I don’t do this myself, but this community has made me aware of Stremio and a plugin for it called torrentio that connects to a (paid) downloader backend called Real Debrid. From the sounds of it, it seems to be a painless user experience for instantly streaming pretty much everything.
I use Jellyfin, Radarr/Sonarr/Bazarr/Jellyseerr/Torrents to play & acquire media. Building a library in advance works for me, but my SO is the “I just want to flick through a list, play something for a bit and if I don’t like it flip to something else random” type. Advanced curation doesn’t lend well to that user behavior, so I am going to explore making the switch.
I’ve been using stremio + torrentio for a while and it’s been the best for me so far. Have tested kodi, jellyfin and others. I don’t pay for a private tracker, but it’s been good enough so far.
I do want to keep a local library instead of streaming, but I’d focus on getting the things I like the most, while this set up helps with discovering. My ADHD in particular may make me suddenly want to watch something that I haven’t prepared.
I set something like this up for my dad but using kodi and some add-ons then connect it to real debrid. It’s like $20 USD for like 6 months. I was able to get him to cancel his cable since he was paying like a hundred dollars + his subscription services a month.
And I have it running on a firestick 4k so really inexpensive.
I always used the guides from reddit[.]com/r/addons4kodi, but you can also Google troypoint and they have great guides for getting kodi up and running. After getting kodi up you can choose an addon, I went with Seren for the Netflix like feature of playing the next episode automatically without having to choose the next link. I also chose The Crew for the sports package they have so he could watch UFC fights without having to pay the PPV. It works most the time but can have some stutter depending on the broadcast.
Get a real-debrid account pay for the 180 day package then when setting up the add-ons you choose link it to the debrid account and you’re set. You also have an option of getting a Trakt account for keeping track of what you have watched, I set this up for myself personally but you don’t need it, my dad doesn’t use it.
Edit 1 - I have found a community on lemmy that’s still small but someone brought over the Seren instructions if you don’t want to go to reddit.
https://lemmy.ml/c/addons4kodi
Edit 1.2 - Found on the lemmy.ml community addons4kodi
Seren
An addon created by Nix, it works with Premiumize and Real-Debrid to stream torrents with the appropriate provider package instantly, and behaves similarly to Netflix, with autoplay and Next up Dialogs. With source select / Resolver / Next up Dialog and more all theme-able
Warning: This add-on DOES NOT work without either Premiumize, Real-Debrid, or All-Debrid (and only works with the paid premium versions of either service), and the “Smart Play Settings” (Up Next, Auto Playlist Creation, Auto Episode Resume, and Pre-emptive Scraping) DO NOT work without an authorized Trakt account.
Current Version Seren : 2.2.4
SETUP
Add https://nixgates.github.io/packages/ to your Kodi File Manager Sources, call it something like “Nix’s Repo”
Go to Add-on browser and Install from Zip File, go to “Nix’s Repo”, and install "nixgates.repository.zip "
After it finishes installing, go to Install from repository>Nixgates Repo>Video Add-on’s>and install Seren
Once you get the notification that Seren installed successfully go back to the home screen
Open Seren, go to tools, Open Settings Menu
Go to Accounts and authenticate Trakt and your debrid providers: PM, RD, and/or AllDebrid
Go to Providers, Manage Provider Packages, and Install Package.
Type in https://bit.ly/a4kScrapers
A prompt will come up asking if you’d like to install the scrapers, Press “Install”, then Press Okay after successful install
Adjust your settings how you like with filters and such and you’re ready to go! :)
Kinda Optional Install Context menu addon. Follow instructions above but where you picked Nixgates repo and then video addons . this time go Nixgates Repo > context menu addons . This will give you much more options when you pull up context menu on Seren Items.
OPTIONAL Themes
(you must be using the skin that the theme is made for )
Edit 2 - I was incorrect about above you do need a Trakt account to use the autonext feature of Seren, I have it set up so I didn’t even notice that whoops. It is free and set up is easy and it’s a set and forget feature for me.
Damn I copied and pasted it but I’m on Jerboa for Android so still learning everything I’ll try to remember to update later when I get on my desktop. Thanks for the update!
I find roku to have the simplest interface for people to learn. Fill it with free channels like tubi and pluto. For your personal library I’d suggest jellyfin. Simple and free.
Stremio and Cloudstream offer a way to stream movies, TV shows, and web series for free, they do so by aggregating pirated content, making them alternatives to mainstream paid streaming services.
can someone please tell me how to use this stremio? I tried it with the torrentio and cyberflix addons and I just could not get the streaming working at all…
Well torrents are slow, typically, and unless the video you wanted to watch had i high amount of seeders, that can cause issues. When i use it, i sort by the number of seeders, and then find the highest balance of quality vs seeders.
Well if large streaming services are off the list, then you could act as one. For instance you could host a Jellyfin instance and make it available to your “someone who is not tech savvy”. On the client side, Jellyfin is very much click and watch. But you take on the burden of being the service host and provider of content.
I am not sure you can find “something that just works” reliably over time without ensuring that yourself.
Yup I did this when I had a server and my non tech savvy friends never had an issue. I even have them access to Radarr, Sonarr, etc do they could add things themselves.
I have a similar setup. The only strange thing is that one house always seems to have buffer issues while the rest don’t (they’ll start a show and it will buffer every few minutes). What would you recommend in that situation kind stranger?
This is what I do. Plex server with storage at home and brother just connects via his app built into his TV. They just text if they want a certain movie or TV show and I add it.
I have them setup public watchlists in imdb and send me the Id and just explain that it checks the list every hour or so. It’s hand off on my end that way.
It’s installed automatically on my TV so I’ll use it from time to time if I want background noise and a certain genre of movie or show I want to have on.
I do the same for my parents. $10 a month, no fuss, 5PB of media from all over the world (and growing!), all high quality Bluray Remuxes along with Dolby Vision content and what not. Can even put in requests for something specific using a discord bot.
It’s just like the 2016 era Netflix never died.
The only investment is an Nvidia Shield Pro because it supports any darn format out there. Without it, you’re only limited to 1080p content (or 4k if the device can direct play) since transcoding anything above 1080p is not allowed due to processing limitations.
But yeah, it’s a set up and forget kind of service.
Make sure to join a reputed server though.
And never pay multi-month in a single go unless you’re absolutely sure of their trustworthiness.
+1 again to what Mancy said. I just pay for the convenience. But yeah, if it’s not cumbersome for you to manage your own server then that’s great too!
As for the cost, oof I can’t even imagine. Besides, they have to make use of CDN services and what-not just so that the experience is consistent worldwide.
But then again, the server that I’m a part of has like 100 people paying every month, and this network is a consolidation of many such servers, so I think the costs and labor get distributed.
I can’t imagine the electricity cost for 5 PB of storage though, God damn.
I used to have a NAS and run my own media server and honestly at some point it just became more labour intensive for little gain. I found a good Plex share that has more media than I can ever imagine or need and if there’s something missing (which is rare), I just request it and 24h later it’s up. I pay less than $20 for that plus IPTV and I have enough content to last me until I die lol.
Been using Plex for years as bought the Plex lifetime deal when it was on offer many many moons ago. Is jellyfin any better? (My biggest concern with Plex is that they have a list of all my content I believe so not happy about that).
Should add use a nvidia shield with an external hard drive with all the content on it and stream to other android devices (fire sticks).
You can even give the link for the *arr apps so your SO can add all the movies, tv shows and music they want. I saved them on her phone, in Firefox it’s add to home screen. Chrome should be similar. Probably best to make it only accessible via LAN unless you have a good reason to need it outside of your home.
I’ve found discord to be a bit of a barrier for the less tech savvy friends too. Overseerr has worked great though. Except now it’s too easy and my server has gone from meticulously curated sci-fi and horror and pretentious classic films to include all the big modern trash I don’t care to watch. Oh well.
Yeah I’ve noticed my library has changed quite a bit and my storage needs are going to have to increase thanks to friends and family but is what it is.
I’ll look into overseer but seems like a lot more work than doplarr to setup
I didn’t know about those, I mainly use nzb360 on android to do the whole requesting and such.
I got prowlarr, radarr, sonarr, jellyfin, homeassistant, archies steam farm, actual budget and bitwarden all hosted on my server. And organizr to have a nice homepage for it all.
I use the nzb360 app for android which makes it very user friendly. She wouldn’t dabble with the ui’s and is the kind of person to use her phone for everything and doesn’t want to use pc’s.
I downloaded that to give it a try. Even as the person that set everything up, I’m really liking having everything in one app, and the popular now page reminds me of rarbg ☹️ helping to find new stuff to watch.
Yeah, I stopped browsing trakt and imdb and just rely on that app for discovery. (And requests from the gf). It made my “managing” work a lot lighter and more fun.
Been using Plex for years as bought the Plex lifetime deal when it was on offer many many moons ago. Is jellyfin any better? (My biggest concern with Plex is that they have a list of all my content I believe so not happy about that).
Should add use a nvidia shield with an external hard drive with all the content on it and stream to other android devices (fire sticks).
For like my parents I use stremio + torrentio + premiumize (instead of real debrid). It’s a set it and forget it thing, and I use premiumize because then I can just share my sub. That way they don’t even worry about anything at all. I’m already paying for the sub and I’ll keep it up to date on my own lol for myself though, I personally think using syncler is the easiest, but when syncler+ lapses, I’ll have to do tech support every year for them.
As someone who currently has Real Debrid and was thinking of switching, what is different about Premiumize? I was also looking at All Debrid as an option.
They are essentially the same if you’re just streaming and not taking advantage of the other features tbh. RD is cheaper, so I would stick with them. Biggest difference is that you could share your account (they don’t promote it though). I do use their other features like the cloud storage, rss feeds, and automation so that downloads from premiumize automatically gets downloaded to my NAS.
I had an issue with sharing my RD account, which is why I was asking. Usually it works fine, but I did get a notice from them about concurrent usage and them threatening to shit down my account.
Also cloud storage? RSS feeds? I’d love to know about these.
Oh ok. Yeah RD doesn’t allow sharing at all. I mean you can share if you don’t watch at the same time pretty much.
PM gives you 1TB cloud storage with the account. I normally download torrents into it and either stream directly or download from that to my NAS.
RSS feeds is like similar to use the *arr suite of apps of you know what that is. Take for example, for anime, I use Shana project. So I just add the anime that I want to sub for the season. Pick the quality and then it’ll generate an RSS feed the I connected to PM. PM will automatically check the feed at an internal and auto-download the new episodes. Works with tv shows/minutes.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
I don’t do this myself, but this community has made me aware of Stremio and a plugin for it called torrentio that connects to a (paid) downloader backend called Real Debrid. From the sounds of it, it seems to be a painless user experience for instantly streaming pretty much everything.
I use Jellyfin, Radarr/Sonarr/Bazarr/Jellyseerr/Torrents to play & acquire media. Building a library in advance works for me, but my SO is the “I just want to flick through a list, play something for a bit and if I don’t like it flip to something else random” type. Advanced curation doesn’t lend well to that user behavior, so I am going to explore making the switch.
I’ve been using stremio + torrentio for a while and it’s been the best for me so far. Have tested kodi, jellyfin and others. I don’t pay for a private tracker, but it’s been good enough so far.
I do want to keep a local library instead of streaming, but I’d focus on getting the things I like the most, while this set up helps with discovering. My ADHD in particular may make me suddenly want to watch something that I haven’t prepared.
deleted by creator
I set something like this up for my dad but using kodi and some add-ons then connect it to real debrid. It’s like $20 USD for like 6 months. I was able to get him to cancel his cable since he was paying like a hundred dollars + his subscription services a month.
And I have it running on a firestick 4k so really inexpensive.
How can I set this up on my grandparents tire stick?
I always used the guides from reddit[.]com/r/addons4kodi, but you can also Google troypoint and they have great guides for getting kodi up and running. After getting kodi up you can choose an addon, I went with Seren for the Netflix like feature of playing the next episode automatically without having to choose the next link. I also chose The Crew for the sports package they have so he could watch UFC fights without having to pay the PPV. It works most the time but can have some stutter depending on the broadcast.
Get a real-debrid account pay for the 180 day package then when setting up the add-ons you choose link it to the debrid account and you’re set. You also have an option of getting a Trakt account for keeping track of what you have watched, I set this up for myself personally but you don’t need it, my dad doesn’t use it.
Edit 1 - I have found a community on lemmy that’s still small but someone brought over the Seren instructions if you don’t want to go to reddit. https://lemmy.ml/c/addons4kodi
Edit 1.2 - Found on the lemmy.ml community addons4kodi
Seren
An addon created by Nix, it works with Premiumize and Real-Debrid to stream torrents with the appropriate provider package instantly, and behaves similarly to Netflix, with autoplay and Next up Dialogs. With source select / Resolver / Next up Dialog and more all theme-able
Warning: This add-on DOES NOT work without either Premiumize, Real-Debrid, or All-Debrid (and only works with the paid premium versions of either service), and the “Smart Play Settings” (Up Next, Auto Playlist Creation, Auto Episode Resume, and Pre-emptive Scraping) DO NOT work without an authorized Trakt account.
Current Version Seren : 2.2.4 SETUP Add https://nixgates.github.io/packages/ to your Kodi File Manager Sources, call it something like “Nix’s Repo” Go to Add-on browser and Install from Zip File, go to “Nix’s Repo”, and install "nixgates.repository.zip " After it finishes installing, go to Install from repository>Nixgates Repo>Video Add-on’s>and install Seren Once you get the notification that Seren installed successfully go back to the home screen Open Seren, go to tools, Open Settings Menu Go to Accounts and authenticate Trakt and your debrid providers: PM, RD, and/or AllDebrid Go to Providers, Manage Provider Packages, and Install Package. Type in https://bit.ly/a4kScrapers A prompt will come up asking if you’d like to install the scrapers, Press “Install”, then Press Okay after successful install Adjust your settings how you like with filters and such and you’re ready to go! :)
Kinda Optional Install Context menu addon. Follow instructions above but where you picked Nixgates repo and then video addons . this time go Nixgates Repo > context menu addons . This will give you much more options when you pull up context menu on Seren Items.
OPTIONAL Themes
(you must be using the skin that the theme is made for )
Arctic Zephyr 2 users = https://github.com/drinfernoo/seren.theme.az2
AuraMod users = https://github.com/SerpentDrago/SerenTheme-SerenMod-Full
Arctic Horizon users = https://github.com/drinfernoo/seren.theme.ah
Edit 2 - I was incorrect about above you do need a Trakt account to use the autonext feature of Seren, I have it set up so I didn’t even notice that whoops. It is free and set up is easy and it’s a set and forget feature for me.
That sounds pretty good. Thank you for the leads. I’ll probably buy one for myself and figure it out first.
Yo I appreciate the update but I think you got the wrong link there ;)
Damn I copied and pasted it but I’m on Jerboa for Android so still learning everything I’ll try to remember to update later when I get on my desktop. Thanks for the update!
You can edit on jerboa!
I figured it out and rerere-edited my post lmao hopefully it’s all right now.
actvid dot com works really well these days
I find roku to have the simplest interface for people to learn. Fill it with free channels like tubi and pluto. For your personal library I’d suggest jellyfin. Simple and free.
I use a Roku and the webcaster app to stream media from fmovies on my phone. Super easy to use, and tends to have everything.
Agreed. My elderly mother has no ability with technology at all and out of all the devices I tried she took to the Roku stick the easiest.
I connected it to Emby and she’s more than happy.
Stremio and Cloudstream offer a way to stream movies, TV shows, and web series for free, they do so by aggregating pirated content, making them alternatives to mainstream paid streaming services.
Check out blog: You can get all your entertainment in one place, like Netflix.
Stremio and Pimp My Stremio *
One time setup, easy to use
can someone please tell me how to use this stremio? I tried it with the torrentio and cyberflix addons and I just could not get the streaming working at all…
Well torrents are slow, typically, and unless the video you wanted to watch had i high amount of seeders, that can cause issues. When i use it, i sort by the number of seeders, and then find the highest balance of quality vs seeders.
cloudstream with addons is a good choice on an android tv
Well if large streaming services are off the list, then you could act as one. For instance you could host a Jellyfin instance and make it available to your “someone who is not tech savvy”. On the client side, Jellyfin is very much click and watch. But you take on the burden of being the service host and provider of content.
I am not sure you can find “something that just works” reliably over time without ensuring that yourself.
You can share your plex library. So the person can stream from your files. Pretty easy to set up.
Yup I did this when I had a server and my non tech savvy friends never had an issue. I even have them access to Radarr, Sonarr, etc do they could add things themselves.
I have a similar setup. The only strange thing is that one house always seems to have buffer issues while the rest don’t (they’ll start a show and it will buffer every few minutes). What would you recommend in that situation kind stranger?
A better ISP or a better WiFi connection. Most of the time it is bandwidth related. Maybe let them manually select a lower quality stream.
I may need to do that. I suggest that everyone stream the original file to avoid transcoding but they just may need to do it. Thanks!
This is what I do. Plex server with storage at home and brother just connects via his app built into his TV. They just text if they want a certain movie or TV show and I add it.
I have them setup public watchlists in imdb and send me the Id and just explain that it checks the list every hour or so. It’s hand off on my end that way.
What about Pluto?
It’s installed automatically on my TV so I’ll use it from time to time if I want background noise and a certain genre of movie or show I want to have on.
I watch Pluto TV once in a while. I think that’s a good solution for people who don’t have friends or family with a Plex-type media server.
Just buy them a subscription to a good Plex server.
This!
I do the same for my parents. $10 a month, no fuss, 5PB of media from all over the world (and growing!), all high quality Bluray Remuxes along with Dolby Vision content and what not. Can even put in requests for something specific using a discord bot.
It’s just like the 2016 era Netflix never died.
The only investment is an Nvidia Shield Pro because it supports any darn format out there. Without it, you’re only limited to 1080p content (or 4k if the device can direct play) since transcoding anything above 1080p is not allowed due to processing limitations.
But yeah, it’s a set up and forget kind of service. Make sure to join a reputed server though. And never pay multi-month in a single go unless you’re absolutely sure of their trustworthiness.
@fedcon @mancy
I just let my family and friends use my #jellyfin server and if there’s something they want to let me know.
I can’t imagine the electricity cost for 5 PB of storage though, God damn.
+1 again to what Mancy said. I just pay for the convenience. But yeah, if it’s not cumbersome for you to manage your own server then that’s great too!
As for the cost, oof I can’t even imagine. Besides, they have to make use of CDN services and what-not just so that the experience is consistent worldwide.
But then again, the server that I’m a part of has like 100 people paying every month, and this network is a consolidation of many such servers, so I think the costs and labor get distributed.
I used to have a NAS and run my own media server and honestly at some point it just became more labour intensive for little gain. I found a good Plex share that has more media than I can ever imagine or need and if there’s something missing (which is rare), I just request it and 24h later it’s up. I pay less than $20 for that plus IPTV and I have enough content to last me until I die lol.
I have the *arr apps running on my homeserver, i manage the backend but everything gets neatly dropped in jellyfin.
Gf is not tech savvy, is very happy about our “homemade netflix”, reverse proxied it so she can watch at work too.
Been using Plex for years as bought the Plex lifetime deal when it was on offer many many moons ago. Is jellyfin any better? (My biggest concern with Plex is that they have a list of all my content I believe so not happy about that).
Should add use a nvidia shield with an external hard drive with all the content on it and stream to other android devices (fire sticks).
You can even give the link for the *arr apps so your SO can add all the movies, tv shows and music they want. I saved them on her phone, in Firefox it’s add to home screen. Chrome should be similar. Probably best to make it only accessible via LAN unless you have a good reason to need it outside of your home.
For my less tech savvy friends/family I just have a bot in Discord that can do requests to sonarr/radarr https://github.com/kiranshila/Doplarr
Other options can be using something like tailscale and giving them the web access to sonarr/radarr
I’ve found discord to be a bit of a barrier for the less tech savvy friends too. Overseerr has worked great though. Except now it’s too easy and my server has gone from meticulously curated sci-fi and horror and pretentious classic films to include all the big modern trash I don’t care to watch. Oh well.
Yeah I’ve noticed my library has changed quite a bit and my storage needs are going to have to increase thanks to friends and family but is what it is.
I’ll look into overseer but seems like a lot more work than doplarr to setup
Do you include Jellyseerr in your definition of *arr apps, because it’s more of an *err or even *rr.
But Jellyseerr/Overseerr are the main apps I would give someone non tech savvy to be able to add their own media.
I find a key part is setting up notifications so that they know when a request is available.
I didn’t know about those, I mainly use nzb360 on android to do the whole requesting and such.
I got prowlarr, radarr, sonarr, jellyfin, homeassistant, archies steam farm, actual budget and bitwarden all hosted on my server. And organizr to have a nice homepage for it all.
I’m not using either of those. I just showed the family how to search and add in sonarr/radarr and lidarr.
Even better, run overseerr and put it behind a reverse proxy.
I use the nzb360 app for android which makes it very user friendly. She wouldn’t dabble with the ui’s and is the kind of person to use her phone for everything and doesn’t want to use pc’s.
I downloaded that to give it a try. Even as the person that set everything up, I’m really liking having everything in one app, and the popular now page reminds me of rarbg ☹️ helping to find new stuff to watch.
Yeah, I stopped browsing trakt and imdb and just rely on that app for discovery. (And requests from the gf). It made my “managing” work a lot lighter and more fun.
Been using Plex for years as bought the Plex lifetime deal when it was on offer many many moons ago. Is jellyfin any better? (My biggest concern with Plex is that they have a list of all my content I believe so not happy about that).
Should add use a nvidia shield with an external hard drive with all the content on it and stream to other android devices (fire sticks).
Jellyfin is not as good as basic Plex.
It’s better since it supports hardware transcoding and seperate user profiles including age ratings.
With the lifetime pass I’d say Plex is better, but without it there’s too many missing features.
a very concise answer there… well done.
I chose jellyfin because it was opensource, looked better imho and was free.
I’d say stick to whatever works the best, plex with lifetime is a solid option that does it all.
Probably gonna head out with my boy Rick and shoot some h🏀🏀ps
For like my parents I use stremio + torrentio + premiumize (instead of real debrid). It’s a set it and forget it thing, and I use premiumize because then I can just share my sub. That way they don’t even worry about anything at all. I’m already paying for the sub and I’ll keep it up to date on my own lol for myself though, I personally think using syncler is the easiest, but when syncler+ lapses, I’ll have to do tech support every year for them.
As someone who currently has Real Debrid and was thinking of switching, what is different about Premiumize? I was also looking at All Debrid as an option.
They are essentially the same if you’re just streaming and not taking advantage of the other features tbh. RD is cheaper, so I would stick with them. Biggest difference is that you could share your account (they don’t promote it though). I do use their other features like the cloud storage, rss feeds, and automation so that downloads from premiumize automatically gets downloaded to my NAS.
I had an issue with sharing my RD account, which is why I was asking. Usually it works fine, but I did get a notice from them about concurrent usage and them threatening to shit down my account.
Also cloud storage? RSS feeds? I’d love to know about these.
Also have you ever used All Debrid?
Oh ok. Yeah RD doesn’t allow sharing at all. I mean you can share if you don’t watch at the same time pretty much.
PM gives you 1TB cloud storage with the account. I normally download torrents into it and either stream directly or download from that to my NAS.
RSS feeds is like similar to use the *arr suite of apps of you know what that is. Take for example, for anime, I use Shana project. So I just add the anime that I want to sub for the season. Pick the quality and then it’ll generate an RSS feed the I connected to PM. PM will automatically check the feed at an internal and auto-download the new episodes. Works with tv shows/minutes.
Sorry I haven’t used All debrid.