I had an account day 1 when Spotify launched in my country. It was such a big deal to me, a person who spent their teens and 20s hoarding music. One service and it was most of the music I wanted. I could sideload my own music and shuffle it all together.

I miss that little app store on the desktop client. You could join shared radio stations and vote on the next track while people wrote to each other in a chat.

Yikes that’s a major issue that I coincidentally bypassed by not using Lidarr for the past few months myself.

Start out simple and stick with a basic BitTorrent client. Figure out where you want to download from and get a torrent client configured. I use an ISP that frowns upon piracy so here’s a quick overview:

1. Look for public torrent sites. I’m out of this game so I don’t have any suggestions.
2. Research private torrent trackers. I don’t think I can provide any help with this, but there are other corners of Lemmy who can.
3. Find a VPN. Everyone has thoughts on this and Proton VPN is the one I’m currently using.
4. Pick a torrent client. I’d recommend qBittorrent myself.
5. Configure your VPN to include your BT traffic.

If/when you want to try Lidarr, you’ll be much better off knowing the basics of BitTorrent because *arr software is confusing in its own regard. Lidarr is just a tool to organize your music library folders and also automatically queue downloads. It is not a requirement to enjoy downloading music.

Usenet and soulseek are other alternatives.

You’ll have to be more specific. :) I think it works well for organizing a music library unless there are issues with this feature that I’m unaware of. Using it to queue downloads was painful for me, so I resort to less automated ways to acquire music files.

Simply put, the *arr software concept works well for downloading movies and TV shows (Radarr and Sonarr). Music just seems to be a little more difficult and I have lots of issues with Lidarr finding music out on Usenet and trackers. I hope that’s user error on my part.

Smarttube on Android TV OS

Apple in 2001:

Another option is using an alternate launcher. I’ve used Flauncher and ProjectIvy to bypass Google’s default launcher.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu&hl=en-US

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.efesser.flauncher&hl=en-US

APKs are available wherever you’d like to source them. F-droid should technically work on Android TV, as well. Android TV OS is a different OS from original Android, so I’ve never seen an alternative like Graphene.

Prices for physical console games has exceeded any historic cycle. I’ve been shopping at the same local used store for 30 years and stopped in a few days ago. I saw a copy of Aerobiz Supersonic for $200. Authentic carts for Earthbound are listed at $400.

A great game, but it’s being sold at a borderline criminal price during a massive market bubble.

If a game isn’t legally available for purchase (digital or physical) from the original company or subsidiary, it’s absolutely the correct decision to pirate a game. Subscription services like Nintendo Switch Online don’t count in my book.

Even with inflation, the game should only cost around $100 based on original price. And even if I buy a used game, the original creators don’t see a dime. We should support the developers/publishers and reward those who create good rereleases like the Castlevania Collection.

I’d also grab a ROM or ISO of a game that I’ve bought on Steam so that I can play it on original hardware. But that’s just me.

All *arr apps should use root folders to organize media. If I understand the question, here’s the hypothetical situation:

1. Create a root folder for *Arr App.
2. Download media until drive is full.
3. Create a new root folder that points to different drive.
4. Configure *Arr App to move new downloads to new root folder created in step 3.

You should be able to have multiple root folders, but I’ve only checked in So are. One problem you’ll run into is that you can’t break up music artists or TV show series across root folders.

You might want to consider something like OpenMediaVault or Unraid to manage your storage. Either platform (or others) allow you to add drives as needed. I don’t use either so I’m just passing that along as a consideration.

Not sure if my setup is unique or wrong but here’s what I use:

1. I registered a domain with Name cheap and created subdomains for the tools I wanted to access (i.e. jellyfin.domain.tld, sonarr.domain.tld)
2. A DDNS client on my OpenWRT router updates the IP address for those subdomains. Traffic for each subdomain is pointed at my server.
3. Nginx Reverse Proxy runs on my server. This provides HTTPS certificates and is pretty straightforward.

I also use Tailscale for remote access and I’m not sure that my friends and family are ready for that. (Admittedly, I’m still on Plex.) Registering your own domain and using a DDNS service and reverse proxy will give your users an easier experience than Tailscale. I can give an easy-to-remember URL to folks rather than a new VPN platform to learn.

If security is more important, Tailscale is the best option for remote connections.

Why don’t we need this for Plex? Because Plex has all of the above steps baked into its service.

I wish someone would make a new RTS with the Halo Wars control scheme. It works so well on the Steam Deck. I played Halo Wars 2 on the Xbox and I was disappointed by the new gameplay.

Flauncher is a great pick too

I use the ONN 4K Pro and the ProjectIvy launcher. You can completely hide the standard Android TV OS launcher and its ads. Button Mapper is another good app to have on Android boxes. The remote is full of app-specific buttons that I’ve either disabled or remapped to alternative apps

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flar2.homebutton

I have no idea which codecs are supported.

I think hindsight bias is always a factor when talking about old video games. The N64 was a runt in sales but the library was stacked in my opinion. But it sold nearly as many U.S. units as the SNES or Genesis, so the fact that the PS1 was such a blockbuster doesn’t reduce the N64’s quality.

Catalog wise, I always felt that the N64 had enough games until at least 1999 when the PS1 pulled away. It had better shooters (with awesome multiplayer) and great party games.

People in 2025 should remember that some folks were lucky enough to have both systems, which plays a factor too.

I like Flauncher or ProjectIvy. I’m using the latter on the living room TV and it works great.

More or less. There aren’t as many bots, and everyone is generally aware of traditional Internet etiquette (i.e. don’t be an asshole). Lemmy also feels as homogenous as early Reddit: college-educated white people in western countries.

I started joining forums back in the late nineties and I’ve learned every place on the Internet is in flux. Things always change. Back in the day, stuff would happen like we would lose hosting because someone got sick of running a niche phpBB forum or the moderation team would change. When social media kicked off, changes were driven by money. Facebook was a big gaming platform in my college years (Farmville), which feels completely foreign to today’s Facebook.

The smaller the community, the more stable it is. Some of those 20-year forums still exist, albeit in a much more diminished state. If a site/platform gets popular, that’s when things can change quickly.

Lemmy has already changed since I joined and I’m sure it will become something different in the future.

Thanks everyone, I feel much better about moving forward. I’m leaning towards Proxmox at this point because I could still run Windows as a VM while playing around and setting up a new drive pool. I’d like a setup that I can gradually upgrade because I don’t often have a full day to dedicate to these matters.

MergerFS still seems like a good fit for my media pool, simply only to solve an issue where one media type is filling a whole drive as another sits at 50% capacity. I’ve lost this data before and it was easy to recover by way of my preferred backup method (private torrent tracker with paid freeleech). A parity drive with SnapRaid might be a nice stop gap. I don’t think I feel confident enough with ZFS to potentially sacrifice uptime.

My dockers and server databases, however, are on a separate SSD that could benefit from ZFS. These files are backed up regularly so I can recover easily and I’d like as many failsafes as possible to protect myself. Having my Radarr database was indispensable when I lost a media drive a few weeks ago.

Good catch, yes my drives are 12TB. My brain is still stuck in 2005. :)

I still use Plex because they offer the product I bought, an easy way to stream content on my devices. Others have technical or philosophical issues, which I totally understand. Plex is the easiest option for my situation as of now. It is working great for me and my family.

Nothing lasts forever so it’s good to realistic about the future. If I start having technical issues, it’s Jellyfin. If Plex doubles down on subscriptions, it’s Jellyfin.

If you’re like me, a lifetime Plex Pass holder, I would experiment with Nginx Reverse Proxy now so you understand how it works. I have Overseerr running through a reverse proxy now.

I think it’s a matter of when, not if, Plex will make a business decision that pushes me off their platform. It’s a company focused on profit and that’s fine. And it would be good to be prepared for the future.

Do a barrel roll!