Is it worth the effort setting up a NAS? Do you watch all those films you transferred from disk?

iainl7

For films, I really don't find it worth the effort to get everything in a format that both looks as good as watching the disc and will reliably play where I want it to. If you've got everything set up, however, it's a Godsend for TV stuff - if you just want to watch one episode then pulling the box off the shelf, waiting for it to load, sitting through copyright messages, dealing with the slow, tedious menus so many of them have and then getting to the screen is too much faffing.

If you don't care about the ultimate in picture quality and want convenience, then you might as well buy them from iTunes and make them available everywhere you have an AppleTV without the fuss of doing everything manually.

rustybin

I wouldn't touch iTunes personally, but between Google / Movies Anywhere / Vudu / Flixster, there's pretty much everything available with lots of bargains to be had.

I picked up Thor Ragnorok, Black Panther, Infinity War and Venom for $12 total over the weekend.

duffbeerdrinker

I would much rather keep all my media locally on a NAS.  Netflix etc are always removing movies and TV shows from their services so I have no guarantee of being able to access what I want.
Anyone who buys movies using a USA account is gambling that the provider doesn't change the access rights in the future, meaning you need a VPN or something else to watch your purchases.

Harkon321

Don't tend to buy TV series.  The only exception being GOT.  Any series I watch are via streaming services.  

It would mainly be films.  I don't see the point in compromising on quality, and want full atmos audio etc. so Apple isn't really an option at the moment.

Eddy555

Only you can answer if you'll watch films again. Personally I've found I watch films again more often as it's more convenient to fire up my Vero 4K with Kodi and browse through my collection.
Straight into the film, no waiting for the disc to load and go through previews/menus etc. Straight into the film.
Streaming services just aren't good enough for me, either from picture/audio quality or from the selection of films I'd like to watch.

It's not a cheap solution though. I see it as a long storage solution though as I can easily watch films again years down the line, especially when I've upgraded a component in my setup.

mickevh

A while ago when we were having such debates and people were "worrying" about the noise and electricity usage, I used to observe that having my media on shiny plastic discs sat on a shelf required 0 GBP electricity and and was completely silent.

But I've ripped all mine and there's something to be said for sitting in bed with my laptop watching/listening to whatever I want to without having to crawl out from under the duvet and pick the media off the self.

Some people have set this up using things like VPN's so that can access their media from anywhere on the Internet (think about going on holiday or long commutes by public transport.)

I suggest, whether it's "worth" it is a value judgement one has to make for oneself.

R-CAD

Plex is used most days in our house for Movies and TV Boxsets. We find it really convenient, although with very poor rural Broadband, Netflix and the like are not viable options.

Watching is across three screens of differing definitions and Plex just serves up what each
requires.

At the moment it's used most by our children (6 to 8) who might have 3 or 4 movies "on the deck" at any particular time and watch them time and time again.

For years we did also stream all our music via Plex, but I finally gave in and subscribed to Google Music, which is even more convenient via Google Home speakers and can just about be streamed over our Broadband.

wormvortex

RAID is for redundancy, not for backup. Do you really need redundancy in a home NAS with your films stored. Is it critical that you can watch your films 24/7 with zero downtime?

If it's not then do not bother with RAID. What you want is a simple backup plan, ideally off site to rule out the risk of fire/flood/theft at home.

TylerDurden

I've had a NAS with films and music on it for years, I've dabbled with plex but have never got it working. Tried it again recently and got it working. I can now listen to my music at work via plex (and my films as well). Another bonus is the amazon echo integration. I can get alexa to play any music /playlists from my NAS. I had some music purchased via goggle and was considering a google home mini for this, however I can now download what I need from google, transfer to my NAS and get Alexa to play it back for me.

Bl4ckGryph0n

I started this nearly 2 decades ago...There was no fast internet and broadband services. Where we live broadband only became fast enough about 2-3 years ago....Would I do it again. Hell no...

Keeper I just buy the UHD disc and play on the Oppo. Everything else is either streamed from Amazon or Netflix, or bought on Apple TV. Works so much better.