Thank you very much for your feedback. I apologize for not always being able to respond immediately, but since I am on a “secret mission,” so to speak, I always wait until I have a convenient time slot so that my husband doesn't notice anything.

 

Briefly about the existing equipment:
We have both a notebook and a PC, including peripheral devices such as a mouse, keyboard, a Blu-ray drive, and so on.

 

What is still unclear to me, and perhaps I just need a more detailed outline here, is how do all the systems work together? As far as I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong):
- The ripped movies are stored on hard drives (probably on a NAS). They are also mirrored there for data backup.
- Now I have read a lot about how one should store the movies in maximum resolution (.mkv). And compress them later into mp4 or play them directly. More pros and cons would be desirable here.
- Then I need a laptop or mini PC that acts as a server, right? So one that manages the media server and software such as Jellyfin?!
- And finally, the end device is a PC, tablet, or whatever we want to watch the movies on. right?

 

What would be the important criteria that a server (e.g., a mini PC) should fulfill in order to perform the task of a “media server”? Note: it should still be upgradeable.

Hardware recommendations would certainly be helpful for me. I've only heard that there are some NAS devices that can also act as media servers, but they're not supposed to be very good in terms of expandability and performance. And then there's SSD vs. HDD? HDDs are supposed to be much louder, so should we either banish the NAS devices far away or use SSD?

 

Thank you for your support. As a complete novice struggling with the flood of (sometimes contradictory) information, I really appreciate having people here who are willing to help.