Netflix will not stop squeezing its paying customers for every penny they're worth. After years and years of price hikes, Netflix is once again raising the monthly subscription rate in the US — even for those of us who suffer through awful ads.

Nothing is stopping Netflix from raising the price, so the only way to win is to not play by its rules. Toss that abysmal monthly subscription aside, and start building your own streaming library.

This is straight from The Cable Company™️ playbook. They get you in at a low price, then slowly sneak it up bit by bit hoping you won't notice, then you have to call them and threaten to leave before they give you a "special retention price" for another year, then you do it all over again. No thanks.

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— Derek, Director of Minutiae (@derek.foggyfield.org) January 22, 2025 at 2:35 PM

Start serving

Your home computer is almost certainly capable of running a media server in the background, and that gives you plenty of options for streaming media to your TV, smartphone or tablet.

Plex is exceedingly user-friendly and has plenty of native clients for just about every device imaginable, but the free version does have a lot of limits. Thankfully, you can pay a one-time $120 fee for a lifetime Plex Pass, and never look back.

Download the server program for your operating system, follow the installation instructions, and then you can begin filling up your hard drives with media files galore.

Of course, some folks are not willing to put up with even a one-time fee, so they can opt for the open source Jellyfin platform instead. It has pretty much all of the video streaming functionality you could hope for, but it's slightly less pleasant in my experience.

Plus, there are some platforms that simply don't have a native Jellyfin client — specifically PlayStation consoles. Plex is a better option if that matters to you.

^{[Image: The Marx Brothers' film "The Cocoanuts"]}

Sourcing content online

Of course, these streaming solutions require you to bring your own content, so it's worth thinking about how you're going to start building up a library.

Assuming legality matters to you, you can always stock up on some public domain media from the Internet Archive, which are entirely free to consume. From Hitchcock to the Marx Brothers, there are some wonderful films to watch if you're into classics.

As for other online videos, it's likely possible to save a copy to your hard drive with tools like Video DownloadHelper for Firefox. It only works for videos that don't have copy protection applied, but some services will try their darnest to keep you from making a local copy.

Even worse, it could end up getting you banned from your favorite sites if it goes against their terms of service, so proceed with caution.

^{[Image: Rima Joma]}

A disc-based solution

Because so much of the world has switched to streaming, you'll find that a whole lot of discs are usually available, for very cheap, at local stores or auction sites. If you don't already have a hefty DVD or Blu-Ray collection, that's one great place to start.

Of course, the vast majority of those are going to have copy protection applied to them, so simply ripping them to your hard drive will be more than complicated.

Most importantly, it might be illegal to break encryption where you live — even if you'd otherwise have the right to make a personal back-up copy. Whatever you do, don't do anything that will get you in trouble with the law.

Assuming you have a non-encrypted disc, or you're in a jurisdiction that allows copy protection circumvention for personal backup, there are easy-to-find tools to extract the contents of the disc.

But even if you're not willing to break encryption, the analog hole is always available for those with DIY inclinations.

Regardless of how you get the original files, manipulating them afterwards shouldn't be hard. You can use free and open source encoding tools like Handbrake to produce just about any video format or file size you'd like.

Slap 'em in your server's chosen folder, and you're good to go.