Spot on!
The moment music starts being split up between companies is the day I start pirating music again too.
My NAS and media NUC have soon paid for themselves from saving on streaming services. Adding music to it won’t cost me a dime.
You’ve already gotten a lot of really good advice, but I’ll add what I did on TL to get >10 ratio in about a year, without really limiting what I download.
For movies, I focused on finding files >14 GB so they are freelech. For movies I really wanted in super high quality to enjoy, I chose torrents with fewer seeds. This both boosts my points gain and lets me upload more when someone else wants the same file.
My best ratio files are several 70+ GB 4k Remuxes.
For TV Shows, I downloaded complete seasons as they are always freelech, unless it was a show I really want to watch right away.
These days I just add it to Sonarr and let it rip.
It goes without saying that you keep seeding everything for as long as you can. I have several hundred, some people have thousands.
Make sure you start with freeleech content to build a small buffer so you don’t get warnings that stress you out. It sucks frantically trying to get your ratio up before some timer ends and you get banned.
Feel free to ask if you need some more help, and enjoy TL. It’s a really good site run by what seems to be very level headed people.
I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, as they are great products out of the box.
A bit pricy, but worth it. I’d give the same recommendation as you for anyone wanting to dabble a little and have room to grow and play with VLAN’s, ACL’s and expandability in the future.
I’m using a Chromecast with Google TV, simply because that’s what I had when I started.
Hoping a new Shield will come before it dies, alternatively I need to find something else.
After I migrated to a N100 that does all transcoding for me, the media device itself is more about codec support, a nice UI and response times and less about raw power.
Cool, well then I can at least share what I went with that has worked really well: GMKtech N100 NUC from Aliexpress with 16 GB of RAM.
It’s hosting Jellyfin with transcoding, PiHole, Home Assistant, Heimdal, a Valheim server and loads of other small LXC’s in Proxmox.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen it break a sweat.
The NAS holds the .arr stack and Qbit, but that’s it.
I cannot speak to the longevity of it, but I repasted the CPU once I got it and it’s chilling below 45 degrees all day long, so I expect it to last for many years. I also enabled C-states to get idle consumption as low as possible, around 7-8W.
Best of luck with whatever setup you end up with mate!
I run a 4 bay and a N100 NUC.
The Synology is almost a pure storage machine. Works really well with Proxmox on the side. Not a single file has made it kneel yet, and I’ve thrown some high bitrate badboys on it.
Is not upgrading the drives an alternative?
I feel like you sacrifice a lot of practicality removing the NAS, such as automatic backup from phones and very easy remote access.
Personally I also prefer separating data and software, so I don’t lose it all if a component fails.
Just my .02
That would be a mirror of my setup. GMKtec N100 with 16 Gb of RAM doing all the heavy lifting with Jellyfin (transcoding), game servers, HomeAssistant and so forth. Not once has it had a hickup.
It’s a brilliant little thing for really very little money.
Remember to activate C-states in BIOS to achieve the super low idle TDP people talk about, around 6-8W.
Good luck on your journey!
I did the same.
Jellyfin and all “fun” containers to a N100 NUC and let the NAS be a NAS. It’s only running the .arr stack and qBit. Works really well and the NUC has power for days to expand.
Yeah same.
NAS is running with everything I downloaded, seeding 24/7. I started back up about a year ago and my ratio passed 10 before Christmas. I did not download a single thing I didn’t want, but I try to stick to movies big enough to be freelech and downloaded seasons instead of single episodes, again as they are freeleech.
Fun fact for those strugling: my top 10 ratio seeds are all freelech and has netted a total of 2,6 TB. Not a single one of those files are newer than 3 years old.
It’s hard in the beginning, but stick to freeleech and keep building ratio, and before you know it you won’t have to think about it anymore.
Yeah it makes no sense, yet it’s so much fun when stuff finally works like it should!
Everybody loves using Jellyfin at home, but they think I’m mad for spending countless hours setting up everything the first time, then a second time to improve, then a third time as I migrated HW.
Keep having fun with it mate! The possibilities are endless
No problem, friend.
Feel free to ask if you need some help setting stuff up and good luck!
Yes, end-to-end. Only you have access to the files. Proton does not.
Yes Sir.
I do a backup of Proxmox to the NAS once a week and auto-delete anything older than one month, and I upload those and all pictures and critical files to the cloud. Critical files being personal data, information about the house, insurance papers etc.
Personally I use Proton and have 1 TB, which has been more than enough. It is also encrypted.
Movies, music and TV shows are not backed up as I don’t consider them critical at all. It can all be re-downloaded if needed.
I know there is unRAID and TrueNAS, but I went with a traditional NAS (Synology, before all the fuckery) and a small N100 NUC on the side.
The NAS is critical for the whole family with backups, pictures and general files, so I need it to be 110%. On it, I just run the .arr stack, Surveilance Station and Qbit, and the NUC runs all my other containers like Jellyfin and Home Assistant. Full access to the files via NFS and it gives me good power for transcoding when needed. Even 4K high bitrate files play seamlessly on WiFi now.
It’s been rock solid and I would probably do it the same way again if I had to rebuild.
Best of luck finding the appropriate solution for your needs, mate!
I do it from home and do just fine.
My «trick» was to only download complete seasons and movies larger than 14 GB to get loads of freeleech to build ratio and just keep seeding them.
I’m at >10 ratio on TL and stopped caring about sizes as the pool of old files outseed anything new I download.
But I get your point: seedboxes have made it a lot harder to do effortlessly from home
As a Jellyfin-fanboy: you are right. Plex is easier to deal with out of the box.
Anything else would not make any sense for a paid service.
I’d say though, if you dedicate the time to set it up correctly, it is an equally good solution and it’s free.
If time is a factor in your life, then there is no shame in paying for something that just works. It’s why I have a Synology NAS and not a self-built Unraid or OMV server.
I run Jellyfin on Chromecast with Google TV every day, it works super well.
Unless you mean casting from your phone, then I don’t know.
The ability to watch from anywhere.
Install on the Jellyfin server and share that server (or just the IP with the Jellyfin port) with whoever you want. Now they have access to Jellyfin and Jellyfin only.
That’s how I set stuff up for friends and family.
I agree, but want to add Portainer. Compose in Portainer takes away the scary SLI/Terminal part.
At least for me, hosting stuff went from «I have no idea what I’m doing» to «This sort of makes sense».
I’ll admit never having used Lidarr, but if it’s dead and no other good automated software exists, I’ll just use the good old “search and click download”-hack.
Hopefully I won’t ever have to do this, but time will tell