I just got a NAS to keep my media on and have it accessible from any computer in the house. Now one of the features touted by this NAS is that it has a built in streaming media server, so it can stream your media to, for example, Windows Media Player on your PC.
My question is, why? What's the advantage? I mount my server as a network drive, it looks just like local storage, so I can just access and play any media file from any computer I have, just playing it like any other local media file. What would the benefit of streaming be? I guess I can see it for some device that doesn't allow direct file access to networked storage, but for a PC?
Just curious to increase my understanding, thanks for any insights.
My question is, why? What's the advantage? I mount my server as a network drive, it looks just like local storage, so I can just access and play any media file from any computer I have, just playing it like any other local media file. What would the benefit of streaming be? I guess I can see it for some device that doesn't allow direct file access to networked storage, but for a PC?
Just curious to increase my understanding, thanks for any insights.