Picture this. You are a big fan of food. You absolutely love it. All kinds. A connoisseur one might say. One of your favorite foods of ALL TIME are Paninis. You love them. Cant get enough of quality paninis.
Alright, stay with me.
One day, you are going along your merry way and find this lovely little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and guess what they specialize in. That’s right. PANINIS.
This amazing restaurant is a Panini heaven. They make delicious paninis that you want to return to, and taste again and again. You love this restaurant. One day, new management comes in and starts making changes. The panini restaurant decides they want to change their image. They go from making lovely paninis, and decide they want to become like Arby’s.
You are devastated. The item you came to that restaurant for is no longer on the menu. You wanted to keep tasting these delicious little paninis until you kicked the bucket. You are basically inconsolable. Now imagine you are gifted a Panini Press by your family, because they realize you are devastated by the loss of your favorite restaurant. Would you then take this Panini Press and go forth to make delicious paninis for you and your family? Or would you just suck it up and eat hot roast beef sandwiches at the rundown Sandwich Shop from now on?
I present you with this thought experiment because that is how I think of Self-hosting. I see streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu build a massive following with their diverse media libraries, only to take away shows that I may want to watch again in the near future. What if I wanted to keep eating those metaphorical Paninis? Maybe I signed up for Netflix to watch The Office? The item I signed up for is no longer available on the menu. And there is literally nothing I can do about that. This is where I take issue.
After plenty of issues like this I decided to self-host and build my own media center. Nobody can take my movies and shows away from my media server like the show ‘Friends’ was removed from Netflix. This is one of the beauties of Self-hosting. Any data that you procure, is under your control and you are not at the mercy of big companies who want to sell off favorite shows to other smaller streaming companies like Netflix did with Peacock.
With minimal effort, you can have your own Mini Netflix, and you can choose what gets added to your movie or music library. With Self-hosting the power is completely in your hands, and no company can change what movies you have access to.
All that being said, the examples I have used, really only pertain to self-hosting a media server. There is SO MUCH MORE out there. Waiting for you to discover it and create your own little Self-hosted setup, whether that be running on an old laptop, a raspberry pi, or even a full blown blade server. The important part is that you learn along the way and have fun.
Stay curious, everyone.
Greyson's Tech Blog 