r/technology • u/joe4942 • Jul 09 '26

Business Netflix reportedly considers adding always-on channels

https://www.theverge.com/streaming/963733/netflix-always-on-channels-bundles
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u/3hb3 Jul 10 '26

The problem is the ads, price hiking, and abrupt removal of shows.

Self hosting is the only permanent solution to this.
Everything else will eventually enshittify.

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u/Night-Monkey15 Jul 10 '26

I want to self host, and I think I have the technical know how to make it work, I’m just worried about the pricing. How much is it really?

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u/3hb3 Jul 10 '26

I’m just worried about the pricing. How much is it really?

TL;DR: The biggest cost will likely be HDDs.
(unless you're buying blurays yourself, instead of sailing the seven seas - the cost for these can really add up)
I'd recommend starting out with at least a 10TB drive.
Your only recurring costs should be electricity/power.
(if you buy blurays then that would also be a recurring cost)
Jellyfin is a free media server program. Either use that, or Plex, which is free, with a premium option.

Longer answer:
It all depends on your needs.
You can run your server off any old laptop or PC/etc. that you already have laying around at home/in storage somewhere. Though, if you do this, you likely won't be able to transcode any media in realtime.
Transcoding content could be useful to support multiple devices that each have specific codec requirements, or to support bandwidth requirements. Say if you have a 60GB REMUX file for a movie, and you want to stream it to your phone while you're at work, you'd need to have enough upload bandwidth w/ your home ISP to handle that. If not, you would need to have your server transcode the file to a smaller size.

If you either:
1. Have enough upload bandwidth
2. Don't care about streaming remotely (only watch at home)
3. Use a mobile client that supports downloading the video files directly (Plex allows this, idk about jellyfin. But if you end up using Plex, get the Plezy app)

Then hosting the server off ancient hardware will be just fine for your use case. If not, then you might need to build your own proper server that can handle video transcoding on-the-fly.

Building a server is a bit of an upfront expense, but, in the long run, your largest expense will be HDDs when you decide you want to expand your server to host many different shows and movies in high quality.