One of the issues these solve is the shear capacity to look through thousands of results from dozens of indexers all at once to choose the best match, in the sense of actually being what you wanted to watch, being in the quality you were looking for, and being readily available to download (has many seeds/is available on usenet, was recently uploaded, etc). As humans, we can only process so much before we just say ‘fuck it’ and pick something.
The other is keeping your library(s) up to date. Often when I searched for something, maybe recently released, maybe older but just uncommon; I can’t find a copy at all, the ones I do find aren’t downloading (no seeds), or maybe they’re just in lower quality than I’d have liked.
The arr stack will monitor each piece of media in your library that you tell them too; they will then ingest the rss feeds from your indexers, as well as perform occasional searches directly, looking for new uploads that match media you are looking for. If you don’t already have a copy, or the newly found one is better than what you already have, it’ll automatically download it and replace the older copy if it does indeed turn out to be better once acquired and verified.
This is fantastic for monitoring shows that are actively airing new episodes, or adding movies/shows that haven’t actually released yet, to be grabbed automatically once available. You can also choose whether it allows cam-rips/telesyncs or if it should wait for a digital release (ie wait till its out of theaters). There’s quite a lot of control over quality settings and what should/should not be accepted. (there’s also recycling bin settings for keeping things they delete until you manually permanently delete them)
Genuinely a life changing experience. Ombi and its request interface is just a cherry on top :)
I run my own unraid server with Plex, and have seen for what must be years people talk about the -arr stack to people who know the -arr stack, and none of it answers “what actually makes it worth all the trouble to understand and set up?” The features you describe are probably bullet points in a list somewhere, but it’s great to hear how they combine to actually save time and attention.
I did the manual way for years as well.
One of the issues these solve is the shear capacity to look through thousands of results from dozens of indexers all at once to choose the best match, in the sense of actually being what you wanted to watch, being in the quality you were looking for, and being readily available to download (has many seeds/is available on usenet, was recently uploaded, etc). As humans, we can only process so much before we just say ‘fuck it’ and pick something.
The other is keeping your library(s) up to date. Often when I searched for something, maybe recently released, maybe older but just uncommon; I can’t find a copy at all, the ones I do find aren’t downloading (no seeds), or maybe they’re just in lower quality than I’d have liked.
The arr stack will monitor each piece of media in your library that you tell them too; they will then ingest the rss feeds from your indexers, as well as perform occasional searches directly, looking for new uploads that match media you are looking for. If you don’t already have a copy, or the newly found one is better than what you already have, it’ll automatically download it and replace the older copy if it does indeed turn out to be better once acquired and verified.
This is fantastic for monitoring shows that are actively airing new episodes, or adding movies/shows that haven’t actually released yet, to be grabbed automatically once available. You can also choose whether it allows cam-rips/telesyncs or if it should wait for a digital release (ie wait till its out of theaters). There’s quite a lot of control over quality settings and what should/should not be accepted. (there’s also recycling bin settings for keeping things they delete until you manually permanently delete them)
Genuinely a life changing experience. Ombi and its request interface is just a cherry on top :)
This is such a helpful comment.
I run my own unraid server with Plex, and have seen for what must be years people talk about the -arr stack to people who know the -arr stack, and none of it answers “what actually makes it worth all the trouble to understand and set up?” The features you describe are probably bullet points in a list somewhere, but it’s great to hear how they combine to actually save time and attention.
Is it possible to use all the arr services on windows? I couldn’t find a way and I won’t be able to switch to a dedicated Linux server for a while.
Yup, that’s where mine are running.
https://radarr.video/#downloads-v3-windows
https://sonarr.tv/#download
(indexer manager) https://prowlarr.com/#download
Absolutely, I run Radarr, Sonarr and Overseerr on a Windows box. Same machine runs Plex. It works seamlessly.