Interesting problem here. So I self host jellyfin, happy to share my (owned) movies with my family. Well, my mother has asked me to digitize her collection too and have me host it. Originally, fine, you give your movies to me, I host them, same thing.
However, what I didn’t bet on was the amount of garbage, terrible movies she would give me. There’s a few that are fine, but the vast majority are, well I’ll just put it bluntly, christian propaganda. I don’t think any of them are as terrible as some of the worst case, but think “My life was horrible until I found god now look and see how fulfilled I am” type propaganda - and they make for horrible plots. Left Behind with Kirk Cameron is a good example. Even removing the blatent boring christian plots - it’s just a horribly made movie. Cheap, not thought out well, and honestly I read the book decades ago, it’s a horrible adaptation too.
Not that I keep only top tier movies in my libraries, but these are, well they just bring a pit to my stomach.
What would you do in my situation? (And I’m going to go ahead and say the pure atheist comments aren’t needed, yes of course I could burn them, or dance around them, but I’m not looking to just burn the bridge between my mother and myself over a lifetime of her indoctrination and bad taste in movies). I’m more looking for generic, how do you handle your users asking you to put content you don’t find appealing on your server?
If its just for her, I don’t really care what content I host for family unless it straight up nazi/gay hate shit. New age “found christian” movies are massive yuck, but innocuous otherwise. She’s gonna consume them regardless of whether you host them or not.
Move it to its own library, make sure to rip in low quality (480p low bitrate) so you’re not spending too much disk space in her, and let it be. It’s not worth driving a rift in the family over.
Good level headed reply, I like this. Others have suggested that as well, I’ll move the crud over to her own library, then it doesn’t pollute my main library and I can hide it from the others.
Separate library for her movies, only her user can access, done.
This here OP! ☝️
Jellyfin lets you do this easily.
Just say you can’t rip them because they have godly protection;)
They’ve got strong DRM (Divine Rights Management)
I’m not entirely sure what those movies are like, and don’t want to know, but ……
My Mom watches horrible Hallmark stuff constantly. As far as I can tell, every movie has the same plot, they are low quality, etc. The thing is they are simple feel good movies for her. She finds them relaxing and gets good feelings from them, perfectly appropriate for “entertainment “.
If there is any parallel here, my point is that you don’t have to appreciate them for your Mom to. Why does it matter whether you agree with the movies or not: do you love her? Do you want to help her with entertainment that makes her feel good /relaxed/entertained?
Yeah this is the only post that I agree with so far.
To op, also have in mind that re watching movies many years later can feel a bit cringe even with great and recognized movies. People change their expectations over time and the collective aesthetics do too.
Honestly I’d be fine if it were hallmark movies. This is pure christian propaganda - very clear jabs that if you aren’t christian then you are not happy. Take the lame hallmark plots that are fine, but then add in that they finding jesus suddenly made them happy, they gave up all of their non christian friends, and renounced their old life type stuff. Face value it’s fine, but the undertone is just vile to me.
I don’t have this problem exactly, but what I would recommend is putting it in a specific separate library. You could even set it up so only your mother’s account can access it, and you never have to see it, or you could have it visible but never go to it.
Would probably do this, but also rip it in very poor quality to be sure it does not take too much space :D
Malicious compliances in action. Not that you can’t do, but this can tense up the relationship.
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I have to agree with this. It’s your mom. If she isn’t hurting you, or asking you to watch them, and you have the space and bandwidth, just do it.
You rip them and provide them to a community that will then re-dub them into something fun. Hilarity ensues.
If there are just a few movies just make a separate library or something. If there are a fuck ton of shit movies that takes up lots of time to rip or use lots of storage, just say no.
A solution would be to place these movies in a seperate Library and only give your mother access to that library, so it does not show up for you other users.
This is it. Also given the low quality of the movies production wise you can even rip them at suboptimal settings. I am sure Mom won’t care if she watches her Christian propaganda at 4k or 720p with some visual artifacts.
720p? Pfffft. 240i. Rip them in ‘2014 YouTube over 2G’ quality.
I tell people, like my friend that wanted a bunch of drivel kids stuff, that if they give me 2 hard drives I’ll set them up as their own library.
I don’t know if you can do this with Jellyfin but this is what I could do with Plex:
- create an account for her
- create a new dir for her movies
- create a new movie library called “Mom’s special” which watches this dir
- share the new library with her account
- share the rest of the libraries with her account
- drop the garbage in the special dir
In the end no one else sees Mom’s special, while your mom sees everything and Mom’s special.
You can do this with Jellyfin, exactly like your instructions.
Perfect. That checks one more requirement on my migration checklist. 🥹
I migrated from Plex to Jellyfin maybe a year and a half ago and haven’t looked back. Great user experience and works so well out of the box IMO. Good Android app, too. Works with Chromecast, too (though I’ve been trying to ditch Chromecast in favor of just a laptop connected to the TV via HDMI).
I started digitizing old home movies that were on VHS and created a “Home Movies” library for my family; none of us had watched them in ages since none of us have a VCR anymore, lol. Great mother’s/father’s day gift for one’s parent if you’ve got the time and equipment. It’s nice having the whole family able to easily stream our home movies.
For my wife, I have a separate library folder, mapped to just her account in Plex. It doesn’t appear in my library at all, so I don’t really care. Even better, I’ve spun up an Overseerr instance for her, so she can just search and auto-add anything she wants for herself.
It was a mistake to agree to that. Also I don’t see how the types of movies change a thing
Do one of the following:
- Tell your mother you’re not comfortable hosting that type of content as a non-believer.
- Lie and hand back the propaganda movies and say you couldn’t rip them to some unknown rip protecting they use and there’s not enough resources online to figure it out.
- Host the content and let your mother liver her life and don’t say anything.
I’d personally use option 1, but you do you.
- You cant host them because your heathen server catches fire every time you rip one of the movies
Whenever people ask me to put up right wing propaganda type shit I just say I can’t find it
This was gonna be my suggestion as well.
I also go in and prune the library every so often to get rid of my sister in law’s trashy reality TV shows.
I bet you’d get upset if someone pruned your trashy videogsme collection.
Is it really so hard just to let people enjoy what they enjoy without being a dick about it?
Some people just love to dictate to others, think they know best.
What I’ve learned over the years is how wrong I can be in my own ignorance, and adversarialism about my ignorance has never convinced me of anything.
Hard/humbling lessons.
