Hi everyone!
In the next year or so, my project is to rip all my blurays and put them on a 4tb external USB hard drive. I’ve already done it for all my DVDs, but I still have to buy an external bluray player in order to finish the job. My budget for the bluray player is CHF 75.- used, so around 75$. All this is done through MakeMKV.
Then, I’d want to have a small Linux PC that I’d use as a media center. My budget is under CHF 100.-, so around 100$. I’ve noticed that you can get 2014 MacMinis with i5 or i7 for that budget, but I’m open to any other brand.
What I’d want the PC to do: -Play all my movies stored on my external USB drive. I don’t think I have 4k movies, but I can’t exclude that some of my Blurays will be 4k in the future -Display my family pictures and videos stored on kDrive (a cloud by Infomaniak) through Firefox and WebDav -Play my music on my Yamaha Amplifier through Firefox and Tidal -Use the wifi for updates, browser based stuff, etc…
The PC would probably not be used for anything else for now, but it needs to be able to become a desktop PC again in the future if needed.
I’d want to operate the PC with a bluetooth mouse and only have to use a keyboard from time to time.
I’ve heard about Jellyfin, Libelec, Kodi and other stuff but I don’t really know what they are.
Thanks in advance for your advice!
My media server, which is just my server generally, is an old thinkpad I have from 2014. For media I use Jellyfin and I ensure the content is already in a format that will not require transcoding on any device I care to serve to (typically mp4 1080p hevc + aac).
If you look at the used computer market, there are endless options to attain what you are asking for. My only real advice is make sure the computer doesn’t draw much power and, if possible, doesn’t emit much or any fan noise. A laptop is a decent choice because the battery kind of serves as an uninterruptible power supply. I just cap my charge limit at 80% since I never unplug it.