If you store them properly and create fresh backups on new discs every couple of years, they can last a long time.
If you store them properly and create fresh backups on new discs every couple of years, they can last a long time.
The biggest disadvantage of physical media is DRM. With the exception of music which isn’t usually locked, pretty much all optical discs have some form of region locking. Software/video games also typically have additional DRM schemes. Some are easy to bypass (e.g. nocd cracks). Online activation is the worst because it relies on the game publisher keeping the servers alive.
Jellyfin or Plex media server on the NAS.
To view content, there are several options. Both servers have client apps for various platforms, this usually provides the most features and best experience. Another option is using a browser, both come with an integrated web server. The third option is through DLNA, which is a protocol for media streaming that many players already support, but it may be a bit more limited.
Even though it takes a bit of learning, I would recommend just using a server Linux distro with docker. It does require a bit of learning, but it is well worth it. I would personally go with AlmaLinux, but Debian, RockyLinux, CentOS Stream, Ubuntu Server are also fine choices.
You can find docker images on dockerhub for pretty much everything, and even if you don’t, creating dockerfiles isn’t that hard. This is very convenient because you know where the configuration and data for everything is, you can easily control access (file system, ports, permissions), it’s easy to update. And if you need to reinstall the OS, migrating docker containers is as easy as just copying the data and config files.
You can’t hard link across docker volumes. In the second example, you need to remove the /media/movies and /media/downloads volumes, only keep /media.
After fixing this, only future downloads will be hard links. Use a deduplication tool like jdupes to create hard links for the already downloaded files.