I started pirating movies again after a decade

I wish streaming companies would take notes from Spotify. It’s not too expensive, non-exclusive, acceptable quality even on higher end gear.
Doesn’t shove idiotic recommendations on my face, doesn’t bug me about my address, doesn’t randomly drop in quality because my neighbour is taking a piss. Looking at you, Netflix, you expensive useless piece of shit.
(I’m fact, Spotify’s recommendations are so good that I’m constantly finding new stuff I actually like.)
- Personally I find the recommendations really bad lol, I never stray outside of my library or playlists. I find music looking at artists I like then seeing other songs they wrote, or search what I hear playing in the world around me, or what I'm watching.
  
  I use an AI playlist creator called songslikex.com which builds a Spotify playlist based on one song. Think it's better than Spotify recommendations and I have found a few new artists that I really like with it.
- It‘s probably going to be the other way around if anything, Spotify eventually doing various moves worsening the experience in an effort for more money. It‘s surprising how long it is holding out (and I‘m still using and enjoying it too), but ever since I learned about Enshittification, I‘m expecting it to worsen eventually.
  
  3 companies own like 90% of all music copyrights and they are getting a fucking sweet deal from Spotify.
  Artists are starting to get screwed and it's only a matter of time before they come for the customers.
  Buy CDs, use Bandcamp, install Nicotine+ (preferably in that order)
  
  Oh it’s gonna enshittify, that’s for sure. It just hasn’t yet.
- The "exclusive content war" already started with podcasts. Wait a few years and let's say Miley Cyrus will sign an exclusive contract with Apple Music and there you have it.
- My spotify recommends are hilarious. I played a track white noise that went for like 6 hours. Spotify recommended ai has all white noise tracks ignoring music choices.

Expanding from just torrents - I highly recommend looking into usenet! Downside, you have to pay for a good indexer. You can get a one time purchase depending on what site you go to, mine is ~$80 per year. After that, set up your nzb/Usenet download client (I recommend sabnzb, these are all free), then you can troll through that for movies, tv, etc like a torrent site. Generally it's more reliable, and if you find something on there you can download it and it'll max out your download speed (if you let it) instead of getting single seeder torrents that get stalled.
Want to get (slightly) techier but much better? Get Radarr for movies, Sonarr for TV shows, lidarr for music, and readarr for books. (There's also whisparr for porn, mylar3 for comics, Bazarr for subtitles and others, but I haven't felt a need to run these yet) Basically you can find movies, tv, etc that you want and "monitor" them, and let the program do the rest. They scan multiple sources (Usenet and torrent sites) that you setup for the content you want, compare it to filters you put in place (quality, number of seeders, age, number of other downloads, etc) and download it for you. New movie that isn't hd yet? It can grab a webrip or lower def version for you, and automatically replace it with a 1080p version when it's available. You can also grab prowlarr to manage your indexers (nzb site torrent sites) across all of your apps so you have one source of truth.
My setup:
Indexers in prowlarr Nzbgeek (paid, mentioned above) 1337x Pirate bay (Some other misc torrent sites)
Download clients Qbittorrent (for torrents) Sabnzb (for usenet)
Frontend apps Radarr - movie manager Sonarr - tv manager Readarr - book manager Lidarr - music manager - no longer use, switched to paying for Tidal Plex - media server to aggregate and stream the video files from above Calibre - media server for ebooks only
I may be a pirate, but I do it with class and comfort.
- Add Nzb360 to this and your pirate life will truly be class
  
  Or LunaSea on iOS
- Comfort is so easy. I'v only started using Plex, which is not much effort at all, but it gives so much comfort. My subtitles are always in sync now!
- What did you use as your music manager before Tidal?
  
  I used lidarr for getting and maintaining the music, and Plex for streaming it. I switched to tidal since the effort of individually selecting songs/albums to download before I could listen to them was far more than the $9/month cost of streaming the music. If you don't like expanding your music library then downloading it is fine (like if you only listen to a few artists and it doesn't change) but my taste in music changes with my mood so I was having to download classic rock, blues and jazz, pop, and classical. Steaming is just a hell of a lot easier than downloading, at least for discovering new music
- Do you have a good guide for setting up your qbittorrent with the arrs? Ive had NZBget working flawlessly for about a year now but haven't had the time/focus to figure out the right way to handle the torrent side of things.
  
  I didn't use a guide actually, but here are the steps!
  Get qbittorrent configured for normal use (up/down limit, root folder, etc
  Enable the webui in qbittorrent. Once done, you should be able to access it at localhost:{port} from your browser, or from {host_ip}.{port} from any other device on your network
  Add qbittorrent as a download client for your arr apps just like your nzb downloader (but selecting torrent). I can't remember if you have to do this individually or if prowlarr can handle it, I think prowlarr can handle it so you don't have to do it multiple times though.
  Pass in localhost or the IP of the host machine and the port when you're setting it up so it knows where to connect it. You may also need the username and password you made (unless you use bypass on localhost or whitelisted ips)
  And that's about it! It will submit the torrent downloads to qbittorrent for you and manage them like sabnzb/nzbget do for nzb.
  Hope this helps! It is a super easy process to setup thankfully, if you run into any roadblocks that a basic Google can't solve I'd be happy to try to help

1337x is my favorite right now for TV/movies and Nyaa for anime. Between that and Usenet, I can get 99.5% of what I want.
I use qbittorent and Sabnzb for downloads.
Since you've been out of the piracy game for awhile you may consider looking into *arr apps (radarr, sonarr, prowlarr, etc). They can auto download movies/tv you want and format them in a way that Plex/Jellyfin like, so you can get a whole library of content with just a few clicks. There's a bit of a learning curve to the setup though.
- What do you find on Usenet thats not on torrents?
  
  It's not so much that I can't find things on torrents, it's that I don't have to worry about something not having seeders so it's more reliable for old uploads. In addition I've found it to be better for single episodes, multiple release groups that I use seem to only use Usenet.
  As for things that aren't movies/tv, I think Usenet is better for slightly more obscure content, such as comic books.
  
  I think it depends on the country and language content. If i want german movies, i dont find them on torrents.
  Torrents are kind of risky here and usenet seems to be far safer. So a lot of uploaders use OCHs or Usenet.

Only way to watch good quality content on Linux is pirating. So, fuck 'em media houses. Imma sail my ship to the high seas!
- Seriously, I pay for streaming services and Blu Rays and still wind up just pirating the stuff I already own half the time because that's somehow more convenient...
  
  Same here. Subscribed to some streaming services because my family members use them. For me, it's simply much faster and more convenient to pirate. It's not helped by the fact that the stuff I watch are more often than not unavailable on any streaming platform.

I would suggest getting a seedbox and joining a private torrent site like torrentleech. That’s what I use and then upload to my NAS that runs Plex and can view from anywhere on any device.
- How do you join a private site?
  Aren't they all invite only?
  
  You can visit this site and they show which private trackers have open signups. You can also buy an invite to certain private trackers. https://www.invitescene.com/forum/34-open-trackers/
  
  That is the definition of private tracker, yeah. Doesn't require much work to join some entry level ones though, and is worth it. Keen an eye out for open signups.
  
  Some, like torrentleech, do open invites on a regular basis. But most do not and you'll need an invite to get in
- I tried private trackers a while back (namely for music with what.cd) and it really wasn't worth it. the stuff they had on there was all just stuff you could find anywhere. and they're so tryhard about ratio that you really couldn't download anything. and any attempts to seed just resulted in larger/faster seedboxes doing the work most of the time.

I'd be fine with a minimal streaming service and being able to rent shit I want to watch but rental streaming prices are fucking ridiculous. It is $20 to rent Fast X. It is only $25 to "buy" it. One that is not still in theaters is still $6 to rent. And if it is ancient, it is $4 to rent. When I was a wee lad, in the early 2000s, it was $3 to rent a new release and $1 for old movies. That required a storefront and an employee. Shit should not have gone up in price 100% and 300% respectively. General inflation has not gone up nearly that much and more efficient tech is supposed to make things cheaper.
So fuck all that. I'll pay for Disney because I have a kid. But they are starting to remove shit so it is likely I will be dropping that sometime in the future.
- I pay a few bucks a month for access to a giant plex share.
  It's worth it to just, watch stuff, basically anything, instead of fiddling around with different apps and subscriptions and all that.
  I'd happily pay a lot more for the same legal service, but it doesn't exist.
  Studios, if you want my money, make everything available in one spot for a reasonable price. Or, continue your bastardization of everything, and I'll just keep watching your stuff anyway.
  
  How does this work? I'm still new here :s
- and you dont technically "own" it if you purchase it. You just have right to access it. ridiculous.

I think a lot of us are in the same boat. The early days of Spotify and Netflix killed piracy for me.
- Convenience and a fair price? Not on my watch! - Greedy corporate assholes
  
  I'd honestly be willing to spend $30-$60 a month for 2012 netflix. It's the content loss that really killed things for me. Stupid-ass copyright holders.

Streaming services are bound and determined to make themselves Cable TV all over again. We had it good for a little while, at least.
- Streaming services shouldn't be able to have exclusive rights to content similar to the way cinemas work. That way they would have to focus on making a decent service, which honestly most of them are pretty shit atm.
  
  It all should be like radio. Report what you play and pay for it based on your viewers.
- At least with cable TV you can get the highest tear subscription with all the channels. With streaming services you have to subscribe to a decent bunch just to have a broad variety of content, resulting in a much higher price than any cable TV subscription.
  It's a disaster.
  
  Cable cost well over $100 a month many years ago when I cancelled it. And 1/3 of the content is commercials.
  Pretty sure you could subscribe to every major streaming service for less than that. And as long as you avoid Hulu, you won't see commercials.
  Things are WAY better now, even though it was better a little while ago when there was just Netflix.
  
  True!

If you are into self hosting, I suggest you look into unraid, from there look at sonnar/radarr/libarr (tv/movies/music), run these in radar as dockers. I recommend looking a spaceinvaders videos on YouTube to get you started.
These three dockers will help with automating your torrent downloads.
Once you get comfortable with this I would suggest looking into seedboxes to host your download clients outside of your local network. And I would also suggest looking into nzb downloads to help pull more content. There are some excellent nzb sites to sign up for.
- Everything you just said went over my head. Can you clarify what you are describing? Or simplify it?
  
  The arr apps such as sonarr (TV), radarr (movies), lidarr (music), readarr (books), etc automate the search, download and organization of content. So for TV you go into sonarr add a show you like such as Friends and say you want all episodes, or just new episodes, setup the quality you want and it will monitor the torrent sites or your Usenet you added and download the content when it is available. It takes a bit of time to setup but once you do it a few times it becomes easier and all the arr apps have a similar interface, settings and setup. There's a good wiki out there if you search "servarr".
  Edit to add: unraid is an OS you can use for virtual machines and containers. I personally use proxmox, but windows will work, probably less efficient, if you're comfortable with it.
  
  Same. I have no idea what's going on rn lol. I just use justchill or ee3 to stream and if I really like something I'll torrent it from yts to keep it. That's about as complex as my system gets
- This is what I do. I have a truenas server and it runs docker containers for couch potato, medusa, transmission, and plex. When shows are released they just show up in plex as if it were Netflix. Easy. No red tape on finding out which streaming service etc. It will just arrive all in one place. Best of all there's a good app to manage it all from your phone. Nzb360

Been torrenting all through with 1337x and yts.mx despite paying for Netflix. The occasional piratebay for more obscure movies. RARBG was my favorite tracker, but sadly, they are no more.
Luckily I live in China where nobody bothers about copyright laws, so I can max out my 1gbit connection that costs me 2 full dollars a month 🙃
- a rarbg copycat group popped up here: https://therarbg.com/ not quite the same but I figure it's worth following and using as a drop-in replacement for rarbg.
  
  Did you grab the rarbg database of magnets that’s floating around?
  
  Ah nice, thanks a lot!

Very similar situation here. Around 2017/2018 I had Netflix and Prime Video. I was able to watch 95% of the content I wanted to watch and only had to download some obscure 90's SciFi series they didn't have.
But the industry had to fuck it up and create too many platforms. We have Netflix, Prime, Disney+, HBO, Paramount Plus, Apple TV+ and many more. I am not subscribing to your service because one or two titles might interest me. It's way too much cost for a lot less value I had in 2018.
I even wanted to make an exception for Apple TV+ because their series are absolutely amazing. But they force you to buy an expensive Apple device to watch the content in 4K on the Safari Browser. Go fuck yourself, Apple. It's not even a technical issue, because they play the trailers in 4K but then switch to 480p with a terrible bitrate.
Don't go to the big media outlets and start crying that piracy is too damn high if you make it more inconvenient to watch your programs legally than just downloading an MKV file from somewhere.
- It's like the old cable tv days where you had to get hundreds of useless channels and multiple packages and pay a fortune just to get the 3 channels you actually want.

Even when I subbed to netflix, I still downloaded what I enjoyed.
I like having an offline copy of my media.
- Online content always seems to provide sub-par quality, even on good connections. Don't need to worry about that with downloaded media.
  
  Plus, if the internet goes down for whatever reason? External HDD > Laptop > HDMI > TV. Boom. Offline Netflix.
  It's also nice for traveling and staying in hotels. Most hotel TVs have at least one accessible HDMI port, and that's all you need.

I stopped paying for services because of the ease of not having to jump between different apps on the Roku to watch various movies. Locally hosting my content had simplified everything for the whole family.

I feel like I must be the only person in the world still still using Piratebay! I switch between that and Kickass Torrents and have done for years. They've been through a variety of guises but seem to have settled down now. I use Tixati to leech and seed, never used a VPN and never had any trouble from my ISPs. It's been interesting reading the comments though, might look at some of the suggestions.
- once in a while when i download a disney movie, it triggers an email from the isp. i payed the fee tho so they need to shut up, in canada there's a tax, or was, on blank cd's that went to the entertainment industry to compensate for pirating. they charged me so i feel entitled to sail on.

Too many shitty streaming services. Just pay for a reliable VPN and torrent to your heart content. I'm using qbittorrent and transmission.
- I have surf shark vpn. Are they reliable or who do you recommend?
  
  Surfshark is okay for torrenting but I don't really trust surfshark when it comes to my sensitive info.

- Same here. I was actually pretty okay with just going with Netflix and then maybe HBO. But then every one of their mothers has their own streaming service.
  Back to the salty seas for me
  
  I think the phrase you were looking for was "everyone and their mothers" 😅

I still buy CDs for the highest possible bitrate and album art. That's how willing I am to pay for content.
I started torrenting movies again about a month ago. This shit is ridiculous. They made the situation absurd. I paid until it turned stupid again.
- CD's are 16 bit, 44kHz, and can not go higher. There are higher mediums, tho I agree with your sentiment.
  I use Musi and it has everything for free (I have no spotify) and acts like youtube red. No account needed. One ad if u don't pay.
  
  24/192 rips from a half inch tape are the way to go.
  You don't do anything with those though without a DAC that can play that without downsampling and an operating system with a sensible sound service.
  And the right genre and good ears.
  Going back to my Steely Dan collection ->
- Good sound quality but shame about the loudness and compression on a lot of CD releases of the last 15 years or so though.

Plex shares solved my streaming need and negated my laziness and hatred of downloading files to a penstock for my ps4.
£5 for everything I could ever need with a netflix like interface, and if for whatever reason something isn’t on…it’s obtained and visible to watch. Bliss!

- Thank you, I needed this! Now I need to get these set up

- I finally got a plan for real debrid and Jesus Christ, it is really a game changer
- Ever since I did this, I haven't been able to go back. Never thought I'd be technically paying (albeit cheap) for piracy but it's just really that convenient.

I feel you. I said heck it and cancelled them when I entered the adulthood in which you're exclusively surrounded by people who are pissed about your existence unless you give them money. Paying for things you cannot physically touch has become a rich thing for me, among with grave service, licensing and censorship issues. To truly watch everything I'd have to subscribe to more than one and get into a VPN.
Just Fmovies suffices and I particulary appreciate their subtitle feature, being a foreigner.
Spotify? You might like ViMusic over at F-Droid.
- ViMusic looks a well put together app, I'm gonna check it out!
  
  Also InnerTune just released version 0.5 which is very nice, it's a bit more like the YouTube Music app than ViMusic is.

welcome back, still using 1337x now

https://torrentgalaxy.to/ is a public tracker that has some decent stuff.
https://torrentleech.org is a good private tracker that has frequent open invites. All their boxsets are freeleech so it's pretty easy to build up a good ratio

Shit, I never stopped.

I just use illicit streaming sites nowadays, I wish I could afford more physical storage but I don't really wanna hold onto every TV show I consume anyways. Way to go though, fuck these vastly overpriced subscription models!
- I've been using flixhq.to which is add-free and I've been pretty happy with it!
  
  that's great to know, these are all the sites I'm aware of atm: https://watcha.movie/ https://fmovies.to/ https://ww8.0123movie.net/ https://www.wcostream.org/ and https://anix.to/

I relate so much to your situation.
I was a subscriber of Netflix, HBO, Disney+ and Apple TV+.
Started to look at alternatives and ended up with a Real Debrid subscription coupled with Stremio and Torrentio.
It’s been smooth sailing for me.

Qbittorrent has search engines as plugins, just google it and choose which ones you want

I see a lot of mixed people between piracy and paying for streaming services.
Streamio + Torrentio
Plex/Jellyfin etc + Real Debrid
Starr stack (not for everyone)
I use a starr stack with custom scripts and shell out more money then if I just payed for services.
For those that don’t want to dive super deep into piracy and want good access to content. Use the Streamio + Torrentio or Real Debrid they’re honestly great and make things easy.
- Idk if I would use whatever this debrid is. You can easily accomplish torrenting trackers and what not via either biglybt or any other torrent client that allows I2P, or you can use a vpn, etc.
  I don’t understand all this hype lately for downloaders, they look and few exactly like crap ware and malware used to come bundled in - what’s the benefit to using a “downloader” over using a setup with torrenting, plex, private trackers and maybe an *arr product like sonarr?
  
  When you use a debrid service with Stremio, you do not need to use a VPN, and you are less hindered by a devices ability to understand torrent content. It makes it easy to stream in your browser, for instance. Even on your phone.
  
  You don’t need to know about bittorrent or set things up as much no VPN either needed and it’s easy to understand. I used it only for a week though personally and thought it was good.
  I’m picky though and wanted ZR releases and everything very specific so I opted into a complete starr stack and plex on a dedi server.
  
  With some clients and addons + debrid, you can set up a Netflix/HBO clone, with no downloads necessary and instant streaming. You just browse the shows (it automatically downloads info and images form Trakt, TVDB, etc.), select play and it plays just like any streaming site.
  Depending on the jurisdiction it's also legal to stream video, while downloading or torrenting is not.

Been pirating movies for many years. At the beggining it was PirateBay, then kickass torrents, now it is a combination of 1337x and torrentgalaxy
- rip rarbg
  
  Rarbg torrents are still out there, try rarbg.best
  
  Like losing a childhood friend... Anything you've found similar out there?

It feels as though we are moving back towards cable with all the different services and none of them are really anything to brag about anymore. I canceled my Netflix when they raised the prices and stated they would end password sharing. I then canceled my HBOMax when they started pulling content I liked to watch and I had already previously canceled my Hulu account since they really didn't have anything worth watching. Now I am down to Amazon, Paramount+ (as it is free with WalMart+), and Crunchyroll and I rather like have less choices as it gives me the push to go do something else besides watch TV.

Got caught torrenting a decade ago by my ISP and haven’t since.
PIA for a vpn good enough to hop back in?
- I've been using PIA for torrenting for several years with no trouble.
  
  Cool! Thanks you
- What happened when they caught you?
  
  Very angry letter home threatening legal action that definitely pissed off my parents (I was in high school at the time)
  Did not help that it was an adult movie that got me caught and this was apparent because the bastards included the movie title in the letter lmao
  
  when i got caught like 15 years ago all they did was send a letter in the mail asking that delete the downloaded game as if they would have any way of knowing if i actually did or not lol. I had a vpn but didn’t know about binding it to the downloader
- I've used PIA for over ten years with no issues.
  
  Cool! Thanks you
- PIA was bought out by Kape Technologies which has a sketchy history of running malicious man-in-the-middle attacks for profit. Up to you if you think that's a dealbreaker or not, but I'd recommend Mullvad instead.
  
  They passed a third party audit of their No logs policy in June of 2022 so although Kape is a concern I’ve been keeping a close eye on it. Performance has still been great across my devices (iPad, iOS, windows, MacBook) and so until I see a change from my side or some more concerning news about it comes out I’ve been happy with it.
- Lemme guess, Germany? Es ist verboten!
- To be honest, I have been always using NordVPN, never had any issues with them. Torrenting like a beast 😂
  Probably there are other, cheaper and better, VPNs.
  
  How does that affect your speeds?

Less likely to get the episodes out of order by pirating than by watching Netflix nowadays.
It just seems like they don't care anymore.
- And the subtitles can sometimes be out of sync or even out of their corresponding chapter!

I’m curling up to a movie right now on Hooplah & last night watched one on Kanopy, two streaming services I get free with my library card.

Welcome back to the seven seas, matey! We have been saving a spot in Davy Jones' locker for ye!
- ... for ye Oh no kanye west, AGAIN!

I started using illegal streams last year after also getting tired paying out of the ass for multiple streaming services. Now I pay only for Spotify and Crunchyroll, and HBO when House of the Dragon starts airing (then I cancel when that's over). Movie/show companies turning online streaming back into cable over greed don't realize they're biting their own faces off. I may pay for Netflix again for the final Stranger Things season, but I won't be keeping it afterwards.
Oh, and if an anime isn't on Crunchyroll, it gets torrented.
Also the constant canceling/dropping shows and movies is maddening and is only pissing people off more.
- Yep, pretty much same here. I cut it down to just Spotify and Crunchyroll, and now just Crunchyroll then torrenting/usenet if it's not on Crunchyroll.

Not only the hassle of too many competing services, it's the fact the buggers drop things all the time. Went to rewatch Enders Game the other night after reading the book and could I find it on any of the services I pay for? Nope (it used to be there), they wanted more money for it. Fk you, off to real-debrid, it's like they want to force us back again.

If you want to share those downloads in an easy netflix-like way you should consider a small homeserver with Jellyfin. Even a newer raspberry pi is strong enough for streaming to 2 or maybe 3 people at the same time, unless files need transcoding to different codecs.
- That combined with the servarr docker containers beats any streaming service hands down

I finally got this all setup but I really just use plex and then I2P to source and download content with/from via biglybt and an I2P setup and manually select my torrents and let em download overnight (raspberry pi setup so it’s not disruptive)
Next up I’ll be looking into sonarr or maybe just whipping up or borrowing a Python script to facilitate searching for and init the magnet links for bigly

I only pay for Netflix because it was the first one that offered a good experience with streaming in my country, but for everything else I torrent.
- Doesn't matter what country I'm in. They keep shutting down access to my always-on vpn. I will simply download the content if they literally don't let me have it when i pay.

I haven’t torrented in ages but I also don’t pay for streaming. You can literally stream any movie or show online for free. Just use a search other than Google, I use Yandex for this purpose. Just search for the title and voila. The only catch is you won’t find 4k quality, only 1080p.
- The no 4K is kind of a big catch

I cancelled Nowtv because it added adverts and you have to pay extra for 1080 which is ridiculous.
So I started watching some of their stuff on Beetv... Then I started looking at my other streaming services.
I stopped torrenting because streaming services made it more convenient. It no longer is.

I use FMHY. It's a listing of a bunch of sources.

I'm currently using "Torrent Search Revolution" on my phone, and it is so easy! Is searches a bunch of sites at one (you can remove sites from the site-search list, not sure about adding to it though). The only downside, so far, is you don't get any extras you'd get from going to the site- no comments, no still-frames for QC. You gotta know exactly what your looking for.
Edit- I forgot, you asked for sites! Primary - Torrentday Secondary - tpb, 1337x, YTS, eztv, ext, magnet.dl, nyaa, cloudtorrents (the aforementioned app searches all of these)

It's so bad, that I've gone almost a decade without watching a movie outside of public television.

Man, I've been thinking about doing the same thing. I was just talking with my wife about how nice it was when you basically had Hulu and/or Netflix.
What's really pissing me off is having Disney/Hulu/ESPN as one account - that used to be called cable and I fucking hated it.

Been using PIA for over ten years with no issues.

I am finally getting around to cutting the cord here in a month (Xfinity raising my prices another 40$ a month). I have a Plex server on a WD myCloud, and am ripping DVD's left and right. I need to start hunting for a decent VPN, and site to pull torrents from.

~~YTS is good for movies.~~
YTS is bad for movies, it turns out.
- YTS is a bad choice as they made an agreement with the movies studios to turn over user data to go after pirates directly. https://torrentfreak.com/yts-operator-helped-movie-companies-catch-a-pirating-user-200817/
  
  Welp. Time to find a new website.

Me too! After paying for three subscription services and not finding anything to watch after a while, and seeing services raise prices and even add ads, I decided enough was enough.
Piracy is really good these days. 4k movies. :)

I'm in the same boat. I stopped for about 10 years and then setup a media server. Started with music and then movies TV series. Mostly using open directories which has been pretty great.

I am still using ed2k/kad network, never stopped in nearly 20 years!

I prefer much more to pay for Real Debrid even when their servers are not as perfect as Netflix or alike, they are cheaper and have all the content that you'd normally want to see.

This is why i pay for spotify, because it's so much easier than downloading and hosting music. The music industry got it right. Sign up with any music service and you'll get likely the same or very similar music libraries. But with TV and movies, there's all this fucking exclusive shit. They can eat shit if they think I'm gonna pay more for streaming than fucking cable/pay TV. Fuck that shit.

I pay for a seed box that is powerful enough to run a Plex server and comes with 8TB of storage for a little more than a Netflix subscription. I'll stick with that.

I never stopped 😂.
But in all seriousness I'm still languishing on janky old school public trackers too, commenting here to help me remember to read through these suggestions at a later date.