I’m having some difficulty finding what ports are available on the store servers other than USB port. Im interested in seeing if it has an HDMI port.
Im interested in its use for NAS and as a media server but wanted to know if I would be able to use a NAS or have to connect the drive directly, and whether I can connect it to my tv directly to show video, or if I’d have to get a separate device to display the streaming video.
I think if you’re looking for just a storage repository for media… a pure NAS… then a personal server isn’t want you’re looking for.
A Start9 device is more for running various services… pieces of software… than acting as a file repository. It also wouldn’t make for a good media client despite HDMI ports. Plugging it into your TV directly to watch videos is… not what it’s for.
Instead… it’s a server. It runs applications as services. It can run things like Bitcoin, a personal password database, a AI chatbot, and… a media library and a file library.
For media, we have Jellyfin available. It sorts, categorizes and serves (key word there) media to client devices connected to it.
The files that are served can reside in a service like, for example, Nextcloud, which serves files to client devices.
This serving is a key concept. You set up your server, put it away somewhere, then access it from your client devices. These devices might be your phone, your tablet, your laptop or your smart TV. For something like Jellyfin, you’d connect your Jellyfin client and stream video from your server over your local network (or beyond) like a private Netflix. You’d manage your media, your files and your server generally remotely via a client device, logging into admin dashboards for StartOS itself, for Jellyfin, Nextcloud or all the other services in the registry you choose to install.
So yes, you can approximate what you’re asking for. No, the server isn’t a client you sit at and operate like desktop computer, and yes you’d need clients to display the streaming video, including a client connected to your TV. (though if this is a primary need, v040 of StartOS is going to work better).
Hope this answered your questions!
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That said. What sort of support for something like DLNA could I use for an appletv,smarttv,roku, or something similar?
It’s tricky right now, because of the lack of mDNS and/or self signed certificate support on many of these devices, but it won’t be tricky at all with the release of v0.4.0 of StartOS.
I’ll just quickly add to Stu’s answer here (which is accurate) to clarify that you “can” plug in an hdmi cable and watch media on Jellyfin. We call this “kiosk mode.” This is just not really the “best” way to leverage your server, as Stu explained. If this is your only desired use case however, it’s an option.