Anyone using a NAS for a media server?

[anthoneous]

This is the QNAP in my home. I use it for full HD streaming of video and sometimes music for parties. It works great.

http://www.qnap.com/useng/index.php?...&t=695&n=19640

[ghostman]

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

I use a Synology diskstation too, it's quite and reliable. Works perfectly well for streaming videos of any size as far as my experiences go!

[mos-to]

I use a Drobo 5D, but wish I had gotten the 5N. That said, works really well, especially through Thunderbolt on a Mac.

[jessd4life]

I have a NetGear NAS w/ DLNA enclosure and stuck x2 2TB drives. To get the media to my tv, I send my pc's hdmi slot to my audio receiver so that covers the surround sound and tv output.

[Beck38]

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

You need to sit down and decide what your goal is (the 'completion backwards' principle). From your initial question, I'll wager you want to be able to stream around the home to different rooms, not be 'locked in' to one output and one viewing area, so first off you need to figure on what kind of 'box' you'll be standardizing on to do that.

Then as far as a NAS, look to what is the cost per drive bay; most boxes do all the larger drives available not (upwards of 4TB, and some which support 6TB although the prices there are still a bit high).

There are a ton of dual-slot boxes out there, and a goodly number of 4drive ones. It's after that, that things get a lot more both expensive and limited. Ones like the Drobo and the free NAS OS's out there (like FreeNAS among others) made sense when drives were expensive, or one actually wanted to use all their old drives to populate some system. And then, of course, worry about which one would fail first.

The is a pretty good price rise above the 7-drive level, going to 8 or more. But in the 7-drive level, Thecus has, at least for the last few years, had the best OS and lowest prices. Their newest, the N7510, is an Atom powered box; I just got my 4th (3 other N7700Pro's before it) with 4TB drives in a RAID5 array, so 24TB of storage. Price was right around $90/TB, so storing a 'standard' 25GB HD movie (some 960+ of them per NAS) is around $2 per. Slide the figures up or down depending on how large each image is.

I have to remind folks every time about large scale NAS boxes, is that by far the cheapest and most expandable is blank BD25's with cheap bluray players; set up a good pc to recode/process/burn, and you're in business.

[NickA]

I have 2 Synology DS410j's which I use for everything from backing up files on my PC to streaming video and even running my website from home.

[NuxV]

i first got a synology ds209 (two slot) and a few years later got a ds412+ (four slot). i use it as a mediaplayer (WMC), and storage. using a synology raid allows you to mix and match different size drives which is a plus. they're pricey, but i've been pleased with the performance.