You know, I always wondered why I always like almost ANY movie that I go see, and I think you are right. I don't watch much TV and hardly pay attention to what's coming out. Going in blind and clueless makes things a lot more enjoyable!
I went through the same thing. I finally gave up on Mini-ITX and went with a rack mount (polar opposite I guess!). I've not had a huge amount of luck with the various NAS software. They all had some issue that irritated me. FreeNAS seemed the closest, but I keep running into a problem/bug...