This weekend, I posted a new video about how two years ago, I quit streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+, in favor of hosting my own media from my physical collection. You can watch the video here if you’d like to get caught up: (YouTube/PeerTube).
Since posting it, I’ve had countless folks share their own stories about algorithm-driven streaming platforms, and I’m truly touched by all of the kindness this community has shown me.
I was nervous to make this video, because it was a bit more of a “sounding the alarm” type of video than I usually make. I promise I won’t make a habit of it, I try to keep things quite positive in my videos and this was a tough subject.
Anyway, the video has over 1000 comments and growing, and I can’t read every one. I thought I’d address some of the common questions in a single blog post here, which I’ll pin to the video on YouTube.
Here’s the frequently-asked questions for this video:
- “What distro are you using for Jellyfin?”
- “Why not just torrent/pirate?”
- “Where do you put all of the physical media?”
- “Isn’t optical media more expensive than streaming?”
- “Did YouTube make you bleep out things?”
- “Aren’t you a hypocrite for using YouTube? You know that’s streaming, right?”
- “You know Jellyfin just streams from your server, right?”
“What distro are you using for Jellyfin?”
Whether you’re talking about the server or client, the answer is the same: Debian.
On a server, Debian is no-nonsense. I don’t want anything that requires updating every day, and Debian’s two year cycle is a perfect fit for me on the server-side. If you’re planning on self-hosting and want a pure Linux instead of something tailor-made like Unraid or Proxmox (and both are fine choices!), I highly recommend giving Debian a look.
On the HTPC, I also use Debian Stable. If I had an uber-recent GPU it might not be a good fit, but it’s a TV appliance and I don’t want to futz with it all that much (my family would not approve). Debian packages a perfectly reasonable Kodi which can be launched as a desktop environment in its own right- that’s an underappreciated feature. I’d use LibreELEC if I didn’t occasionally play games on the PC.
“Why not just torrent/pirate?”
First off, not judging. It’s a fair question.
I’m not going to criticize where folks get their media. I was a Napster die-hard in my youth so I’ve been on that side of things before. I’ve also been a musician my whole life, and I’ve seen benefits from piracy personally- would I rather get pennies a month legitimately or have thousands more hear my music illegally? Who’s really doing the stealing at that point?
Anyway, I actually like collecting physical media. I get nostalgic for it, and nostalgia can be a great tool- I keep my childhood Game Boy around because when I’m having a rough day, picking it up and playing for a bit can bring me right back to a happier time. DVDs and Blu-Rays occupy the same space for me.
Plus, with physical media, I have a lot more control over the quality of the rip.
“Where do you put all of the physical media?”
It doesn’t take up as much space as you’d think.
For one, I don’t have a massive collection of optical media- I probably have 200-300 DVDs/Blu-Rays. We watch some TV most days, but I don’t think my family watches as much as most. We’re readers!
Book storage is a far more pressing challenge for us, and to tell the truth, I have a significant amount of books in my storage unit at any given time. I also store plenty of optical media boxes, but as I mentioned in the video, most of the cheap TV/movie sleeves I just toss. Optical media doesn’t take up much room at all in a binder!
“Isn’t optical media more expensive than streaming?”
No, not really?
When times are lean, I can simply not buy anything. I mean, that’s how it was before streaming!
Also, folks practically give away CDs, Blu-Rays, and DVDs. While eBay and Craigslist can be absurd, we hit up thrift shops frequently and can find gems for next-to-nothing. I also live in a large enough metropolitan area where we have plenty of classic record shops.
If you use Amazon pricing, yeah- this is absurdly expensive. But I can count on one hand the amount of “brand new” discs I’ve bought over the last year. And in those cases, I know the money supported the artists directly. Win win.
“Did YouTube make you bleep out things?”
No, that was a joke. If YouTube was censoring me, I simply wouldn’t have said anything. It is true that YouTube might down-rank my video if I said the things out loud, but by calling attention to it without saying it, I got you to be interested in the programs. A sizable amount of comments don’t seem to realize that this was the strategy. Oh well. I think most of you got it. 🙂
For those who can’t read lips, the programs I bleeped are FreeTube and MPV from the terminal.
“Aren’t you a hypocrite for using YouTube? You know that’s streaming, right?”
Yup, I’m a big boring hypocrite.
I want you to watch my videos. I put them on PeerTube as well as YouTube, because it’s my art and I enjoy creating them. I also enjoy watching other folks make art in the same form. If Netflix let us upload our own videos for sharing, I might not have dropped it.
I think of YouTube as occupying a different space because virtually anyone can upload to it. In effect, this is social media. To put it another way, if I said “I don’t read the newspaper but I get my news from Twitter”, I don’t think we’d conflate the two simply because they’re both written down.
If you ask a lay person to define a streaming platform, they’re likely to call out Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO, etc. They might include YouTube, they might not. I feel the social media nature of YouTube creates enough gray area to justify my video title, but if you still think I’m a hypocrite, I can live with that. I know I’m living my ethics just fine.
“You know Jellyfin just streams from your server, right?”
Stop being so pedantic.
Thanks for reading!
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