Asking too much of technology?

[admin_exported]

Hi all

Apologies if this has been covered in the forum before, but have done a lot of research online and not having much luck. So am hoping this forum of sound and vision enthusiasts can help.

1. The Situation

I currently have the following kit:

- Toshiba Regza LCD

- PS3

- Virgin home BB with wireless router & VBox

- 2010 MacBook

- Eee PC netbook

- Retired iMac (pre Pentium processor - only mentioned in case it's of possible use)

- Wired Seagate backup drive

- STR DH800 Sony Amp currently being delivered

2. What I'd like it all to do...

- Have a network attached storage device connected to my wireless router

- Have all my music (mainly on iTunes as we're an iphone household), movies (various formats) and various files which are currently on my Macbook & netbook to wirelessly backup automatically to my NAS, freeing up space on my laptops (and to avoid having to manually plug in my backup drive to my laptops whenever I remember to back my files up)

- Connect my NAS to my amp to allow me to listen to my music & watch my movie collection on the LCD

- Ideally without necessarily having my laptop on (although not an issue if it does) & controlled by my iphone remotely

3. Is that possible?

Am I asking too much to have one device that is a NAS that automatically backs up & holds my entertainment files, while allowing me to access them & view them through my LCD or play directly through the amp? Do I have to succumb to getting a device like the Apple Time Capsule? It's my understanding that if I hooked up my Time Capsule to my amp, only files that are .mp3 or .mov would be accessible.

I currently have to 'plug in' my laptop into the TV & amp or transfer the files onto a memory stick & plug it into the PS3, in order to watch my movies/listen to my music (unless I plug in my iphone directly into my amp), which seems a rather complicated process.

What I'm after seems like such a simple solution yet I've been unable to find a device that can do all that, other than the Western Digital MyBook World Edition, although am still not 100% sure this will do everything I need it to. I'm just trying to avoid getting too many gadgets when one might be able to do the job of 2-3.

Would be keen to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

 

[amcluesent]

As you want to stay all Apple, a Time Capsule for storage and Airport Express and Apple TV for music and video play back respectively would seem sensible. AFAIK Time Capsule provides an SMB share, so the EEE PC should see content, maybe the PS3 too.

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Designing_AirPort_Networks_10.5-Windows.pdf

 

[Anonymous]

I would strongly recommend that you keep a separate backup device rather than rely on the NAS box, even if the one you buy does provide some form of fault tolerance in storage (such as multiple hard disks). Hard drives do fail - it's a matter of when and not if. Personally I keep a backup of data that I can't replace off-site, just in case.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm looking into a similar solution, although this is all new to me, I have started to look at the HP X510 as a media server, from what I can gather you can run itunes on this, you can automatically back up your remote clients and stream media. It runs Window Home Server software.

Ideally I want to use something like a Apple airport connected to my B&W Zepplin and stream itunes music to this from the server, selecting music for it via my iphone, there is a iphone app called iStream, but not sure if this can do this, there is also the remote itunes app. Secondly I want to be able to stream my DVD and Blu Ray's from the server to my plasma, which will mean I will need a wireless media extender of sorts to revcieve this and input to my amp ( I dont' have an Xbox or PS3), but it has to be good HD quality ! I looked at the apple TV, however I want a solution that plays as many files types as possible. I will need to buy a new dual radio N wireless router also !

I'm sure this is possbile, I'm just cautious that there may be many pit falls ! - Also I have heard that Microsoft are working on WHS v2 code name "Vail" will this mean I will need to buy a higher spec server to cope with this?? I don't want to buy a x510 and find in a few months it is no good !

Any thoughts and recomnedations will be much appreciated !

 

[Anonymous]

HP X510 is an excellent choice, I paid £500 for a 3TB version (eBuyer). It does run Windows Home Server and you'll need a Windows PC for initial setup but it works with a Mac and Timemachine. HP have done a great job of providing a machine that works well out of the box and software includes streaming and media conversion software. It will backup all your networked PC's (in fact it more or less insists !).

Streaming BD will not be easy, your best bet might be to rip then convert to MKV, I'd be surprised if you'd be able to stream wirelessly, I have a Gigabit network. iTunes 10 will not be able to read music from your HP X510, it's not HP's fault, Apple have done their usual trick of unnecessarily annoying their user community.

The HP X510 resides in my living room, it's nice and quiet, something like ReadyNAS, Synology or Thecus not as easy to configure, also they tend to be noisy.

Vail has some good features, notably Mac support out of the box, streaming (via Silverlight) but it's 64bit only ... not a problem for the HP X510 though as it has a Intel E5200 CPU, it just depends on whether you want to install the new O/S or wait for HP to come out with an official version for the X510. As yet HP have not mentioned an upgrade path so that would be a risk you would have to take (unless you will do a manual install).