Thanks for the tip - starting to think some sort of NAS might be better...windows home server 2011 needs a better machine than I have and according to what I've been able.to find so far points to earlier versions not liking windows 7 too much. I'll have to get off the phone and start having a look on a proper computer

How about a HP N36L?

It's £242 on Ebuyer, but you can claim £100 rebate from HP. Comes with 1 250GB HDD, but has space to hold 4 HDDs and a optical drive. It's x86 capable too so will run Windows (Home) Server or some Linux or whatever you fancy throwing at it.

What Matt said.

 

If I didn't already have more than the amount of drives to put in one of those I'd buy one myself.

What Matt said, thirded.. I've had one for about 7 months now I think, loaded with a couple of 2TB drives and the standard one for the OS, with WHS2011 and DriveBender ('cos MS decided to remove the duplication feature); add Mezzmo or a free alternative as a DLNA server, and you've got a great thingy in a little box.

That is exactly what I run my WHS2011 on :)

Such as Serviio

Precisely - although I had some issues with Serviio, so I'm sticking to Mezzmo for now.
I'm also following this thread to set up SABnzbd and Sick Beard (but without XBMC 'cos my TV can stream DLNA so I don't need it). Geekness!

I assume you pay for Usenet access?

Well you have to, no?

It's just my confusion about people paying to pirate, each to their own I guess.

I would quite happily pay a monthly fee to someone if that would mean being able to legally stream/download movies in high quality and I was provided with a good choice of material - I do so already for Spotify (despite its niggles).

 

But there isn't yet such a service for video material unfortunately. Retarded industry...

So would I (maybe) but I refuse to pay to pirate.

My ISP gives me free Usenet access. It's the only reason I put up with their shitty speeds.

I think most ISPs do (BT certainly does) but you only get a certain number of connections, and the servers you connect to may not hold on to files for as long as pay-to-access ones do.

Pretty sure over here that stopped long ago!

Or I could be wrong!

Yeah same deal. I get less that 100 days of retention and 5 connections. But it's unlimited.

I vaguely remember reading something about providing access to Usenet as being one of the requirements of being an ISP. Though I could be mis-remembering things.