Just to keep the instance up and running he needs to spend up to $5000 a month, pretty much out of his pocket.

Wtf!?

ThinkGeek used to have the annoyatron that would do that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z1I1grocF0

Anything that fits the socket and has the IO and form factor that you need is fine

You may be overestimating your requirements a bit. For video, all you need is something with a transcoder and it could handle at least one stream. If this is just for you, it’ll be idle most of the time. As long as the hard drives have good reviews, it’ll be fine.

What you listed sounds good. I have my entire family’s files and photos (with some duplicates that i never removed) and it comes out to less than 1TB.

I think your idea sounds fine. An old PC will do fine.

In Louisiana we have the holy Trinity: onion, celery, and green bell pepper add the basis for most of our foods.

If you want something easy, maybe mix that with some scrambled eggs and rice. Otherwise, peanut butter? Haha

I thought that was gone for good, ty!