Disney+ started getting strict about password sharing in Canada last year, and now it’s expanding the restriction to the US. According to The Verge, the streaming service has been sending out emails to its subscribers in the country, notifying them about a change in its terms of service. Its service agreement now states that users may not share their passwords outside of their household “unless otherwise permitted by [their] service tier,” suggesting the arrival of new subscription options in the future.
The Verge says Disney+ told subscribers that they can analyze the use of their account to “determine compliance,” though it didn’t elaborate on how its methods work exactly. “We’re adding limitations on sharing your account outside of your household, and explaining how we may assess your compliance with these limitations,” Disney+ reportedly wrote in its email. In its Service Agreement, the service describes “household” as “the collection of devices associated with [subscribers’] primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein.” The rule already applies to new subscribers, but old ones have until March 14 to feel its effects.
Oddly enough, the price hikes earlier last year were enough to move me to spend four times as much as an annual subscription for a NAS and 16TB of storage. I made digital backups of my media and set up my parents and sister’s family with Jellyfin accounts to access my media as needed. Now they can watch videos of our wedding and my niece’s dance recital from the comfort of their living rooms. All without worrying about arbitrary changes to TOS. And I’m learning about all kinds of horrible children’s shows. OTOH my niece and nephew are learning about cool things like Batman: The Animated Series and Tiny Toons.
I’ve only run into a couple small issues when it came to backing up my media, but I’ll get them sorted.
If you’re gonna waste money, you might as well waste money on something big.
It’s not a waste, it’s an investment lol
Confirmed
I’ve got… A rather large storage pool.
My media server also handles family movies, including VHS from the 80s I’ve converted and cleaned up.
Server itself is a cheap off lease dell micro I bought several years back for $125, added a $50 nvme SSD, and the igpu has been chugging along transcoding beautifully since.
Same system also runs a separate book/comic/etc service, backup DNS, a generated kid safe “channel” that is available on the media server, all my dslr photos are on there, etc, etc.
Which then for what is crucial to me gets a local and a remote backup.
At this point I’ve saved money over paying for subscriptions, and I use it for a whole lot more (so even more savings on top).
I’d like to use Jelly Fin, but it has not been a great experience for me on a Mac with an Apple TV. HDR doesn’t carry over, some videos are blocked due to music licensing or something, and the library syncing doesn’t always work. I’m not sure if it’s a Jellyfin problem, a lack of support for Mac hardware, or just my personal incompetence with this sort of thing (very likely). I managed to get Plex to work without issue, so I’m using that even if I don’t really like the UX all that much.
First off, I’m by no means even close to an expert. More of a spurt, in fact.
I tried Plex but wanted to give remote access at varying levels, which, to my understanding, requires paying for a subscription to Plex Premium or some such. Basically I wanted to be able to see my sexy home videos from anywhere, let my parents see my wedding videos and their granddaughter’s dance recital, and let my niece see her dance recital only (to painfully stretch a metaphor).
Jellyfin has it’s limits. It’s easier for my needs in part because my family has Roku, and there is a built-in app for Jellyfin on Roku devices. I have a Samsung TV and haven’t taught myself how to sideload Jellyfin into my TV. The app works great tho, so I can watch things on my phone or laptop with ease while on vacation. I probably spent a few hours teaching myself about port forwarding, VPNs, and such. I bought a Synology NAS, which simplified things quite a bit.
Anyway, I’m not at all familiar with Apple products. Nothing wrong with them, mind, I just never liked the walled garden ethos
See if the TV supports DLNA by any chance, Jellyfin does, so all you’d need would be a DLNA controller app on your phone to make one cast to the other.
Alternatively, there’s a self-hosted app called BubbleUPnP Server that can DLNA-enable (some) things without native support. I know for a fact it can do it for Google devices, maybe it can do it for Samsung too.
🤘 Hope it’s working well for y’all.
Yarr, it surely be
i dont even sub to streaming services and currently building my media server (5x 12tb drives in zfs z2) just for archival and setting up a service for some family inthe case they want to bail. aa prices fo up, people are just going to look for a diy way at some point.
I understood some of those words lol
I was toying with the idea of a home made server using an existing case and a mini atx, but then i ran across a 16TB NAS HDD for like $240 at microcenter and just decided to go the simple route, picked up a two bay Synology case and the rest is history
zfs is just a disk file system format (e.g like fat32, exfat, ntfs), z2 for laymen is basically double parity drives (drives are setup that 2 drive worth is used as data integrity, so in the case of a dead disk drive, data isnt lost and can be repaired. z2 offers 2 disks can die before recovery is finished (meaning requires 3 drives to die to actually lose data))
The great part is you own it at the end of it.
Even then, I’ve had hard drives last 10 years. But YMMV.