My Story — Why I Created LODB
A warehouse worker, a collection built over years, a NAS, a lot of late nights — and a family movie-night problem that eventually became Watch Together.
It started with my own collection.
Hi, my name is Chris, and I’m the creator of LODB Media Server. I’m not a big tech CEO and I don’t have a huge development company behind me. I’m a normal guy working a 9-to-5 in a warehouse, with a passion for movies, music, technology and anime.
Over the years I built up hundreds of DVDs, Blu-rays and CDs. I started ripping them and saving them to my NAS so I could enjoy my own collection on demand instead of searching through physical cases every time.
In 2020 I started with Plex, then moved to Emby, and later discovered Jellyfin. Each one taught me something about what I liked, what I found difficult, and what I wanted my own media setup to feel like.
The movie nights that planted the Watch Together idea.
During the pandemic, when we were all stuck at home, family movie night became something special. We could not all be in the same room, but we still wanted to sit down together and watch the same film.
The way we made it work was a Skype call. Everyone would get the film ready, we would count down, press play and keep the Skype call running so we could laugh, talk and react together. When somebody paused, buffered or fell behind, the rest of us had to stop and work out where everyone was.
Those nights were genuinely great. In a difficult period, it gave us a way to feel like we were together even when we were in different homes. But the technical side always felt clumsy. We should not have needed a countdown and a separate call just to stay on the same scene.
Why I decided to build my own server.
Plex introduced me to personal media servers. Emby gave me a setup that suited me better. Jellyfin showed me the strength of an open-source community. But instead of spending forever looking for a perfect combination of features, I eventually asked myself: why don’t I try to build the server I want?
That question became LODB — Live Or Die Baby. The name reflects my love of anime, but the product itself is built around something very ordinary: people wanting a simple, private way to enjoy the media they already own.
Why there is a licence.
At first I considered making LODB completely open source. As the project grew, it became clear that maintaining the server, building client applications, running infrastructure, improving playback, testing security and supporting users all cost time and money.
The licence is intended to keep development sustainable while staying affordable to ordinary users. I still work my normal job; LODB is something I build because I care about it and want to keep making it better.