Hey folks! How’s it going? I’m SCOPEDD, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about how you can get into self-hosting your own private Netflix (and more!) alternative.

At face value, this sounds difficult. You’re most likely wondering, “How the hell am I going to run my own NETFLIX?!?!” and that’s exactly what I’m going to discuss in this little article today. To start this off, let’s preface what we’ll be using. The key part of this is a capable PC, which luckily doesn’t need to be much. Most modern iGPUs are more than enough for this. Another thing that’s handy, is storage space. Storage space gets out of hand quickly, I’ve been using 4TB for the past year or so, but I’m starting to get to the point that I really need to 2-3x my storage capacity ASAP.

Example Hardware:

iGPU (10th Gen Intel) or Dedicated Graphics (NVIDIA 10 Series+)

2TB+ of Storage Capacity (Not needed, but definitely going to be wanted)

Internet Connection, which isn’t NECESSARY, but will help with acquiring & serving media.

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Now that we’ve covered hardware, let’s get into software. Personally I run everything manually. I download Torrent files, run them through Real Debrid, and direct download them to my Jellyfin Server, but let’s talk more about this. Your media server can get to a point that it’s either fully-automated, or it’s a second-job. I personally like the second-job approach more, as I get to personally curate & modify what is in my library. I can name almost any movie, show or song I have off the top of my head at this point, since I didn’t just automate everything and let it fly, but, for the sake of our crash course, let’s talk about everything you can do with this.

My media server of choice is Jellyfin. There is also Emby, Plex, and others, but Jellyfin is (in my opinion) the easiest to use, it’s open source, and it’s fully free. No subscriptions, purchases, nothing. Just download, point it to media folders & run. Another nice thing about Jellyfin is it’s got a ton of Plugins, Extensions & External Tools.

Let’s layout all of the possible software, with it’s uses here:

Jellyfin – This is your main media server, this is what you will use to watch & listen to your media.

Jellyseerr – This is a requesting platform built off of Overseerr. This allows you to request media & those requests will go to Sonarr / Radarr & handled from there.

Wizarr – This is (personally) the best Inviting software I’ve used. This is great if you want to invite family or friends to your Jellyfin server, with a full walkthrough built-in.

Sonarr – This will be your TV Shows manager. This uses Indexers from Prowlarr to pull torrent files from all over the internet & automatically send them to your torrent manager of choice.

Radarr – This is going to do the same thing Sonarr does, but for movies.

Prowlarr – This will index all of your important torrent files & help Radarr & Sonarr find where the media you want is on the web.

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Now that we’ve talked software, let’s explain how it all works. Everything here is ran through IPs & Ports. It can be tedious, luckily most of these have Windows native services (Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, Jellyfin) but for those that don’t (Jellyseerr & Wizarr) they have to be ran through Docker. Which can still be done on Windows, using Docker Desktop. (I personally hate Docker Desktop, and bought a $100 Mini PC to run these services.)

With this setup, you can already get far. You can setup damn-near an identical Netflix clone, with little to no hiccups.

Useful Information

• You can set this up in varying ways. There’s tons of different ways people have ran automated media servers. I personally, lean towards using Real Debrid for all of my downloading, but if you choose to use a VPN, I personally recommend Windscribe with a Datacenter IP (If I remember correctly, it’s about $50/yr, aka, more expensive than Real Debrid)
• There are ways to implement Real Debrid in an automated setup, RDT-Client can be used as a fill-in for qBittorrent.
• For acquiring media, I rely heavily on YTS(.)MX and TPB(.)Party. These two will get you everything you need. Be careful still though, as some downloads may not be what you’re looking for. YTS is specifically movies, and TPB I use for TV Shows. Music can be found using SQUID WTF. Look it up for more info.

Ending Statement

I will say, this is one of the best things I ever got myself into. The only things I pay for nowadays are YouTube Premium (luckily free via family plan), Real-Debrid, and my VPS. A grand total of ~$65/yr. Please, keep in mind, getting into this is a slippery slope. I currently have about 8 concurrent users & that has caused performance issues, even on a 4070 Super. I’ve used roughly 4TB of HDD space & am looking at a roughly $900 storage upgrade. Just to store more media.

Anyways, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading this. If you’ve made it to this point, and you still don’t understand somethings, I’m sorry, please feel free to contact me on Discord @scopedd, or on X @sc0p3dd. I’ll be more than happy to help!