Total Newb on Servers

maxw72 · March 31, 2022

Hello all, I'm hoping that I can get some help. I have searched Youtube and can't really find what I'm exactly going for so having seen some LTT content, I thought I would check here.

To start off, I'm not that technically savvy. I had seen some threads here talking about what I believe I'm trying to do but I could not understand what was going on in the forum. I can figure stuff out, but when you get into programming and such, you will probably lose me.

So what I'm trying to do is I have a Macbook Pro which I have Kodi on and an Apple TV. With kids I like to download movies via Kodi instead of streaming, that way if internet connection is bad it doesn't start buffering on them. Now I don't like having the movies stored on my Macbook because I don't want my kids messing with my Macbook or my wife having to plug in my macbook whenever they want to watch something. I have started looking into Plex but that still brings up the issue of having to have my Macbook loaded with the movies. I have started to venture down the path of looking at old desktop computers and what I'm wanting to do is download the movies via my macbook and then transfer them to the desktop, and then be able to remove them from my macbook. Would the best way of doing this be just purchasing a desktop, loading plex on it, loading plex on my Apple TV, and that's it? My current media setup is against our unfinished basement so I'm hoping that I can just have the desktop setup basically sit turned on and just constantly on to the point that I don't have to worry about it. What are your thoughts? Remember as my kids are 1 and 4, ease of getting this to work is key. I don't want my wife to have to somewhat fiddle around with it every time my kids want to watch a movie, hence the reason I'm trying to get it to just work through our Apple TV. I know that I could use a USB or External Harddrive, but the issue I have with those is that requires more front end work with making sure the file type is converted correctly. Typically when I'm downloading a movie via Kodi, it is maybe 5 minutes to download it. When I have to convert to a certain file type for my receiver, that adds a few more hours.

Anyway, thank you in advance for any help! All help is appreciated!

Needfuldoer · March 31, 2022

I think the most seamless change you can make is to just run the Kodi server on another machine. You would have to point the Apple TV client at the new server, but after that the kids shouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Thankfully, Kodi runs on just about anything, so you have plenty of options for servers. I'd suggest a used office PC, they're generally inexpensive and quiet.

This video is a good place to start:

For the OS, one option would be to run TrueNAS Scale, a Debian Linux based OS that's designed primarily as a file server. Add the "TrueCharts" application library to it, and a Kodi-compatible server is only a few clicks away. This would be best if the machine is just going to hum away in a corner. (You do all the administration through a web UI.) If you want to take it for a test drive, you can install it inside a virtual machine on your Mac inside an application like VMware or VirtualBox.

If you buy a used office PC, it will most likely come with a Windows Pro license. (It will be for 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 depending on the age of the machine, but they'll all activate Windows 10.) That's a perfectly valid option if you don't want a completely headless server, just connect to it over Remote Desktop or VNC. (That's also a more familiar environment for maintenance and updates, which could be a selling point depending on how tech savvy the adults in the situation are.)

Somewhere in between those two in ease of setup is Unraid, a $30 home server OS that's not quite as complex as TrueNAS but still based on Linux and meant to run headless. I haven't used it myself, but it also gives you more flexibility in storage expansion by using btrfs instead of ZFS. (Again, you can download the free trial version and play around with it in a VM.)

If you don't mind paying a premium for ease of use, Synology sets the standard for turn-key NAS boxes in my opinion. DiskStation Manager's web UI is as easy to use as a desktop OS, and the midrange desktop models have enough power and storage capacity for your use case. They're on the expensive side for what you get though, and skip the base models. You want one with an x86 processor and expandable memory, so you can run Docker (and a Kodi-compatible server inside it).

Bombastinator · March 31, 2022

The easy way (if perhaps not quite the cheapest) would be to buy an external drive of the size you need to hold the amount of movies you want to keep. that connects to the machine via either USB or thunderbolt and put Kodi on that. Then whenever you want to watch a movie on whatever device you connect it to the drive. If you did a server you would be able to keep adding drives as needed which is more difficult or perhaps impossible with the pre-rolled solution. You could however just buy another when the first one is full though.