Cordcutting/multimedia...

[Bogie]

Okay - it has been a while since I've actually set up real computer systems. Actually finally fired up a refurb Dell that I got from Microcenter on an impulse purchase last year. It's in the living room, connected to the television that I rarely watch. And... I put the new version of Mint on it last night (co-hab with Win10), and it is now connected via HDMI through my AVR (which also has a blu-ray player connected), and I finally figured out the sound. Realized a couple of days ago that my office machine was running a version that was five years old, when Netflix refused to work.
 
Probably going to go with a T-Mobile home wireless internet thingy for my Christmas present to myself, and cut back my $60/month phone plan drastically.
 
This Cowboy Bebop live action tv show looks interesting.
 
The torturecycle is right in front of the huge 42" screen, with a pair of 15" Yamaha gig speakers flanking.

[AZRedhawk44]

Cordcutting is rapidly being outpaced by the de-consolidation of content, and the injection of more advertising into the streaming providers.

I cannot recommend solutions such as PlayOn and Plex Media Server or Kodi enough.

[fifth_column]

Being behind a VPN is best when using Kodi, etc. Nordvpn is cheap, easy, and as far as I can tell, effective. There are many others.

[Bogie]

I think what is driving me most is... I'm cheap... After the break with Jen and her family, I was literally living in my van with my 6x12 trailer with what I could salvage. I can't really rationalize spending $100/month on... television. I like to watch an occasional movie. I used to like it more, before, and had set up a fairly elaborate projection/7.2 surround home theater... Can't get into that as much now...
 
I may eventually guy a bigger TV for my small house's living room... I think that a 65" would be huge in there. I grabbed my projector and 92" 6x9 projection screen, but that's just too big...

I want a security system that I can monitor, so that means internet... And the T-Mobile thing will work for that.

[PEfarmer]

Being behind a VPN is best when using Kodi, etc. Nordvpn is cheap, easy, and as far as I can tell, effective. There are many others.

Explain please.  I have Plex, but have been unable to get port forwarding to work in order to distribute my content outside my home wifi network.  Would vpn help with that?

[dogmush]

I had 2 Kodi boxes for a while, and found them to be too annoying to keep working.  The various streams I wanted to watch were almost always not working.  Yeah I could fix it when it didn't work, but I'm not trying to spend time fiddling with my entertainment streams.  I have enough hobbies.

AZ Redhawk is correct though that stream services are splitting up and $10 a month here, and $14.99 there can add up.  I think the key is being realistic about what you actually want to watch.  Years of Cable made it seem like I wanted all the choices, but in reality, I don't care about most of them.

For US:  We get Hulu (/w some ads) and Disney+ free through Verizon.  I would have the unlimited data that got me those anyway, so it's a net wash.  Amazon Prime has a bunch of content, and I pay for the $13.99 Netflix. (You could cut that down by buying the 1 screen at a time plan).  If it's not on those services, I just don't watch it.

Pick what you want to watch and just buy that, rather than signing up for everything you may want to watch one day.  The only folks I know that aren't saving quite a bit of money streaming over cable or the ones that feel the need to watch pro sports.  Those plans are pricey.

[AZRedhawk44]

Explain please.  I have Plex, but have been unable to get port forwarding to work in order to distribute my content outside my home wifi network.  Would vpn help with that?

VPN is helpful so your ISP doesn't give you grief if they notice where you obtain your media files.

If you're not afraid of others knowing where you get your media files, it's unnecessary.

PlayOn, for example, is a DVR-like piece of software that allows me to record content from a streaming provider and maintain my own copy of the file.  My biggest use for it is to buy something from Amazon, point my PlayOn software at it, and create my own MP4 file that I host on my Plex.  You don't want to expose such a file to any P2P file share environments though because it's tagged with your PlayOn license and IP address from which you recorded it.  Content producers will come and spank your pee pee with barbed wire over that.

I rip EVERYTHING I buy from Amazon to disk via PlayOn.  I absolutely do not trust them to be the sole custodian of my multimedia and sole arbiter of the EULA for it.  Go look for stories about Amazon deleting things from peoples' Kindles and such.

Also... look at the Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 4 ("jeans guy") for another example for why owning media is important.  Or E.T.  If the streaming provider holds your only copy, they can edit it at their whim.  I have Mando S02 E04 "jeans guy" edition on my Plex, and Feds-with-guns-willing-to-shoot-children version of E.T. and the Despecialized Harmy version of the Star Wars Trilogy.

Torrenting is a great way to get caught.  Don't torrent.  And honestly... it's not that big of a deal to buy the content you like.

But if you want to avoid ripping BluRays to MP4 or streaming to file with something like PlayOn, then Usenet and NZB is your friend (double-plus so over HTTPS/SSL).  If you own it, you own it and your EULA allows for an archival copy.  How you get that archival copy is irrelevant.  Go try Easynews.com for a good Usenet provider for such things.  If you're really paranoid they also offer VPN services.

As for port forwarding, it's pretty simple unless your ISP is one of the sphinctery types that try to block such behavior.  To get Plex to work seamlessly outside though, you're gonna want the Plex Pass, which enables the more advanced distributed streaming features of a Plex server, along with integrated user management and so on.  Honestly Plex Pass is the best $75 I've ever spent on software.  I must have bought it over 10 years ago and I still get updates for it and the company hasn't come up with a way to weasel out of the "lifetime" portion of the agreement.

My Plex server is every bit as wonderful as Netflix for my family and the handful of people I grant permission to access it.  And never a commercial!

[fifth_column]

Explain please.  I have Plex, but have been unable to get port forwarding to work in order to distribute my content outside my home wifi network.  Would vpn help with that?

AZRedhawk answered much more thoroughly than I can since I don't use Plex, and hadn't heard of it before today. VPN just anonymizes your device, or network if you run it on the local router. VPNs in general increase privacy and decrease network speed.

VPN is helpful so your ISP doesn't give you grief if they notice where you obtain your media files.

If you're not afraid of others knowing where you get your media files, it's unnecessary.

<snip>

My Plex server is every bit as wonderful as Netflix for my family and the handful of people I grant permission to access it.  And never a commercial!

I suspect your hardware environment is an order of magnitude greater than mine . . . .

(Insert "jealous" emoticon here.)

[Bogie]

I used to make my living, in part, by guarding intellectual property. There weren't many "secure" offices when I was working at Monsanto, but I had one.
 
I would burn disks for Jen's kids to destroy, but I'd have the original in a binder. Prior to 2010, I was probably buying 2-3 movies or concerts a week, on DVD...
 
I had several monster binders, because the folders took  up too much room.
 
One of the kids/relative stole one of 'em... Probably hocked it to buy rock for $20.
 
I still have a couple, but haven't really added to them, beyond the Justified series, the Wicks, and a couple of other minor things...
 
Now I just do Netflix and Prime. Disney is dead to me.
 

[Bogie]

I do miss some of the news stations tho - Newsy is seeming interesting tho.

[AZRedhawk44]

I used to make my living, in part, by guarding intellectual property. There weren't many "secure" offices when I was working at Monsanto, but I had one.
 
I would burn disks for Jen's kids to destroy, but I'd have the original in a binder. Prior to 2010, I was probably buying 2-3 movies or concerts a week, on DVD...
 
I had several monster binders, because the folders took  up too much room.
 
One of the kids/relative stole one of 'em... Probably hocked it to buy rock for $20.
 
I still have a couple, but haven't really added to them, beyond the Justified series, the Wicks, and a couple of other minor things...
 
Now I just do Netflix and Prime. Disney is dead to me.

Those discs are slowly decomposing.  They'll be unreadable in another decade.

[Bogie]

I'll be 71 in another decade. If I am not actively decomposing...

[bedlamite]

[dogmush]

I do miss some of the news stations tho - Newsy is seeming interesting tho.

I don't.

[Bogie]

Thus far I have avoided most binge watching...
 
The Netflix Cowboy Bebop thing ain't all that shabby. Hell, I don't need to be coherent tomorrow.

[gunsmith]

 i have a thousand videos saved to "watch later" that i never seem to get thru on youtube, i have cable tv included in my rent but it is super annoying.
 my rent went up from 800 to 1000 so now i can't afford anything and saving is super difficult too.
so, i aint streaming nothing and am just watching youtube and on occasion 48 hours 

[PEfarmer]

VPN is helpful so your ISP doesn't give you grief if they notice where you obtain your media files.

If you're not afraid of others knowing where you get your media files, it's unnecessary.

PlayOn, for example, is a DVR-like piece of software that allows me to record content from a streaming provider and maintain my own copy of the file.  My biggest use for it is to buy something from Amazon, point my PlayOn software at it, and create my own MP4 file that I host on my Plex.  You don't want to expose such a file to any P2P file share environments though because it's tagged with your PlayOn license and IP address from which you recorded it.  Content producers will come and spank your pee pee with barbed wire over that.

I rip EVERYTHING I buy from Amazon to disk via PlayOn.  I absolutely do not trust them to be the sole custodian of my multimedia and sole arbiter of the EULA for it.  Go look for stories about Amazon deleting things from peoples' Kindles and such.

Also... look at the Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 4 ("jeans guy") for another example for why owning media is important.  Or E.T.  If the streaming provider holds your only copy, they can edit it at their whim.  I have Mando S02 E04 "jeans guy" edition on my Plex, and Feds-with-guns-willing-to-shoot-children version of E.T. and the Despecialized Harmy version of the Star Wars Trilogy.

Torrenting is a great way to get caught.  Don't torrent.  And honestly... it's not that big of a deal to buy the content you like.

But if you want to avoid ripping BluRays to MP4 or streaming to file with something like PlayOn, then Usenet and NZB is your friend (double-plus so over HTTPS/SSL).  If you own it, you own it and your EULA allows for an archival copy.  How you get that archival copy is irrelevant.  Go try Easynews.com for a good Usenet provider for such things.  If you're really paranoid they also offer VPN services.

As for port forwarding, it's pretty simple unless your ISP is one of the sphinctery types that try to block such behavior.  To get Plex to work seamlessly outside though, you're gonna want the Plex Pass, which enables the more advanced distributed streaming features of a Plex server, along with integrated user management and so on.  Honestly Plex Pass is the best $75 I've ever spent on software.  I must have bought it over 10 years ago and I still get updates for it and the company hasn't come up with a way to weasel out of the "lifetime" portion of the agreement.

My Plex server is every bit as wonderful as Netflix for my family and the handful of people I grant permission to access it.  And never a commercial!

Thanks!  I have paid for plexpasslife, mostly because my primary use is OTA DVR.  I think I may have one of the "sphinctery" ISPs you speak of.  Small town type Line of sight radio internet.  My media is entirely ripped copies of my owned hard media, so I'm not too concerned about exposure of my files.  I don't/haven't used file sharing at all, so less concern there also.

[Bogie]

I'm considering buying a few big drives, and starting to RIP the movies I still like...

[AZRedhawk44]

I'm considering buying a few big drives, and starting to RIP the movies I still like...

Get a NAS.  I'm on my 3rd Synology NAS since 2011.  Replaced that first one with a more powerful one in 2014, then in 2019 I went from 2-drive RAID1 to 4-drive RAID5, along with SSD read/write acceleration and a big CPU/RAM boost over the 2014 model.  It's a small server of its own right, and the NAS itself runs my Plex software.  It will even transcode on the fly for up to a small handful of simultaneous users, though I tend to store everything in well supported codecs that don't require transcoding for most clients (Rokus seem to be the worst clients in this regard but none of the clients that connect to my environment are Rokus any more).

Edit to add:  I mentioned to you earlier that your optical disks will eventually decay and be un-readable.  What I love about my NAS is that it is RAID protected, and as drives fail I can replace them with new drives.  Or as I fill it, I can remove one drive deliberately and add a new larger drive.  Synology has always allowed me to run mismatched drive sizes and makes, which I think is a really good strategy having gone through the Seagate drive crash scandal of 2011.  Same makes tend to fail within weeks of each other.  Ever since then, I've run staggered sizes, starting with a 4TB and 5TB drive in RAID1 for a total space of 4TB.  When I filled my volume I removed the 4TB drive and replaced with a 6TB drive, giving me 5TB of space.  And so on.  The same tactic works with RAID5 on Synology too, just takes longer to pay off.  Way cheaper than throwing away all your drives at once and replacing them all simultaneously though.

The net result is I am running a team of drives that are generally of staggered age and size, from 1 to 3 years old.  This entire setup is independent of my main computer I use for video games or work or photo editing or whatever.  It's fairly low power consumption.

[HeroHog]

I'm using an OLD Iomega ix2-3 NAS/SAN and it has been flawless. It came with a mirrored pair of 1tb drives that I later upgraded to 2tb drives. Now I need to double the size yet again! SUPPOSEDLY it can be done BUT it is NOT supported.

https://www.cnet.com/reviews/iomega-storcenter-ix2-review/

The Bad
The two hard drives are not user replaceable or serviceable; no remote access via the Internet; requires application running in the background to use Web interface; short one-year warranty.

BULLSPIT! You can and it is EASY!