Make a Windows 10 media server

Access movies, TV, music and photos from anywhere in your home with the aid of Emby Media Server.

These days, we consume our media – from music and photos to movies and TV – on a variety of devices in various locations. However, digital media is both liberating and yet constricting at the same time. If you’ve built up a library and want quick and easy access to it from any location, then you need a media server.

A media server allows you to collect your media together in one location – your PC’s main storage, a USBattached drive or even a networkattached drive – and can access it from just about any smart device – other computers, phones or tablets, even the set-top box or smart TV in your living room. It provides you with a consistent experience wherever you happen to be, and allows you to start watching on one device, then finish on another without having to manually skip to the right place.

Your server PC doesn’t need to be brand new – just make sure it either has a 2GHz dual-core processor or a graphics card or chip that supports hardwareaccelerated decoding – most recent chipsets from AMD, NVIDIA or Intel support this. We’d also recommend 4GB of RAM, and suggest your PC is connected directly to your router via Ethernet for the best possible network connection (if this isn’t possible, choose 802.11n Wi-Fi networking or invest in 500MBps HomePlugs). Basically, if it can run Windows 10 and is less than eight years old, it should be powerful enough – indeed, if you have an old PC that fits the bill, consider using that instead as a dedicated server to free up your main PC for other tasks. Which media server package should you choose? We’ve gone with a free, open-source package called Emby, which is powerful, flexible and shows off your media in the best possible light. We’ll show you how to rename and organize your media in one central spot so it’s easy for Emby to recognise, get installed and set up your media libraries. You’ll discover how to stream your media to just about any device , plus we’ll reveal how to get more from your media server. For example, using it to watch and record live TV to setting up user profiles that provide access to your library.

Once you’ve experienced your media through your Windows-powered server, you’ll never consume it in the same way again. Read on to start the revolution…