Who here owns a nas server for home media streaming?

I am thinking of getting one down the line as I have been digitizing my blu ray collection for the past month. For those who have done so, did you bought a nas serve, built your on nas server, or bought a cheap pc?

I just use my gaming pc for the task. I've considered it too, but I just have plex running and it's no big deal.

do you have computer own when you want to stream to your tv?

I just use a spare pc with a g4560 running plex. Works pretty great along with stablebit drivepool, don't see a need for a NAS unless you are very limited on space.

My computer is on most of the time. And if I turn it off, I'm not watching any movies anyways.

@TheShadowLord07:

I have QNAP branded NAS media file server and home's network backbone is 10 GBit/s.

No NAS, but I do have a media server I cobbled together from spare parts to run Plex. I had to pick up a CPU and hard drives, but I had everything else.....aside from a case, I had to get that, too.

Runs an i5-4460, 8GB DDR3, 2x 4TB WD Red HDDs and a 980Ti (built it to function as a second gaming computer should the need arise or if I just want the kids to get the hell off my computer). I had the system setup to be RAID1, but a Windows 10 Update broke the hell out of the OS and I couldn't recover/repair the OS on either drive. I wiped one drive, installed Win10 again, fully updated it, copied all the videos from the second drive over and wiped the second drive. I now let Acronis backup a couple times a week to the second drive and I disabled Windows 10 updates.

Between all my DVDs, Blu-Rays and TV series I've got around 1.25TB copied to it and I'm about 2/3 of the way through my collection.

You don't need anything fancy or high-end if you're planning on running Plex. NAS system certainly isn't required. I guess it all just depends on your needs.

I have a Franken-computer made of spare parts (old Pentium CPU, 8GB DDR3 RAM and 2 old mechanical drives plus 2 I bought) that houses my digital movies, music, and a periodic backup copy of my main computer's important documents. It has 4TB of storage, though only 2 is used right now. It runs on FreeNas, which, while kinda overly complicated in my opinion, gets the job done once set up.

The thing I like about it is that my data stays on my network only, but can still be accessed by any computer that has been granted access without accounts or passwords to remember or hassle me (though you can set up password protection). The downside is, once I leave my network, I can't get to it. Though I guess I could sign up for something like Plex for that, but I don't feel the need.

The thing just sits in the corner of my room, on 24/7. It's pretty much silent as it only has 1 200mm case fan and a passive CPU cooler. The only maintenance it needs is the front dust filter being cleaned off every now and then.

Are there no restrictions when it comes to copying blu-ray over to computers? Any simple blu-ray drive will work?

Yes any drive should work. I use makemkv to rip the blu ray discs. So far, I have filled up 50% of 8tb external hdd. Mostly because of tv seasons

I'll have to look into getting one. I got a simple NAS, however using it as a iSCSI disc at moment. Planning on switching to either to a DIY version of it or getting a 6-bay or bigger NAS and use as a iSCSI.

You just leave your files in .mkv or do you covert them to mp4?

I use MakeMKV and pull movies from my DVDs/Blu-Rays and then I use Handbrake to covert the files to .mp4.

I leave them as mkv. Converting mkv to mp4 just too much time when I'm already converting my blu ray collection into my digital library. Converting movies to mp4 from mkv is okay, but doing it for tv series is just too time-consuming

I don't find it too bad, plus I can save so much space, unless space isn't a concern for you.

Pulling a blu-ray from disk in .mkv I found the movies to be 25GB+. Having around 4 dozen blu-ray movies, that's 1,200GB of space just for them alone. Converting them to .mp4 does take a bit of time on my i5-4670k, but I find it worth it. The settings I use, converting a blu-ray .mkv file to .mp4 can be 2.5-3 hours. The end result means a video file goes from 25+GB to 2.5-6GB. So, what was roughly 1,200GB is now more along the lines of maybe 200GB.

Plus, it's easier for a couple of people that utilize Plex outside of my house to stream smaller video files considering the limited upload speed available from my home ISP (6mbps) the smaller file sizes are a blessing. Max upload I could obtain from my ISP is 10mbps, but that comes at over double the cost of my current plan and so not worth it. I find it worth the time to covert them to .mp4.

I don't find it too bad converting TV series. Psych, for example, I copied over all the episodes to my computer. I then took about 20-30 minutes to queue up every episode through Handbreak to covert them to .mp4 and let it run overnight. It only actually took about 4-5 hours, but in the morning all episodes were copied to my Plex server. I currently have around 1,700 video files (between my movies and TV series) copied over and they only take up around 1.15TB of space.

i built my own but it was pretty much based off a build i found online.

its a 5TB system running freenas.

the server is mostly used for photo and video backup but i do have plex running for streaming to my tivo / phone. i'm in the process of uploading my dvd collection but it's slow going :)