You could say this about a lot of automation tools. A properly-functioning *arr stack is nothing more than an automation tool. Punch a movie/tv show into Overseerr, the *arrs work in the background with your downloader client (torrent or Usenet), and some time later - depending on your internet bandwidth - it appears in Plex/Jellyfin.

The convenience of the end result is worth the work.

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com -5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

No its just not that convenient for the LOE. You know what just requires punching in the title you want? Most private tracker uis. Click download and the client picks up the torrent file from your downloads folder

Fuck retrovibed has an rss feed reader and you can just click bookmark in a trackers ui and it'll download in the background.

I took one look at the arr stack and noped right the fuck out.

[–] sobchak@programming.dev 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I kinda agree. IIRC, they were originally built for downloading from newsgroups, which does need a lot of automation. Personally, I do find Sonarr useful, so I don't have to manually keep track of when new episodes come out. Before Sonarr, I used to use a tool that was configured with YAML or something, forgot what it was. I do run an *arr stack now because I have a multi-member household, and they don't want to go searching for stuff on trackers, so they just use Overseerr.

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

hehe they're clearly products of their times/ecosystems. I dont judge people for using them. I just shake my head at what people are willing to tolerate when there are far easier mechanisms to find and download. I havent had to go outside of a single tracker atm for my uses so that might be part of it.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It doesn't fit your use case then. I check missing TV episodes once a week and i never interact with it outside of that. Once you get then set up it's way more about organization than anything else.

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It doesn't fit most peoples usecases. Its why they're only used by techies. I perfectly understand the utility they provide. Im simply rejecting the premise that such utility needs to be anywhere near as complicated as those systems are to setup