Current setup is PMS running on a Synology 5-bay, and another PMS running on a Shield Pro. The NAS server is primarily used for remote streaming, while the Shield serves to my home LAN (AppleTVs mainly).

I've been seeing stuttering on larger files, either using the Plex app or Infuse, and I'm fairly certain the Synology is the weak link. Network performance in the house has pretty solid, though admittedly I could stand to test it more thoroughly. I've been looking at moving my library to a standalone system. I've been looking at the Beelink ME Mini (which happens to be on sale!). What I don't know is the best way to build this out.

I don't want to have to buy all 6 SSDs (ar at least 6x4TB ones!) at once, so I'd be looking at either a stock Linux (Ubuntu or Rocky) install w/ I guess a BTRFS pool for the SSDs (I'm guessing I can use the eMMC for OS depending on how big the install is - that or use the SSD in slot 4). Alternatively, i could possibly set up TruNAS w/ the Plex pp to manage the storage.

As for populating the media, I plan to keep the Synology as the central repo of my data. I have it replicating to another NAS at my dad's house, with movies/music/tv replicating using Syncthing. I plan to also use Syncthing to populate the Beelink.

Anyway, please poke holes in this plan and/or suggest a better one. My main goals are to get the media I'm streaming off spinning disk w/ minimal power draw (didn't mention that above) in a way that I can expand storage as necessary to accommodate the media library. Nothing's purchased yet, so I'm not married to the hardware. I would ideally like to convert the library to h.265 or even AV1 if I can make it work.

ETA: For clarity: I'm not transcoding AFAIK. My Shield mounts the Synology over SMB and mostly works fine, until I try to play anything 4k - then I get stuttering. On the surface, this sounded like a network issue, but I can't find a problem w/ the LAN. My thought was to move the PMS to a single location w/ local storage, and use the Synology just as an archive.

ETA2: FWIW, I have not expanded the memory on the Synology or installed any cache drives.

I finally had time to play with the Pinephone! It was a hard video to make: the Pinephone is nos by any means ready to be shipped to the general public, but it’s still a very interesting device.

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The Pinephone is, for now, mostly aimed at developers. It’s a device that will run Linux based OSes. Not Android, but full blown Linux. I’m talking Ubuntu touch or Plasma Mobile, and why not the same OS as the Librem 5, Pure OS.

The PinePhone is made by ThePine64, a company that produces a bunch of Linux hardware, such as the PineBook and Pinebook Pro, the PineTime (a prototype smartwatch running Linux), and the PineTab, a tablet, running, you guessed it, Linux.

The phone comes in a nice white box, with minimal branding, very reminiscent of Apple packaging. Once you open it, you get a little warning card thanking you and letting you know it’s not a consumer-ready device yet, and you get the phone itself, with a charging cable. It doesn’t come with a charging brick, but that’s not really an issue, since I don’t think anyone needs another one of these.

The PinePhone itself is a big device, with a 5.95 inches display It’s not the crispest, at 1140 by 720p, but it’s bright, colors look good, and it doesn’t detract from the experience of using the phone. It weighs in at 190 grams, and it feels pretty nice in the hand, although I’m not a fan of such big phones. The screen is protected by glass, and the back plate is made of black plastic. You get a power button and volume rocker on the right side, the audio jack on the top, a usb-C port on the botton, and a frontal camera and speaker at the top, with an RGB LED.

The back of the device is very simple as well, with the camera and its flash, inlaid with a little “Pine” Logo, which is a nice touch.

All in all, the phone feels pretty good for a device that costs less than 200$, it definitely punches above its weight in terms of look and feel.

Now, in terms of specs, the PinePhone is definitely on the low end of the spectrum, as far as phones go. It uses an AllWinner Quad Core CPU with a Mali 400 graphics chip, 2Gb of RAM and has a 5Mpx camera on the back, and a 2mpx one on the front. It’s not far off from what the Librem 5 offers, but it’s definitely no flagship device either. Still, for the price, it’s a pretty good value.

Connectivity wise, the modem should support 4G and LTE networks from most carriers in the world, and the phone also has support for Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and GLONASS, and WIfi, although it’s only single band.

The back cover is removable easily, just by popping out the lower right corner. It gives you access to a 3000Mah battery. Once you get the battery out, you can insert your Sim card, which is a micro sim format.

Now, even more interesting, is a set of switches on the back. These are hardware kill switches for the Modem, Wifi and Bluetooth, The Microphone, the Rear and front cameras and the headphone jack.

In terms of software, the PinePhone doesn’t come with any OS preinstalled. It does have PostMarket OS running a series of hardware tests.

It was a bit underwhelming, although I’ll still give UBPorts a fair shake in the future. The cameras and the speaker don’t seem to work yet, and you shouldn’t let the phone go to sleep unless you know the default passphrase is “phablet”. The OS runs… alright, even though it exhibits problems when scrolling and navigating; it’s definitely not quite optimized yet for that hardware yet, and you can tell that performance wise, there is still some work to do.

Now, while the OS itself works pretty well apart from some slowdowns in animations, the application situation is still problematic, and will probably be the main issue for most users. A lot of webapps are available, but nothing official. Still, judging from the interest the Pinephone and Librem 5 are gathering, and seeing the progress of libhandy, I’d be surprised if a lot of open source apps didn’t make the switch to the smartphone form factor.

Battery life wasn’t fantastic, but I won’t judge that too harshly yet, since it’s very early days for this combination of hardware and software.

I obviously didn’t find the apps I use everyday, like Spotify or Freeletics, or my bank’s applications, but these are probably a long way off, if they ever come. The Anbox project seems to let people run Android apps on Linux based systems , though, so it could be a nice path to try and explore later.

Other software initiatives are also available, such as Plasma mobile, or postmarket OS running Phosh, the phone optimized gnome shell developed by Purism for the Librem 5. I tried both, and found them less advanced than UB Ports.

More operating systems are also supported, like Sailfish OS, LuneOS, Alpine OS, or even Manjaro ARM running Plasma Mobile. I’ll need to take some more time to explore each one of these and see how they fare.

We return to the Digital Autonomy series to take a close look at our role in participating in today's information landscape. It is an honor and a pleasure to be joined by James Corbett of the Corbett Report to dig into this topic in detail. James brings his vast experience as an independent researcher and alternative media voice. We discuss the evolving digital landscape as well as the pressing concerns around artificial intelligence tools. Independent voices and audiences themselves face unprecedented challenges to make the most of the opportunities of our time.

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