Building a NAS if your comfortable with it is the better option, better hardware/cost generally then pre-built synology (the benefit is really they are the ones responsible for managing the experience). Once you have the case/hardware, you can toss TrueNAS on it.

Personally, I have one machine setup as a NAS, one machine as a router running VyOS (virtualized on proxmox) with core services, then a few extra machines for things like jellyfin, etc.

I have most of the pokemon collection, you can find a lot of the seasons on ebay and rip them once you get the disks. There are several auto ripping scripts out there (personally made my own, pass through the dvd/blu-ray drive and auto detect media type).

I don’t have to worry about a company just not providing video service anymore for some licensing issue or something

I used plex for like a decade. I loved it. It had all the features i would ever need. A year ago i tried out an open source media server called Jellyfin and was blown away. It was so easy i started digitizing my library again. I use makemkv to backup the bluerays (it handles multiple audio streams too), and handbrake to reencode them to a streaming format. If you encode the movies into a streaming format, there’s mo need to re-encode when serving them, thereby saving a lot of provessing.

Would 100% go JellyFin vs Plex, also toss in some sonarr/radarr automation and organization. Everyone should have some kinda media streaming server, even if its just kept in house.

100% agreed on the advice to just start going with it on your current setup. That’s exactly how I started out with Plex and it worked really well.

I’ve since made upgrades, but it’s all been incremental based on what has been helpful at the time. For instance, I got an Nvidia Shield Pro and started running Plex on that, which has been nice since I don’t need to keep my desktop on all the time. I also use it for streaming games from my desktop to the TV, so it’s not purely just for Plex.

After building up a lot of media, I got a bit concerned about having a single point of failure in my single HDD, so that’s when I got a Synology NAS box and I have their RAID setup going for redundancy. I could also just run Plex from the NAS box and I’ve been considering it, but I’ve been really happy with how things are working right now, so I’m not messing with it.

There is also Kodi if you don’t want to host something.

But I have to admit, I don’t know if I’m using it wrong, but Kodi lacks very basic features. I don’t know why there’s still newer version being released and still no historic section by default. Irritating stuff like that makes me wonder if I should just host jellyfin. I don’t really watch stuff often.

Does Plex have a plugin for Archive.org content?

A close friend of mine has a Plex server, and set it up for the exact same reason lol - he’s got a ~5 year old whose TV interests of just a handful of different franchise span like 100 streaming services.

Dude said ‘fuck that noise’ and set sail.

Kinda awesome that a key driving force for piracy is just parents placating their toddlers, lol.

Jellyfin, not Plex ;)

I’m using Jellyfin on a cheapo dell sff from shopgoodwill website. I hear you on the fragmented children’s content. The kids stuff was a big motivation to set it up.

find a paid plexshare. Cheaper than Netflix, has everything, no weekends wasted on being a devops

p.s. sorry I didn’t look where I’m posting. I’ma open notselfhosted

For Pokemon specifically I can recommend pokeflix.tv. I think there are all seasons on there.

I pretty much followed these guides. I’ve completely cut the cord and streaming services. I just go to my Overseer page and click what I want and it automatically sends it to sonarr, a few minutes later shows up on my plex.

Im pretty sure you could watch it all on 9anime.to

With a plex server youre still going to have to find and download it all no? I just set up an old sff mini PC to stream fmovies and 9anime, go pretty much everything id want to watch, isnt anything ive wanted that i havent been able to find yet.

Dooooo ittttt!

Edit: Forgot to add the useful comment.

Honestly if you’re just starting out, straight up use your existing computer, plug that HDD in, load her up and just follow the instructions or a guide to set it up. Wait to see how much you use it before spending cash.

A recommendation however: Due to how Pokemon is and how Plex’s two available metadata sources (TVDB and TMDB) categorize and lay the show out differently, make sure when you are getting the episodes in Plex that you have the TV show matched to TMDB (TheMovieDataBase), not TVDB (TheTVDataBase). Both have the show, but TVDB lumps a lot of the later seasons/series together, whereas TMDB will keep them separate as the correct seasons.

For me it’s because all these companies hate Linux for some reason. I have Amazon prime, Hulu, HBO max, and Apple TV, but they would only show sd if I’m on Linux.