Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Protip - If you like scrolling for inspiration on what to download, check out JustWatch. It's a site with clean UI that catalogues shoes across streaming platforms.

No piracy, you do that yourself with Plex and the *Arr.

Front End:

Plex

• You can have multiple users,
• tracks your progress in a series,
• gives you imdb and soundtrack info,
• metadata and cover art.
• Automatically handles discoverability - Log in with your account and it'll find your server wherever you are in the world!
• Great app support across mobile, tv, web, and desktop.
• Automatically syncs to films/tv folder(s) when new shows are downloaded.

Back end:

qBitTorrent

• Versatile and stable torrenting client.
• Can control up/download speed
• Online front end can be a lifesaver when diagnosing issues remotely.
• FOSS

Sonarr, Radarr

• Automatically discovers torrents for your chosen shows and movies, and forwards them onto torrent client.
• Can track unreleased content, downloading it as it becomes available.
• Supports user-configurable quality formats to weed out torrents that don't meet your quality or space requirements.
• Automatically searches multiple trackers - If one tracker lacks a show, it can try another!
• FOSS

Prowlarr

• Indexes thousands of known torrent trackers for all kinds of content, with sonarr/radarr-ready configs.
• Add tracker to Prowlarr and it syncs to Sonarr/Radarr clients automatically
• Add your own private trackers too with a simple interface
• FOSS

Operating System:

DietPi

• Debian-based server OS with powerful terminal interface for managing and starting your first streaming server
• Rock-solid stability of debian, paired with a curated packaging system that reduces risks of breaking configurations
• Popular services are auto-configured to align with best practices, such as Nextcloud, Plex, Sonarr etc. all installing and configuring their own databases at install
• Powerful utilities for managing disks, files, power management and other server necessities with minimal existing knowledge of the command line
• Can be set up in a day on a raspberry pi, and be streaming torrented content by the evening!
• Great support, both with hardware and software. The devs are active and helpful on github if you have problems.
• Loads of tutorials for installing every single service you could need for a piracy server, from VPNs to linking services together and accessing them remotely.
• FOSS

DNS:

freedns

• Link your IP to a friendly domain name for free.
• Like, free. I can type in my domain anywhere on earth and access my rpi server easily.
• Loads of choices available
• Just log in once every 6 months to keep the DNS listing active.

Everyone always recommends the torrent solutions, plex and the arrs, but unless it's something I'm really excited about or want in extra high quality, I find it's easier to just use the browser streaming sites. In Firefox with ublock there's no ads, it has subtitles for multiple languages loaded automatically usually, and a nice ui that shows most popular show/movies, and has a good catalogue. There's lots to choose from, I think the guide has a list, but the ones I use are:

Bflix.gg Hdtoday.cc Fmovies.to

Quick, simple and painless.

https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop/releases/

It's a torrent client with a Netflix-like interface. It hides all the torrent stuff from you and just shows movies and shows in a nice format. It downloads and plays on the fly, it also grabs subtitles as needed, you can pick 720 or 1080, and you can choose to keep or delete the stuff you watched after you're done.

Keep in mind that under the hood it's still a torrent client, so if you have trouble with that kind of thing in your country you may want to use a VPN and all that jazz.

You could install Overseerr which also integrates nicely into sonarr & radar

It doesn't have a TV app though.

I think what you want is either plex or Jellyfin which will give you a nice UI to browse your already downloaded files.

Now how do you browse new releases and figure out what you want to download? I just setup https://overseerr.dev/ to go along with sonarr, radarr, prowlarr, nzbget, transmission... it's a lot of different services but they all work well together. Now to look for new movies, I or my family goes to Overseerr to request downloads, then plex to watch.

I use jellyfin and it has a really nice ui

Kodi is what your looking for. A debrid + kodi is basically netflix with shows from around the world, in high quality, on demand.

But, it is not available on TVs as a seperate app. Companies do not like piracy, so many applications that are related to it do not make the appstores. A cheap and easy way to get Kodi would be to simply buy a Intel NUC, or a similar mini-pc.

You’re looking for Stremio / Syncler.

You could try Stremio with the Torrentio add-on, it works really well and it's simple to set up

Amassing a media library is simple enough, and software like jellyfin can pull in media info and make your media streamable on various devices with a polished UI.

However, finding good quality (in terms of merit) movies and shows is difficult.

Maybe start with movies critics or a movie discussion platform like letterboxd to see what others are watching/rating movies.

My setup:

Jellyfin for the frontend. Has apps for android, iOS, windows, android TV, bunch of other platforms as well..

Deluge as torrent downloader. It's old, but it just works without the (in my opinion) complicated configurations of qbittorrent.

Prowlarr to search a bunch of sites simultaneously for torrents.

Radarr to add movies, search them with Prowlarr and add the best torrent to deluge, eventually moving the downloaded content to Jellyfin to view.

Sonarr to do the same as Radarr but for TV shows instead.

What you need is Jellyfin, around 2-5TB (depending on your quality) and access to a private torrent tracker, usenet or DDL site.
Then you can stuff like this:

Stremio with an addon like Google Drive or Real Debrid (torrentio).

You can set up Couchmoney through trakt to get similar recommendations algorithms.

Stremio has a UI which works amazingly on TV, and should be familiar to Netflix.

FMOVIES

Streaming is the way to go.

No need to download anything and watch anywhere you have Internet with a UI comparable to any popular streaming service.

I had a lot of success with StremIO and the TorrentIO addon, that allows me to stream directly from the torrents of various sites with autoplay, IMDB, remembering where I am at and all that good stuff

So I am wondering if it's possible to have a Netflix like GUI but powered by piracy?

It's called Plex.

Check out Sonarr and Radarr to automate downloading.

Then there's tools like Ombi that work with those and Plex to allow your users to make requests that can download automatically

Use Plex, and the *arr apps along with a usenet subscription. When I add something to my watchlist in Plex, it automatically downloads. It takes a little work to set up but it's pretty seamless.

Get stremio.

I would suggest Stremio, it needs the torrentio plugin and it streams from the torrent itself. It also has playlist plugins from most commercial steaming services (netflix included) . You wont find it for Samsung tvs natively, but it works with casting.

Stremio with Real Debrid is enough for me.

Check out overseer, it's a request system that has a streaming service like UI that pairs with sonaar and radaar.

Overseerr is good. nzb360 (android app) is also good in browsing upcoming or popular movies/shows.

Setup a jellyfin server, and then you can use custom CSS options to outright make jellyfin look and function like netflix.

Example: https://github.com/Automationxperts/jellyflix

There are many more options to completely customize the look and feel. Also you can do this system wide (meaning all clients get what you set up, or you can set it up per client since its just CSS)

So you want to be able to browse films and TV shows to add to your queue?

I use NZB360 for that. It has upcoming for me to schedule, recently released and popular for me to add to sonarr or radarr.

Is that what you are looking for?

I really like Jellyseer for this. Occasionally browsing around with different filters, auto add to the arr services (which I only use for keeping track of what's currently in the cinema and what is released on streaming/bluray)

Kino.pub. it costs around £2 per month, but you get all the video content from all over the world, apps for TV and Android, multiple translations and subs, as well as 4K and HDR for some content. And you don't need to search anything manually all over the torrents and hope for quality.

It's written specifically for unraid, but given they are mainly python scripts, it may work on other systems.

Requires plex and the *arr stack.

https://www.reddit.com/r/unRAID/comments/14f2bzb/movie_churn_solution_on_plex_autogetautodelete/

I have plex and emby servers I run off my PC and it's has everything I have pirated and I can just scroll through it on my TV app. You still have to have is downloaded but otherwise it's pretty similar. I try to torrent a bunch of shoes and movies in big chunks then I have a bunch of media to go through for a while.

Try Plex its free for tv, available even for ancient smart tvs like mine (12 years old samsung)

Basically Plex. Throw in sonarr, radarr, and overseerr for automating the content acquisition.