Headless server with debian and mldonkey, I search on ed2k/kad network and public trackers for bittorrent. I use plex to stream to my devices.

I use a NAS running the Unraid OS, with a Docker setup using the Servarr apps to find and fetch media using SABnzbd and qBitorrent to download from Usenet and private trackers. It pipes movies, TV shows, and music into my Jellyfin library, which has all the features of Plex, but is free. I don’t believe in telling corporations what shows I’m pirating. Bazarr automatically fetches appropriate subtitles for everything. I have the Servarr apps set up to fetch the best quality using the Trash guides.

For visual media discovery, I use Jellyseerr, which allows me to easily find new shows and movies, and allows my family and friends to request shows to be downloaded. Jellyfin automatically cleans up watched media so that it doesn’t take up space after it’s been watched.

For audiobooks, everything is fetched from private trackers, specifically the mouse site, and automatically piped into Audiobookshelf, to it can be streamed to friends and family. Ebooks get likewise sent to a Kavita server, so they can be quickly sent via email to physical readers as desired by users.

And of course, all ebooks and audiobooks are seeded in perpetuity, meaning I get a lot of points on the tracker from seeding hundreds of torrents. I use those points to buy free leech tokens, so I don’t have to worry about ratio. Other types of torrents are usually seeded until they are at 1.5 ratio, then they are deleted.

Video games I download are automatically synced to all gaming PCs on my network via Syncthing, so they can be installed by everyone. Save games for each person are also backed up to the NAS and to any other PCs or portables used for that game by that person.

All this is protected behind an obscure domain proxied by Cloudflare and protected by an LDAP server that authenticates and validates access for each user to the services they are allowed to use. Torrents and Usenet media are downloaded to the NAS using a bound VPN located in a country that doesn’t cooperate with Western governments. Everything is streamed to users on a fiber connection.

I use Plex, emby, and Jellyfin shares.

1. Various sorts and browse for recommendation
2. Stream in 4k when available, 1080 when not
3. I don’t
4. Plex, emby, Jellyfin
5. It’s automatic. Favorites, individualized playlists, watchlist. Sort by played.

Nice try, FBI.

Nzb360 for Android.

I buy apps. But I never donate again.

I’ve donated several times to the dev. It’s an amazing app.

1. Mostly movies from yts . mx, and movies and tv shows from watchsomuch . to.
2. Mostly for convenience and I think information should be free. I cam back to the high seas after they decided to have 4,758 different streaming services and kind of hate exclusive as an excuse to get you to pay for one service over another.
3. I have a dedicated 6TB hard drive(wish I would have paid a bit extra for an 8 or 10 though). I also used it for rsync back ups but that’s it.
4. I switch back and forth between Jellyfin and Plex. Jellyfin is a bit fiddly but open, Plex “just work” but is closed source. I try to use free software as much as I can.
5. Both JF and Plex will keep track, but I’ve had issues with JF if a movie or show doesn’t want to run(I think it’s a transcoding issue) sometimes I lose progress of my most recent watched stuff. Kind of sucks. I’ve had more issues with JF than with Plex which sucks.

1. Mostly Lemmy/Reddit/social circle recommendations

2. Download

3. I used to download directly to my phone and watch there. Then I got a NAS and started copying from my phone to the NAS. Then I set up download software on the NAS to have it always on. Then got Plex set up. Then the Arr’s (although these are janky and I end up doing a lot of manual additions).

4. Plex

I would highly suggest getting a NAS and playing around with it. Self hosting is complicated, but I got it as a “dumb” network drive on my LAN. Then slowly I started adding on different Docker containers and added to it. Each setup was a painful learning process of errors and troubleshooting, so don’t try to do everything in one go.

You don’t even need to be a pirate for self hosting. You can buy dirt cheap physical media on eBay and rip it to make a pretty huge personal library on the cheap.

I was about to post my arr suite until i read your last line :D For recommendations i follow some youtube critics (like stories of old, mubi) who regularly provide recommendations and my tastes match with theirs. Then there’s reddit/lemmy movie forums. And i just use QBittorrents in built search to just download if i’m not tracking the movie/tv on my arr stack. And for playback locally i use mpv. I tried streaming services a long time ago but they are incredibly inconvenient compared to how flexible it is to watch/find something on torrents and the quality is also better.