2024-06-11, 10:57 AM
The short answer is, "it depends."
The long answer... That computer should have no problems with streaming half a dozen FHD videos, provided that the clients can handle the CODECs natively (i.e., no transcoding) and the external HDD can handle the required bandwidth. If the videos need to be transcoded on the fly, you could find it falling flat on its face (the i5-9500T has QuickSync functionality for a hardware boost of the transcoding process, but it's not going to do wonders).
Given your modest requirements with three streams, I don't think you should have an issue with this computer at least in the short term; problems likely won't start surfacing until you add a considerable stock of 4K videos to your collection - at that point you'll not only be much more likely to be transcoding streams, you'll also start running short of storage space on that 4Tb drive.
Given the cost of the computer, I'd say go for it. It'll give you something completely functional to start with, a base on which you can learn, and then you can contemplate expansion if/when the need arises. In my case, I started with a 2Tb drive to store videos (back in the days of MythTV), then upgraded to 4x3Tb RAID (~8.5Tb total), then 7x4Tb RAID (~22Tb total), and have just recently splurged on an 8-bay NAS with 8Tb drives (~50Tb total). My server is still the same, but thankfully there's very little transcoding being done on the fly (I transcode all source material prior to putting it up).
The long answer... That computer should have no problems with streaming half a dozen FHD videos, provided that the clients can handle the CODECs natively (i.e., no transcoding) and the external HDD can handle the required bandwidth. If the videos need to be transcoded on the fly, you could find it falling flat on its face (the i5-9500T has QuickSync functionality for a hardware boost of the transcoding process, but it's not going to do wonders).
Given your modest requirements with three streams, I don't think you should have an issue with this computer at least in the short term; problems likely won't start surfacing until you add a considerable stock of 4K videos to your collection - at that point you'll not only be much more likely to be transcoding streams, you'll also start running short of storage space on that 4Tb drive.
Given the cost of the computer, I'd say go for it. It'll give you something completely functional to start with, a base on which you can learn, and then you can contemplate expansion if/when the need arises. In my case, I started with a 2Tb drive to store videos (back in the days of MythTV), then upgraded to 4x3Tb RAID (~8.5Tb total), then 7x4Tb RAID (~22Tb total), and have just recently splurged on an 8-bay NAS with 8Tb drives (~50Tb total). My server is still the same, but thankfully there's very little transcoding being done on the fly (I transcode all source material prior to putting it up).
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