I am a DevOps engineer. 🖥 For the last ten years, my home has been a construction site of physical servers, blinking racks, and the constant hum of cooling fans.
I love it. I’m passionate about the hardware and the freedom that self-hosting provides. For me, a Saturday spent configuring ZFS pools or debugging a kernel panic isn’t a chore — it’s a hobby. I’d host my own library anyway, even if it were more difficult, simply because I love the process.
I also love physical media. I still buy Blu-rays and DVDs because I trust plastic more than digital licenses. Like a bookshelf, a physical movie library is a design choice; it’s beautiful, and it says a lot about who you are. But just like my books — where I own the physical copy but do 90% of my reading on an eBook — I want a convenient way to bring my movies with me on the go. 📖
For years, I’ve had the perfect setup: my ripped library, hosted on my own iron, and streamed via a combination of Jellyfin and Tailscale. It was private, it was mine, and it was fine.
The problem was that whenever someone saw it, they wanted it. And I never knew how to help them. Whenever a friend asked if they could get the same thing, I always gave them the same four reasons why it was a “no-go” for them:
- 🛑 It’s too technical: Unless you’re willing to learn Linux, DNS, and networking just to watch a movie, you’re going to get stuck.
- 💸 It’s too expensive: A Raspberry Pi is fine to start, but once you factor in drive redundancy and hardware failure, the actual cost to build and maintain a reliable NAS is enormous.
- 🔌 The energy bill: Having a server running 24/7 in your living room isn’t free.
- 🤯 The stress: You become the IT department. You have to set up notifications for drive failures, know how to replace them correctly, and worry about data loss.
I do it because it’s my job and I love it. But I couldn’t recommend it to them.
The “Rental” Trap
The only other option for my friends was the “enshittification” of the streaming industry.
Netflix prices are rising. Commercials are being added to paid plans. Services are fighting over content ownership, meaning the movie you want to watch today might be gone tomorrow. And as someone who truly loves movies, I hate seeing brainless content pushed by algorithms to pander to people who just want “something in the background.”
I love that my library doesn’t have that noise. It contains only media I’ve actually chosen. I never get stuck in the dreaded endless scroll loop that defines the modern streaming experience.
I kept thinking: there has to be a way to get the best of both worlds. A hands-free, cloud-based storage that serves your own content, respects your privacy, but doesn’t require a degree in systems administration.
Why I called it “TimeForPopcorn”
I decided to build that “Third Path.” As for the name… it’s a pun. It started as a joke between friends, a nod to the infamous PopcornTime software from years ago. And honestly? It just stuck as I talked about it.
I’m an engineer at heart. I love building things, but I absolutely hate naming them. I’d rather optimize a streaming buffer than brainstorm a “brand identity.” But the name works in my favor: people already associate it with video, and it fits the vibe. If you’re tired of the price hikes and the privacy leaks, then it really is “Time for Popcorn.”
The Dream of Open Source
I’ve spent my life and my career built on a passion for Open Source. It has always been a dream of mine to have a project of my own that fits that ethos perfectly.
That’s why the client code for this project is Open Source. I’m not hoarding anyone’s data. I’ve designed this with a Zero-Knowledge architecture: your files are encrypted on your device before they are uploaded. I see random noise; you hold the keys.
Privacy shouldn’t be a luxury
I store and log only the bare minimum needed to keep the systems running and my debugging simple. I like being a customer — I like paying for products so I know I’m not the product — but I want this to be accessible.
I even added a “Ghost Mode” 👻 where power users can bring their own TMDB API key so I don’t even know what movie titles you’re looking up. By default the call will go through my servers, as I don’t want the average user to have to know what an API was. And of course I don’t store that information anywhere, but I could, and if my users are anything like me they’ll want the option to opt out entirely.
I also included a Free Tier (20GB) that gets the exact same privacy and encryption as everyone else. Privacy isn’t a premium feature; it’s the foundation.
The Mission
This project is for people who love movies. It’s for the curators who want to build a permanent library, not just consume a feed. It’s for the “Reluctant Admins” who want the privacy of a homelab without the hardware stress.
We are currently in Pre-Launch.
To be clear: This is not a pre-sale. I am not asking for your money until the product is live and proving its value. I am building a list of interested users who want to follow the development journey.
Be Notified: You’ll be the first to know when we go live.
Founder’s Ticket: If you are among the first 300 to register, you lock in a Lifetime -30% Discount for when we launch.
Beta Access: We will open the doors early for registered users who want to help test the system and give feedback on Discord.
If you’ve been looking for a way to take back your library from the streaming giants, I’d love to have you on board.
Join the Waitlist and let’s go back to just watching movies. 🎬
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