What is a fun gadget you have purchased that has added value to your life?

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I'd like to mention a combo:
A Nvidia Shield TV 2019 Pro and a Synology NAS, they really are the perfect combo to sail the seas, or watch legal streams if you want to.
Both gadgets have been used daily since the day they were purchased, and that is a good sign lol.
The Shield TV uses hardware since 2015, and even when some could say it is failing into the enshitification territory due to the usual crappy decisions regarding putting ads in the stock launcher, it is to applaud that Nvidia still supports this thing officially though.
About the NAS, I have a two bay unit (bad decision) but it supports Docker and it has helped me to feel attached to Linux again.
Your usual multimedia selfhosted program that you have running in your overpowered server/rack, you name it, I could probably be using it too in my humble DS218+
If I had to choose only one I'd say the Shield, because along with Smart Tube Next already is 80% of my total usage lol (plus I had my NAS turned off for months because a recent fuck up, and I didn't have a PC to check it out, which is kinda solved now).
- I’m on board with this. I did something similar putting a Synology 920+ and an Asus NUC style machine running Ubuntu in place of my old OptiPlex and WD MyCloud setup.
  I’m now the primary content provider for a bunch of my family!
  
  It is truly amazing how you can put a decent multimedia provider with minimal hardware, heck, my two units act as a PMS each, and it serves well enough my usage, my girlfriend and the one user that actually uses it remotely lol.
  
  For sure! The only reason I upgraded is because the OptiPlex costs a lot to run in terms of electricity.
  For stuff I pretty much run 24/7 I really wanted better power efficiency.
  
  You can run Plex on a Raspberry Pi if you disable transcoding!
  
  Yeah I know, but sooner or later you'd need transcoding, especially if you share your server :/
- I have a two bay unit (bad decision)
  I started out with a DS220+ and soon bought a 4 bay DS920+ for my media center with the 220+ on backup (as in system backup) duty 😁
  
  Yeah, this seems like the logical path to me, although, at this point I ask myself, why not a 5 or 6 bay unit better? 🙂
- You don't really need a NAS if you get a Real Debrid account plus an app that supports it, like Weyd, Syncler, or Stremio + Torrentio. You can run a Plex server directly on the Shield, too.
  Only for content that you're legally allowed to watch, of course. Nobody would ever pirate content over the internet!
  regarding putting ads in the stock launcher,
  This was Google's decision, not Nvidia's. It's in the base OS and Nvidia have no control over it. I replaced the stock launcher with flauncher which is basic and lightweight - just what I wanted. I used "Method 2: disable the default launcher" from the flauncher Readme to disable the default launcher and it worked well on both of my Shields.
  
  You don't really need a NAS if you get a Real Debrid account plus an app that supports it, like Weyd, Syncler, or Stremio + Torrentio. You can run a Plex server directly on the Shield, too.
  Yeah for sure, and that has actually helped me to offload a lot of storage of my NAS as well, but RD can fail, and it is good to have something offline too.
  This was Google's decision, not Nvidia's. It's in the base OS and Nvidia have no control over it. I replaced the stock launcher with flauncher which is basic and lightweight - just what I wanted. I used "Method 2: disable the default launcher" from the flauncher Readme to disable the default launcher and it worked well on both of my Shields.
  I understand, I actually decided to just rollback the launcher to the old stock UI, it works pretty well to me.
  
  I understand, I actually decided to just rollback the launcher to the old stock UI, it works pretty well to me
  I didn't even realise that was possible! How do you do it?
  
  I'd start with deleting updates of your launcher, that way you'll have it in its original state, then deactivate automatic updates.
  I downgraded to 8.2.3 just to be extra safe it won't change back because of the server side update thingy... Plus seeking for a better performance/less clunkiness.
- Your usual multimedia selfhosted program that you have running in your overpowered server/rack, you name it, I could probably be using it too in my humble DS218+
  I've been using a low power embedded-cpu server for proxmox+homeassistant+openmediavault+*arr stack, but I've recently built a new one with my desktop's Ryzen 3600 CPU, 'cause I wanted to use Jellyfin. It's gone from 35 to 60 W/h, but it's got more drives, so I think the power consumption can be good with a more powerful server.

470 comments