Over the years, I’ve experimented with a bunch of different methods for media servers, and I think I’ve finally arrived at something that works well for me. Here are the details:

The Server

An old Dell Zino HD I had lying around, running Windows 7. Pretty much any server will be sufficient, this is just the one I had available. Dell doesn’t sell micro-PCs anymore, so just choose your favourite brand that sells something small and with low power requirements. The main things you need from it are a reasonable processor (fast enough to handle transcoding a few video streams in at least realtime), and lots of HD space. I don’t bother with RAID, because I won’t be sad about losing videos that I can easily re-download (the internet is my backup service).

Downloading

I make no excuses, nor apologies for downloading movies and TV shows in a manner that some may describe as involving “copyright violation”.

If you’re in a similar position, there are plenty of BitTorrent sites that allow you register and add videos to a personal RSS feed. Most BitTorrent clients can then subscribe to that feed, and automatically download anything added to it. Some sites even allow you to subscribe to collections, so you can subscribe to a TV show at the start of the season, and automatically get new episodes as soon as they arrive.

For your BitTorrent client, there are two features you need: the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed, and the ability to automatically run a command when the download finishes. I’ve found qBittorrent to be a good option for this.

Sorting

Once a file is downloaded, you need to sort them. By using a standard file layout, you have a much easier time of loading them into your media server later. For automatically sorting your files when they download, nothing compares to the amazing FileBot, which will automatically grab info about the download from TheMovieDB or TheTVDB, and pass it onto your media server. It’s entirely scriptable, but you don’t need to worry about that, because there’s already a great script to do all this for you, called Advanced Media Server (AMC). The initial setup for this was a bit annoying, so here’s the command I use (you can tweak the file locations for your own server, and you’ll need to fix the %n if you use something other than qBittorent):

Media Server

Plex is the answer to this question. It looks great, it’ll automatically download extra information about your media, and it has really nice mobile apps for remote control. Extra features include offline syncing to your mobile device, so you can take your media when you’re flying, and Chromecast support so you can watch everything on your TV.

The Filebot command above will automatically tell Plex that a new file has arrived, which is great for if you choose to have your media stored on a NAS (Plex may not be able to automatically watch a directory on a NAS for when new files are added).

Backup

Having a local server is great for keeping a local backup of things that do matter – your photos and documents, for example. I use CrashPlan to sync my most important things to my server, so I have a copy immediately available if my laptop dies. I also use CrashPlan’s remote backup service to keep an offsite backup of everything.

Conclusion

While I’ve enjoyed figuring out how to get this all working smoothly, I’d love to be able to pay a monthly fee for an Rdio or Spotify style service, where I get the latest movies and TV shows as soon as they’re available. If you’re wondering what your next startup should be, get onto that.