Any home media network experts on here????

[Captain Crash]

Anyone as above to give me some advice???

[KevDavies]

what you after?? setting up a home network or hardware?

[Steve]

I recently sought similar advice on here and got same great results - [url]http://www.rcheliaddict.co.uk/off-topic/89180-networking-problem.html[/url]

[Captain Crash]

Hi Kev, i have just bought an Iomega 2TB NAS drive, we have ipods and iphones, i want to be able to stream music and videos direct from NAS to TV without having to have a computer on all the time, want to know if this is possible and if so what type of media device will be required to do the streaming as i don't have a smart tv, i did some research and came up with a DLNA equipped Blu Ray player, so i bought one of these a Sony BDP s590 and tried it, it did indeed work but only plays a few of the hundreds of files that i have on the NAS, i did some more digging and it appears that this is a problem with a lot of the DLNA equipped blu ray players in recognising and being able to play mp4 files

[KevDavies]

Yeah thats the biggest problem file formatting. The DLNA systems only usually run 1 or 2 file types and its obviously a right pain converting them to the correct format.

What I have done is have a pc base station hooked up to my telly sky etc. But no extra monitor, the telly is the monitor (Phoenix on a 50" is awesome). Basically a smart telly is a computer built in. But you can get a cheap base station for £50 off ebay. Fit a half decent video card, and video capture card (for recording) and bobs yer mothers brother. And then link the nas drive and ipods etc to each other via the windows home network service using the router.

My desktop is a bit better than average mind and Ill admit I spent a fortune on it, but you really dont need to and if you get a low consumption psu, its about the same current draw as a sky unit

[nitromad]

i use my xbox 360 to play .avi .mp4 .wmp on my tv from my NAS

[Aidi]

Have a look at the WDLive box. About £85 HDMI connection to the TV and a Cat 5 cable into a small switch/hub which in turn connects to the NAS. I have got one and it will pretty much play any meida file format you throw at it. If the switch is then connected to your broadband router it will also do things like BBC iPlayer, yourtube, netflix, facebook etc.

[url=http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330]WD TV Live[/url]

I used to use my Xbox but it was limited with the files which it would play, this does the same job but a lot smaller and quiet!

Rgds
Aidi

[Skeets]

Also take a look at Dune HD I have the Dune HD Smart D1 in my home automation system and it work great.

[url=http://dune-hd.com/eng/products/full_hd_media_players/15]Dune HD Media Player - Dune HD Smart D1 | Dune HD[/url]

[450man]

We have a dedicated home server running Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011. We have 5 drives with a total of 4TB and on it we store all our photos (20,000+), music and documents. WHS also automatically backs up every day all the PCs in the house (3 laptops and one desktop) so we know we will never lose a file in the event of a breakdown.

We also have solar panels and so we have a permanent feed from our inverter to the internet through the WHS (it is on 24/7) so we can monitor and graph our eletricity generation and also a weather station which sends data every 15 mins to a web site and to Weather Underground to people can see the weather here including historical graphs.

We access our photos and music from a network attached TV and also from our mobiles and we can also do the same from the internet. We have access to all our documents from the internet too.

It isn't the cheapest or most simple solution but it works once it is up and running.

If you don't like Microsoft or want something cheaper (or even FREE!) then similar functionality can be gained with Amahi or if all you want is Network Attached Storage then FreeNAS is well known.

If anyone wants any help with these just PM :smile:

[KevDavies]

thats well beyond the capabilities of mine!! LOL and I thought mine was cutting edge LOL

[helinut]

+1 on the WD Live box.
Great bit of kit, been using it for about 2 years now. The latest versions have built in Wifi as well.

[450man]

[QUOTE=KevDavies;954097]thats well beyond the capabilities of mine!! LOL and I thought mine was cutting edge LOL[/QUOTE]
TBH I expect it is beyond most people but I wasn't just showing off!!! HONEST! I am a professional computer consultant so for me this is bread and butter... but I did want to show others what is possible if they do actually have the interest to learn it and do it. Although I am a pro you don't have to be a pro to do this kind of stuff... just keen to learn and with a bit of an affinity with computers. It really isn't as difficult as many make it out to be and I have helped many non-computer people to get a home server setup like this up and running.

I do think that you need to me the kind of person that likes and feel comfortable tinkering with computers and software generally though and if that is not you then a simpler NAS setup would probably work well.

I started out with a similar set up to to yours Kev with an old PC beside the TV. It worked well and as you say... the sim on a big TV is awesome!