There are several advantages to having a media server in your home or office: first being that you can store and save music and videos and documents that can be accessed by any computer on the network or even mobile devices via DLNA or DAAP (itunes).
I have one set up at home and at my school. Why at home? Well, we share media files since we are a home schooling family. It just makes sense to have a centralized server to share and store files. also, this means no space is taken up on the device from which you are viewing the media file. At school I can have students view digitized video without slowing the internet by streaming. The Vortexbox is a Linux server distribution based on Fedora Linux. It can automatically rip CD's and now DVD's with the new version 1.8.
Check it out. Make an older computer useful again with Vortexbox.
