I have 16TB NAS dedicated to storing TV shows. It is just a cabinet with ryzen 2600 and no graphics card. I have installed openmediavault in it to access it via smb to other devices. I am an absolute noob in setting up a server. Please tell me how I should go on about turning it into a media consumption machine.
P. S: I usually use VLC on android and MPV on linux to consume the media.
DDNS is only required for when you want to share it with other people. For accessing your own stuff from anywhere, there’s tailscale. I set aside 30 minutes to read into it and set it up, but found myself with a working VPN between my phone and PC after just 3 minutes. And it’s completely free for this use case.
DDNS takes about the same amount of time to get running these days, something like Caddy + DuckDNS goes together pretty easy. Even for purely personal use, I use DDNS for media access and save the VPN for share access and admin work.
Either way works though.
I wouldn’t know how to access Jellyfin through tailscale on a Android tv that is not in the same network, and that wouldn’t necessarily be sharing.
I think the most relevant thing is that using DDNS implies exposing to the internet which for many self hosters is a big no no. As well if you only want one or two machines , maybe tailscale can be a very easy way to setup… I guess it boils down to the OPs needs.
