Why do I need Twonky on my NAS?

[roger06]

I'm a bit confused about media servers / clients.

I have music ripped to a NAS and play via an Apple TV running XBMC. So does Twonky need to be running on the NAS? What's it acually doing seeing as XBMC scans the files to create a library and down song, artist etc info. If I put XBMC on my MacBook I just point it at the local files, there's no media server running...

Perhaps someone can explain.

Thanks

 

[Andrew Everard]

Agreed, but then XBMC is itself a media server solution, so you don't need to Twonk as well.

UPnP/DLNA devices need a media server program to make content visible to them. Most NAS devices come with such a package preloaded, and TwonkyMedia server is used on some, and available as an add-on for others.

 

[roger06]

Thanks Andrew

So for XBMC I could turn it off? The NAS just becomes a file server?

The Twonky scanning process takes up well over 70% of the CPU most of the time so really slows things at the moment.

 

[Andrew Everard]

I'm not all that up on XBMC, as I don't use it, but I had assumed from your post that you were using it on your server. But yes, the install on the ATV should be able to access the files on your NAS and play them.

I'm sure someone more knowledgable about XBMC will be along to help, but the simple solution is to turn off Twonky on your NAS and see what happens! If there's no music, then just restart it, let it rescan the drive(s), and you'll be back in business.

 

[roger06]

I'll give it a bash tonight - I'll turn Twonky off and see if it affects XBMC...

Will let you know.