I mean… I’ll regularly go to the grocery store and see soda prices vary by 200-300% week-to-week. Sure, it’s all based around “sale” value, but it amounts to the same thing. If it’s $9 for 2 12-packs one week and then $11 for a 12-pack the next week, it isn’t an invalid markup because you had to buy 2 to get the first price.

You can always just undervolt the cpu and take out the gpu. Sure, a 1000w power supply is going to be inefficient at 20% draw, but if you already have old hardware it isn’t always cost effective to replace it just because of a higher power draw.

Also the pi is great for stuff like dns and network storage, but it’s going to struggle with transcoding as a media server. I can’t speak for the 5 from personal experience, but the 4 was completely incapable as a jellyfin/plex server. I just use an old stripped down computer for media and the pi is relegated to dns adblocking.

You could always just make separate movie/tv sections and just fill it with symlinks instead of the actual files. I don’t know how you’d automate it if you can’t get consistent metadata, but it’s easier than managing your own metadata fixes.

Yeah, that’s completely untrue… The reason we can’t just create a new youtube is the same reason there aren’t more ISPs. The infrastructure cost is too high.

You can’t just build a site that allows video uploads and playback, throw it on a Pi and release it to the world. You need scalability, and that costs money.

Maybe the end solution is a distributed system, but that’s not something you can easily sell to the average Joe that doesn’t give a shit about the “how” or “why” with Youtube, and simply wants to watch videos.

I’m not saying that Google isn’t the scum of the earth, but there is currently no feasible way to recreate what they’ve made/bought without an absolutely stupid amount of money.