Tell the electric company not to hard shut it down.
It happened a couple of times yes. So far no damaged cards here. Probably I was lucky
You obviously haven't used a PI long enough with the SD card. Quality or not. In daily use an SD card lasts no longer than 2 years. That's how long they last in a PI and how long they last in a dashcam. They tend not to fail gracefully either. I use either Samsung or San disk cards.
My RPI3 is running daily for at least double than that, so far without SD-card failure.
So, again, probably I'm lucky. Or maybe you shouldn't buy your SD-cards from shady sources and risk you get an
imitation card
On media, it was the RPI as media server. It could not handle the multi-threaded SMB protocol used underneath. Fine for playback but even skipping and flicking through MP3s it would bottle neck.
That's a different use case. I use the RPI3 as a client, not as a server.
And Kodi on a RPI3 and you say you have never experienced problems. That tells me your tolerance for performance. I couldn't use Kodi. I can't stand waiting a second for every damn click.
In fairness, Kodi runs like shit on a modern PC as well.
I'm very satisfied about how Kodi performs on my RPI3. Having said that, I only use the basic features, no exotic or
complex setup, apart from having added a hi-fi stereo DAC and an IR-sensor & Lirc for the remote control.