Self hosting and syncing data to a 3rd party would give you total control of your data and data resiliency.

Sounds like a good combo that’s lacking now.

Simple to use NAS software. Has a unique raid model that allows adding as few or as many discs as you like of whatever size. You can start with 3 and add 1, 2 or more to the array, no issues. The parity model also lets you add as many parity discs as you like, as long as they are the same size as the largest disk.

Had early docker support as well, so it’s easy to spin up and integrate docker apps on the same server.

Lastly, they used to sell an excellent 8 bay standalone case. Think its been some years since they did.

There are knock offs in the $100 range on amazon. Bring your own raspi4 though.

Kodi can play discs if you rip them directly, menus and all.

If you already have plex setup, add the “plexkodiconnector” addon. It replaces kodis inbuilt, standalone media db with Plex, which gives some nice features like media sync between devices and intro skipping.

Jellyfin can do this with its kodi plugin as well.

Protecting

They have an "all in one" docker installer for the above because you are far from alone here.

So you’re comparing the new pi with one 2 generations back that runs at 1/4th the performance and assuming they work the same?

I’m betting a decent amount of them are used as media PCs. The x265 decoding, 4kx60hz output, 2x speed ram and better wifi are much appreciated for that application.

They are pretty opinionated about LXC and opposed strongly to direct docker intergration, so I wouldn’t expect it.

Ideally, you would want to find 50-100 neighbors, or whatever your bandwidth/range could handle. Take a $1000 deposit or whatever seems sane to cover initial costs, giving them their first “X” months free. Maintain the system for that time period, then you are generating a profit and providing much better service.

This comes off as flippant, but it’s viable at least on a small scale as a WISP. Point to point wifi has become both good and cheap, with a pair of devices from companies like tplink or ubiquiti running around $200.

You can “shoot” wifi over air for miles now with near pinpoint accuracy. If your area has a tall landmark(water tower, grain elevator, etc) or is willing to let you put up a tower, you can trench line to just that location and load it up with WAPS to shoot wifi to customers in the surrounding area. You can also often use this customers as repeaters to widen the coversge.

For a real life example, some folk living in the islands off the coast of Washington started their own from scratch.

Symfonium is great. The devs “Yatze” kodi remote is also excellent.

There was a great resale market for them. I got an i7 8th gen for about $200-300 new when the 10th gen came out. It was clearly never used overstock that a reseller picked up cheap. Its a champ of a machine, still going strong.

They also made cheap celeron models that sold in the $100-200 range that were 5x as powerful as the raspi that would normally fill the niche.

Try Keepass. FOSS where the passwordDB is just an encrypted file. Sync with nextcloud/syncthing for concurrency, copy off to a thumb drive for backup and drop off at a freinds house, keep on your keys, etc.