Hello! I never used *arr stack, and was interested into it, but one thing is stopping me. I see a lot of articles like how it is Netflix (or any other ONLINE theater) replacement, but as I see it is not online. I see two big factors that stops me from trying seerr + jellyfin (and other stuff in between):

  1. You have two switch between those apps to search and then watch.
  2. You can’t watch media before it’s completely downloaded.

I imagine sitting on coach, searching for show. Then you want to watch some, and then you have to wait half an hour for full episode (or even season?) to download. And then you can realize that you not into it and have to repeat all the steps above. Is my expectation correct? Please don’t consider this as negative opinion. Just want to know what to expect. I remember an app called “popcorn time” that does not have that flaws.

  • fonix232@fedia.io
    2·
    4 hours ago

    Yes and no. You need to understand that no home service truly replaces Netflix, for a few reasons (the media might not be available on any of the services you’re using, for example).

    It’s also not as simple as searching for a media in Jellyfin/Plex (or whatever other media frontend you choose, like Emby). There’s a fixed flow.

    But let’s start by explaining the layers:

    1. The frontend - Plex/Jellyfin/Emby/Kodi. This is what your users see, aka the “Netflix experience” - open the app, and all the media available on your storage device will be shown. Then they can click one and play it.

    2. The request manager - Seerr (previously Overseerr/Jellyseerr). This is a separate interface where your users can request media. You still need to manually accept it (unless you set it up to automate things fully, but make sure you trust your users!). If something isn’t available, your users will come here and ask for it, then the manager will show the status (requested, accepted, downloading, available). Once available, your users can watch it through the frontend.

    3. The media managers - Radarr/Sonarr/Lidarr/etc. This is the software responsible for keeping a list of media you want, regularly looking them up on torrent trackers, Usenet servers, etc., and matching your requirements (resolution, language, encoding, file size, and so on), then grabbing the release and passing it on to the download client.

    When you accept a request in the request manager, it passes on the info to the media manager, which adds the requested media to its internal list and begins looking for it.

    1. Download client - torrent/Usenet downloader (qBittorrent, sabnzbd, etc.) pretty straightforward, this thing takes an incoming download request from the media manager, and downloads the file according to protocol, then signals the manager that the download is ready.

    At this point, control is passed back onto the media manager, which finds the freshly downloaded file, copies/moves it to the right place according to settings, renames it according to settings, marks it done then sends a signal to the request manager to indicate the request was fulfilled.

    Finally, the media frontend, which is set up to watch the folder where the new media items are copied/moved and renamed, gets a notification that a new file is available, scans it, prepares metadata (poster, background image/music, description, actor and production lists, ratings, etc.), and makes it available in the search interface.

    So the key differences with Netflix are:

    • limited content compared to Netflix
    • the ability to request new media
    • no CDNs, so if you have lots of users and not much bandwidth/processing power (latter in case of transcoding), your users will struggle. A standard home server and internet connection can serve 3-4 users at the same time.
    • limited language support. since these are pirated media, and most pirated media has at most 2-3 audio tracks, you’ll lose that Netflix perk of having 6-8-10 audio tracks available. subtitles can be supplemented though (audio tracks too but they rarely match perfectly to the video so it’s not as simple as downloading a file and call it a day).

    That about covers all the functional differences between an arr stack and Netflix.