How so? From blu-ray, I can use handbrake or ffmpeg to pick the exact quality and options I want. And I can use av1, which most torrent groups still aren’t using.
I also find many of the downloads strive for smaller file size over quality. I want the opposite, as I don’t ever want to have to rip again, and I want them to look perfect.
I don’t have trouble with most blu-rays, but there are a few I have not been able to get to rip. This includes, brand new, out of the box blu-rays. I have not tried any ultra-hd blu-rays yet, even though my external blu-ray drive should support it.
I do recommend looking at the makemkv forums for blu-ray drives. Some of the cheaper external drives do not last very long! A higher quality internal drive with an external case works much better. There are some people on the makemkv forums you can buy from. They have specific drives they like and they’ll pre-flash libredrive firmware on them.
I also prefer ripping to downloading. I am quite specific about how I like my movies ripped, and like to keep embedded subtitles, extra languages, full DTS surround, and commentary tracks, which are often missing in downloads. It does take a bit more time, but I also find I am way more careful about curating my collection and keeping it high quality.
My DNS provider doesn’t have an API for setting DNS, which makes doing dns CNAME validation manual.
Therefore, what I do is:
Mere was interesting, but it runs entirely offline in a browser (which is pretty cool). But, this means all data lives in your browser’s localStorage (or indexdb), which would make it hard to sync between devices.
Sure. But I’d also not host it publicly on the Internet, just on my local lan!
If you don’t need transcoding, then anything should be able to handle it. But, if you are planning to stream over the Internet to your phone on LTE, you’ll “probably” want transcoding, or if you are streaming to set top boxes, they may not support the codecs you used, and will also require transcoding.
I personally am using Jellyfin, and find it to be great for TV shows, movies, and you tube (via tubearchivist + its jellyfin plugin). It’s dead simple to setup, its metadata is perfect, and there are great frontends for it. Other than the big update from about 6 months ago, it has mostly been a set it and forget it.
Some people use jellyfin for music, but I find navidrome a much better option for music.
I run my media server on a fitlet2. It isn’t super powerful, but has been a great little machine. It can transcode 1080p just fine, but would struggle for doing anything higher than that.
It hosts about 30 other things too, including my camera and NVR with frigate.