I’ve been a good boy for 5 years or so but the seas call to me. Are streaming sites the way to go now or is torrenting still a better bet for mainstream movies and tv? I’d imagine all of my accounts have been deleted on those sites so I’d be starting over.

  • Mountain_Mike_420@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Commenting to bring awareness to the ‘arrs. Radarr sonarr and lidarr will get you all the media you need organized perfectly. It runs on any device but take a few days to figure out. Once setup it’s a set it and forget it thing. Uses torrents and or usent so use a vpn. Mine runs on a 10 year old raspberry pi 2 and a few usb hdds. Been going strong with very little maintenance for 6 years at this point.

    • faercol@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      4 months ago

      Agreed. Combined with a jellyfin instance and you will never want to come back. As said before, it takes a while to setup at first (especially if you download animes which aren’t exactly handled the same way), but when it’s done you’ll see you weekly episodes magically appear with nothing to do on your side, and that’s just great

      • massive_bereavement@kbin.social
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        4 months ago

        Jellfyfin is the reason why I do this. I went from spending 30 minutes dumpster diving through terrible movies in one of the streaming platforms to now spending 30 minutes trying to choose from a selection of movies that I actually want to watch.

    • Gilgeam@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      I’m super old school and just started finding my way back to torrenting. Would you have a recommendation on how to read up on these arrs? So far I still manually pull my torrents from a search engine and run it through my vpn hardened Pi in the cellar. It works, but I do wonder if there’s a more streamlined approach.

      • stom@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        Their docs are decent and will guide you through setup. For advanced stuff search for Trash’s arr guides

  • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 months ago

    Torrents and usenet will get you high quality videos if that’s what you want. Streaming sites are usually only have low bitrate videos.

  • blindsight@beehaw.org
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    4 months ago

    I use Real Debrid with Stremio + Torrentio. I just need to figure out how to add the manual torrent search & download plugin for Real Debrid since I watch a lot of obscure British TV, not everything is hosted already.

    For mainstream stuff, it just works. For obscure stuff, it’s about 50-50 if it’s on there.

    Manually downloading torrents is just for stuff I’ll be transferring to a mobile device, like audiobooks. And cracked software, I suppose. I needed Adobe Acrobat for something and torrented it.

    • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      I use Real Debrid with Stremio + Torrentio. I just need to figure out how to add the manual torrent search & download plugin for Real Debrid since I watch a lot of obscure British TV, not everything is hosted already.

      If you mean caching content to RD I think you can do this with the Unchained app, if you use Android, or you can do it pretty much anywhere you like using the RD website.

      Then you can use the DMM addon to watch it on Stremio, or probably it will show up with any addon that supports RD, or if not then you can simply use the Debrid manager that is available at Torrentio, or as a standalone addon.

  • gila@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    Pay for real-debrid and set up a kodi addon like Seren on a streaming box. You’ll get an equivalent experience to paid/official streaming platforms without having to pay for them all, including browsing popular shows without having to download them ahead of time or manage a home server. It’s still torrenting under the hood, just a lot more convenient

    • Evkob@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      Kodi + add-ons is great if you like tinkering, otherwise I would recommend Stremio with the Torrentio add-on. Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid is the easiest way to consume pirated media IMO.

      • gila@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        I’ve heard good things about Stremio + Torrentio. Does it have trakt integration or similar equivalent? I think the discovery in addons that have this makes a big difference. I have many different categories to browse that might sound similar, e.g. Trending, Trending New, Most Watched, Most Popular. But each one has a specific and plainly disclosed ranking methodology and that’s very useful to avoid constantly being recommended to watch The Office, Breaking Bad, cowboy soaps etc

        • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          Does it have trakt integration or similar equivalent?

          It has a subpar integration, if you care too much about this kind of stuff (getting a whole working multimedia center, and thinkering in general) and have a proper device that can handle Kodi in a lagless manner, I’d say you stick with it.

          If you want a set it and forget it kind of solution and have less sophisticated hardware Stremio + a Debrid provider is golden.

          (My Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 struggles with Kodi and a Debrid/streaming setup, also is significantly slower than Stremio).

          • Zintag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 months ago

            How does a shield struggles with kodi? It’s my main setup (kodi+fen+trakt+real debrid) and I have no problem with it.

        • Evkob@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          There is also a Trakt add-on, like the other commenter said the integration isn’t as seamless as a well-maintained Kodi setup, but it’s definitely good enough that I’ve switched from Kodi to Stremio with Trakt being the way I organise my TV/movie watchlists.

    • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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      4 months ago

      And you can use it for any torrents, like games & software. It’s way cheaper than any streaming site and so much more worth it.

  • Coasting0942@reddthat.com
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    4 months ago

    Depends on your hardware.

    Streaming is more accessible, but you’re stuck at 720p usually.

    If you can afford a vpn and the storage then torrenting gets you better quality.

    Don’t forget to seed

      • Bigfoot@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        The large files are such better quality, though (if you care about such things and have a TV that allows you to appreciate the extra detail).

  • Perhapsjustsniffit@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    We do both honestly. Stream for TV and crappy movies, I don’t need to see every nose hair and skin pore. Movie night is torrent. 17 years with no traditional tv or paid services in our house.

  • itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.mlOP
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    4 months ago

    I used to use a kodi box. Every month or so I’d have to find a new source. I might have to dig it out and give it another try.