Having a personal media server that’s online 24/7 is an underrated luxury. It gives you complete control over your media, enhancing your streaming experience in this age of enshittification of streaming. If you’re finally convinced about creating a media server for your family and yourself, there are multiple ways to go about it. You could buy a mini PC or SBC and set up Jellyfin or Plex, or you could buy a NAS that handles not only your storage but also your self-hosted stack, including media streaming. That said, you might be ignoring the ready-to-go media server already gathering dust in your house. An old office PC that you stopped using because it became outdated for basic productivity is still more than equipped to double up as your media server. Transcoding your movies, so that your TV or smartphone can play them without compatibility or bandwidth limitations, is small fry for your decade-old PC. And with an inexpensive GPU from eBay, you can make it way more powerful, allowing multiple people in the house to stream simultaneously without hiccups.