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.
The URL provided was missing the
https://
portion. Here’s a working link.The only one here answer the question about looking for content. The rest are great (plex + *arr stack myself) but it didn’t solve the issue of WHAT media to add to plex/kodi/stremio/etc.
Need to be an *arr or another program we can docker to basically be Just Watch with a click and torrent search.
Overseerr is the “*arr” you’re looking for.
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:
Bflix.gg Hdtoday.cc Fmovies.to
Quick, simple and painless.
The files these sites rely on are generally the lowest available quality in their resolution, that’s why they aren’t recommended often. Fair play if you don’t care about visual and audio quality, but I find them unwatchable most of the time. The artifacts and distortion detract from the experience significantly.
I second the first, haven’t used the others.
This is fine but doesn’t work unless you’re watching on a device with a decent and usable web browser. Most people are using android boxes and Apple TVs etc so that’s not a viable solution.
The option to cast a stream from a phone to a Chromecast, Roku, etc has been pretty functional for quite some time now.
That’s just another not ideal situation though. Casting is crap, that’s why people buy media boxes. They get a remote, a UI, apps, etc.
I’m having a good experience with Samsung DeX on an 7 year old TV. Gives me a trackpad with keypad on my phone to navigate a full OS on a large screen. In a pinch, I connected a Bluetooth keyboard to my phone and have even used it as a document editor using Google Docs without any hitch.
I love Dex too, but let’s not try to pretend it’s anything more than a niche use case for what OP is asking.
What else can you complain about?
https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop/releases/
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.
As far as I know it has no vpn option build in right? And getting a VPN on regular smart TVs is not really easy
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.
I set up plex, overseer, sonaar and radaar to let my family request videos and stream from me when Netflix kicked them off my account. My boomer dad hasn’t had any issue using overseer to request stuff to watch. I even overheard him kinda bragging to a friend of his about the setup.
Overseerr pings me on discord when someone makes a request. I auto-approve movies but require approval for series to keep from them from downloading every episode of Grey’s anatomy all at once.
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.
And with this setup you don’t need a VPN? I just checked what debrid is and it still downloads illegal files but it isn’t a torrent or something similar, right?
No. Since you aren’t seeding the files, or are in the swarm, you are fine without a VPN. This is especially popular in Germany where you get fines of upwards of 500€
While a vpn is never a bad thing, no you don’t need a vpn if you are watching debrid sources. Your ISP will see you connect to your debrid but it won’t see the vídeos you’re watching or anything like that. All Debrid (At least Real Debrid, the service many use) sources are encrypted and wont be picked up.
Any android TV compatible streamer can get Kodi from the play store.
Or this. Forgot about android TVs. Used to have an nVidia shield, are those still around?
They are, but they’re high. Better off getting a Amazon fire stick
I had nothing but problems with firesticks, just underpowered and bloated. Got a Roku and have had much better luck. I hear you can run Kodiak on it just fine I haven’t done it myself though.
It’s also on F-Droid if your TV doesn’t have the Google Play Services - I run LineageOS on my TV box!
Android TV may or may not have Kodi on the Play Store depending on your location. I’ve got it on my ‘smart’ TV, no sideloading required.
Of course the TV itself is a POS and stutters during playback so I never use it. YMMV on that front as well.
My setup:
Jellyfin for the frontend. Has apps for android, iOS, windows, android TV, bunch of other platforms as well…
Deluge as torrent downloader. It’s old, but it just works without the (in my opinion) complicated configurations of qbittorrent.
Prowlarr to search a bunch of sites simultaneously for torrents.
Radarr to add movies, search them with Prowlarr and add the best torrent to deluge, eventually moving the downloaded content to Jellyfin to view.
Sonarr to do the same as Radarr but for TV shows instead.
I would add jellyseer as a nice option to request movies rather then doing it directly through so are/radarr
Nice list but sub out torrenting for usenet. There’s a fee associated with usenet but worth it imo as you get higher quality releases, more likely to find niche stuff and don’t have the issue of no seeders.
If you have all these setup I’d recommend getting NZB360 on Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kevinforeman.nzb360
You could install Overseerr which also integrates nicely into sonarr & radar
It doesn’t have a TV app though.
You can set it up to monitor your Plex watchlist, which essentially turns Plex into your Overseerr TV app
TIL
Thanks! I still kind of like the overseerr UI but a great option to have.
For the tv app part:
You can use jellyfin to host your media, it has apps for many types of television. The jellyfin-specific fork of overseer is called jellyseer.
Yeah but you have to delve into developer tools and build the app from source for TizenTV
That was the reason I went with Plex instead of jellyfin for me
That can be solved by connecting a computer to the tv via hdmi. My main tv has a computer that connects is jellyfin to my home server than runs radarr, sonarr and lidarr. I have not seen a commercial in years!
So I am wondering if it’s possible to have a Netflix like GUI but powered by piracy?
It’s called Plex.
Check out Sonarr and Radarr to automate downloading.
Then there’s tools like Ombi that work with those and Plex to show your users to make requests that can download automatically
Nah plex suck atleast use jellyfin. I prefer stremio
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
This. Stremio is great for discovering content.
Another +1 for stremio and torrentio. Their popular lists don’t update as frequently as I’d hope, but all other debrid solutions require either a learning curve or a bunch of automation. Stremio just works.
I use jellyfin and it has a really nice ui
Stremio with an addon like Google Drive or Real Debrid (torrentio).
You can set up Couchmoney through trakt to get similar recommendations algorithms.
Stremio has a UI which works amazingly on TV, and should be familiar to Netflix.
This is the right answer.
I would suggest Stremio, it needs torrentio plugin and others and it streams from the torrent. And it has playlist plugins from most commercial steaming services (netflix included) . You wont find it for Samsung tvs natively, but it works with casting.
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:
Are you able to filter it by language? My parents are old, and they did not have a chance to learn any other language like English
You could create different libraries for different languages.
Also helps with auto metadata fetching.
This is a cool setup. But torrents in Europe? Too many horror stories.
Usenet is a good option then, although not completely free
So you want to be able to browse films and TV shows to add to your queue?
I use NZB360 for that. It has upcoming for me to schedule, recently released and popular for me to add to sonarr or radarr.
Is that what you are looking for?
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.
ya honestly my letterboxd watchlist is immaculate
Care to share?
I have, among other things, set up auto download lists that just get any new releases with a >7/10 on IMDb.