Streaming to PS3...which NAS?

[satoshi]

Hi,

I have a 10/100 router and a PS3 wired with cat5e to it.

All I want to do is watch HD movies on the PS3...mix of 720p/1080p and all in mp4 format which the ps3 can recognize. Currently, I don't have a NAS, and I'm using ps3mediaserver on my mac. It works with very minor occasional jerky picture (even when not transcoding), but fast-forwarding and the ps3 "goto" scene selection function are very slow and jerky.

USB hd connected directly to PS3 eliminates the issue and performance is amazing. No stuttering at all, even when fast-forwarding etc. But the PS3 requires the drive to be FAT32 so there's the file-size limit.

The point of me getting a NAS is so I don't need the computer on the whole time, as I know these particular NAS drives all come with twonky or similar. This would be my first NAS.

My questions:

1) Would getting a NAS and upgrading the router to gigabit ethernet eliminate this jerkiness issue? Or it'll likely be too slow? Can gigabit ethernet with consumer-grade router and NAS handle 1080p streaming to begin with?

2) Is a Linkstation Live fast enough to do this? They sell them at my local micro-center, along with a QNAP TS-119, wd mybook world editions, and the dns-321 and 323. If the QNAP is the only way to accomplish this with adequate speed, then I'd buy it because I have a drive I can throw in it (the one that currently has the movies on it), but it just seems overkill to me for this purpose.

3) The acer aspirerevo is $200. If you're not familiar with it, it's a very small low-power intel atom nettop with an ethernet port and an esata port. Could I run freenas or something on that and end up with the best possible performance, or it's not likely to outperform without lots of tweaking, and I'm better off sticking with an out-of-the-box NAS?

Thanks.

 

[EnglishmaninNY]

On a similar quest

I don't have a wired connection but rather a WiFi connection (not N) but I have found the ps3mediaserver from PC to my ps3 to be painfully slow for even photo browsing and when I hook up the USB drive directly, as you mention, all works fine.

This is my principal reason for looking for a NAS but it conveniently addresses my other concerns/needs:
- backup my photos more securely (currently if I lose a USB drive I lose everything)
- access so both my girlfriend and I can access the files at the same time (and she does feel the need to keep separate copies of files on her machine)
- No need to connect and reconnect the USB drive to see our photo/music/video on different platforms
- Frees up the PS3 USB sockets which I need to charge the controllers
- I'd also like to access the drive remotely so no need to take my USB drive everywhere.

My theory is that if I can get a NAS with gigabit Ethernet connected to the ps3 than I shouldn't have the performance issues. However I think to be able to do that and have the wireless internet I'll also need a switch because my wireless cable modem/router only has one Ethernet socket.

Here's my setup:
- Motorola SURFboard Gateway SBG901 DOCSIS 2.0 Wireless Cable Modem
- PS3 connected to my HDTV (which also has WiFi infostick)
- my laptop (and blackberry)
- girlfriend laptop (and blackberry)

Initially I was looking at the WD My Book World Edition II because it seemed to do everything for a very reasonable price particularly as the drives are included but:
- The NAS charts suggest there are much faster NASs out there in my budget and I was worried the processor wouldn't be enough for the media features.
- I notice some NAS have two ethernet ports which would avoid the need for separate switches. These aren't that expensive but I want to have everything on the wall and space (and power sockets) for another device is limited.

I'm now considering:
- QNAP TS-239 Pro II
- Buffalo Technology TeraStation Duo

Any help with this would be appreciated but my first question is:

Does two ethernet ports mean it works like a switch?

 

[thiggins]

No, the two Ethernet ports are for link aggregation (making one faster connection out of two slower ones), failover (automatically switches connection if one fails) and connection to separate networks.

You'll just need to buy a switch to connect to your Motorola modem/router. You could even get just a 10/100, not Gigabit, since that will support even HD streaming just fine.

 

[EnglishmaninNY]

Thanks for the quick response exactly what I needed to know.

I guess Satoshi's occasionally jerky picture could be his Mac rather than the 10/100 ethernet connection then?

...and WD My Book World Edition II might be good enough for me. I'll probably get a gigabit switch anyway as they're not wildly expensive and everything seems to support that standard now anyway.

 

[satoshi]

The performance issue was fixed by switching to a Netgear WNDR3700 gigabit router. Previously I had an older Linksys router (WRT110).

I tried every which way with the old router, not just with ps3mediaserver, but with twonky, eyeconnect, rivet, and others. Just didn't happen. 720p was fine, but 1080p was jerky immediately after fast-forwarding or rewinding. Otherwise the playback worked.

The WNDR3700 has a USB port to plug in a hard drive so you can share it over the network, with a media server built-in, however I'm not using that because I didn't want the USB bottleneck and according to comments in their forum if your media library gets too large it makes the router spaz out.

So now I'm streaming from my hard drive with ps3mediaserver. The mac isn't the problem...this is a mac pro with two dual-core Xeons and a gigabit ethernet port. The problem was either the router's poor performance or for whatever reason the PS3 performs better with mp4 streaming over gigabit ethernet instead of 10/100. I realize 10/100 should be plenty fast for a 1080p encode, but that was not my experience.

Keep in mind I have everything wired. Over wifi YMMV.

 

[ozPJ]

Has anyone tried connecting a USB drive to the WNDR3700? I'm in exactly the same situation as the OP. I'd love to be able to stream from a USB drive attached to a router, so I didn't have to use the MAC for streaming purposes

Also very interesting to hear that replacing the router sorted out the streaming issues from the MAC.

thanks!