Raising prices you say? Oh that's too bad.

Yo where's my boy Jellyfin

How about Jellyfin server, synced with Kodi for playing on the TV?
- I use jellyfin on my TV too. No kodi needed
- I started here but switched to just jellyfin. way easier, fewer issues, etc
Love Jellyfin and kiddos have noticed how much better it is; they often request older stuff they've heard about that's not available elsewhere
Jellyfin server with Infuse on an AppleTV is a match made in heaven!

Downgrading your service to offer a worse user experience than piracy you say?

To shreds you say?
The only negative about piracy is that it's hard to find niche stuff because not enough people do it

Plex be like:

"All this shit you got is legit, right?"

"Yep, all 15,000 video files, yes sir, now plz stream."

Also Plex: everything works great but you can have tons of rad features for $5 a month, or just pay $90 once for life! Hell yeah, I snagged that life time pass and love all the extra features.
- I've never looked into anything outside of the vanilla setup, what kind of features are you enjoying?
Does Plex have a dependency for their servers? Like, if I were to unplug my modem would it still work or would it flip shit if it can't phone home?
- I love Plex for the most part, but this is why I also run jellyfin with my same media collection.
- You can browse directly to your server's local IP address and use it that way if your Internet goes down. The cloud stuff just allows you to connect from the outside without port forwarding on your firewall.

I pay for a bunch of crap because I split it with my ex, but now I'm waiting for them all to throw a removed fit over multiple households so I can just go back to the implied activity.

I like paying for things, and have been more accepting than most about price hikes cause I get that servers cost money. Lately though I've been tired of reading about the "pay more as we strip content" strategy everyone is utilizing. The real kicker though is watching people who outright paid for content having it stripped from them.

If purchasing isn't owning, piracy isn't theft. Of course I'm aware of the legal reality of content ownership, but it's still implied that by "purchasing" a title you'll retain access to it. Like on Steam, if something gets pulled but you own it, they still have it tucked away somewhere so you can still download it in the future - They don't just tell you to eat a dick.

Copyright infringement (piracy) has never been theft. The statement about purchasing and ownership gives ground to see creating more of something to be the same as taking something.

Plus you don't own games on steam, you've purchased a license. If you owned them you could resell them.
- plus you don't own games on steam
  
  I think you misread my comment somehow. I never said you did, just that they're good about maintaining access to content that gets pulled from the market for one reason or another.
- While I don't particularly see harm coming to a multibillion dollar corporation if someone torrents a 20 year old movie, piracy is still theft in the sense that something with value was had for zero dollars. The "copying vs taking" argument is irrelevant. Whether or not you're being charged for direct ownership of a tangible item, or being charged for a 1 time viewing of an item, circumventing that agreement is still theft.
I've been upset for about 10 years or so. I used to use the Love Film service where I got two Blu-ray at a time posted to me. The company was bought my Amazon. Ok, don't like Amazon but that's fine, I like the service still. They then incorporate it into their Prime package. I didn't want anything else, just discs by post. To retain the disc service it cost more than just prime as prime was a requirement. They sneaked Prime onto my account without me realising and the price went up. They were phasing people from discs to online by making it the cheaper option. They then phased the disc service out altogether.

They literally bought Love Film to shut it down.

I'm was happy renting blurays. I switched to buying Blu-ray for a while but I have no where to keep a collection. So I have up and switched to Kodi.

Quite sad really. I still have what were then two good quality Blu-ray players now collecting dust. I sometimes look at them and think one day...
- That sucks. I don't have an extensive collection but I occasionally try to pick up physical media where I can. Where I get my haircut has a small record store with a dollar CD rack I forage when I'm there lol. Their regular cds are only $4-5 but I'll impulse buy some bs for a buck 😂

Do people not prefer Plex anymore?

Jellyfin is the new plex
- Combine it with sonarr, radar, jackett and qBitTorrent and it's incredibly easy to get a new show or movie
  
  I feel like a wizard being able to add a movie to jellyfin for my mom in minutes
  
  Also love that new episodes auto download!
- I disagree unless there is a way for me to share my library with other people with out putting my Jellyfin server in a DMZ or exposing it ports to the internet. There is some security things I am worried about and feel like Plex is better. And I run both
- Until it can act as a server on my Nvidia Shield TV Pro, have hardware acceleration through Docker in my Synology NAS (and Shield TV Pro) and be widely available for the people I share it with (like shitty TVs) it is not.
  
  I think it only can do the hw acceleration part on Docker, but the last time I checked it didn't work for me.
I still use Plex but I’m considering a concurrent jellyfin server for when it inevitably enshitifies in ways I can’t tolerate.

I paid for a lifetime like 10 years ago so I def got my money worth, and it costs me nothing to keep using now.. but I don’t want all my eggs in one basket.

As the server owner, I’ve disabled all of plex’s self-promotional bullshit for now.. and the only people who actually use my server are “home” users, which I have control over, so it’s just not an issue for any of them. Yet.
- I'm in a similar boat, but I haven't really switched because my watch history is all in Plex. Have you solved for this, or just lived with it?
  
  I've tried jellyplex sync (I think), but config got to be a bit much.
- This is what I've been doing for the past couple years. I have a docker of Plex, emby, and jellyfin. Doesn't really make much more work for me to run them all simultaneously so why not.
Plex has been enshittifying for a good while now.
That depends on your goal. If you want something free, open source and self-hosted then Plex isn’t the best option and you’d do better to look at Jellyfin or Kodi.
- Thanks for the info.
Don't need it. Stremio does everything I need.
- Indeed, with a Debrid account for sure, and if you want more customization you have Kodi.
you have to have specific uses cases for plex, e.g if you want to share your plex servers to technologically illiterate, its centralized login is easier to use, at the cost of privacy of course. its significantly easier to send someone the invite and register using traditional means than having users enter ip addresses and ports that are open.
This didn't help
- Thanks for the info.

I jumped Plex ship long time ago, don't trust them. Jellyfin is open source and the way to go

that's what being close-source does. jellyfin works great, use it every day.

What's the best way for me to stream to a Samsung (Q70T) TV these days? I use a Plex server, and their Plex TV app (which is hit & miss quite often), but at least it has a nice GUI.

If watching directly from laptop I have Kodi, but have also installed Jellyfin for testing recently.

My wife requires me to find the answer to this in order to cancel “convenient streaming”

IK if you put your tv in developer mode you can sideload other apps like jellyfin (better then plex, doesn’t require email signup)

I have yet to find an app to sideload that connects to online free streaming sites or alternatively a pc way to search and download that same contest to the jellyfin drive that is more noob friendly then torrents.
- Look into the Servarr suite for a weekend project. Sonarr for TV, Radarr for movies, Lidarr for music, Readarr for audiobooks, Prowlarr to index torrent sites, and Overseerr to handle media requests.
  
  It starts with Prowlarr. That is what allows you to automatically search relevant torrent sites. You set it up with your preferred torrenting or Usenet sites, and it allows you to automatically run searches.
  
  Then you tie those automated indexers into Sonarr/Radarr/Readarr/Lidarr to manage your library. When something is requested, they’ll search for it, queue it for download via your preferred torrent/usenet client, automatically rename the files to a Plex/Jellyfin friendly naming scheme once the download is done, and move the renamed files to the correct folders for Plex/Jellyfin to find and add to your library.
  
  Finally, you use Overseerr to manage content requests. The most straightforward way to do it is simply by tying it to something like your Plex watchlist. So you add something to your watchlist, it automatically gets requested via Overseer, which sends it to the respective download manager, which cues the download, renames the file(s) when it’s finished, and adds it to your library. You can also set up individual users in Overseerr with their own request limits, size limits, etc…
  
  By the time it’s all set up, you just add the request, and it appears on your Plex/Jellyfin server as soon as the download is done. It takes some time to figure things out and set it all up, but by the time it’s done it’ll be much more noob-friendly than torrents. Because it’s basically automating the hardest part of torrenting, which is doing it all manually.
- You should look into Overseerr/Jellyseerr, it provides a simple frontend or web app for Sonarr/Radarr. There's also Reiverr that would probably be the most convenient as it allows you to download and watch from a single ui but I don't know if it's still actively developed and it's only available as a webapp
  
  Alternatively, if you want to stream directly you could try CloudStream which work over http or Stremio for streaming torrent tho I wouldn't use it without a debrid account
- We just recently switched to Stremio/Torentio/Real Debrid. This was what made it convenient enough for my wife to really be onboard with canceling our subscriptions. Stremio plays on a super cheap Onn TV box from Walmart and that works for us. There are probably better hardware options though. I was going with the cheapest option I could find just to test the waters.
- I used Radarr and Sonarr, both with Transmission. It's easy enough to just say "Hey find and download me this", and it appears in your Jellyfin server as soon as its done. IIRC it supports notifications.
I have kodi on some cheap android box that I bought for retro gaming but it's running kodi now.

The solution before was the synology videostation app on Samsung TV but this app did not play everything (otherwise pretty good).

With kodi I have a solution now that I can fall back to, once the official app stops working.

Ps Plex seemed hardware hungry for my old NAS in my case so I never used it.
Yeah, the Samsung plex app is not the best. At least some of the blame is on Samsung I think for not supporting more codecs.
Something like an Nvidia Shield would open up a ton of options for you. I use it plus kodi primarily, but also stremio, my country's national stations service, etc
Emby app on Samsung works great. There's a premium pass for unlimited clients on a server but you can pay for a lifetime pass. I consider it one of the best purchases I ever made.
I went with Nvidia Shields ... Everywhere. Works perfectly for my use cases.

"We're raising prices and inserting ads!"
"I've been pirating your shows for years!"

Stremio

Oh. Something I need to go figure out. Is it good?

Very good and much easier to setup than Kodi due to the add-ons being cloud based vs locally downloaded. I still recommend learning Kodi as a more reliable backup. The torrentio addon for Stremio goes down on occasion for a few hours which can happen at inconvenient times. Lately it's been pretty stable though.

Having both set up and synced with trakt is recommended.

Sorry for the reddit link but this is a great guide for Stremio. Beautiful thing is you can set it up on any device and all you have to do for any future device is sign in. All add-ons are cloud sources that save your settings to your account. https://www.reddit.com/r/StremioAddons/comments/15agu2p/stremio_torrentio_debrid_a_howto_guide/
Add torrentio and don't look back.
- Actually, you need to look back, Torrentio is not perfect because of the recent downtimes, improve Stremio with more add-ons with Debrid access and you are good.
Wtf on their homepage:

How about my privacy?

We respect users' privacy and do not collect any personal data besides the essential minimum to create and sync your account.

https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/399618/

Facebook analytics, Facebook login, facebook share, google firebase analytics and microsoft visual studio app center are present in the android app.
- Then grab kodi and the addon seren for it. Gets same results but ui isn't as pretty by default
It's the best. The best Jerry! The best!
With good seeding it works like a charm. Else you need some seedbox kind of thing..
- Debrid?

What are the best hardware and OS combos for a media setup?

Nvidia Shield + Lineage OS? Chromesomething? Roku? AppleTV? X86 + Linux? (I’m not afraid of Linux, but remember some posts about video acceleration not working and services being web only.)

My server is 12+ years old made with desktop parts and I use an original Apple TV to watch.

This can be done cheaply.
I just use Android TV.
- Second this, android tv will run kodi (with seren) and stremio if you wanna go the real-debrid route. And if you decide to board media for some reason it'll run plex, emby, or jellyfin. Shield tv used to be king but its pretty expensive for older hardware
- This is the front runner, but I’m not sure which device is the best though. Nvidia Shield seems to be the most logical answer.
I use Jellyfin on an old laptop running Ubuntu. I like Jellyfin because it's FOSS.
- It’s a little bit of brain damage to figure it out but once it’s all set up the *arr stuff and Jellyfin makes it pretty painless
$19.99 Walmart ONN Google play box. Handles 1080p just fine via Kodi over wifi.
- How much malware is on that thing?
  
  The firmware needs to be replaceable, so it doesn’t turn into a liability.
- It might be supported by LineageOS, so that could be an option. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/dopinder/
I just plug 500gb usb stick on my Asus router (Merlin). Install transmission, and turns on vpn and smb share. Playback is using iina on Mac, mpv on Android, and Outplayer on iOS.
I’m running a rusty old QNAP NAS (10+ years old), and access it via Infuse on my iPhone / Apple TV.

It provides a very Kodi-like interface, and requires near 0 set-up. Just point it at the root network folders and it’ll pull all the relevant metadata (movie posters, cast lists, series info, optional subtitles etc.).
I have an oDroid N2+ with CoreELEC (arm Linux for booting into Kodi) that I use to stream content from my home server. It's honestly the best setup I've ever used. If a streaming service is needed, my TV runs on Android with a TV specific launcher.
Depends what you want to do. You can do stremio + real debrid on just about anything but if you want to do your own server I would get a cheap used tower off of eBay that has an intel processor with integrated graphics and throw Ubuntu server on it and drop in a commercial NAS drive for storage like a WD Red. I did that for ~300 and am happy with the results (half of that budget was storage)
- How is transcoding handled? Does the Intel iGPU have the drivers/support to do transcoding on the fly?
  
  Anyway… In this instance, I’m mainly looking for a client reccs. I have a crappy Roku streaming stick that needs to get replaced, and I’m wondering which client device is the best. An Android device or AppleTV seem to be best choices, since I could get commercial services with hardware acceleration on them if I wanted to.

I want to love Kodi but God damn is it user unfriendly a lot of the time.

I used Kodi for some years but immediately switched to Jellyfin as soon as I tried it. Basically Plex without the proprietary cloud service.
Which is actually kind of nice. It keeps it from mass adoption and flies under the radar easier that way.
- Idk what's nice about having to manually configure sound settings like I'm on MS DOS, but okay.

Context?

Maybe that SkyShowtime - being inspired by the likes of of Netflix and Amazon Prime - announced it'll be raising prices and adding an ad-powered "cheaper" tier.

Streaming services have become what cable was all those years ago: ad-powered, overpriced, low quality entertainment.
- Don't forget that it's split up between 20 or more services that all cost $12-15 now.
  
  So they'll market it to you as 4,000 shows and 2,000 movies or 80,000 hours of content (or whatever number/metric) for just $12, but it'll really turn into $80+/month for the 2 shows and 4 movies you'd actually enjoyed that month and hundreds of hours wasted on subpar content to justify renting instead of just buying said shows and movies (if you even can anymore). Then you'll binge them again the next time you have a sick day or are feeling burnt out because they were the things that were good enough to take your mind off life, further narrowing the price gap between renting/streaming and buying
  
  So basically exactly like the "Premium" cable packages that came with the 2 channels, each with 2-3 shows, that you actually cared about per package.
Meme format?

I like it.
- it's a classic.
  https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/two-buff-men-beating-up-a-rectangle-youtube-vs-ad-blocker
  
  I actually didn't know the original was so relevant lol

Jellyfin ascends into the battle

What's this compared to? Are there commerical applications that play content locally like that?

Its comparing piracy to streaming.

There are also several commercial local media servers. Plex and Emby, to name a few.

Don't forget cloudstream3

It is my backup solution to Stremio, and I have even read it can stream Stremio stuff so yeah, don't forget it.