Airport Express vs Time Capsule vs Other

ChrisFloyd1982 said:

Im after setting up my house to be apple friendly and my aim is as follows

1) stream movies from a storage media to apple tv and ipad/iphone/ipod touch
2) stream music to speakers from ipad/iphone/ipod and also storage media

Click to expand...

I've got a Synology NAS and ATV2 connected to my AirPort Extreme in the living room. Streaming works very well from iPhone --> ATV and NAS -->ATV. In the garage, I've also got an AirPort Express connected to a speaker system. From my MacBook and iPhone, I can choose either the ATV or the speakers for AirPlay output. It's a pretty seamless setup overall.

In the basement, I have the aTV3 > tv/AVR. In the adjacent office room, I have the AT&T DSL router>AEBS with a 2TB, 1TB, and 300GB HDD's connected by USB powered hub. The 2TB is my movie storage, the 1TB is my Time Machine backup and the 300GB is a manual backup of critical family files (pictures, home movies, etc)

Upstairs, I have my MBP (which acts as the iTunes server) and an AE connected to my stereo for iTunes music airplay.

So as you can see I operate pretty much wireless. Everything works perfectly. Sometimes I feel the aTV coverart may be a little slow to load but all other aspects of the aTV are very rapid. At my MBP (upstairs) my transmission rate is 75 to100+ and operates on wireless "n" 2.4GHz. If I take it downstairs, closer to the AEBS it switches to 5GHz.

I use my 2011 27in iMac as my media hub. It has all my music (which actually isn't too much, since I do a lot of streaming through Spotify and Pandora) and I am currently building up my movie/TV show collection (currently around 90GB).

I also have an Apple TV 3rd generation connected to a 50in Samsung LCD and a 2012 AirPort Express that powers my wireless network. Additionally, I have a 2011 MacBook Air, iPad 3rd generation, and iPhone 5.

My Apple TV is connected to my AirPort Express via ethernet. It's also connected to my AV receiver via the digital optical connection (5.1 surround sound). I also have some cheap speakers (an iPod dock essentially) connected directly to the AirPort Express.

I can mirror my iMac, MBA, iPad, or iPhone to my Apple TV. I can output sound to either the Apple TV or AirPort Express with those same devices. Plenty of options and all seamless.

Someday I'd like to move to a NAS setup, but that's pretty expensive unfortunately ... so for now, the iTunes library on my iMac is what I stream from. Probably picking up a 3TB hard drive and this around Cyper Monday though

Upstairs, I have an old Mac mini connected via firewire to a DRobo2. The Mac Mini is wired to an AEBS and runs iTunes.

Downstairs I have an ATV3 that's all hooked up wirelessly. It was wired, but there's still bugs in the firmware that "don't play too well" if it's hard-wired.

it all works like a dream, although I have difficulty waking the mac mini up from sleep on the odd occasion.