I'll admit it's a bit of a pain to initially setup, but it's a one time pain. With Plex + arr services already set up, it's definitely easier to pirate than use a streaming provider.

Now, if I want to pirate, I just go to my browser, search for a movie/TV show, tell it to download, and it ensures it shows up seamlessly in Plex.

The benefits:

- Searching is easier

- One interface (Plex) vs many streaming interfaces, each with its own quirks.

- You don't have to worry that they'll take the show away while you're in the middle of Season 3.

Plex is pretty easy to set up. The arr services, though, were a royal pain. If there's some automation that sets it all up for you on your machine, though, then it would be a game changer.

I'm fairly pro-streaming services. I want the content producers to get paid when I watch. However, Apple TV's royal screwups[1] drove me to the edge and I decided to go through the painful process of figuring out all the *arr services.

If the streaming services don't make it a pain, I won't even think about pirating.

(I'll add that there was one time I pirated a Netflix show - even though I had Netflix - and the audio in the pirated version was much better than if I watched directly with Netflix. Not sure why).

[1] Locked out because I couldn't confirm the CVV of a card that I had reported lost almost a year prior. All the attempts to change the card/account failed. Even with a new account, once you'd enter an updated CC, it would tie it to my old account because it would realize I'm the same person.

I didn't just get locked out of Apple TV. I got locked out of all Apple services until that CC expired. I could not even apply for a job at Apple unless I confirmed the CVV. Thank God I don't use Apple devices!