NAS Media Server Help!

[LFCYNWA]

I have a macbook pro, and an wifi router.

I was wondering what is the best solution for a Wireless media server that can stream audio/video to my mac devices, at the same time I want something independent to serve as a backup for time machine.

So far I have either:

A) Time Capsule connected to: my router via ethernet
an external hdd (would this work as an indie
streaming capable hdd?)
B) Mac Mini connected to airport express

C) Black Armor NAS 220

What's the best solution?

Thanks in advance

 

[bjw408h]

Same exact goal!

Hello all. I have a full iMac HD, need to move all my media, music, videos, movies to a NAS on my ethernet network, with my time capsule backing up at least the iMac. My ReadyNAS Duo has RAID disks and needs to serve media speedily.

Possible???

Recommendations???

Thank you in advance.

 

[Panch0]

For Media playback, disk and LAN speed are unlikely to be a problem. Playback is not really a heavy load on these resources. The place you sometimes get constrained is with your WAN ( Internet / ISP ), so streaming from services like Netfilx & Amazon cause some people problems. Even a slower 100Mbps LAN is far faster than needed for streaming.

If you are talking about media managed in iTunes, I highly recommend using a direct attached external drive rather than a NAS. Firewire 800 would be my preference, but USB2 is still fine.

It is possible to store your iTunes Media on a NAS. I did it for a year on a Synology DS411Slim. I think the Synology product is a great device, but iTunes on NAS is more trouble than it's worth. I finally gave up and migrated my library back to a FW800 external.

Short explaination of why iTunes & NAS is not worth it: When the NAS or the iMac are restarted, the share you are using for iTunes is not going to automatically mount reliably. This will get you into situations where iTunes can't find your library, causing all sorts of weirdness. External direct attached drives always mount at start-up.

 

[bt22]

If your media is in iTunes format you will have to have iTunes running to stream your content. This requires iTunes to be running on a computer. I have struggled to find the perfect solution to this problem as well. Currently I am using a current Mac Mini with my media stored on a 2TB Western Digital external hard drive and has worked well for me.