Just pirate or I guess spoof your user agent, but just pirate instead: Don't give Amazon money.
or I guess spoof your user agent
That won't help. The issue is Widevine DRM protection level. It's the same issue everywhere.
Streaming services like netflix and prime helped reduce piracy to all time lows. But then corps started getting stupid again and making their own exclusive streaming services, requiring you to have 20 subscriptions just get all the same shit you had with 2. Now drm enforcement on top of that and piracy is back on the rise...
Yep, I paid for a movie and they hit me with this, so they're never getting another dime from me. What brain dead morons are responsible for restrictions like this? Is it really that hard to see what the only possible outcome is?
Jellyfin streams all my shit at whatever resolution I went out of my way to download.
whatever resolution I went out of my way to download.
Addon Radarr, Sonarr, and Ombi and you won't even have to do that.
Users make requests via Ombi, those get sent to Radarr/Sonarr to search for and download. Most stuff is ready to watch ~15min after requesting, with no interaction from the servers admin needed. (optionally, requests can require approval before downloading, that's disabled for the users I trust)
I need to get around to setting up the arr stack but I've been manually downloading torrents for over a decade now I just forget there are better solutions
I did the manual way for years as well.
One of the issues these solve is the shear capacity to look through thousands of results from dozens of indexers all at once to choose the best match, in the sense of actually being what you wanted to watch, being in the quality you were looking for, and being readily available to download (has many seeds/is available on usenet, was recently uploaded, etc). As humans, we can only process so much before we just say 'fuck it' and pick something.
The other is keeping your library(s) up to date. Often when I searched for something, maybe recently released, maybe older but just uncommon; I can't find a copy at all, the ones I do find aren't downloading (no seeds), or maybe they're just in lower quality than I'd have liked.
The arr stack will monitor each piece of media in your library that you tell them too; they will then ingest the rss feeds from your indexers, as well as perform occasional searches directly, looking for new uploads that match media you are looking for. If you don't already have a copy, or the newly found one is better than what you already have, it'll automatically download it and replace the older copy if it does indeed turn out to be better once acquired and verified.
This is fantastic for monitoring shows that are actively airing new episodes, or adding movies/shows that haven't actually released yet, to be grabbed automatically once available. You can also choose whether it allows cam-rips/telesyncs or if it should wait for a digital release (ie wait till its out of theaters). There's quite a lot of control over quality settings and what should/should not be accepted. (there's also recycling bin settings for keeping things they delete until you manually permanently delete them)
Genuinely a life changing experience. Ombi and its request interface is just a cherry on top :)
This is such a helpful comment.
I run my own unraid server with Plex, and have seen for what must be years people talk about the -arr stack to people who know the -arr stack, and none of it answers "what actually makes it worth all the trouble to understand and set up?" The features you describe are probably bullet points in a list somewhere, but it's great to hear how they combine to actually save time and attention.
I’m technically capable but all I know about is manually torrenting from public trackers without even using VPN because I got old and out of time and also like living dangerously and don’t mind getting occasionally smacked with bandwidth punishment for arrrrrrring. Usually I just use arrrr streaming. Is there a good guide to learn about the stuff you mentioned ?
I've always found the servarr wiki to be a great source of info, especially their quick start quides.
Beyond that I'd just be googling around for you really.
There's some docker compose stuff that makes it easy. I just set mine up yesterday
I found one that is a good starting point, and just updated it to match my setup.
Here it is: HMS. It's a bit overkill, but like I said, it's a good starting point. Maybe you can give it a try if you wanna.
Is it possible to use all the arr services on windows? I couldn't find a way and I won't be able to switch to a dedicated Linux server for a while.
Yup, that's where mine are running.
https://radarr.video/#downloads-v3-windows
(indexer manager) https://prowlarr.com/#download
Absolutely, I run Radarr, Sonarr and Overseerr on a Windows box. Same machine runs Plex. It works seamlessly.
Not sure how to tag users on lemmy...
Commenting here to point out my other reply to the comment you've replied to.
Nice, appreciate it, and thanks for taking the time to write out such a helpful response!
Wait, can you explain a bit more? I have Radarr and Sonarr setup to automate show downloads. What does Ombi do and how does it fit into the process?
Ombi is just an interface for your users to submit requests for new media (and report issues with existing media).
Users can search for media, getting results from thetvdb/themoviedb and just click 'request'. If they have the appropriate permissions, it'll just get sent directly to sonarr/radarr to be grabbed as if you'd added them manually. If they don't have 'auto approve' permissions, it'll sent you a notification though whatever means you've configured saying 'user x has requested y. This request requires manual approval' before sending it off to be grabbed. It'll even notify the user when something they've requested is ready to watch.
Ok so it still has to download the request fully before it can be viewed? It’s not like Stremio+Torrentio at all where you can start watching while it’s being downloaded?
No, Ombi is just a way for users to add stuff to radarr/sonarr just like you do, but in a controlled way.
Alternative to ombi is overseer which imo has the best interface. Just throwing it out there as an option.
YouTube purchases also don't work beyond 480p on any desktop except for Mac Safari. These companies are fucking insane.
And if you purchased movies from Sony instead, they will just remove them all from your account.
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Guys, relax. Cancel your amazon and Netflix subscription and download streamio and use it with torrentio or real-debrid add-in.
It's an app that can integrate with a lot of streaming services(officially) and has a built-in torrent client(that does nothing). (You know, all of this so that they can be accessible on all platforms, etc. torrenting isn't viewed kindly by platform makers) With the help of third party plugins (such as Torrentio) stremio now has access to systems where you can integrate with torrent sources so that when you browse for your movie, you can also see torrent sources and with the help of the built in torrent client, you can also stream them. Stremio has casting support and apps for all devices, even TV. It makes it really easy to watch movies easier and in better quality than any streaming service. It also keeps track where you last were in your movie so you can resume, the same thing for shows, also has many other useful extensions that streaming services don't support, such as Trakt.tv integration, or browsing curated lists of movies and shows from anywhere, as well as integrating with other sources outside of torrents such as providers holding archived materials.
What's the catch? A free app on the play store that has acceess to all premium Netflix or Amazon content would be banned directly into purgatory.
The app doesn’t have access to any of that, it can show you where you can legally access it
But if you run 3rd party plugins then you can access some illegal content
I don’t really see the point of it vs traditional piracy
People still want the streaming service experience of scrolling for 30 minutes before giving up and watching something they've already seen.
Using a torrent plugin without a debrid service has the usual torrenting issues. In some countries torrents are monitored by copyright holders, so in NA getting letters from the ISP for copyright infringement is an issue. In Germany torrentio is a great way to receive a few hundres to thousands euro fine.
By using a debrid service it's a pretty good experience (if your watching in english, as other languages are often not well represented on public trackers).
I strongly advocate this and if anyone needs help feel free to message me. Been using this for years.
Not sure I understand the question.
If you mean about getting torrents that could be viruses the way it works I don’t think that would be an issue but they might have stuff in play to make it that way.
Given the torrents nor files are ever on your computer I can’t see it being problematic. Unless it’s possible to stream a video via torrent and that torrent somehow injecting bad code in.
Though another advantage to debrid is that majority of the content is cached due to the amount of people using it. So bad torrents would very likely not stay cached long but it could be an issue with more niche content maybe?
That's your own post that you made at the same time you made this comment. You wouldn't be shilling now, would you?
Louis Rossman has done a couple videos about this and I tend to agree - Paying customers get a worse experience.
You use the official apps and real accounts and you are still subject to artificial bandwidth restrictions. You use the official YouTube app on your smart TV and you get 10+ midroll ads at unnatural places during a 12 minute video. You "own" purchased content in one platform and it can still be taken away from you or made inaccessible when a service gets collapsed into another platform or rebranded etc. I'm not going to re-buy the same fucking movie I already owned on one streaming platform and have already owned on 2 different formats of physical release.
Curating your own digital copies, regardless of how you obtain them, is the only way to guarantee quality and availability anymore.
I’m not going to re-buy the same fucking movie I already owned on one streaming platform and have already owned on 2 different formats of physical release.
This is the thing that really pisses me off.
It's like I'm not paying for the content itself, I'm paying for the media the content is on, over and over again.
Teenager-me bought a few Marvel movies through Google Movies. It was a terrible experience and I never touched them again. Iirc I later ripped them from DVD from our local library for the better viewing experience (unsupported devices).
It doesn't matter how much DRM you put into the service. someone can just spin up a Virtual Machine and install chrome, windows in it and then record the stream from the host system.
I wonder if a user agent switcher would be enough to fool them, or if they're actually using an exclusive library or something.
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In-browser DRM usually uses a library called Widevine, which is a closed-source library created by Google that's usually only used on Windows or MacOS.
On Linux, you can use Google Chrome to get Widevine working. You can also extract the library from Google Chrome to use it with Chromium (e.g. see https://github.com/proprietary/chromium-widevine). The version of Chromium shipped with Linux distros doesn't include it since you need a license and permission from Google to distribute it. Lots of Linux users would also (understandably) really not want to run a DRM binary on their system. It's intentionally obfuscated to try and prevent people from breaking it.
I don't know what other Linux browsers do - I haven't used Linux desktop for a while (going to switch back soon though). On other OSes, browsers like Firefox and Brave prompt you the first time you try to watch DRM'd content, asking if you'd like to download the plugin. I assume they license it from Google.
Also as far as I know, Widevine doesn't allow the same security/compliance levels on Linux as it does on Windows and MacOS, as the OS is less locked down. This could mean that a 4K video streaming service works fine on Windows but won't allow you to stream in 4K on Linux. Isn't DRM great???
i wouldn't count it as impossible for really cool and well-meaning businesses like the amazon fun factory to somehow detect and ban/restrict use on VMs
Sure, but the thing is: only a single person needs to break it temporarily in some way and this person can then leak the DRM free copy for everyone to consume.
That's why DRM is such bullshit. It only ever punishes legitimate users. All others are unaffected.
Seems like there is no legitimate way for you to get that content. I guess youre forced to be a pirate!
That's the case for pretty much all systems that use widevine - you can blame google for it, as they are the one that built the widevine DRM that all streaming services use
I'm in no way a Google fan boy (rather the opposite), but IMHO this is backwards.
We have a (at some levels) shits DRM because of Google providing a semi-secute DRM stack.
If you want to go full DRM, there is no way around a key store, so for most (user) linux installations unachievable.
Without widevine nobody would give a fuck about Linux DRM anyway and Netflix, Amazon and friends would be out of reach for "normal" Linux users.
That said: fuck DRM, fucking cancer.
Not just key store, since you can quite easily use a secure enclave on Linux just as on any other platform.
The key issue is the render stack. On Windows and MacOS, providers can get certain assurances that the parts of the stack that take their decoded DRM'ed content and draw it into a window, get composited with other windows, have various transforms applied, and actually get things out to an HDCP-supporting monitor are all unmodified and (at least to a certain extent) immune to screen captures and other methods of getting the plain un-encrypted media stream. Linux on the desktop almost never provides those assurances. The only ones that really do are ChromeOS and Android--and both of those provide relatively high trust DRM as a result.
DRM doesn't work in practice to prevent piracy, but if you drink that cool-aid and assume for a moment that DRM actually worked, then Linux is basically impossible to provide verified DRM content to with the current landscape in the way that Windows, MacOS, CrOS and Android/iOS do
Absolutely! You don't get the former (keys) because you can't get the later (secure render stack) as a "normal" Linux user.
That said, one thing you got technically(!!) wrong:
You can get a secured (stack) and certified (keys) Linux, if you close it up properly... Source: I worked a little bit on one of those, and yes, I'm ashamed, and yes, I'm expecting a bit of hell time for it... Was a fun task though.
Probably some DRM shit. This basically reads like "don't use the software specified here if you want to rip it, because we can only prevent it on these"
This is why even though I pay for prime, I pirate everything. It's amusing to pay for a service that your experience is better pirating than using the service you pay for.
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I pay for prime for the shipping advantages. I barely ever watch it, no way could I justify having it for just the streaming services.
Primes shipping advantages are 100% hit or miss. They no longer honor delivery estimates. In tgier efforts to save a buck, they implement private shipping companies that send your shit half way around the world and back, when your item started 100 miles away. I'd say about ~50% of my prime orders take 8-10 days when they advertise 2 days. I bitch, and they keep moving the goalpost, changing thier promises. Over and over. And, prices now are on par with so many other sellers. There is very little reason to continue using Amazon.
You have no idea how insane i went trying to figure out why clarkson farm was playing at extremely low quality, pixelated 320p on my PC before I realized Amazon just hated Linux.
320p? I've seen 540p iirc, which was already terrible. Interestingly, a Windows VM made higher resolutions available, but I didn't want to watch a (tearing) slide show either.
At least I don't have to come up with a reason to justify piracy.
Its been some time since i last had prime.
but got the free trial today doing some christmas orders.
Now it just flat out refuses to let me watch video. Demands I enable Widevine content decryption module in my browser, which I don't have.. and isnt available on firefox (at least on linux) according to the mozilla add-on page/search.
edit
had to enable drm in the preferences for the option to even show up, aaaaand with it enabled and widevine installed, its still a blurry low resolution mess. Fucking amazin.
Yes, sadly, DRM is necessary to use many streaming services, be it Spotify, Crunchyroll, or Netflix.
At least Widevine works on Linux. Without Widevine copyright holders would probably demand some Windows-/macOS-only DRM that'd be probably even worse.
Edit: Just remembering Flash gives me shudders.
Well, my point was more about Spotify and other sites which only require basic DRM.
But yeah, I also consider the quality inacceptable. It's why I bought storage for my server to start sailing the high seas with automatic downloads.
I swear to god I'm about to start doing it to.
Im a fucking customer, that is paying, or has paid, and still wont let me watch the shit.. So whats the point of giving my money?
had a lot of people offer to give me charts to the new seas, as mine are 20 years old at this point, and i am so dangerously close to finally accepting an offer.
Maybe if you fake your user agent it would think you're on Windows.
Did you mark this as NSFW because Amazon fucks those running Linux?
It's not even really better on Windows. (Nearly) all streaming services restrict resolution to 720p if you watch on a PC, mobile phone or tablet. With the exception of Netflix if you watch with Microsoft Edge or Chrome, I believe.
Netflix plays 4k on my Mac, android and ipad. I don't use prime enough but it does the same I believe.
yeah I don't run into this issue on my mac at work or at home, but i do with every windows and linux machine i try them on. I can do whateevr the fuck i want on my plex server though.....if i could only get my wife to adapt to the plex UI and the ombi requester.....
You're sure Netflix plays 4k on Android? I have Widevine L1 reported in my Android Netflix app (on my rooted Android phone thanks to Magisk and the various spoofing/root-hiding tools). But even at L1 the video is limited to 1080p. I think it may be an app platform limitation, but would love to be proven wrong.
iirc, netflix requires the os's drm and browser for 1080p and higher. safari on apple, chrome on android, edge (plus perhaps newer cpu) on windows. third-party browsers (and linux as there is no native os drm) limited to 720p.
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Netflix limits you to 720p even on windows, unless you are using Edge: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 (expand HTML5 browsers and scroll down).
This limitation doesn't apply to all content - it's the worst case scenario if copyright holder really put their foot down.
But it should work fine with the Netflix app in the microsoft store. Not that this makes it any better.
I gave up on prime video long ago for this bullshit, they're also not the only streaming to serve crap quality on linux.
We really get much better content, quality, experience, and for a cheaper price just by navigating high seas these days.
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And yet their servers are using Linux to host a subpar experience for Linux clients.
Hey Amazon, use Windows and MacOS servers (lolz) instead for HD/UHD stream hosting!
Does Apple even make servers? I've seen plenty of *NIX servers but it's usually RHEL or whatever Solaris/SunOS got Frankenstein'ed into.
Apple had server hardware more than a decade ago. It wasn't really popular altough some institutions with mainly Apple devices did use it.
And there was a macOS Server app which enabled some "server" features, altough the important ones like file sharing are now directly integrated in the OS.