I was planning to buy a VCR for my uncle since he has a lot of old DVDs lying around that he wants to watch. But VCRs are quite outdated now, so I was thinking of ripping them to a Synology NAS and then using DS Video to stream them across devices like his TV and phone.
What do you think? Should I still go for a Synology NAS? I’d only need about two 8TB HDDs at most.
I’m looking for something stable and easy to use right out of the box. Another thing is, even if he travels, he’d still be able to watch the content remotely, and I won’t have to do much for remote access.
Synology Active Backup is the main reason I keep it in my home “production” setup. I’ve built and run two TrueNAS systems that I originally planned to deploy for business use, but honestly, I haven’t found a clean or reliable way to replicate something like Google/Microsoft Active Backup on TrueNAS, so I’ve avoided trying to force it.
Tom, what do you think would be the simplest way to pull this off?
My old (and honestly kinda janky) workaround was to spin up a Windows VM that synced Google (desktop app) and OneDrive (and Outlook emails) using Files On-Demand, then took regular snapshots and pushed backups to a separate dataset. It technically worked for a couple of months, but it always felt duct-taped together. Once I found out about Synology’s Active Backup, I migrated everything over.
Now I have a dedicated 2-bay Synology box just for business backups, and it’s what I recommend to clients too, especially when they need that reliable, hands-off backup experience. It’s hard to move away in that aspect, maybe because I haven’t found a good solution yet.
What do you recommend? Should I go with Synology or consider other options?
My other concern is remote access—I’d prefer a solution that doesn’t require opening ports or complex configuration.
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