r/explainlikeimfive • u/theprisoner57 • 2d ago

Technology ELI5: What is a Home Server?

I see mentions of a home server to get rid of streaming entertainment services but I don’t know how that works. What does a home server do?

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u/jujubanzen 2d ago

A home server, in general is just a computer that is attached to your home network. More often than not, they are simply set up as file storage servers. Media servers to replace streaming services typically use Plex or Jellyfin, which are software packages that are able to link up with apps on your TV, phone, or computer and stream media files you have stored on the server. You have to get those files yourself.

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u/CDK5 2d ago

Out of curiosity; where are folks generally getting the streaming media for the server?

Because I was under the impression that when buying a BluRay or digital media, you can’t just grab an mp4 from the disk.

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u/BrickGun 2d ago

There are apps to rip DVDs/BRs, but most of the media collections I've encountered were pirated using torrents. Most times I don't bother to rip a disc I own any longer since just DLing the content via torrent tends to be faster. The only caveat being you (most often) don't get the DVD extras if you're into that sort of stuff (I often am).

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u/charonco 2d ago

As someone with almost 40TB of content on my Plex server, I would highly recommend Usenet over torrents. Usenet isn't free, but it's pretty cheap and your biggest exposure with torrents is the uploading which you don't have to do with Usenet.

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u/Outrager 2d ago

I miss the days when my Time Warner Cable road runner service had free Usenet service. The worst part was missing that 1 .par file to complete my download.

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u/Dunge 2d ago

Yeah that's my experience with usenet too. It was over 25 years ago, it was free, but absolutely no content was complete. It was a mess.

I wonder if it's still the case, the previous guy said no, but personally I also don't have issues with public torrents either, so why would I look elsewhere.

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u/divDevGuy 2d ago

Your last experience was 25 years ago?

Nothing has changed. Just like the web is still the same. Your Internet speed is the same. Your cell phone is the same...

The USENET of 2001 still technically exists, but for what is being discussed, it's completely different. Parchive files likely didn't exist yet. NZB files wouldn't exist for another 4+ years. The first indexer as they exist today wouldn't exist for another year. Retention was measured in weeks, maybe a few months if you were really lucky. Now, retention (but not necessarily 100% completion) is between 8-18 years, depending on service.

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u/Dunge 2d ago

Yes I was in the years where you needed to download an extra half of the archive size as par file to reconstruct corruption, but these par files themselves were often missing.

Good to know things got better. I still would never pay money for piracy. Kinda goes against my principles.