My 2.5 year old loves watching classic Pokemon. I’ll be honest, so do I. But have you tried doing that? It’s fucking insane.

  • The first half of S1 is on Netflix
  • The second half is on Amazon but you need an extra subscription to watch it.
  • The theird season (johto) is also Amazon.
  • The 4th is no where but Archive.org of all places… Which is called Johto Champions, so it really feels like the end of the season but it’s another 52 episodes!

You would think pokemon.com would have all this (they have a lot, and it’s all free) but they don’t!

Seeing S4 (is that even right?) On Archive.org is really pushing me to want to build a Plex server. Having all this content in one place would be very nice.

I do IT work by day, and I have some older 2TB platter drives from a retired camera server laying around. What’s the easiest way to get my foot in the door? Do I save up some $$ for a Synology box?

Love to get your input!

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    A close friend of mine has a Plex server, and set it up for the exact same reason lol - he’s got a ~5 year old whose TV interests of just a handful of different franchise span like 100 streaming services.

    Dude said ‘fuck that noise’ and set sail.

    Kinda awesome that a key driving force for piracy is just parents placating their toddlers, lol.

  • skamansam@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I used plex for like a decade. I loved it. It had all the features i would ever need. A year ago i tried out an open source media server called Jellyfin and was blown away. It was so easy i started digitizing my library again. I use makemkv to backup the bluerays (it handles multiple audio streams too), and handbrake to reencode them to a streaming format. If you encode the movies into a streaming format, there’s mo need to re-encode when serving them, thereby saving a lot of provessing.

    • maniajack@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’ve still been using Plex, bought a lifetime license a long time ago and it’s mostly been set-and-forget for years (except when they broke plex on the shield for like 3 months, ugh). What are the top things that makes you want to use Jellyfin over Plex?

  • jargoggles@kbin.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    100% agreed on the advice to just start going with it on your current setup. That’s exactly how I started out with Plex and it worked really well.

    I’ve since made upgrades, but it’s all been incremental based on what has been helpful at the time. For instance, I got an Nvidia Shield Pro and started running Plex on that, which has been nice since I don’t need to keep my desktop on all the time. I also use it for streaming games from my desktop to the TV, so it’s not purely just for Plex.

    After building up a lot of media, I got a bit concerned about having a single point of failure in my single HDD, so that’s when I got a Synology NAS box and I have their RAID setup going for redundancy. I could also just run Plex from the NAS box and I’ve been considering it, but I’ve been really happy with how things are working right now, so I’m not messing with it.

  • GeekFTW@kbin.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    Dooooo ittttt!

    Edit: Forgot to add the useful comment.

    Honestly if you’re just starting out, straight up use your existing computer, plug that HDD in, load her up and just follow the instructions or a guide to set it up. Wait to see how much you use it before spending cash.

    A recommendation however: Due to how Pokemon is and how Plex’s two available metadata sources (TVDB and TMDB) categorize and lay the show out differently, make sure when you are getting the episodes in Plex that you have the TV show matched to TMDB (TheMovieDataBase), not TVDB (TheTVDataBase). Both have the show, but TVDB lumps a lot of the later seasons/series together, whereas TMDB will keep them separate as the correct seasons.

  • NSA_Server_04@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Would 100% go JellyFin vs Plex, also toss in some sonarr/radarr automation and organization. Everyone should have some kinda media streaming server, even if its just kept in house.

  • ollie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    The easiest would be a Synology Nas, but make sure it has transcoding capabilities otherwise its such a headache if the device you’re playing the video on doesnt support the codec.

    otherwise i’d just try and see for a 2nd hand thin client which will be way more powerful than a synology and sweet sweet intel quicksync.

    Also look into Jellyfin instead of Plex :)

    • charles@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Can Synology nas with transcoding handle 4k content? I’ve been using my old desktop for ages to handle Plex, but the CPU is too old to handle live transcoding of 4k

  • where_am_i@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    find a paid plexshare. Cheaper than Netflix, has everything, no weekends wasted on being a devops

    p.s. sorry I didn’t look where I’m posting. I’ma open notselfhosted

    • Red Wizard 🪄@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Haha this comment is keeping it real. That’s a good point. I’ve never looked into a plexshare before. I’ll have to look it up.

      • KidsTryThisAtHome@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        There are also free ones, BUT they’re a lot harder to get into, and a lot of times don’t have as much content or aren’t managed as well. They do exist if you’re patient though, I managed to get into a pretty good one a while back.

  • nieceandtows@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    For me it’s because all these companies hate Linux for some reason. I have Amazon prime, Hulu, HBO max, and Apple TV, but they would only show sd if I’m on Linux.

  • adj16@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Yo, I already have Plex set up. I can add Pokémon and invite you if you want as long as you don’t need 99.9% uptime, I’m just some dude :)