Hello! I never used *arr stack, and was interested into it, but one thing is stopping me. I see a lot of articles like how it is Netflix (or any other ONLINE theater) replacement, but as I see it is not online. I see two big factors that stops me from trying seerr + jellyfin (and other stuff in between):
- You have two switch between those apps to search and then watch.
- You can’t watch media before it’s completely downloaded.
I imagine sitting on coach, searching for show. Then you want to watch some, and then you have to wait half an hour for full episode (or even season?) to download. And then you can realize that you not into it and have to repeat all the steps above. Is my expectation correct? Please don’t consider this as negative opinion. Just want to know what to expect. I remember an app called “popcorn time” that does not have that flaws.
Your expectation is absolutely correct, and I often find myself looking at my current Jellyfin collection and have absolutely nothing I want to watch.
SuggestArr tries to fill this hole by automatically downloading content similar to what you already have, but I have yet to deploy it. (note that its development seems aided by LLMs and it has “AI” powered features)
Maybe jellyseerr is something for you 😇
I already use Jellyseerr (recently renamed Seerr) but it does not resolves my “what to watch?” issue.
My wife hates Jellyfin. When the whole world’s media is at her fingertips, she gets choice paralysis. She finds it easier for Netflix to serve up a small number of suggestions and just pick from there, even they’re all crap suggestions.
Ive found it so much better to disconnect from suggestion algorithms. I’m much more intentional with what I watch. I never run out of things to watch. I bookmark movies and TV shows from organic suggestions from friends, family and Lemmy, or from podcasts, critic reviews, my followed YouTube channels, etc. Everything on my Jellyfin is curated content that I want to watch.
To help combat this I’ve created numerous collections in Plex based on commonly shared traits like genre, actors, directors, release decade, holidays and placed these collections at the top of my library. You can even find artwork for all this stuff on The Poster DB. I also make sure to put sequels into their own collections and separate animated TV/movies from all the live action stuff (four separate libraries) to further reduce the wall of choices.
I find the suggestions on Seerr not always very relevant, but it definitely functions as a “what to watch?” service for my needs.