Yo.
I’m new to the game. Like 2h fresh. I’m fairly technical, being a millennial and a programmer.
What I want to do, is to have a NAS server I can host movies from and watch them on my phone in my bed - or on my projector.
Extra points if I could host my ebooks and music there and run a torrent client. Extra extra points if I could connect to it from outside my home network (and stream)
I’ve read about about Plex and Jellyfin.
I’m here to ask you about hardware advice.
Will QNAP or Synology be enough for my needs and can I install custom software there? I don’t really want to create hardware from scratch.
Google says yes, but I trust reddit and random articles like I trust a fox not to eat chickens.
Prebuilt is almost always the wrong answer. That holds true in way more fields than just technology as well.
The phrase “bought versus built” comes to mind.
You can almost always build exactly what you need for less money or headache than you think.
Will you maybe spend a little more than buying some cheap one-off? Possibly. However, the best part of building it yourself is that you’ll also typically know exactly what you’ve got, and if you use off-the-shelf parts, replacements and upgrades are easier in the long run.
TCO. Total Cost of Ownership.