What do I need? HTPC, media server, NAS?

[Typhoon]

Hope this is the right section. I have never had any sort network before. I primarily would like to be able use Plex to stream my BlueRay collection to the TVs in the house and tablets when at home and possibly away from home. And backing up pictures taken on phones.

Additionally I would like to store my images in one location and have access to them from 4 different PC in the house. Just moved in and renovated the new place so took the opportunity to wire all the rooms with Cat 5e cabling.


At the moment I back up data and pictures to a portable USB HD and 1 GB is plenty. I have about 25 BlueRay discs and 75 DVDs that I want to load up to have access on Plex. These are all still on DIsc, not stored on the PC.

My main rig is a i7 5820, 32gb ram and 980Ti. My old PC are in my kids rooms and the garage all of which have been wired up with Cat5e. I have 3 smart TV that connect to my router by wifi.

What NAS do I need? Or would I be better of with an intel NUC of some description or build a small HTPC. It would be going in the lounge. I could connect it up to the main tv in the lounge via HDMI rather than via the network and wifi if this would be beneficial. I have around £400-500 to spend.
Cheers

 

[pedromaltez]

Not exactly answering your question here, but just wondering if you've considered also that you could store all your media in cloud storage, like Google Drive, and access it via Plex Cloud (need Plex Pass at 4GBP/month). That would be more expensive in the long run I suppose but the initial cost would be much lower as all you'd need is something like a Raspberry Pi.

Because with Google G Suite for Business (6.60GBP/month/user) you basically get unlimited cloud storage, that's maybe something to consider as blurays would eat up hard drive space quite quickly, and if you plan on adding to your collection you'd have to keep adding drives to your array or buy really big and expensive drives, plus keep power consumption in mind, number of ports, etc.

I dunno, just something to consider if you haven't already.

 

[wywywywy]

Sounds to me you need a small centralised home server, which is pretty much the same price as a pre-made NAS anyway.

You can then add cheap android boxes to the TVs if required.

 

[Typhoon]

Thanks, I have decided to go for a basic NAS and move my files and pictures and movies on to it. Then decided between something like a Nvidia shield TV to or HTPC to host the Plex server.

 

[Typhoon]

A little off topic now but just to update, I bought an NAS which hosts all the media files and everything else's, I loaded The Plex server software on all 4 of the PCs in house all pointing at the files stored on the NAS - working on the assumption that at least one will powered on if I forget. I am 'Casting' the video to my TV ( using Goggle Chromecast) using my phone and iPad as remote controls. Works very well and no need for a dedicated HTPC.
No issues transcoding on the fly and watching outside the house over wifi either (5820k on the main PC).

 

[hrockh]

how about a router with pfsense?