I’ve been in similar situations while renting. I ran ethernet cables along skirting boards and around doorframes and hid them inside adhesive cable raceways.

There is a 16:9 “open matte” edition of blade runner 2049 floating around many torrent sites. Unfortunately it’s only 1080p SDR. But it does look great and is a neat way to rewatch the movie.

The fun way to watch movies is to have a NAS with a Plex/Jellyfin server and browse them on your TV with a nice UI in the comfort of your living room.

Want to watch this movie in 4K Dolby Vision with atmos? Just browse or search for it and click on the poster art. Want to stop that half way through and watch a tv series instead? Go for it. It’ll take all of 5 seconds to navigate to it and have it playing.

After going through the effort to set that up, I can’t go back to anything else.

If a drive fails or other issue occurs with my NAS, it will send me an email and then shut itself down. Replace a dead drive and off I go again. No data loss due to RAID. (insert obligatory comment that RAID is not a backup solution and that you should have a separate backup for important files)

The Android market sort of split into cheap streaming sticks vs more expensive but niche boxes (like the Zidoo or Dune players). The former are meant for streaming but lack power. The latter are more capable players but often can’t stream from legit services due to DRM.

The Shield sits in this weird middle ground where it’s actually good for a variety of use cases….but unlikely to get an update due to small market demand.

Although I’d argue that unless you need atmos audio passthrough for Bluray rips…the AppleTV 4K is the best option these days. Super fast processor, no ads or bullshit in the OS, reliable frame rate matching, good track record of software updates and vendor support, and apps like Infuse which is a superb Plex and Jellyfin client. It’ll do 4K REMUX playback with lossless 7.1 audio, and the UI never lags…ever. Just a shame about no audio passthrough which prevents it from being an enthusiast player.

They’re extremely good for higher quality content such as 4K REMUX files. I have access to a private tracker that I use regularly. I only search public trackers if what I want isn’t available in the private one…which is rare.

To me it’s not about price or openness or anything. Piracy is a service issue. Private trackers have better service than public trackers. Better curated content, better seeders, and fewer (if any) shit quality re-encodes by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

Every 4K WEB-DL I see uses x265. It’s extremely popular by streaming services.

I’ve gone through the effort to build a 50terabyte media center. And am slowly filling it with tv shows, movies, and documentaries I like. It’s expensive and inconvenient. But still a fun hobby.

But the reason I do it is because I can have everything in one spot. Easily accessible. I control it. Never going back.

It decodes everything to 5.1/7.1 LPCM. So apps like Infuse or Plex it will play back lossless TrueHD or DTS, but the height metadata is lost.

It only supports Atmos for Dolby Digital Plus, used for streaming WEB-DLs.

Some of mine that suffer from this: Cowboy Bebop anime series, early seasons of Futurama. Many kids shows like Paw Patrol.

Agreed. AppleTV with Infuse blows away everything else I’ve tried in terms of responsiveness and stability. I spend less time fucking with it and more time just…using it. It’s almost worth it for the screensavers alone.

Get an Nvidia Shield if you need atmos passthrough for Bluray rips, otherwise I recommend the AppleTV in every other way.

I can respect wanting to go with a custom built PC setup if you have the time and interest. But that’s not for me.

Haha. What I mean is that some TV series have a different episode order on DVD/bluray than what they were originally broadcast in. “Firefly” is the classic example. The TV networks broadcast them out of order and the DVD order is the “correct” one and the order in which pirate TV packs will use. But by default many tools (which use TMDB.com) have the wrong metadata for the episodes.

For TMDB to end their stupid policy of setting broadcast episode order as the default. Any app that uses them for metadata to match files names ends up with wrong episodes because obviously nobody wants broadcast order.

The worst part is that even buying SG1 on Bluray gives a bad experience, because they fucked up the 5.1 audio.

So what did the pirates do? Combined the Bluray video with the better DVD 5.1 audio! Best of both worlds.

Are you using the Plex app or a third party app such as Infuse? Infuse can handle more codecs and things like image-based subtitles that I don’t think the Plex app can handle, which should reduce transcoding requirements.

It’s a shame that AppleTV doesnt support TrueHD atmos. That seems to be the one feature that the Shield stands apart on, although the new model Firestick now support it, too.

I tried Kodi on Firestick 4K and the whole experience is super clunky compared to the AppleTV.

AppleTV 4K + Infuse app.

Streaming from my local media server.

There are only 10 seasons of The Simpsons and I won’t have it any other way!

Depends what you consider “long term”. My suggestion would be a NAS unit with dual drive redundancy. And additional backup device as well. For consumer level stuff, Synology units with hyper backup are a good solution.

The best way to compare is to re-rip one of your already ripped DVDs. Use MakeMKV and play both back and see if you can tell the difference.

But if we are talking popular movie DVDs, then I’d just grab the Bluray copies from a torrent site. The quality will be far superior.

Oh nice. Didn’t know about this. Seems like an interesting solution!

The film uses an intentionally wide aspect ratio. It also has a lot of added film grain, also intentional. But the grain messes with low bitrate rips. Grab the 20gb+ 4K Web-DL rip to get it in the best possible quality.

I’ll be honest I’m not trying to preserve knowledge I just want high quality stuff for free. Private trackers weed out the low quality files and keep the system healthy by also weeding out people who just leech files without seeding anything back.

If you want to play the files back on your TV…get an Nvidia Shield and run Kodi. Or an AppleTV and run Infuse. Both can connect directly to your network file share and build a nice looking library UI. No need for an intermediate server such as Plex or Jellyfin. But give those a try if you want.

Nvidia Shield or AppleTV4K.

I use an AppleTV4K with the Infuse app to connect to my NAS. Works flawlessly.

Infuse also has support for Plex. I haven’t tried using it with Real Debrid but it does work apparently by adding it as a WebDAV source.

Good point. I’m personally not doing any transcoding so it doesn’t affect me.

Buy a NAS unit such as a Synology DS923+

Add 4 drives to it of equal size. One drive’s worth of space will be sacrificed for redundancy and they’ll all be combined into a single storage drive.

I have 4x 18TB drives giving me just under 50TB of usable storage. Any single drive can fail with no data loss, and I just replace it and keep going.

I’m sure some are out there. But it’s far easier to find a 4K REMUX file which maintains the original video and audio (and usually commentary tracks as well). But you do lose the video extras, behind the scenes etc.

A good playback app like Plex, Kodi, or Infuse (AppleTV) will present the files in a nice looking way.

AppleTV with Infuse is my setup also. It makes everything else feel like the fucking stone age. Copying files, ads and slow Android device interfaces…never again. The AppleTV remote is also great.

It’s rare to get a high quality pirate copy until the movie is released on disc or streaming services. Once that happens, you’ll get perfect copies. Until then, it’s probably a “CAM” version which means somebody filming it in the cinema. The betting/casino ads are common with those these days.

Get an AppleTV 4K. Use an app called Infuse to play back your video files from your local network/plex/jellyfin. Best Ui and remote on the market. No ads. No lag. No bullshit.

Connect it to an LG TV and disable the TVs internet connection and disable the Home Screen on startup. You basically have a dumb tv.

If you run a Jellyfin server you can connect to it from the AppleTV via the Infuse or Swiftfin apps.

Me and a few friends pitch in together and pay for a seedbox. Much more convenient since I don’t need to keep my computer running to download/seed. And you connect to it via encrypted FTP.

I pay for a seedbox and get torrents from a private site. Then I transfer from the seedbox to my home NAS server with many terabytes of storage. I like having my own copy of files which I have total control over.

Are you sure network isn’t a bottleneck? Even with a gigabit network, copying 40gb worth of data back and forth can take a while.

Are you wanting to play it back on a TV? Get an AppleTV 4K and run the Infuse app. It’ll scan the network folder and build a library with its UI.

Although I’m pretty sure you can do the same with Kodi and its various themes.

AppleTV4K + Infuse + LG OLED TV.

This gets me 4K HDR and Dolby Vision support. 24Hz frame rate matching, and lossless audio to my 5.1 audio system. And a UI that doesn’t lag or have any ads.

Infuse is what makes the AppleTV worth it. Although I download from a seedbox to my NAS, it’s so nice having a fluid and modern interface for browsing everything. How does real debris compare to that flow?

Now if Apple would just add TrueHD Atmos support, the device would be perfect.

I don’t think it handles livestreams. It’s just for playing back files in network storage. There are probably other apps for live streams.

I personally use an AppleTV with the Infuse app. Great UI, no lag, and it plays everything including 4K Bluray remuxes. You also get Dolby Vision, frame rate matching, and Jellyfin support.

You get diminishing returns. But yes, on a large 4K TV you can notice the difference.