1. Local Backup storage server – always have a local+cloud back – neither one is good enough just by itself.
2. Local streaming service – photos, music, home videos etc.
3. Internet gateway –
a. filtering firewall,
b. privacy enhancing dns server,
c. optionally wireguard based tunneling with custom routing.
d. You can also log and catch suspicious traffic in your network (best way to catch an infected device on your home network).
e. If you have two Internet connections, you can configure them for high-availability and load-balance your outbound traffic.
4. Local software updates caching proxy.
5. Mail server (transport/relay).
a) raise my power bill and heat my home :p
b) run a PPPoE client (ugh) and firewall/nat, and handoff the PPPoE session (custom client, available on github, email me) and firewall state (pfsync) if the primary goes down (which is usually for reboots); redundant dhcp, recusrive DNS, and automatic failover to LTE as well.
c) host a samba share for household documents and media. With automated backup to the secondary server (but if the main server is offline, you can't use the share). The samba share also accepts backups from the windows hosts (veeam free edition), which means I actually have backups that are easy to restore from.
d) publish selected data from the share (on change) to my DO droplet, because my connection isn't reliable enough to host from home (I used to serve my lame webpages, and my DNS from my home servers, but when I moved, it became a non-option due to the DSL going offline when the DSLAM loses utility power)
e) record over the air TV with MythTV and HDHomerun network tuners
f) host local development because my frontend systems are Windows and I'm not developing there (not interested in a windows hosted Linux environment thanks, putty works well for me)
g) PXEBoot server, which is mildly useful, at times.
Are there other ways to do that stuff? Probably, but this is what worked for me. I used to have all these things running on a single server, but having multiple means I can reboot them for kernel updates without losing my internet, so that's pretty nice.
Note that for non-technical people, using a hosted password manager is far preferable in most cases than not. And for technical people who don't want to go through the effort of standing up their own service, paying for somebody else to do it for you is no doubt easier.
It is nice that when you self-host you also don't have to worry about a third party service shutting down. But for security oriented software I think it'd be too risky to continue running indefinitely without maintenance, so unless people stepped up to maintain the code you'd only be buying yourself your own migration timeline really.
My desktop is two floors away from either TV in my house, so being able to stream my personal media library to them over LAN is more convenient than lugging around a desktop to either TV. It's buttery smooth streaming too, and the interface is really customizable
It's the best I've seen, way better than I've seen built in TV's. It's also the Switzerland of streaming services. No problems with Apple devices disliking google services, or vice versa. So you get the best selection of streaming channels I've seen.
It's also popular enough that clients written for roku tend to be better than less popular devices, like say some random brand TV. Not to mention TVs are often useful for 10+ years, and it's way cheaper to upgrade a Roku than replace a TV.
Oh and there's a Plex client.