100%, I’ve been torrenting for my whole life and seriously running Plex/jellyfin for a decade now and only paying $5/Mo for mullvad and don’t have to worry about what service stuff is on - I just get it all.
I recently decided to supercharge my arrstack setup with Usenet (better availability for older stuff, was able to backfill lots of reality TV that only had dead torrents) and even then, since lots of Usenet providers include a VPN that you can use for torrenting, I’m only paying $7 and change per month.
And most of what I spend reoccurring is paid back by friends I’ve shared with buying me drinks and stuff. Easily worth it.
The priciest part of the whole ordeal is buying a NAS and upgrading HDD capacity every few years :D even this comes out cheaper than even 1 stream subscription without ads !
100%, I’ve been torrenting for my whole life and seriously running Plex/jellyfin for a decade now and only paying $5/Mo for mullvad and don’t have to worry about what service stuff is on - I just get it all.
I recently decided to supercharge my arrstack setup with Usenet (better availability for older stuff, was able to backfill lots of reality TV that only had dead torrents) and even then, since lots of Usenet providers include a VPN that you can use for torrenting, I’m only paying $7 and change per month.
And most of what I spend reoccurring is paid back by friends I’ve shared with buying me drinks and stuff. Easily worth it.
The priciest part of the whole ordeal is buying a NAS and upgrading HDD capacity every few years :D even this comes out cheaper than even 1 stream subscription without ads !