comparable. Also Plexamp is the best music app I have ever used. It’s unbelievably good. Also Plex has more features like the ability to download and select new subtitles on the fly, and consistent skip intro functionality across all apps on all devices.
- Can you import watched status and progress?
Same. I signed up for Netflix when they came to Canadas in 2010. Immediately had to start using proxies/vpn to access US Netflix since Canada's selection was broiled ass.
By 2013 there was news of Netflix talking of blocking non-US users from accessing US Netlix. Immediately cancelled, spun up my Plex server. 30TB later and I got 18 friends off of all their streaming services too lol
I don't think you can even get a service as good as the Arrs if you're rich and have insanely expensive stuff like Kaleidescape.

pay for prime video or whatever. $2.99 or something i don't know what it costs i don't actually do this

30 minutes in and the resolution changes to 480p because my internet is shit and it's streaming

no thanks

My internet is fine win any other streaming service. Prime streaming is the worst one out of all the major streaming services. Which is fucking weird considering Netflix runs on AWS.
Even with good internet if you're watching on the wrong device (desktop/media center PC) your stream will get bitrate locked to a 720p equivalent or whatever because of DRM bullshit.
- Yes. This was what made me stop paying for streaming.
  Yes, I guess, as a Linux user I could probably steal their stuff more easily than some others. (?) Or maybe just because I know how my computer works.
  But - I have better things to do with my time.
  I have indicated this to the streaming providers, using money, which I paid them, each month.
  I believe that this is an easy way to tell me apart from pirates, who I understand did not pay for the streaming services each month.
  But since the streaming services stopped delivering quality working streams to my devices, I no longer pruchase their streaming services.
  Now I am enjoying my ancient DVD and VHS collection until streaming services stop sucking.

so there is this movie which is too niche, not available for purchase and no seeder :(

Local library, local thrift store, 2nd hand websites... If it was ever published on VHS, DVD, ... chances are it's out there somewhere
- Operation sandman - cannot find anywhere for the last few years, Usenet, torrents, vhs/dvd, anything
Search soulseek with a “ .mkv” at the end (note the space)
- Why the space?
What movie?
- For me it was Not4Sale - TV Sheriff and the Trailbuddies. I actually bought the DVD from OtherCinema, maybe the only movie I’ve ever bought. I don’t think you can even buy it anymore.
Always a terrible feeling
Try fmhy.net.
I feel your pain

Try justwatch.com, they'll tell you where you can watch anything legally.

Sir, this is !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com.The meme was just a cover, we were never going to pay anyways LMAO
- JustWatch is still useful if you want to act like you watched it legitimately, e.g., if a coworker asks where they can watch it. Even if your coworker also pirates, they might not have an account on your private tracker, Usenet, etc..
  I may be wrong, as I haven’t actually torrented anything substantial since Demonoid was still a thing, but it all feels less accessible than it used to be.
Funny, I only have to go to one website to watch anything I like.
Why go to that effort just to pay?
- It's no more effort than it was to type this comment. Literally go to the site and type in the name of the show and that's it.
  If you don't want to pay, just say you don't want to pay. None of this non-sense about how you were totally going to but just couldn't figure out how.
Yeah, nice try Jeff, except no, there's a lot on justwatch but it definitely doesn't tell me where to find "anything".
Either you are so boringly mainstream not to know, or you are simply full of it, but there is plenty missing from the streaming world.
Especially if you consider markets outside the US.
For instance, in Italy The West Wing has not been available for years, neither streaming nor DVD. Only option is used DVDs off of eBay.
But even in the US, where exactly can I stream the original Spider Man animated series from 1967?
- If it's not available, then feel free to pirate it, obviously
- My name is not Jeff. You should educate yourself on the concept of hyperbole.

For English content, torrents are great.

But I've been having much better luck finding Spanish content on streaming sites, instead of torrent sites, and then downloading. See Guides for downloading streams.

The The Stream Detector is great!

The usual suspects for modern stuff is easy to find in Germany.
What becomes difficult is getting older or obscure stuff (like the Pokémon show) in a decent enough quality.
Recently ordered the first season dvd box to trial the ripping process as most of the stuff I found is either incomplete (missing entries) or not up to quality (mixing audio segments between english/german or leaving out the intro/outro)
- Don't forget to seed your rips!

skullxdcc requires no VPN

nor does i2p

I never use a vpn with torrents. Private trackers in my experience have been enough to be fine. The only times in 20 years of torrenting tons of shit I’ve gotten isp letters were once I downloaded a Pokémon rom from a pubic tracker, which was stupid, and once I had a roommate that downloaded some shitty movie from a public tracker
Alternatively usenet
- I've always found private trackers to be almost unusably bureaucratic
But neither has the speed or selection that regular torrenting with VPN has at the moment.
- dcc is blazing fast. I get the full DL in like 5 mins
Ive never seen xdcc for anything but anime. Do you have a link?
- https://skullxdcc.com/

At this point, I can say I've literally waited decades for movies to show up on streaming. I remember Office Space and They Live not being anywhere for years. Those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

Using VPN for torrents? Laughing in Brazilian

Technically its illegal in New Zealand (after the great John Key and The Hobbit saga) but the ISPs don't give a shit. Never used a VPN and only got one letter just after the law took effect. Nothing since. So many people here do it it's unenforceable.
- I think it's also technically illegal in Australia but because the rights holders can only come after you for the retail cost of whatever was pirated it's functionally legal. the MPAA would rather sue a kid in the US for hundreds of millions than one in Aus for $14.95.
Even here in the heart of Europe, Denmark, there's not many that really care enough unless you run your own tracker. Back in the day with CD's and DVD's it was a lot worse though, because it's obviously easier to catch someone when there's physical media involved.

Fmovies
1flix

uBlock Origin

And the uBlock Origin is mandatory. The ads on those sites are insane
Here's a great resource for sites and a rating system with explanations for each site
And if you want to explore more of the site there's other resources for other media, and a guide to help protect you're privacy
Ublock still mandatory on any site there, they don't hold responsibility for the ads those sites allow

Kodi + The Crew + Real Debrid + daddy live

Fuck cable

Fuck real debrid
- What do you suggest? I'm just going by whats worked for me so far. I was thinking of trying some other services but if it works for me I'm kinda ambivalent.

Replace torrenting with usenet, but absolutely yes.

better value than streaming? yes
better value than free? debatable
- I mean I pay like...$15/yr which isn't bad and I can nearly cap my 5gbit line and not have to deal with seeding.