You can skip all this long winded vomit....my question is.....So can I build a fairly quiet raid media server for say $500 (the price of a good capable used nas)?? I can source used stuff like case, etc. May even have a old case laying around. As opposed to snagging a good performing 4k transcoding capable nas.
I didnt want to have a PC in the living room but what I've decided to accomplish has grown so now I'm looking at either a used PC or nas. I've decided to localize all of our home videos (many) and pictures which are scattered across various computers and USB drives. Add all of our DVD's over time. Plus I have TB's of music I can incorporate (the music started it all). THEN I want to run something like Kodi that has a slick looking interface for all of it and a Plex addon for movies. I probably will also run something different for my music.
Looking at a used Qnap ts-453mini with a Celeron J3455 and 4-8gig of ram (listed by plex and reviews as a decent plex server being able to transcode several 4k movies in real time. Has hdmi and a remote. I can install Kodi/Plex from the Qnap app store. Make it have a media center feel. Then I'd probably need to run a virtual PC linux or windows to run a different music manager like JRiver or Emry unless. I can send music to my Yamaha wxc-50 via DLNA.
So can I build a raid media server for say $500 (the price of a good capable nas)?? That would be better than the nas? The nas isnt very powerful so a pretty cheap CPU would be stronger. Like I said I can get used stuff.
If custom, are there things to look for in order to ensure good clear audio via dlna or toslink? (I think dlna can handle 24/196 and optical only 24/96).
I didnt want to have a PC in the living room but what I've decided to accomplish has grown so now I'm looking at either a used PC or nas. I've decided to localize all of our home videos (many) and pictures which are scattered across various computers and USB drives. Add all of our DVD's over time. Plus I have TB's of music I can incorporate (the music started it all). THEN I want to run something like Kodi that has a slick looking interface for all of it and a Plex addon for movies. I probably will also run something different for my music.
Looking at a used Qnap ts-453mini with a Celeron J3455 and 4-8gig of ram (listed by plex and reviews as a decent plex server being able to transcode several 4k movies in real time. Has hdmi and a remote. I can install Kodi/Plex from the Qnap app store. Make it have a media center feel. Then I'd probably need to run a virtual PC linux or windows to run a different music manager like JRiver or Emry unless. I can send music to my Yamaha wxc-50 via DLNA.
So can I build a raid media server for say $500 (the price of a good capable nas)?? That would be better than the nas? The nas isnt very powerful so a pretty cheap CPU would be stronger. Like I said I can get used stuff.
If custom, are there things to look for in order to ensure good clear audio via dlna or toslink? (I think dlna can handle 24/196 and optical only 24/96).