Question about streaming to apple tv 2 from NAS

[thetruth1985]

Hello. I currently have a 1tb hard drive in my iMac that serves 4 apple tvs. I am thinking about getting a readynas nv+ has that has 4 drive slots in it and placing my entire video library on there. From what I understand, streaming movies from the NAS to the ATV will go like NAS>Imac> router>ATV rather than iMac>router>ATV... So my question is, how much slower is this process? I have the iMac wired via gigabit to a apple extreme and the NAS will be connected to the apple extreme also. Also, if anyone has any tips or suggestions, please let me know since I would rather know the answers before buying the NAS. Thanks!

 

[georgee2face]

I have a ReadyNas Pro that serves my home network and 2 ATV2s. The biggest problem I had was getting the permissions straight to be able to ftp etc. to the NAS remotely. As far as streaming movies, i have 3 tB of old and new movies, tv, and the only hint of any slowness is upon loading the SECOND MOVIE OR TV SHOW. It is like the loading of the first BD players....about 45 seconds. I think this is a function of the computer memory and am working to isolate and remedy that. there is no slowness or drop out while streaming. My Imac is on and itunes is up and it all looks good.

Edit: I have a Uverse modem and my ATV2s and my TVs are run off switches, and are all hard wired gigabit

Hello. I currently have a 1tb hard drive in my iMac that serves 4 apple tvs. I am thinking about getting a readynas nv+ has that has 4 drive slots in it and placing my entire video library on there. From what I understand, streaming movies from the NAS to the ATV will go like NAS>Imac> router>ATV rather than iMac>router>ATV... So my question is, how much slower is this process? I have the iMac wired via gigabit to a apple extreme and the NAS will be connected to the apple extreme also. Also, if anyone has any tips or suggestions, please let me know since I would rather know the answers before buying the NAS. Thanks!

 

[thetruth1985]

Thanks for replying. Please let me know if you ever isolate the problem. Right now, the longest pause I have when loading a 720p movie on the ATV via wifi is 5 seconds. Of course, this it from the iMac that is wired to the router. I'm really not sure if I can handle waiting 45 plus seconds for a movie to load on my local network lol. The NAS that I am thinking about getting is the NV+ which I believe is slower than your pro.

 

[Panch0]

Do you have additional reasons for buying a NAS? If you are looking ONLY to feed multiple ATVs from your iTunes Library, a FW800 external drive is far simpler.
Something like this from OWC will give you the 4 bay RAID without the added complexity of NAS.

Not that NAS is really all that hard, but there is definitely some care and feeding involved in getting it to work nicely with iTunes. I went the NAS Route because I am trying to find ways of making my library available to devices without keeping local copies.

 

[georgee2face]

Panch); Thanks I use mine for business as well as for storing all my media.

what exactly sre you talking about as far as getting itunes to play nice/ u may help me.

The pause in loading my SECOND episode may be NAS realted and I don't know it.
Thanks
G

Do you have additional reasons for buying a NAS? If you are looking ONLY to feed multiple ATVs from your iTunes Library, a FW800 external drive is far simpler.
Something like this from OWC will give you the 4 bay RAID without the added complexity of NAS.

Not that NAS is really all that hard, but there is definitely some care and feeding involved in getting it to work nicely with iTunes. I went the NAS Route because I am trying to find ways of making my library available to devices without keeping local copies.

 

[Panch0]

I'm not talking about performance, just functionality.

1) You can't get iTunes to recognize that it's files are on a NAS ( by including afp:// in the file name for example). You have to mount the shared volume.

2) you have to make sure that your share is mounted BEFORE opening iTunes.

3) it is possible to end up with multiple copies of the same share ( music and music_1 for example) - this will exacerbate the above problems.

4) If you open iTunes without making sure to mount your shares, iTunes will do you the favor of changing your library location back to the default local location. After remounting the shares, your old files will still be linked, but any new files will end up in the wrong place.

All of this can be overcome, but if you are just trying to get your library off of your system drive, a Direct Attached external is MUCH easier to deal with than a NAS. A NAS opens up other possibilities, but if you aren't going to use them why bother. If you are committed to ATV, then you have to have a computer running iTunes anyway (unless you just re-stream from the cloud for purchased content).

If you wanted to use something other than an ATV, and none of your content was DRM (not tv & movies from the iTunes store), then a NAS may remove the need for an always on computer.

as far as performance, by having the library on the network, you are pushing double the data through your switches. They all have a maximum throughput that they can handle, which may be lower on the wireless side than the wired. I don't think the specs on most newer networking equipment should have a problem passing the traffic of multiple streams, but there is a ceiling somewhere.