I've tried a bunch of karaoke software including trials of the commercial products. So far my favorite for house parties is Karafun for Windows. You need to dig up the v2 edition. They REMOVED the ability to play your own files in the new v3.

https://www.karafun.com/karaokeplayer/

Karafun isn't perfect, it can act up if you have a large library... Even freezing or crashing. But that generally happens at startup or shutdown, not during use. Imperfect as it is, it's still the best I have found.

We do serious parties, if I could pay someone for awesome karaoke software I would totally do it, but all the commercial versions are really hateful to use. (I guess I should take another look, it's been a couple of years.)

Edit to add:

I just re-tried Kanto Karaoke, it looks so promising... But as with every app I have tried it has some usability issues that are fairly devastating, for me anyway. I think it is worth a look if you are exploring the free and affordable options, though.

If each frame in the media contains the exact 1920 × 1080 pixels ...

This image has the same number of pixels on the top and bottom half, but you can probably see the bottom half looks worse. That's what lower bitrate does. It's like turning up the compression on a jpg -- you are not getting the exact same pixels, just the exact same image size.

https://i.imgur.com/CFriCXf.png

Iä!

It's a fair cop.

I actually listen to music on Twitch a lot. I follow a handful of streamers who play music I like, and are always playing stuff that is new to me, and kindly list track IDs on the video feed.

I hear a song I like by an artist I am unfamiliar with and then guess what...? Entire discography.

I partially agree.

Reference books, with high-resolution images and diagrams, or subjects that invite constant page flipping, are great as physical objects. Most other books I prefer to have digitally. I do not need to have an object full of short stories or history lessons taking up space in my home.

I do like the feel of books and the look of a bookcase... But not as much as I like having that space for other things.

Everyone finds their own path in this, there are no wrong answers.

I once pirated a book I wrote because it was faster to download a pirate PDF than to find my original files and export a PDF myself.

It still counted as piracy because the book was owned by a company I used to own.

~~For now I am not messing with my extensions to prevent the YT message. I found that the extension Kill Sticky, which eliminates all kinds of elements that cover content, blows away the popup. So, I just dismiss the message with one click when it comes up.~~

~~Eventually the adblocker situation will improve, I hope, but for now doing it this way is only a minor inconvenience.~~

Edit to add: Well I got the "countdown" popup, and you can certainly dodge it by blowing it away with a tool that deletes overlays... but the countdown continues and then it does block the content in a new way. Other people posted that accepting the ads once resets the countdown, this did not work for me. I ended up installing my own Invidious instance since I have a Linux box on my LAN but I look forward to better anti-anti-adblock extensions.

SmartTube on Android TV still works great.

I would add SmartTube for Android TV.

https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube

I was surprised to see only one other reference to Twitch. I have found Twitch to be AMAZING for new music discovery. MOST of the time when I listen to music, it is actually through Twitch. I have many good hosts saved and checking the who's on now page is the first thing I do when I want to turn on music. And when the apocalypse comes, I have a good library myself now...

There's a catch, of course. A lot of Twitch streamers are fucking irritating! It takes time to find channels that meet my needs...

• Plays my kind of music (classic rock, 80s, industrial, darkwave, synthpop, electro, gothic rock, some dance genres like filth... to name a few). If anyone wants channel recommendations I am happy to list some.
• Ideally, the video feed clearly shows the track ID (so I know what music to grab!)
• The host isn't on mic all the time. It just kills me when I find someone playing good music with track IDs and they talk too much. The more of the video frame taken up by the DJ, and the bigger the mic, the greater the chance that they won't shut up, haha.

A good host will namedrop and raid hosts with similar taste, so once you find a couple that you like, your list of follows will expand quickly.

Here are a few more tips...

• If you follow someone on Twitch, there is a separate toggle for receiving notifications when they go live. For 95% of the people I follow, notifications are OFF. A few are so good I want notifications.
• "Alternative Player for Twitch" in the Chrome extensions is a cool alternate client that MUTES ADS. There are a few such extensions, this one has been the most reliable for me. However, for some reason it does not support taking you on a raid (that is when your channel ends and sends all the viewers to someone else).
• There is a cool alternate client for Android TV called S0undTV.
• Some Twitch hosts will put their shows on Mixcloud too, so check their details
• Even if a host does not list the track IDs for what they are playing you may have success IDing music with something like Shazaam. On-screen ID is so convenient though.
• Get to know a mass tagging tool like mp3tag, and you can RAPIDLY expand the size of your music library.
• It seems impossible to tell Twitch to not suggest channels that you are not interested in. You can spend hours trying to kill off bad recommendations but it doesn't matter. For example I do not care about game streaming or people playing live music but I CANNOT get them out of my Recommended list. You just have to learn to ignore them.

Thanks for that explanation. I have seen references to Tailscale forever and even looked at the official web site... And you explained it better than they did.

Good summary, that will help a lot of people.

I think it is worth pointing out to those that don't know that automation via the *arr apps is optional. Sure, it's great, but it's not like you need to learn that whole toolchain right away. With a good indexer, a good server, and a good download app you can get going really easily. You're just doing manual searches and clicking to download nzb files.

I have also found that having more than one indexer helps. Part of the trick is finding a few that complement each other--and then getting an invitation to register. Everyone has their own opinion on what combos are good.