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by mikepurvis 902 days ago
I've tried at several points to roll my own media center PC/server setup and it's always been a very far cry from what the fire stick does for like a tenth the price and zero effort.

So yeah, I'm very keen for something plug and play in this space.

2 comments

This is probably a bit too custom, but I did the same, and it works really well after it's set up. Plex/Jellyfin just works for everyone (you do need to use the app, because I disabled transcoding).

I have a repo that uses a Harbormaster (a Comppse-based deployment tool I wrote, https://harbormaster.readthedocs.io/) to set everything up and keep it up to date, so all you need to do is run the Harbormaster container, point it to the above repo config, and the apps will run. Then, you just need to configure each app, but the directories will be set up properly.

It's a bit of work, but probably not as intimidating as it sounds.

https://github.com/skorokithakis/mediacenter-in-a-box/

> you do need to use the app, because I disabled transcoding

You can use Plex as a DLNA server together with a DLNA client (like players built into most TVs), so Direct Play and Direct Streaming should work just the same.

I tried DLNA served from iTunes and Jellyfin and fiber there player experiences mostly pretty terrible— hard to browse, seeking was bad, UI ugly, etc.
It's not running locally, sadly, but the Plex app somehow also supports more codecs, so I've found it's generally better.
Piracy is super evil and I would never and have never pirated anything in my life. but I do know that Stremio + Torrentio + RealDebrid takes at max 30 minutes to set up and for a few bucks you can essentially stream everything in higher quality than most streaming platforms, it works great on a google tv chromecast (a friend told me).
I prefer legal options whenever available, but most of the time the movie/series just never was available in my country, or is no longer available.

Anyways, in my country it's legal to download for personal use.