“Be careful what you choose. You may get it.” -Colin Powell

All the *arrs are in the same Github repo.

It’s not as relevant today as it used to be, that’s for sure. Originally it was to limit transcoding of 4K content (which used to be a lot harder), and also to avoid the HDR tone mapping issues with 4K content during transcoding, both of which are largely resolved with newer hardware and Plex software updates.

The only reason I keep them separated now is because most of the folks I share with can’t direct stream 4K content anyway, and so I only share out the 1080p libraries in Plex. It keeps bandwidth usage down and limits having to go to hardware transcoding, which can reduce quality and introduces startup delays. The library I use locally indexes both the 1080p and 4K content, so Plex will always prefer the 4K if it’s there.

If diskspace ever became an issue, I’d probably consider merging the libraries again.

You’re taking it too literally, and missing much of the nuance between philosophy of design and actual implementation details.

The movies app manages movies. That’s its one thing. No need to overcomplicate it. Unix ‘find’ for instance, finds files. That’s its one thing. ‘find’ also lets you filter the results, but that doesn’t change its purpose of finding files.

The fact that *arr apps don’t do things, or are bad at things, has nothing to do with the Unix philosophy. Were these apps combined into a monolith, the same issues would need to be addressed.

There is no right or wrong in a design philosophy. It’s all trade offs. I don’t know anyone who says Unix (or the metaverse) is successful because of a design philosophy. What matters is what you deliver.

I do wish I didn’t need to run a second Radarr instance to have both 1080p and 4K media.