With the recent password sharing crackdown, I decided to ditch my Netflix subscription and try piracy. What I miss about Netflix is scrolling through content and finding something to watch. With piracy I need to know exactly what I am looking for.
So I am wondering if it's possible to have a Netflix like GUI but powered by piracy? And as this is the pirate world, it shows shows and movies not just from Netflix but also from the other streaming services? And finally it is available on TVs ( Samsung tizen in my case). Something like this would be the best case scenario. Wondering if someone has a similar setup?
Protip - If you like scrolling for inspiration on what to download, check out JustWatch. It's a site with clean UI that catalogues shoes across streaming platforms.
No piracy, you do that yourself with Plex and the *Arr.
Debian-based server OS with powerful terminal interface for managing and starting your first streaming server
Rock-solid stability of debian, paired with a curated packaging system that reduces risks of breaking configurations
Popular services are auto-configured to align with best practices, such as Nextcloud, Plex, Sonarr etc. all installing and configuring their own databases at install
Powerful utilities for managing disks, files, power management and other server necessities with minimal existing knowledge of the command line
Can be set up in a day on a raspberry pi, and be streaming torrented content by the evening!
Great support, both with hardware and software. The devs are active and helpful on github if you have problems.
Loads of tutorials for installing every single service you could need for a piracy server, from VPNs to linking services together and accessing them remotely.
Everyone always recommends the torrent solutions, plex and the arrs, but unless it's something I'm really excited about or want in extra high quality, I find it's easier to just use the browser streaming sites. In Firefox with ublock there's no ads, it has subtitles for multiple languages loaded automatically usually, and a nice ui that shows most popular show/movies, and has a good catalogue. There's lots to choose from, I think the guide has a list, but the ones I use are:
It's a torrent client with a Netflix-like interface. It hides all the torrent stuff from you and just shows movies and shows in a nice format. It downloads and plays on the fly, it also grabs subtitles as needed, you can pick 720 or 1080, and you can choose to keep or delete the stuff you watched after you're done.
Keep in mind that under the hood it's still a torrent client, so if you have trouble with that kind of thing in your country you may want to use a VPN and all that jazz.
I think what you want is either plex or Jellyfin which will give you a nice UI to browse your already downloaded files.
Now how do you browse new releases and figure out what you want to download? I just setup https://overseerr.dev/ to go along with sonarr, radarr, prowlarr, nzbget, transmission... it's a lot of different services but they all work well together. Now to look for new movies, I or my family goes to Overseerr to request downloads, then plex to watch.
Kodi is what your looking for. A debrid + kodi is basically netflix with shows from around the world, in high quality, on demand.
But, it is not available on TVs as a seperate app. Companies do not like piracy, so many applications that are related to it do not make the appstores. A cheap and easy way to get Kodi would be to simply buy a Intel NUC, or a similar mini-pc.
Amassing a media library is simple enough, and software like jellyfin can pull in media info and make your media streamable on various devices with a polished UI.
However, finding good quality (in terms of merit) movies and shows is difficult.
Maybe start with movies critics or a movie discussion platform like letterboxd to see what others are watching/rating movies.
What you need is Jellyfin, around 2-5TB (depending on your quality) and access to a private torrent tracker, usenet or DDL site.
Then you can stuff like this:
I had a lot of success with StremIO and the TorrentIO addon, that allows me to stream directly from the torrents of various sites with autoplay, IMDB, remembering where I am at and all that good stuff
I would suggest Stremio, it needs the torrentio plugin and it streams from the torrent itself. It also has playlist plugins from most commercial steaming services (netflix included) . You wont find it for Samsung tvs natively, but it works with casting.
Use Plex, and the *arr apps along with a usenet subscription. When I add something to my watchlist in Plex, it automatically downloads. It takes a little work to set up but it's pretty seamless.
There are many more options to completely customize the look and feel. Also you can do this system wide (meaning all clients get what you set up, or you can set it up per client since its just CSS)
Kino.pub. it costs around £2 per month, but you get all the video content from all over the world, apps for TV and Android, multiple translations and subs, as well as 4K and HDR for some content. And you don't need to search anything manually all over the torrents and hope for quality.
I really like Jellyseer for this. Occasionally browsing around with different filters, auto add to the arr services (which I only use for keeping track of what's currently in the cinema and what is released on streaming/bluray)
I have plex and emby servers I run off my PC and it's has everything I have pirated and I can just scroll through it on my TV app. You still have to have is downloaded but otherwise it's pretty similar. I try to torrent a bunch of shoes and movies in big chunks then I have a bunch of media to go through for a while.
I highly recommend cloudstream. Join their discord or dm me for the set up if you dont know how to or stuck. It works on android and android tvs (sticks, boxs or tv itslef). Its also available on windows 11 and 10 via the android system that it introduced recently. The Ui is very nice and there is a plugin that works most of the times with 1080p and 4k if lucky. It also displays the newest and trendiest content from all platforms.
Funnily enough this is what I absolutely loved about using my google tv with chrome cast - content discovery. Others called it “ads” but when I’m looking for things to watch I fail to see how suggestions for what to watch based on my viewing history is a bad thing.
Plex is slowly getting better at it, but I really wish Overseerr was integrated into it.
A lot of people recommend Plex, which I'm sure is great, but if you want an actual Netflix GUI, Titan Bingie Mod for Kodi is the way to go. From what I understand about Plex, Titan Bingie on Kodi provides all of the same features.
My set-up doesn't include a smart tv ... I specifically stayed away from buying one because of the monitoring they can do on my usage.
So mine is a good LCD > HDMI'd to my laptop > running a good VPN > links to multiple streaming sources that offer everything from live sports to new movies/TV shows.
Been running this way for over 20 yrs now and it works for me.
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No there's nothing like this. You'll still have to search and download stuff before watching it.
You can have your setup auto download lists and try to mimic things. But you'll never be able to have the mindless scrolling like Netflix. Don't let anyone convince you there's a solution out there currently.
Netflix UI, sure. Plex does a great job with showing content from all over. But it's still not the same cohesiveness.