For some people, having downloaded movie collection that available at any time is better. Especially if it's not a blockbuster movies, like indie movie, documentaries, or very old movies that not available on streaming platforms. For me, watching these movies shouldn't be any harder than streaming from Netflix.
My watching set up is on a smart TV in my living room. This is where all of my streaming app lives, from Netflix, Youtube, Disney+ and others. The old way of watching the downloaded movies would be to watch in on a laptop and plug in via HDMI cable to my TV, or store the files in HDD and plug it to the TV. I feel like there's a much more elegant solution to this.
Meet Raspberry Pi, a single board computer in a credit card size. This is basically a computer, just like my laptop, but small and low power consumption. It means that I can use it as a server and use it as a media server. You can plug in a mini HDMI cabel and use it with a monitor like a regular computer, or if you prefer lightweight OS like me you can install the headless version of Raspbian and access everything from the terminal using SSH.
The first step is to install media server software on this Pi. I choose Plex for the server. It's reliable and have a beautiful interface. It's available for most operating system out there, including the operating system that I installed in my Pi, Raspbian.
You can follow this step-by-step guide for installing Plex on a Raspberry Pi.
Next step is to add my movies to the library, it's a straightforward process. In my case I have the movies on a SSD connected via USB to my Pi. The server then will scan for any movie files and it will also find the metadata online, including posters and subtitles!
That's it for the set up and we're ready to enjoy the movies! The server will broadcast to all devices in the local network at my home and make it available to play on any device, including my TV. I've downloaded the Plex app on my TV and all the movies that sits on my SSD connected to my Pi is now available on my TV.
Now everytime I add new movie to the SSD, the server will scan it and it will show on Plex app on my TV. To make it even easier, I set up bit torrent client and SMB server on the Pi. This allows me to download movies directly to the SSD via Pi. I can also browse the files on the SSD from my computer or phone because it's available on the network using SMB.
