UKC

A question for tech-minded folk.

I'd like to install a central repository for videos and music - probably 2Tb or more - so that we can easily find and play what we want directly from the repository rather than having to play files stored on a computer or phone or dvd player. I presumed I would just need a NAS drive and somehow connect it to the tv, which itself plays audio through a separate soundbar.

However, while browsing for buying options the mud started thickening unexpectedly and it's starting to seem a whole lot less simple than I expected. It seems more complex due to our tv not being DVLA compatible, although I do have a Chromecast I got a few years ago and haven't used much, which I suspect may be helpful now. It doesn't help that many of the online resources and suggestions date from 2012-2014 and may be well out of date by now.

So over to the UKC borg. Any good suggestions for simple setups that will be easy to create and manage? Note that I'm not bothered about brilliant definition video and I very much am bothered about any solution being easy enough for both of us to use.

In reply to john arran:

Get a fire stick, put KODI on it and point it at your NAS. KODI should be able to see your dlna server and play media from it.

In reply to john arran:
Your TV's issue is probably a lack of DL_N_A compatibility, unless I've misunderstood and you're concerned about getting it a road fund license.

I have a QNAP NAS, which is many years old and still going strong. It does most of what you could want, but probably would require a smart TV to be able to play video to it directly. I'm not sure about a Chromecast (never used one) but you can get an Amazon Fire TV stick for £25ish and run Kodi or similar on it, and that would allow you to play media off the NAS as well as do many other things.

There would be a bit of a learning curve to get it all working but once it's set up it's pretty user friendly.

PS. If you've heard of Kodi in connection with copyright infringement problems don't worry - Kodi in itself is absolutely fine. There are plugins that you can get for it that are dubious in legality.

In reply to john arran:

For me, a NAS was the way to go for having all my movies, music, and photos in one place. I could then view, listen to or watch any movie from any device that could connect to router and NAS box.

However not all NAS boxes are made equal and as such, you do get what you pay for.

Some NAS boxes say that they are good media streamers in the marketing literature but in the real world struggle with more than one person in the house-hold trying to do stuff at the same time. You'd be hard pressed to buy a cheap NAS box that would allow two people to watch two different movies at the same time without buffering. And add a bit of music streaming into the mix and it could slow down completely.

Two of the reputable names for looking for good NAS boxes for the home are made by Synology and QNAP. There are others and some are cheaper but the saying is buy cheap, pay twice.

Another alternative, which can be cheaper or even completely free depending on what you have at home, is to use a spare computer as a Media Server. To begin with you could use your desktop computer with an extra hard drive shoved in it which is dedicated to storing media. Everything in the home then has access to this hard drive. Or, if you have a spare computer gathering dust in the house, then you could turn it into a dedicated media server for your music, movies, and photos.

These computers used as media servers act in the same way as a NAS box but have there differences. The first, is that they are considerably bigger in physical size than a NAS box and they would have to be kept constantly running to feed the media needs of the house. NAS boxes are small and use far less energy. The benefits of a spare or dedicated computer taking the role of a media server is that they can have shed loads of RAM and processors that domestic NAS boxes can only dream of. This extra RAM and processing power is excellent for streaming a couple of movies around the home and playing music at the same time, provided your home router is up to the task of sharing all this media goodness out to everybody.

I started my media server path by starting off by using my desktop computer and from there moved onto a cheap NAS box bought from PC World. The cheap NAS box worked well however I soon realised its limitations in speed and multi-tasking. The hard drives eventually died and at that point I invested in a fairly decent NAS box from Synology. These boxes can easily cost the same price as a good quality desktop computer but you have to remember that they are small to be energy efficient especially as they will be switched on 24/7 365 days a year. Many NAS boxes are near silent. A home computer is nowhere near as quiet so you may want to stick it somewhere out of the way if you don't like the sound of fans whirring around.

https://www.qnap.com/en/

https://www.synology.com/en-uk

In reply to john arran:

I've got all our music and video stored on a Synology NAS (DS215j) and have found it to be a great solution, very easy to set up and requires next to no maintenance. Also allows you to access all your files from anywhere that you have an internet connection, which is occasionally useful.

We don't have a smart TV, so I've got a Raspberry Pi with Kodi installed on it plugged into the HDMI port on the TV, this required slightly more technical knowledge to set up and the occasional fettle to keep it happy. Media playing devices as suggested elsewhere in the thread would do the same job.

In reply to Sam W:


I have a similar simplified set-up at work. I have a raspberry Pi duct taped to a hard drive with a HDMO cable going into the back of a TV at work. The Raspberry Pi has XBMC on it rather than KODI, but they look virtually the same. The hard drive has loads of stuff on it to kill the odd half hour during meal breaks.

Another option for the home user is to use a chromecast connected to a TV. Provided you have a NAS box or a computer that shares some of its hard drives then you are half way there. All you then need is either an android tablet or android phone to talk to the NAS box or shared drive on the computer to watch a movie. You can then bounce that movie onto the chromecast and watch it all on your TV. This is called casting. I'm sure Apple do something similar but I find that android is more adaptable and plays nicely with both Microsoft, Linux and android kit. You try getting Apple to play nicely with non-apple kit.

Thanks all. I knew I could rely on the UKCpedia.

So it seems that a good quality NAS plus an Amazon Firestick is the way to go, so I'll probably look into getting those. Could somebody please tell me why the Firestick would work but the Chromecast not? Is it just that Kodi can be loaded onto it?

In reply to mullermn:

Haha. DVLA, DLNA. Same, same but different!

In reply to john arran:

The chrome cast works if you have something inbetween it and the NAS box such as a phone or tablet. The chromecast is an alternative for a wired cable. Your phone or tablet acts as the connection between the TV and your NAS box or computer.

In reply to The Lemming:

Great, thanks.

In reply to john arran:

If you're into Apple then the Synology can work as an itunes server, if you want to keep it really simple then plugging a hard drive straight into a Raspberry Pi as suggested by the Lemming works well, that's the setup I've got in the shed (no internet) for playing videos while I'm on the turbo trainer.

In reply to Sam W:


Ha,ha,ha!

In reply to john arran:

It would also be worth looking at a piece of software called Plex. The media server part of the software would run on the NAS (if you choose a compatible one) and would let you watch your media on the Chromecast rather than needing to buy another bit of new hardware to run Kodi.

As others have already warned, though, make sure the CPU in the NAS you choose is up to the job. Plex might need a better CPU because streaming to the Chromecast is likely to sometimes involve a CPU-intensive task called transcoding.

In reply to Luke90:

+1 for this. I have an old chromecast in my TV and PLEX has changed the game for me. Got lots of stuff stored on the PC that is very easy easy to watch now.

In reply to john arran:

1. Take a close look at your router. It may have a USB port, to which you can attach a USB HDD, and it will create a DLNA Media Server, and a File Server. This would be the cheapest option to create a media and file server.
2. If you want to add 'smart' facilities to your TV, then your Chromecast may do. If not, there are hundreds of little Android media boxes that will plug into the HDMI port of a TV (that's how I'm reading UKC at the moment). Cost about 35 quid. I bought mine on Amazon, but I saw one at 7dayshop today. They will run Kodi and most of the catch-up TV services (mine won't do All4 for some reason; thinks mine is rooted. iPlayer, ITV and UKTV are fine). They'll also play just about any video or audio format you can think of.
3. If you're familiar with Linux and RPi, there are NAS packages you can get.
4. Some NAS can be bought for little more than the price of the HDD they contain. I have a couple of WD MyCloud devices, and, after some not inconsiderable learning experience, they now mostly sit there, serving media and files. I did have to spend quite a while figuring out how to get the media server to work as I wanted it, since it was plonked into the device, not properly integrated, and I eventually wrote a long FAQ on their forum, which has now had about 90k hits... WD have changed the firmware, so it's not as open as it was, and any changes you make don't survive reboot. Their support is pretty shit. I've spent too much time on their forum, acting as unpaid support, but their 'community manager' recently pissed me off so much with his crap atttitude to their lack of proper support for Twonky that I said "f*ck it; I'm no longer providing free support to idiots who can't be bothered to read the (badly written) manual". There are means to install Debian and OpenMediaVault, or even Synology's DSM5; the hardware is good, but the firmware is pretty sorry.

https://community.wd.com/t/faq-twonky-dlna-media-server-setup-use/95373

In reply to Luke90:

Plex is pretty, and nice if you need to transcode video to support your viewing device/connection bearer. Pick the right viewing device, and you shouldn't need to transcode, especially not locally with good, fast, local network connectivity.

If you want 4K/H.265, you'll need a good read access rate from the file server, maybe more than 100Mbps ethernet can provide.

Back to Kodi; it can access the file server as SMB or NFS; it doesn't need to use DLNA. You get a better experience, too. I use SMB to my MyCloud NAS.

I use Bubble UPnP for music, accessing the DLNA media server. I can also run a BubbleUPnP proxy server on the NAS, and access my DLNA server remotely through the proxy server. Uplink rate is the limiting factor here.

The MyCloud gives me remote file access, and automatic photo backup from my phone and tablets.

In reply to john arran:

If you're going down the NAS route, it's worth considering setting up RAID so that data is written to 2 or more drives. It's a duplication of data, but a godsend when one of them dies. Most NAS these days will handle the RAID side for you.

In reply to john arran:

I had the rasPi + XBMC + usb disk solution and it worked well at unnoticably low power and noise. Set up was dead easy. If your telly supports CEC you won't need another remote or app to control it all, which is nice.