Creating a Home Media and Backup Drive

[Crackle]

A little more on the space bit folks if I may. So I'm trying to work out what my existing content would require and I'm seeing a variety of numbers for each type of content, for example:-

HD DVD - from 700MB up to 8GB - depending on whether you're storing the entire disk plus extra content and whether or not you are compressing it.

I see the same sort of variables for other content, are there any hard and fast rules based on what I'd like to achieve? ie I wouldn't want to squish a movie into a tiny space if it meant lengthy/complex decoding/translating to be able to watch it.

I'm just reading one review around the first 4TB HDD and the size comparison they give is that it would hold 2000 HD movies, so that would be 2GB per movie.

If you do need to squish stuff up to maximise space then can the decoding SW be on the NAS as well and decode as you download/stream?

On the DVD front, have you tried this? In my experience ripping DVD's can be awkward and time intensive, depending on the copy protection employed. It's doable though.Having them on your NAS is only half the story though.

Getting them to decode on the fly can only be done on the client side by your PC or device and for something like the Samsung, which only plays certain formats, you might need to put some kind of media server between it and the NAS. I don't reckon Handbrake is the right software for this and I'm reasonably sure you can't load something onto your NAS and expect it to work.

In my limited experience of using devices as media servers, PS3, Samsung TV, they all have quirks and they all behave differently. PC's, especialy windows 7 on, are all DLNA and UpNP aware, so won't present a problem. Incidentally you might have more difficulty with an XP pc. Music and pictures should be easy but videos are definitely more complex and if you are having any home videos encoded now you need to go for the lowest common denominator, probably the TV.

 

[MacB]

I think I'm going to upgrade from XP, it's getting harder to keep updated and the licence isn't much.

To be honest the DVD upload and streaming is icing on the cake and isn't something I give a stuff about...call it a selling point to the rest of the family. Data, pics, music and VPN remote access are the primary uses I envisage. Along with backing up our various bits of kit and having a central storage point for manual and cloud backup. Oh and print server type stuff will be handy as well.

As far as DVDs go I may only ever consider uploading them for viewing if and when our current DVD players give up the ghost.

 

[MacB]

Ok took the plunge and ordered the Synology DS213+ with 2 x WG Red 3TB hard drives. For backup purposes then I'll use a cloud solution plus a portable desktop drive. Plan to just straight mirror the two drives as I think 3TB will vastly exceed our needs for now.

Will report back as to ease of setup etc.

 

[Andrew_P]

The WD Live box connected to the network will decode almost anything you throw at it. Would just mean switching to a different HDMI channel to watch/listen/view pictures.

 

[fossyant]

Slap an XBOX 360 on the telly - sorted !

 

[fossyant]

I use the main PC - with a drive that is shared on the network. Media will play on the other PC's and is available to the Xbox too - we don't have a SMART TV.