Prices are rising across Netflix, Spotify, and their peers, and more people are quietly returning to the oldest playbook of the internet: piracy. Is the golden age of streaming over?
Prices are rising across Netflix, Spotify, and their peers, and more people are quietly returning to the oldest playbook of the internet: piracy. Is the golden age of streaming over?
maybe I’ve been living under a rock but I don’t get all this emphasis on hosting. What’s wrong with having a file on your device that you just play when you want to
That is the smallest scale of self hosting. The server and the client are the same device. It is also the most insecure way as you probably don’t have any backups and very limited storage space.
Actually self hosting is the next step when you decide you want 5+ TB of data and have it automatically create backups. Digital storage media degrade pretty quickly and if you just have your movies on a hard drive in your computer, after 5-10 years you might start to lose quality or some files completely.
Wait… That’s a thing? You can lose video quality off a video file on a HD over time?
You do have the file on a device… On a server, and you can play it on any client you like
Self-hosting allows you to have all your files on all your devices, like many have used to with the streaming services. Also, some smart TVs specifically require to connect to some server to grab movies from.
If you don’t need any of that, regular hard drive will suit you best.
For me, it’s a matter of restoring the convenience and UX that you’ve given up by leaving the big providers.