https://fmhy.net/

Books, comics, sports, knitting, gardening, woodworking, video games, shitposting on Lemmy...

There are so many other things one can do besides watch Netflix.

Going out into the big bright blue room and fondling the foliage? Piracy? Hookers and blow? I dunno man, we can't do all your thinking for you.

I started a Blu-Ray collection. The quality is just so much better and I don‘t waste hours sifting through garbage. The price isn‘t a big factor either. Especially if you buy used. Hell, you can even sell the discs again if you end up not liking a movie that much and get some of your money back.

Piracy...

Set up a homelab. Doesn't need to be big - a NAS with dual 18TB disks + OS disk will do. Try to stay away from off the shelf NASes (Synology, QNAP, etc. - though the recent Ugreen NASes are quite okay!).

Then simply install the "Arr stack" (if you Google it like that, you'll find all the relevant info):

• the download client of your choice (for torrent I recommend qBittorrent: low memory footprint with reliable clients, sane defaults, nice web UI)
• Prowlarr for having more trackers and other media sources supported, with advanced filtering (e.g. you can limit a specific tracker for manual searches only, or for specific media types, and so on. I have it set up so auto searches only hit my main tracker that has known good media, while all the other trackers are on manual search for stuff I look up manually, this way quality is ensured)
• Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Readarr (although the official Readarr is EOL, there's a bunch of projects taking up the staff to continue it) - these are the "brains" for handling media. You set them up: connect to Prowlarr and the download client, set the folders in which you store the specific media, set up the media profiles you want, and add what movies, TV shows, music, books, etc. you need, and it will just do its job
• Seerr - this app finally connects all the previous Arr stacks into a single interface, with multiple user support (through Plex or Jellyfin), and allow anyone you grant access to it, to request any media they want. You can even set up user roles so for some people requests go through automatically, and for some, you need to manually approve.
• Jellyfin, Plex - these are your media frontends. Think of the rest as the Netflix servers, well, these will replace the Netflix app. You log in and all the media you have downloaded is made available via these apps. It's that simple! You can set up limited access here (e.g. if you have a nice big porn collection, you obviously don't want your kids to have access to that... Or if you invite friends to access your server, you don't want them browsing the family photo album).

There's a bunch of online guides that are super useful and aren't too technically involved, and most of the setup is going to be visual anyway.

https://rutracker.org/ or https://mazepa.to/ if you're even more paranoid about getting caught using torrents.

Both resources support English search, have well seeded netflix content and English audio tracks are always provided for English language content (just set your player to default to english). Rutracker especially has lots of niche/older content you simply won't find on streaming platforms. Mazepa has a lot less content (in context of niche/older productions), but its also less on the radar and netflix content is generally well covered.

I don't know about North America, but in Europe you should be able to use both services via torrent streaming for most netflix content. Might even work in North America.

You'll need to register on both, but it's not difficult with a webpage translator. There is a solid number of english language users on rutracker.

Lot's of other options as well if you don't want to deal with foreign language; Usenet which requires a fee, private torrent sites (can be a pain to get into and maintain ratio though).

Plex?

There is a multitude of streaming services if you want one.