I am very impressed with the Plex Media server. It runs on all your operating systems but I have it running on Linux. It sets up the server and accessing the server through any of the Plex apps. It then will scan your folders on your hard drive, gather TV Shows into series and seasons, download an image for each TV Show or movie, description for each, and then keep track of your watched status. It works at home on a local network, on your phone, or at someone else’s house. The streaming is fluid. As long as you keep your laptop on, you got a home media server ready. It also is good for streaming your own, home videos to your TV. I highly recommend it.
They offer a Plex Premium account that has good features like offline content for smartphones and syncing with devices and the cloud.
Problems
- Have needed to restart my laptop after the server had trouble indexing.
- Lost TV show progress when upgrading the Plex Media server.
Man and Keyboard 