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Considerations
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Why building a mediaserver?
My personal reasons were already stated in the previous chapter, but let's look at it from a more neutral perspective.
The advantages of a self-hosted media server would be:
- You don't have to subscribe and pay monthly
- You don't need to check what's allowed and prohibited by their terms of service (flashback Netflix's "Love is sharing a password")
- You get the media you like all in one place
A self-hosted media server does not only have advantages. Here are some disadvantages:
- You need to maintain the infrastructure
- You need to find time to get and organize new media
- You need to pay for a fast internet and electricity
As I am a tech enthusiast, the disadvantages don't bother me and it's absolutely fine for me to go with it.
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What hardware to use?
To go with a server or rather a NAS, is hard to say. In the following table you can see some points you need to mention. Based on that, it will probably help you decide.
The scalability advantage was crucial for me to go with a server. But if you want to go with a NAS, there are many good vendors (QNAP, Synology) which makes it really easy and fast to set up. And from what I've read, the upper class for a home media server would probably be Asustor.
When buying a NAS, check if it is recommended for streaming as not all products are designed for media transcoding. If that is the bottleneck of your setup, you won't be happy with it.
Even if you don't go with a server, you should check out the storage information on the components page: https://avalon.christianrybovic.ch/hardware/components/#storage
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What software to use?
There are many applications out there. We will compare here the most popular.
As of version 3.5.3, Emby has been relicensed and is now closed-source. I am not a big fan of this change. And due to GPL violations and a lack of respect for the FLOSS philosophy and ethos, I won't recommend anybody to use or buy it.