Paid plex + Emby shares. C/piracy can’t fathom paying $5-10/mo for a catalog of almost all media ever (and if it’s not there, request it) that works well on multiple platforms and has a high spouse approval factor but it’s fantastic.

This is why i pirate. Haven’t seen a tv ad in months (not counting product placement in shows/movies obviously).

You already have a pihole. I assume you like it. You could buy a cheap minipc/NUC and set up proxmox on it and learn to set up and configure a second pihole as a virtual machine. Then you’ll have a server running with the ability to expand as needed. You could look into setting up new network gear (like tp-link’s omada) and run the software controller in a VM. Or you could dabble with HomeAssistant and get into smarthome. Or set up a photo management tool like Immich. Like others have said, find a problem you want to solve and use these tools!