Why We Built a Custom Home Server?
Let’s face it: The golden age of streaming is officially over.
Why did we cut the cord? What benefits do we get? Is it worth it?
What started as a convenient way to watch your favourite shows has devolved into a frustrating web of fractured platforms, rising monthly subscription fees, and a revolving door of licensing agreements that yank movies off your watchlist without warning. If you love film, television, and music, relying on corporate streaming platforms means you are paying a monthly premium just to rent access to culture.
That is exactly why we decided to step off the carousel and build our own dedicated media server.
By taking control of our own hardware and self-hosting our library, we’ve created a private, permanent digital archive that rivals any mainstream platform in performance—with zero reoccurring fees, zero ads, and total ownership over the content.
Here is exactly why self-hosting is the best decision we ever made for our digital life, and how we are sharing that experience with our inner circle.
Taking Control: Our Current Library by the Numbers
When you manage your own server, you truly realise the scale of what you can curate. Because we built our rig with massive storage headroom and optimised transcoding capabilities, our self-hosted platform has grown into a staggering powerhouse of content.
To give you an idea of what a robust home server can handle, here is a quick snapshot of what our current rig is actively hosting and serving up on a daily basis:
TV Shows: 596 series totalling 17,846 individual episodes
Movies: 1,587 feature films in original disc quality
Music Library: 49,228 tracks representing 1,638 distinct artists
Try finding a mainstream streaming service that lets you keep that exact library forever, in maximum quality, without ever threatening to delete a single episode of your favourite comfort show.
Our Core Benefits of Cutting the Cord
1. Cost Savings & Total Ownership
The average household now pays for multiple streaming apps just to watch a handful of exclusives. With a self-hosted server, your only primary costs are the initial hardware and the hard drives. Once your data is on your array, it is yours permanently. No price hikes, no tiered subscription tiers for "4K access," and no content disappearing overnight due to corporate tax write-offs.
2. A Private Netflix for Friends and Family
One of the best features of a platform like Plex is its ability to create isolated, secure user profiles. We don't just use this massive library for ourselves; we share it directly with our home users and close friends. Our circle can log in from their own TVs, tablets, or phones, track their own "watch next" queues, and stream content simultaneously—all powered by our central home rig.
3. Audiophile-Grade Music Anywhere in the World
For music lovers, streaming platforms have a massive flaw: compression. By hosting our collection of nearly 50,000 tracks locally, we can stream lossless, high-fidelity audio directly to our devices. Using specialised mobile apps connected to our server, we have a private, seamless Spotify alternative in our pockets. Whether we are commuting, travelling abroad, or just out for a walk, our entire 1,638-artist collection is accessible anywhere in the world with zero compromises on sound quality.
What’s Coming Next:
Inside the "Hardware Graveyard"
You might be wondering: What kind of powerhouse does it take to stream files to multiple people at once?
The answer might surprise you. You don’t need to spend thousands of pounds on enterprise-grade server racks to get incredible performance. In fact, some of the best, most efficient home servers are built by breathing new life into older, reliable components.
In our upcoming blog posts, we are going to pull back the curtain and give you an exact look at the hardware powering this massive project. We’ll be breaking down our specific equipment specs—diving into why we select certain high-reliability enterprise drives, how we optimise power consumption for a machine that runs 24/7, and how you can salvage and repurpose components to build your own budget-friendly media monster.
We will walk you through the entire process, from component selection to software setup, so you can build a digital sanctuary of your own.
Stay tuned for the deep dive into our server architecture. Until then, happy building—and stop paying for subscriptions you don't own!