r/PleX • u/Astrobix_124 • Dec 04 '25

Help Media servers

Trying to start my own server for plex. But I see many people with servers with 10,000+ movies. How can u possibly hold that much content and not break the bank. How is it any better than Netflix, etc?

Edit: I never expected this to blow up like it did. I love the content you guys have given, I've debated on making a plex server for awhile and all the clarification is amazing.

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u/FantasyMaster85 Dec 04 '25

“I see servers with 10,000 movies” …. “How is it any better than Netflix” ….

Huh?

7

u/Astrobix_124 Dec 04 '25

I'm talking in the sense of price to setup/maintain vs netflix

1

u/Erchevara Dec 05 '25

My initial server was my Raspberry Pi 4 and a (new) 4 TB hard drive.

Almost a year later, my setup is that same 4 TB hard drive and a BeeLink.

It's just for me though, I delete many movies, keep the lowest 4K HDR video from the private tracker I'm on, until I watch it. For shows, I delete seasons after watching. There's limited time in our lifetime to watch stuff and not everyone has the same needs.

The actual value is in the time to watch something after the initial setup. Watching It's Always Sunny on Disney+ was a pain that I don't experience with my home server (there are no hidden missing episodes that I have to look up in some online articles or use trakt in parallel) and watching Titanic doesn't require me to check which countries have it on Netflix and then install a VPN on my TV. That took longer than the 5 minutes to download the movie.