Reasons (TV/Movie) piracy is better than any paid service:
* All in one place/App/UI. Be it Plex/Jellyfin/Emby/Kodi/etc, you only have 1 app UI/UX to deal with. No more wondering "What network was that on?", "Wait, it's on 2 services but which one has my watched status?", "What does clicking forward/back do in this App?", "How do I turn on subtitles?", etc
* Local playback. You never have to wait on your internet or deal with lower quality if something goes amiss.
* More features. Ability to download a show/movie to your iPad for travel (Yes, this has improved on the streaming platforms but is not always easy or ubiquitous)
* Access forever. If you hoard at least. You cannot find certain shows online anymore. The Daily Show or The Colbert Report are good examples. I know some people might find watching old episodes of daily news shows to be odd but I find them interesting and still humorous. All you can find is scattered clips online. Also shows that were never super popular can be impossible to find on streaming and often impossible to buy.
* No Ads. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
* Tech/Job improvement Aspect. This is less about piracy directly and the skills you are forced to learn to maintain an *arr+plex+UnRaid/FreeNAS/Debian/etc box.
You are correct that the cost is not cheap, I've probably sunk $5K+ into my servers but I find the process to be both informative and enjoyable.
Lastly, I would happily pay $100-150+ a month for a service that gave me all of the above (aside from server management experience). 1 App, offline/local caching, no ads, all content. But it will never happen. Netflix gave us some golden years where they had almost everything someone would want but then the content providers started to pull back their content to their own "platforms" and now it's a mess. Even things like Amazon Channels, Apple TV (no, not the device, no, not the service, the app :rolleyes:), or now even Plex (with their newest release) that attempt to serve as directory that can either play the content directly or bounce you directly into the app to play are a far cry from what you get from an only-Plex (or insert other media server) setup.
* All in one place/App/UI. Be it Plex/Jellyfin/Emby/Kodi/etc, you only have 1 app UI/UX to deal with. No more wondering "What network was that on?", "Wait, it's on 2 services but which one has my watched status?", "What does clicking forward/back do in this App?", "How do I turn on subtitles?", etc
* Local playback. You never have to wait on your internet or deal with lower quality if something goes amiss.
* More features. Ability to download a show/movie to your iPad for travel (Yes, this has improved on the streaming platforms but is not always easy or ubiquitous)
* Access forever. If you hoard at least. You cannot find certain shows online anymore. The Daily Show or The Colbert Report are good examples. I know some people might find watching old episodes of daily news shows to be odd but I find them interesting and still humorous. All you can find is scattered clips online. Also shows that were never super popular can be impossible to find on streaming and often impossible to buy.
* No Ads. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
* Tech/Job improvement Aspect. This is less about piracy directly and the skills you are forced to learn to maintain an *arr+plex+UnRaid/FreeNAS/Debian/etc box.
You are correct that the cost is not cheap, I've probably sunk $5K+ into my servers but I find the process to be both informative and enjoyable.
Lastly, I would happily pay $100-150+ a month for a service that gave me all of the above (aside from server management experience). 1 App, offline/local caching, no ads, all content. But it will never happen. Netflix gave us some golden years where they had almost everything someone would want but then the content providers started to pull back their content to their own "platforms" and now it's a mess. Even things like Amazon Channels, Apple TV (no, not the device, no, not the service, the app :rolleyes:), or now even Plex (with their newest release) that attempt to serve as directory that can either play the content directly or bounce you directly into the app to play are a far cry from what you get from an only-Plex (or insert other media server) setup.