How does one get a NAS without spending an arm and leg these days? I started pirating because I was broke, I don’t have triple digits to spend on hardware.
An old PC with a bunch of hard drives (they shouldn't be NAS drives necessarily) + TrueNas. The main cost will be the hard drives which is about 20$/TB
If you don’t need to download it, there’s himovies.sx. There used to be option to download, but maybe they had some issues with that.
Does this website use public torrenting in the background to give the files or do they host the actual file? I'm asking because if former is the case, a leak in VPN, will reveal your real IP to other peers (including copyright trolls). I know kill-switch but that is not completely safe and binding client is not possible when using such websites if they use torrent protocol.
Revanced is your new friend.
If you are concerned about privacy, don't use Plex or any other software which use central servers to collect your data. They can literally see where you click on the screen, let alone what kind of hosting you use. Jellyfin on the other hand is open source and don't phone home. Also if a software is free, it doesn't mean it was easy to create it in the first place. So please consider donation or support the project.