Hey Everyone!
I’m new to this whole Lemmy/SLRPNK.net world. However I am a seasoned old-timer when it comes to having a computer constantly on in the corner of my house doing things. I came to visit this community and thought I’d throw my 2c out here for any potential new people who come snooping around.
In the world of self-hosting, there are like 100 things you can do, everything from a smart home, to a multiple rack mount server setup. I am here to introduce any new people to a concept that I think should be getting more attention. After I heard about the spike in new sign up’s after Netflix pulled their no-password sharing shenanigans, I thought hey, people must not know that this is an option. Self-hosting a media server might be the most simple, yet biggest rebellion against this culture of constant targeted consumption.
Yes yes, I know that most of you long time nerds have had home servers for years, but what about the people who don’t?
So… What is it?
Think of Netflix, except you get to decide what is on it. No fees, no rules, no taking things off. You can watch stuff from your phone on the train, or even get your mother-in-law that show she’s been struggling to find.
How can I have all these cool things at my fingertips? Well, you’ll need two things.
1. A home server of some kind. If you already have one, excellent! If not, this is unfortunately not a guide on how to get started with self hosting, but a raspberry pie (or one of the alternatives, rockpie, pine64,orangepi) or any old computer, yes even a laptop, is a fine place to start. Give it the OS the manufacturer recommends. If you want more than that,I am sure the many lovely members of this community would love to help you out.
2. A media server software.PLEX, Emby, or Jellyfin are your “real” options. Plex is robust, mostly free, and constantly gets updates. Emby is a fork of plex that happened before the devs started to get greedy and make a premium tier. Jellyfin is the fully free open-source alternative. All three will have apps for your smart TV, or phone. (although plex supports the most, eg xbox, playstaion, Samsung tv, lg tv’s, android and ios)
Now that you have your server, follow the setup guide given by your app of choice, and put some media on your server. You can use a USB, or some kind of remote connection to do this.
Where do you get your media?
Most Blueray or DVD purchases will give you a code inside to get a digital download. Personally, I have no issues with encouraging you to sail the high seas. However for those wanting to walk the straight and narrow, many libraries offer the ability to rip VHS content to digital… and well, CD/DVD drives aren’t hard to find.
Now run yourself a bath, grab some wine, and watch that obscure 1990’s anime in peace, knowing that no woke or conservative mob will every be able to stop you from enjoying jiggle physics Dragon Ball.
I’m working on a home server myself right now but I’ve run into some issues. I want to be able to read and write to my server without the need to pull the drive and upload before hand. Idk I’ve run through Google but everything is pointing me towards a full on NAS. I don’t want to spend the money on it. I’ve got a good drive and a laptop i should be all set. If anyone has any answers I would appreciate the help
https://syncthing.net/
Might be the easiest to do that.
Moving files from one machine to another is pretty easy if you just want a shared drive. Getting one of those working on an old windows box is super easy, and linux isn’t far behind.
You said you have a good drive and a laptop. The first thing to do is go into the power setting sand stop is from turning off them it goes to sleep. The next thing I would do is install software to remote control it. Teamviewer is a good option, although personally I currently use Parsec for my personal PC remote control needs
Now that you have closed up secretly running laptop you can remote control, set up a shared folder (see above link) and put some stuff in it. I can share links to help you “find content” if you want, but learning how to pirate is it’s own post
Follow this guide to get a Jellyfin server running on the laptop, download the app onto your phone and log in.
You should now be able to see media from the folder on your laptop on your phone, and also be able to watch it.
Hopefully this is what you where looking for? If not please let me know and I will try and provide as much detail on whichever parts of the home server setup you would like more details with
I’m having an issue where it will let me write to the hard disk when plugged into my main pc, but when I set it up on the “server” laptop it only let’s me read files
That is super weird… What version of windows are you running? Is it a USB external hdd or a Sata drive?
Ahh, nah i got the pirating part just fine, I’m just getting sick of streaming everything from my phone and would just like a central storage for my home, that I can stream from and use as a back up for “data”
@Conman_Signor @JohnLikesComputers so you want to be able to move files to and from the server without unplugging the hard drive and plugging it into another machine?
If yes, that’s entirely possible, what operating system are you running on the server?
Windows 11 right now, and after getting everything going, so far all it will let me do is “read” when streaming from the server. I would like to be able to upload from whatever device as well
Ahh ok, Do you have a shared folder already setup? Sounds like a permissions issue. Go into the properties menu of the folder and give the everyone options full control
Thanks for the help! I think I finally got it. Seemed to be a permission issue! Thanks