NAS for BT and Media Streaming

[ur-dude-samy]

Hi Guys

This question would have been asked many times in bits and peices which is not helping me in anyway. so though of asking it straight away.

Present setup:
1) WD MBWE I (500 GB) - Hacked to the core, maxes out RAM when transmission is downlaoding 5-7 files at a time. - Connected through Wire

2) PlayonHD2 media player to take care of media streaming through the NAS - Connected through Wire.

3) TV with DLNA running independent to save energy - Connected through Wire.

No Wifi is used. Note the missing dedicated PC here, Tablet is used to download Torrents to NAS folder which it then does it's job of downlaoding and cleaning.

Requirement:
NAS has died and needs to be replaced. I'm tired to get the HDD partitioned and put back into the NAS. So need a new NAS which has the following:

1) Low power consumption

2) Enough juice to download multiple torrents and also stream at the same time.
(India still has restricted bandwidth of just 4MBPS, so need to queue downloads)

3) DLNA, as mentioned above

4) Would be good to have USB Slave port, not necessary.

5) BYOD, nice to have.

6) Budget is 150-USD.

Please suggest.

Thanks
Sam
Samrat D'souza

 

[Generic George]

Hi Guys

This question would have been asked many times in bits and peices which is not helping me in anyway. so though of asking it straight away.

Present setup:
1) WD MBWE I (500 GB) - Hacked to the core, maxes out RAM when transmission is downlaoding 5-7 files at a time. - Connected through Wire

2) PlayonHD2 media player to take care of media streaming through the NAS - Connected through Wire.

3) TV with DLNA running independent to save energy - Connected through Wire.

No Wifi is used. Note the missing dedicated PC here, Tablet is used to download Torrents to NAS folder which it then does it's job of downlaoding and cleaning.

Requirement:
NAS has died and needs to be replaced. I'm tired to get the HDD partitioned and put back into the NAS. So need a new NAS which has the following:

1) Low power consumption

2) Enough juice to download multiple torrents and also stream at the same time.
(India still has restricted bandwidth of just 4MBPS, so need to queue downloads)

3) DLNA, as mentioned above

4) Would be good to have USB Slave port, not necessary.

5) BYOD, nice to have.

6) Budget is 150-USD.

Please suggest.

Thanks
Sam
Samrat D'souza

A single bay NAS from synology like the DS110j is pretty much what you are looking for and goes for around $150. Though, I'm not sure exactly how many torrents it's going to be able to handle while streaming. I think similar models from QNAP or Netgear have similar features, though people seem to think that Synology's user interface is the best currently.

http://www.synology.com/products/spe...g=us#p_submenu

You do have a very small budget. So you may have trouble finding exactly what you want in this kind of a price range. Especially in the $100 range. At that kind of price you are talking about units that are pretty much the same as the WD you had. So they're not likely to have significantly more processing power.

Also the prices on HDD have gone through the roof with the recent flooding in Thailand, so the WD MBWE are likely to see some very large price increases soon, if they have not gone up already. So a diskless unit might well be your only choice soon.

 

[rhombus]

Can't you just use a drive plugged straight into the Playon HD2?

I thought this device had a bittorrent client, file sharing/server and DLNA server built in. So couldn't you ditch the NAS and have the bonus of local playback without streaming?

I am only starting to explore such media setups, I have no experience, so if the answer is no or I have totally misunderstood, that would be helpful to know why. I can then know what to look out for instead. Thanks.

 

[ur-dude-samy]

Can't you just use a drive plugged straight into the Playon HD2?

I thought this device had a bittorrent client, file sharing/server and DLNA server built in. So couldn't you ditch the NAS and have the bonus of local playback without streaming?

This would make this thread a bible for building as well as buying a NAS for such setup's, grin.

PlayonHD2, It doesn't has enough juice to download as well as play at the same time. The unit starts freezing. (wish I knew that nefore I bought it, i got blinded by the hot swappable disk feature).

Also, as a rule never keep the player as a downloader too. It will be always on sending video signal to your plasma, which would be in standby mode, taking it out.

Also the prices on HDD have gone through the roof with the recent flooding in Thailand, so the WD MBWE are likely to see some very large price increases soon, if they have not gone up already. So a diskless unit might well be your only choice soon.

Let me check for disk prices here, if gone high shall sell off my old 500/320GB ones, . Thanks george for pointing that out.

I anyways care a damn about interface my WD was running without one, had turned it off. BT and DLNA(mediatomb), that's all .

If I had an option of increasing my budget what would be the perfect unit and what price?

Thanks
Sam

 

[Generic George]

Let me check for disk prices here, if gone high shall sell off my old 500/320GB ones, . Thanks george for pointing that out.

I anyways care a damn about interface my WD was running without one, had turned it off. BT and DLNA(mediatomb), that's all .

If I had an option of increasing my budget what would be the perfect unit and what price?

Thanks
Sam

It looks like Netgear ReadyNAS Duo v2 (2 bays) is probably the one to beat if you are looking for low cost. It's about $200 diskless and seems to have more than enough power for what you want.

After that you're talking about probably $400-$800 for a 4 or 5 bay unit. $400 being the 4 bay version of the Netgear above and $800 being the Synology DS1511+.

FWIW, I would be warry of "really low" prices on NAS units. A lot of times I've seen very low prices on units that were a couple of years old and they tend to have AWFUL performance. So if you see something that looks like a "great deal" I'd check for it on the charts here. To make sure it isn't one of the older units.

 

[rhombus]

PlayonHD2, It doesn't has enough juice to download as well as play at the same time. The unit starts freezing.

Also, as a rule never keep the player as a downloader too. It will be always on sending video signal to your plasma, which would be in standby mode, taking it out.

Thanks, I didn't imagine that would be an issue: something to look out for then. To run bittorrent isn't a particularly thirsty task, and the hard disk side of things should perform pretty much the same as a NAS, I wonder if its a software issue or if the Playon really is on the edge of playback with no headroom for background apps?

I don't understand your point about the TV - they don't usually come out of standby if a source is switched on. Mine certainly dont, so it's not a problem.