If this blog has been quiet lately, it’s basically because I got really into building a Plex server for streaming my collection of movies/tv/music. It all basically kicked off because of the Bandcamp fiasco and realizing that I should probably have all this stuff backed up. I already had a few SSDs from my dad, who no longer wanted them, so I bought a docking station and started throwing stuff on there. Realizing I had a lot of room leftover, I then started ripping my entire cd collection. Seeing that I still had a ton of room after that, I’ve start putting my film and tv collection together, mostly from ripping my dvd and bluray collection, something I’ll probably be doing for quite a while.

While most of the media on my server had come from my physical collection, I was surprised at how many various places digitally I had accumulated music from. Sources include Bandcamp, Amazon, Itch, Humble, iTunes, Steam, and GOG since I listen to a lot of video game music as well. I also had some movies digitally from various kickstarters I had backed, that brief period when GOG tried selling films, as well as that period where comedians were selling DRM free specials for $5. This seems to have died out, which is a shame because I really enjoyed having DRM free movies. There aren’t really many places where you can pick up DRM free copies of films and tv shows but I did stumble across a few places like Rifftrax, Drafthouse Films, Internet Archive for public domain films, Found Footage Festival, and Vimeo.

I’m not really sure what comes next for the server. Probably buying larger hard drives, but I don’t think I’ll have a machine just for the media server since this is just for my home. It’s still been a fun project though and a nice way to revisit my physical media collection.