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Comment by nabeelms | Hacker News Reader

I've never used a media server before. What advantages does a media server offer over just storing stuff on a set of folders?

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Flashy movie posters you can idly browse through while you are curling up against your significant other.

There's a real emotional difference in clicking on a movie poster rather than squinting at text in a list of folder contents.

Additionally the media server will generally pull lists of actors, directors, and other related works, as well as holding your place in the episode or series if you are working your way through a TV series on the weekend. "What episode where we on?" becomes a rhetorical question rather than a debate.

Also, other quality of life features such as searching your library, ordering your list by different criteria such as directors, critic reviews, release date, combining movies/tv shows into organized collections etc.

Plus your library marking what you've seen and bringing what's next to the fore. Kodi does this very well

Plus gives you the optional ability to watch your media from anywhere, even outside your network.

I use Archos video player on a firetv and connect to my miniDLNA instance. Archos gives you all of the movie posters, imdb descriptions, actor info etc etc. my dvr recordings are also served from minidlna which allows archos to pop up “new episodes!” on recently added series episodes

What is the benefit of this being a server side function?

Remote access and a single library of truth across multiple clients - keeping track of what’s been watched and when. There’s other bits, but that’s the most important.

Am I the only one in this thread doesn't regularly fall asleep or get distracted watching a show/movie? Multiple times a week in having to fight to find which episode or where in the movie I was. This is painful with the atrociously slow uis of every app I use.

Archos flys and this is in the face of Amazon's Fire OS which is not the fastest UI at all.

> There's a real emotional difference in clicking on a movie poster rather than squinting at text in a list of folder contents.

Sounds like the opposite of a feature. Never judge a book...

For me, a media server:

(1) Pulls media metadata automatically

(2) Can serve content to a variety of clients, including smart phones

(3) Provides user access controls for when you want to share your content with others

(4) Can transcode media on the fly for clients that don’t natively support a media format

(5) Allows you to logically split up your content into libraries

(6) Provides powerful search capabilities using metadata (e.g., by actor, by genre, by director)

(7) Provides support for audio as well as video content

Grabs metadata for shows and movies (episode titles, actors, summaries, thumbnails, etc)

Handles organization and searching for various media

Additionally, clients available for smartphones and Android TV devices.

And most importantly for some people is being an endpoint for accessing their media remotely

For me the significant advantage is showing me a list of films I haven't seen yet, or the latest unwatched episode of a show.

It's easier to browse and stream to other devices. It can also help organize your files and retrieve metadata about them.

Another nice aspect is collections with access controls per user, useful if you have kids.

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