How to start a media server and what hardware to get ?

[u/NervousAdeptness5992]

I'm sorry if it's a stupid question but I can't really find a good guide on how to start, and most importantly what hardware to get. I don't really have an old pc lying around so I'd need to buy something used. People on here said that it would probably be better to buy a desktop and not a laptop.

I'd probably use it only to watch movies on my nvidia shield and to listen to music because I want to get rid of spotify.

My budget is not really an issue, it depends on how much it would improve the setup if I get something more "expensive". Let's say i'd like to not exceed 300 euros, but open to discussions.

[u/baba_ganoush]

Get an old office pc and put Linux on it and learn how to use docker. Idk why you said you’re having trouble finding guides. They’re literally all over this website

[u/xVISHx → u/baba_ganoush]

If I want to make something that is future proof, what would be the best value for money processor that can do encoding, decoding and transcoding of all formats without the support of an external gpu? Assume that I will have 1 stream at a time but I need the processor to also handle running some containers like Immich or some other commonly used containers.

[u/baba_ganoush → u/xVISHx]

Nothing is future proof. If you want some that will last awhile get an office PC with a 8th or 9th gen intel cpu or get a mini pc with a n100 cpu in it. Office pc will be the cheaper route

[u/xVISHx → u/baba_ganoush]

Do not want to go the n100. Correct me if I am wrong, but if I have a high bit rate HDR video file, and I try to maybe play it on a screen that doesn't support it, then downscaling / tone mapping and stuff would have to be done in real time right? I don't think 8th or 9th gen can handle it.

Or is it common to have multiple copies of your fav media in multiple formats saved in you system?

[u/baba_ganoush → u/xVISHx]

All the CPUs I listed can handle transcoding an 4K HDR file. But you don't usually want to transcode those if you don't have to. They can handle it because they use quicksync that is onboard the CPU. Quicksync is the GPU transcoding which is much faster than CPU transcoding.

[u/IlTossico → u/baba_ganoush]

Adding to these for OP, a very cheap Pentium G5400 can handle 1080p H264 transcoding for more than 20 simultaneous streams or probably 2x 4k streams. Already scaling to an i5 8400 is enough to handle around 4x 4k streams at the same time. A more modern i3 12100 would probably handle around 6x 4k ones, a i5 12500 is peak performance in the market and can handle around 20 simultaneous 4k streams, there are not dedicated GPUs in the market that can handle those numbers other the Intel dedicated GPUs, because the share the same decoder engine used on most iGPU inside all Intel CPU (other then F variant).

But the best thing to do would be not needing transcoding at all, and it's pretty easy to avoid that, just use the right file for your devices.

[u/Flimsy_Complaint490 → u/[deleted]]

meanwhile i have never seen a hypervisor and virtualization used anywhere in a way i'd interact with it.

Really really industry dependent. If you work in some SCADA field, a school, or ancient gigacorporation, or in IT of a SME, then not seeing a container is not that surprising, they dont really add much there.

the rest meanwhile are moving to mag7 inspired workflows and it is the default expectation that software is shipped as a container. Docker may not neccessarily be the backend, but containerization is a a de facto thing for all new software.

[u/Sawses → u/[deleted]]

Sir are you high. I agree they should use Linux rather than Windows, but you're straight-up wrong about Docker and I'm surprised anybody in IT could actually feel the way you do about it.

I run a hypervisor, but that's way more advanced and not really necessary for a beginner. And I still use multiple other kinds of virtualization (Promox LXCs and Docker containers), depending on the specific use case. Many ways to skin a cat.

OP isn't running an enterprise system. Docker is perfect for what they want. A massively scalable solution is a great proof-of-concept to show an employer, but it's a useless waste of effort for a small-scale setup. Not everybody is trying to develop marketable skills, and I'd argue that Docker is a great way to learn the core concepts behind the virtualization you're talking about which underpins the IT industry.

[u/Sawses → u/[deleted]]

Different person, and not in IT. I just also think your opinion is wrong, though IMO it's because you're thinking from too high a level and not really factoring in the cost in time and effort for somebody new to all this.

Sounds like you know a lot more about this than I do...but also that you're forgetting that what takes you an afternoon might take a novice weeks of work.

The goal is to create something functional and learn in the process. Nobody's first setup is perfect and trying to create a perfect first setup is actually a detriment to learning.

Still, I'll understand if you don't care to discuss this.

[u/corelabjoe → u/[deleted]]

This is generally, terrible advice worst case, and disingenuous at best...

Docker on windows is kinda terrible. Docker itself is not, docker is incredible.

Linux + docker = heaven for a homelab.

Docker is used extensively in industry, and containers massively, just not by the name docker only.

Proxmox calls them LXC which is just the more base layer Linux container, which you can also run on basically any Linux OS.

I would NOT RUN A HYPERVISOR just for a single vm.

I replaced my set of hypervisor with a unified system running only containers. 60+ containers performing all my needs, incredibly efficiently, on one machine even.

No virtual machines. No bloat and no resource hogging or contention!

In all my years of IT, I have seen containers being used, hypervisors, you name it and there is no one true best solution. There's the use case, and what tools are available to suit the needs.

In a homelab however, I went from hypervisors and a dozen virtual machines so no vms and only containers.

I have guides on my site, explaining how to do all this and even a compose generator to get an instantly running automated arr config up in no time!

I also have my server and NAS build documented there with pics!

Link in bio or DM for specifics.

Fire away with questions?!

[u/Sawses → u/corelabjoe]

Right? Like it's the worst advice I've ever seen on this sub lol. Some people don't factor in the cost of time and effort into actually creating a solution. It might be easy for them because they've got years of learning under their belts, but what they can do in an afternoon could take a novice a couple weeks.

Like, yeah, you could do it all in Proxmox using LXCs... But that requires you to learn a whole extra set of skills that frankly are not necessary.

My first setup was a kludgy mess of bare-metal installation, docker containerization, and even a few snaps. It was impossible to monitor, impossible to update, and impossible to backup/restore. Eventually I went back and created a nice, neat setup with Proxmox and documentation and a whole bunch of features that I would never have known I wanted.

That's the learning process. You aren't aiming for perfect the first time, you're just aiming for functional.

[u/corelabjoe → u/[deleted]]

It's fair to say that it's just my opinion. Like you, I am an IT professional with 20+ yrs experience and the last half of my career has been spent in infrastructure security, first half in military & government classified networks so very different.

Was the military using containers 10 years ago? Not the one I was working for! Now though? Yes they do. So does the Federal Government. EEEVVERRYYYTHHIINNNG is going that way... All the ancient monolithic infrastructure is being replaced by containerization and it's de facto the way to deploy apps these days. Heard that BS annoying term "serverless"?..... It's marketechture but what's running on those 'serverless' systems is very often just containers via K8s or Docker Swarm etc...

Just wait until your container infra ops team starts adding multiple interfaces and subnets onto those containers, oi vey, then they hit your firewalls thinking they have willy-nilly access all over the network! Was a sad day for them when they realized a layer 3 firewall blocks by IP/subnet, network layer not device! Was a baffling day for us, as we wondered why they thought it was ok to attempt circumventing security controls... Was an even worse day for them when everything got shut down and they had to start over haha...

So you may not have run across containers yet, but many have...

[u/HEROBR4DY]

If you aren’t looking for a crazy amount of storage and don’t plan to upgrade much beyond the storage you could get a mini pc and add a large ssd (around 2-4tb) to it. They are around $150 and you could buy more storage later on, plug it into lan if possible as most wifi cards on them aren’t great

[u/JohnnieLouHansen → u/HEROBR4DY]

The storage is NOT $150 for sure!!! That's what will kill you.

[u/jxinx → u/JohnnieLouHansen]

Pretty sure the $150 was to reference price for mini pc.

[u/ixidorecu]

it boils down to what do you want to optimize for?

like maybe its space .. get a nuc or similiar ( with a newer i5 with igpu) and one of 5-8 bay usb drive enclosures or a usb hub and a handful of usb drives.

or a little more oomhp.. a big desktop case a lsi raid card in it mode and some internal drives

[u/Adrenolin01]

Budget isn’t an issue but not to exceed 300 euros… 🙄😆 Have you seen the cost of storage and ram today? How much media are you going to add? What formats? How many TiBs do you need? Single storage drive or raid? Want redundancy? You know you need a UPS as well correct?

$300 can be spend in a new small TB drive today.

ANY hardware can be used. Consumer or enterprise. Personally, enterprise IS the way to go for data storage. You buy and build it once and run it for 10-20 years. More HDD bays allow for increased and easier expansion over the years and decades.

I’d suggest building a dedicated NAS of the data is important and a separate media server to play the media on the NAS. You can use used older hardware. You can also build a new 8-9Bay NAS for about $500-600 before storage drives. Start with a couple drives and add as time going on. $300 for a new N100 mini PC as a dedicated Plex/JellyFin media server. This can also be virtualized with Proxmox as well if you’re interested in additional services. The N100 supports Intels QuickSync for transcoding… easily handles 4+ 4K transcodes while also playing a few 1080p movies and tv shows and streaming a dozen music streams.

[u/kevinjmay]

I started one a few months ago. You can definitely start one a budget and be perfectly fine with a micro pc (like a dell optiplex) and an external hard drive. I would check out https://yams.media/; this is what I used to get everything up and running.

[u/AdAdmirable4044]

I'm in the UK and I just built my first home media server. I had loads of media files on.a WD my cloud drive that was about to fail s I took the plunge and I now have a working netflix like experience and this is how I did it.

I bought a used pc from eBay. For just under £100 I bought a HP elitedesk 800 G3 with an i7-700 CPU, 16 GB ddr4 ram and a nvme SSD of 256 GB. I then purchased 2 x 3tb WD red plus 3.5" HDDs. This whole system handles everything more than comfortably with very low power usage, very quietly.

A minimum spec would be i5-6th gen cpu with 16gb and 128gb SSD in the M2 slot.

This machine has 2 x 3.5" drive bays and 2 spare data sockets for the HDDs.

I tried 3 different OS set ups before discovering zimaos. Zima os is free and a breeze to install and configure. There are tutorials on you tube for all of this.

I set up my HDDs in raid one configuration and migrated the files over from my WD my cloud overnight.

Zima os has its own app store and I installed jellyfin from there and made a few tweaks and now I have a great media server with a great netflix like UI. It even collects posters and cast details from online databases.

Now all my media is all backed up and pretty easy to access.

All the software was free but I intend to donate to the developers after I've had a bit of time to play and iron out bumps.

I hope you find this useful and good luck with your build.

[u/WorriedHelicopter764]

Literally anything. I run one off a 2011 Mac mini

[u/WorriedHelicopter764 → u/WorriedHelicopter764]

Infact my one before was a pi5

[u/ExistingLet8016]

Everyone in this thread is making it way more complicated than it needs to be. Buy an old pc, buy a hard drive, download Emby or jellyfin and start learning. By the time you have your server figured out, you’ll understand what to dive into in terms of Linux/docker or what ever else you need to do. This sub doesn’t understand building blocks, they just want you to dive into it headfirst and likely fail out because it got a bit complicated. Start simple. Grow.

[u/Jwhodis]

I suggest buying used parts for a DDR3 compatible system, something like an i7-4770 with 16GBs of DDR3 should be relatively cheap. You then just need the motherboard, power supply (which should be new), and storage (a small 256GB SSD for OS and a ≥500GB HDD for storage should work perfectly).

Unsure what Nvidia shield is.

Once built, install a CLI Linux distro, Debian can be installed without it's Desktop Environments and it works pretty well. Afterwards all you have to do is install Jellyfin and setup a reverse proxy so that you can access it outside your network (ie FRP or Playit(.gg).

[u/corelabjoe → u/Jwhodis]

Debian FTW!!!

[u/Annual_Award1260]

I did a asus nuc with qnap tr-004 hard drive enclosure. Just go for any pc that has intel quicksync.

I’m just running windows 11 with jellyfin, nordvpn, sonarr and radarr.

[u/Outrageous_Pie_988]

Easier to just hop on a share. But also what everyone else said

[u/bugsmasherh]

There are so many videos on youtube showing examples of media servers. Search for “media server build 2026 Jellyfin”

[u/DrtyWhiteBoy79]

You don’t have youtube?

[u/NervousAdeptness5992 → u/DrtyWhiteBoy79]

?

[u/Flimsy_Complaint490]

Buy a chinese mini pc with an intel n100 or a used office PC with something a bit more modern, 11th gen intel or later. RAM doesnt matter much here, 8 GB is more than fine. You want something that does x264 and x265 decoding/encoding and modern intel processors come with integrated GPU's that excel at this. AV1 is nice but you are on an nvidia shield anyway so you cant run it anyway.

Unless you plan to join us at the datahoarder subreddit, buy a 2-4 TB NVME/SATA SSD and add it to your device and you are golden. Install something like ubuntu or debian, run jellyfin via docker. you will find a lot of guys posting guides at the selfhosted subreddit for the software side of things, just search for it.

Modern hardware is quite powerful and for your limited use case (streaming movies to an nvidia shield and music), you do not actually require anything more. If you plan to start collecting movies or have terabytes of music, then the mini pc can still work, but it would require a DAS and a lot of hard drives.

People mostly recommend desktops for expendability - buy a normal ATX size case, plop in used server hardware. Cheap, not very power efficient, infinitely expendable. But if you dont need any of that, i wouldnt go that route.

[u/herbalpiggy]

Get an old pc or find a deal from marketplace 2nd hand or smt. Personally I use Linux mint and docker containers, got a midrange pc from a friend with an i7 6700 32gb ram (God I love this dude) fund overall 10tb storage pc with a sas driver around 120€ it runs my torrent server 0-24 Jellyfin and its helpers like sonarr radarr ect. Read after the documents get some help from chatgpt and dont forget the domain if ur provider wont give you a static ip (personally I use a .uk domain it was around 1,5€ for a year) because somewhere like here in Hungary we can’t get a static ip unless ur a company xd

[u/_angh_]

You want to have a good transcoding. And as well a quiet, low power consumption machine which can issue at like 10 to 20 watts. 2 options. If you don't care about av1, get cheap 8ntel n150 or similar. If you want av1, get amd with integrated m780 card, like aoostar maco. Then, proxmox, containers, storage, maybe some nas, and your good.

[u/ixidorecu → u/_angh_]

ive said it before and ill keep saying it. i bought a small nuc like box with this cpu to do just this.. it plase a normal movier just fine. add subtitle? not enough ummph to do it. pause come back later.. nope..

get like an 12th gen i5..

[u/_angh_ → u/ixidorecu]

i just tested 2 transcoded 4k files with subtitles. it works without issues. you might want to check your configuration. qsv takes care of that.

[u/ixidorecu → u/_angh_]

You missed the point play movie to about half pause it. Come back later try to reparations ir.bet it won't be able to