It's extremely easy to set up the entire stack (Sonarr for TV, Radarr for movies, Lidarr for music, Transmission (or Deluge, or Rtorrent) and Jackett for torrent handling, Plex (or Emby, or Jellyfin) in a docker-compose using the LinuxServer containers, shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to set it all up for complete automation. I have a NUC from... 2016? running all of these and handling a couple of Plex streams at the same time as well, everything works perfectly (but if you're looking for an actual NAS be careful since Plex is a bit on the heavy side, especially if you want transcoding). You can find more info on Reddit, especially /selfhosted /datahoarder /plex and /homelab

as I trust HN more than reddit (perhaps optimistically), what VPN should I use with a seedbox? I've been looking at seedhost, but wondering if I also need a VPN as well, as an american

I am currently using Mullvad VPN.

I followed a guide to set a seedbox up as a media server a year or two ago, and as a professional salesperson not developer it took me like an hour.

I've found that seedbox providers tend to have very helpful irc nerds if you run in to trouble.