You didn’t mention your budget. That will impact things.

If you have a closet with a rack you have a lot of options, hardware-wise. If you’ll be running this in your living room, for sake of your sanity, something like an AMD mini-PC with a small NAS for additional hosted storage via NFS would probably be your best bet.

A PC with Proxmox could do this handily. I have a cheap Ryzen 5500u mini PC hosting my Plex server, audiobookshelf, home assistant, and DLNA server (AssetUPnP). It’s only 6 core/12 thread and32GB RAM but still has resources to spare. You could totally do an 8c/16t one and throw more RAM at it.

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Edit - oh, and don’t forget that if you’re going to be hosting a public instance, you’ll need a good internet connection (with good up and down speed, generally fiber is good for that) and a public IP.

Music is easily solved.

• Qobuz store
• Bandcamp
• 7Digital
• Tidal media downloader
• Deemix

Screw streaming. Local is always better. Purchase and/or download FLAC. I’ve got nearly 1 TB of music on my NAS and my collection is regularly growing. From Qobuz and Bandcamp, anything you purchase is owned, and DRM free.

Edit - though for me as a Linux user, Qobuz has actually turned this from something perfect into a service issue. Used to be able to just download a tar of your album from them after purchase. Now you have to use their (Windows only) application downloader, or individually download each track as a single download. It’s fucking irritating. I don’t buy from them now because of it. That said, they can’t edit or alter anything I’ve previously bought and stored locally.

This is freaking awesome. Only a few years ago it was exciting to see a fusion reaction last a fraction of a second.

The Nova 3 released in late 2020, it hasn’t existed for 8 years.

You and I read a very different comment, apparently. There was nothing there saying new is bad. Maybe read it again.

No book turn animations in Neo Reader, but other apps might, like Moon+ Reader. I prefer the Boox interface and warm light, and it’s much more customizable. Also, being android based means access to alternative reading apps, and even manga.

Not sure if you can still buy the Nova line, I’ve had it since 2020. I bought the Paperwhite Signature as an “upgrade” but the Boox screen is larger, the warm light is nicer (warm orange/tan, the Kindle warm light is pee yellow).

And mine are digital, DRM stripped, stored locally, backed up to my NAS, and cloud.

Don’t be a Luddite.

I rarely use my Paperwhite Signature since I like my Boox Nova 2 more. The Kindle is mostly just for the serial now to strip DRM via Calibre.

My wife recently joked that it’s my “Kindle Paperweight.” With this announcement it’s no longer a joke. I doubt I’ll buy anymore books from Amazon.

This, for sure. Last year I had to get some x-rays and because they weren’t sure insurance would cover it, I saw something like $1600 USD out of pocket. Eventually I got $900 or so back, but it was months later. And this was on top of lab/blood work that only has limited coverage under preventative care, and often costs additional out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

Oh and dental coverage being entirely separate, without full coverage, so I pay every few years between $600 and $800 for deep cleaning (periodontal disease, and that cost is with insurance).

And my CPAP stuff being terribly covered only through DMEs that upcharge for hardware and mask equipment to the point since 2017 I’ve paid out of pocket cash or via HSA to get what I need online because that’s cheaper and less hassle.

I can afford it these days and do the needful, but all this stuff is way more complicated and expensive than most can deal with.

Actually, I’m gonna add another really simple option: Lyrion (Formerly Logitech Media Server). My wife swears by this one, supports local library, integrates with LastFM, and if you use Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, or Spotify, you can integrate your streaming service with your local library for radio mixes.

Can install it right on a laptop or PC and connect to wherever your music is (local on the machine, on a NAS, etc.). After you install it, you can access it directly via a web browser or webapp, which will make it accessible from desktop or phone.

Not necessarily overkill, you can run Plex on almost anything. I used to run it on an old NUC6 I had laying around, then upgraded to a NUC8, and more recently I setup it up as a VM on Proxmox on a Ryzen 5700u mini-PC and just reimported the DB.

Virtualizing it has been good for my purposes since now it’s running alongside AssetUPnP, AudioBookshelf, and a dockerized squeezelite setup, and I’ve another VM on the host running Home Assistant with still plenty of resources to spare. Crazy we can do that now with a “server” that literally fits in my palm.

But virtualizing it makes hardware acceleration for video transcode be I more complicated, just a heads up. I play everything native so don’t use it, but YMMV.

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Edit - Plexamp is an awesome radio/DJ player, though I generally send to a Wiim Mini, as AirPlay quality with Plexamp can be kind of ass compared to direct DLNA.

There are lots of solutions, but as others have noted, Plex with Plexamp is great.

I’d recommend getting a NAS for storage and running mirrored disks. This way you’ve got some redundancy in the event of a disk failure.

No prob. Extra tip, the router has support for guest networks. If you want to be hardcore about it, put it on a guest network where it literally can’t see any of your other devices (bear in mind, this will make the automation stuff I mentioned not viable, but I’m sure most people don’t care about that).

Can confirm, I no longer get network or ad pop ups on my LG C1.

If you have a modern router you can block WAN connections while allowing LAN connections. This is what I do and it doesn’t give me crap (and bonus, I can interface with it still with home assistant for automations).

My router is an ASUS AX5700, if it matters.

I just have my LG C1 locked down to LAN only connection, in my router settings put it on house arrest. 😂

That way it doesn’t whine about no connection and wardrive for open connections. No ads, no crap, and just works without being able to phone home.

Next “TV” Will definitely be a short throw projector or commercial display (which is the codeword for “dumb”) TV today.

The other person said to never connect to wifi, but I’d say either put it on an isolated wifi (guest network) and lock it down to LAN-only access in your router, if at all possible.

The reason being that these devices are aggressive about getting a wifi signal, and even if they can’t connect to yours, they’ll apparently search for unprotected wifi networks and connect to those to send data and phone home. Locking it down to LAN only prevents this, and isolating to a guest network means no information about other devices on your network.

It’s utterly insane we have to do this stuff. If you’re willing to spend more, there are commercial signage displays you can buy that are essentially dumb TVs, and that is pretty much the only way to get a dumb TV today (and obviously, don’t expect smart features from it).

I don’t use pi-hole currently, but have managed access via my router. My LG C1 has been locked down to LAN access only for a long time.

It’s kinds great this way. Since it has an IP it doesn’t give me any bullshit about network, but no traffic escapes the home network.

Ah thanks. I didn’t follow to the release page and just skimmed the article, should have read closer.