Anyone using a NAS for a media server?

**nick_simpson17** · 01-21-2014, 05:00 PM

Hello,

Was thinking of buying a NAS to run as media server for all my bits and bobs.

Just wondering if anyone had any experience with them?

Ideally I would like it to run 1080p through media player with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound through my surround sound system.

Any recommendations?

Cheers

Nick

**gooberling** · 01-22-2014, 11:59 PM

IMHO a professional NAS is a bit of overkill, noise, power consumption, etc. (I run a few at work... Aberdeens and Dells). I find that having a decent older machine that can function as server that can pool drives is great. Windows Home Server 2011 will do it with a plugin and Linux will do it via LVM natively.

I'm running mine (WHS 2011) on an old AMD chip with 2GB of ram and I have no problems streaming 1080p to my home theater setup.

**Artemis** · 01-23-2014, 03:02 AM

I'm not really sure where the concept of overkill comes in in power consumption on a standard 4 bay home NAS. They typically use between 40 & 70 watts of power, it is one of the main reasons for switching from a PC based server to a NAS, the power savings.

The NAS itself doesn't need to do any decoding, if you have a player on the network then this can handle the audio/video decoding. It doesn't even need to be a PC, you can use any of the common multimedia players like the AC Ryan Playon HD3, the Popcorn Hour, or the WD Live. The NAS itself will set itself up as an SMB share on the network, it will also work via DLNA, so other digital devices can share the content.

I don't want to sound like a sales brochure so ask some questions, but a NAS is an efficient way of storing a large amount of data.

**gooberling** · 01-23-2014, 04:55 AM

You're right Artemis, I'll admit when I hear NAS, in my head I think of the bigger enterprise one's that I'm used to dealing with that belong in a datacenter. I completely forgot about the consumer grade stuff that is out there. Of course one of those would work and would certainly use less power than a PC.

**ocubillo** · 01-23-2014, 10:10 AM

HP NL54 microserver can be a good reliable NAS.

You can use FreeNAS on it.

**dcipha** · 01-23-2014, 11:01 PM

I have a Synology DiskStation DS413. I stream 1080p MKV's to my TV using the Western Digital TV Live Plus.

**stsigoun** · 01-25-2014, 10:09 AM

I have used Freenas in the past and found it very reliable and easy to use and set up. Actually learned alot about data redundancy and different types of RAID. My system was using an Intel Atom CPU with two mirrored 2TB sata hdds.