Newbie... what are my options... not sold on prebuild NAS...

Hello,

Please forgive my ignorance here - I’m trying to figure out a better way to offload my dvds. I have quite a few movies on dvd, and basically ended up ripping them to my hard drive, well the drives grew and now I’m running two 2T drives over a sabrent usb3.o dock which i connect to a dedicated laptop w/ hdmi to my tv and use the system as a much smarter "smart tv" as the standard streaming things suck.

Sure netflix, hulu are cool, but i use VLC or Zoom Player to play the "dvd directories" on my TV. I’ve been thinking about moving to a NAS, and need some assistance.

Currently I use a wireless mouse and keyboard to navigate the menus and what on the laptop (wired with cat6a, and gigE switch/ router) , watch my ripped dvds, websurf, etc , and worry that moving to a dedicated NAS would be quite restricting in this regard.

Ideally id like to
1) watch my movies anywhere
2) get rid of my laptop and the usb3 drive(s) setup
3) get a media pc / nas / media server that has power efficient external storage and replicate my current experience, just have the files play over ethernet instead of on usb3 attached hdd’s


From my understanding - although I could potentially watch movies anywhere on my tablet, or another computer far from home with a personal cloud NAS device, but my main fear is Power consumption of an "always on" device as well as the likelihood that id have to figure out how to transcode my entire dvd collection (vobs) into mp4 video. On top of this I’d have to learn to live without the DVD structure (no chapters, no menu, subtitles, special features, etc...) and i really like some of those features.

I’ve heard about using XBMC and/or Plex… but still trying to visualize what an alternative setup would be that allows the same flexibility as my laptop’s hdmi port and the USB storage that are attached.

Basically im trying to figure out what device(s) can do this and possible replace the eyesore of my laptop with its array of usb3 attached storage which is always connected to my TV (which i use to websurf, watch news clips, hulu, and other things) to some other "thing" whatever that is.

I was really interested to hear that there are a few dedicated NAS machines which have HDMI ports that I could possibly use as a MEDIA player for my TV (qnap?) - enabling me to solve the issue of the laptop and drives, with a NAS that i can have running in my living room.

However on the flipside Im never really been a fan of "apps" and what not so was thingking perhaps a dedicated media player box with an optical drive + external storage array (???) might be better so i I can get rid of the laptop, yet still be able to use this new device to surf the web free of "apps".

And so Im looking for some people that have been through this process and know the best course of action… Ive looked at the QNAP Turbo NAS (TS-470 Pro) and the Synology Disk Station (DS415+) but really don’t know what direction to take and could really use some advice from someone who’s already learned from their mistakes and can suggest the best way to get done what i need to do... If there was a way I could play DVD's without transcoding them that would be awesome... (granted id loose drive capacity by not using compressed mp4's but at least Id get the same experience as what i have now which would be great).

Ive build a variety of machines before and and mostly work in the windows, android and linux desktop environment.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Checkout NAS4Free

It will run on just about anything if you chose the UFS file system.

For movie playback I have a WDTV, about the size of two decks of playing cards, hooked up to my nas4free & tv.

I like diy NAS as parts can be replaced as needed. The prebuilt, synology / qnap etc, might not have replacement parts available if / when needed.

If you aren't actually using that dedicated laptop for anything other than watching movies, my suggestion is this.

Build your own server running windows or OSX on it. Then get an Apple TV. Or there are several other streamers that will work with DLNA or SMB shares. Easy enough to setup either of those on a windows, OSX box or on one of the free OSs, like NAS4Free or FreeNAS.

I built a Windows 8.1 box for my server and it is running iTunes to feed my Apple TV. If I want to watch something on my windows tablet, or laptop or similar, I just navigate to the directly on the server on that device. On my iPhone or my wife is on her iPad, can pull it up through iTunes on the server.

Some DIY just for the fun of it.

I tried 2-3 NAS-like freeware loads, linux on X86. They were all to featureless and geeky in the UI.

I chose one of the top two NAS brands and have been very pleased - esp. with the file versioning backups. I'd say the brand but HRH Tim may complain again.

I'll say it! QNAP and Synology are the ones that have been proven over time.

Anything else today, including a homebuilt setup will be less than rewarding if time and dependability is high on your list.

KenZ71 said:

Checkout NAS4Free

It will run on just about anything if you chose the UFS file system.

For movie playback I have a WDTV, about the size of two decks of playing cards, hooked up to my nas4free & tv.

I like diy NAS as parts can be replaced as needed. The prebuilt, synology / qnap etc, might not have replacement parts available if / when needed.

Click to expand...

I checked out freenas some time ago and wasnt impressed - the only unix distro i liked was openindiana for the ZFS support, but it was bit of a hassle... I mainly wanted the option of viewing/editing word files and other "windows crap" on my TV.... obviously there are likely alternatives to some of the programs i use, but it would be nice to have something standard that anybody can use... thats why worse case i can get qnap/or synology as well as a headless giabytebrix w/ windows.....

azazel1024 said:

If you aren't actually using that dedicated laptop for anything other than watching movies, my suggestion is this.

Build your own server running windows or OSX on it. Then get an Apple TV.

Click to expand...

Thats what i was thinking but you lost me at Apple TV. If i have another pc / why even have a dedicated 'streamer box' - when i can use plex on that same system and stream it direct to the TV from the machine (which is kinda what im doing now)? Perhaps i dont understand... I appreciate the suggestion guess more what im trying to decide is if i want to build a windows raid box with a bunch of drives w/plex or go NAS with one of the 2 big players.

L&LD said:

I'll say it! QNAP and Synology are the ones that have been proven over time.

Anything else today, including a homebuilt setup will be less than rewarding if time and dependability is high on your list.

Click to expand...

understandable..... so taking a step back.... how do move all my collection to the NAS -- there all vobs - im assuming ill need to transcode them ? before putting them on the nas ? or do i put all the vobs on the nas and let plex transcode them for me on the fly?

if transoding on the fly :
1) is plex installed on the nas itself .... or
2) do i need a middle man (my windows laptop) to have plex installed to do the transcoding (or anything else)? ... or
3) considering i supposedly have a "smart tv" that has a plex app built in...... or does this machine laptop machine become obsolete with a prebuilt (synology/qnap) nas?

Sorry, networked multimedia is not my thing. I'm more focused on data and multiple simultaneous users.

The files may indeed need to be transcoded for specific output devices. Doing so on the fly seems unnecessary to me. Let your main system convert the vobs and store that on the shareable folders on the NAS. The vobs can also be stored on the NAS for safekeeping, but I would not be accessing them directly.

My suggestion on the AppleTV is, unless you are running Plex/XBMC or similar and using an IR/wifi direct remote, its more of a pain to use a wireless keyboard and mouse to operate than an Apple TV or other streamer. I personally suggest an Apple TV because, as much as I am not a huge apple fan (I hate OSX and not a huge iOS fan, though I don't hate iOS on a phone), their ecosystem is tightly integrated and works well.

I am running an Apple TV on my one TV and have an Airport express connected to some speakers in my kitchen. I can easily play music where I want to from my phone, laptop, desktop or tablet to either my basement through the Apple TV or to my kitchen/living room through the airport express. iTunes organizes my movies and TV shows well, if not a plethora of organizational options. Same with my music.

If you don't want to dive deep in to Apple, that is fine (BTW, you can do plex on the Apple TV), but I'd still consider running a streamer instead of using your laptop for simplicities sake.

As for the VOBs, some streamers support them raw. Frankly I move away completely from worrying about any kind of on-the-fly transcoding as I just transcoded all of my DVDs and BRs when I ripped them, same with any new movies. Easy enough to do and done at very high quality settings, most movies suffer no noticable loss in quality. It also keeps my storage needs down to roughly 1/5th what I'd need if I keep the full size DVD/BR sources. What it costs in a small amount of time to setup a transcode and electrical costs to run my desktop transcoding the sources, I probably save at least 5x over in reduced storage costs as well as portability and time later on (IE waiting around less time to transfer a 2GB 720p movie to my tablet before I run off on a trip instead of having to wait on a 30GB BR, as well as being able to fit 4-5 1080p movies on my tablet in the same space that one raw BR source would take up).

azazel1024 said:

If you don't want to dive deep in to Apple, that is fine (BTW, you can do plex on the Apple TV), but I'd still consider running a streamer instead of using your laptop for simplicities sake.

Click to expand...

Again I appreciate your idea I just cant stand apple stuff (too constricting) - itunes, and all the other icrap that third party companies have can certainly make some things easier but your confined to their way of using the stuff. The only reason I like the laptop is i can use the BR/dvdrw to rip movies while watching something else or burn/record something if i want a hard copy, or if i want to watch the dvd/br before ripping. I have smart tv but hate using remotes - take netflix for instance- .....on many streamers - if you search for title you have to scroll to the letter press enter then the next character and so on.. with the keyboard I can type it in quickly and even elderly people can figure it out its just more natural than using a software based keyboard using arrow keys and a button.

azazel1024 said:

As for the VOBs, some streamers support them raw.

Click to expand...

Not that this is an ideal situation, but do you know which ones do this? Figured might be worth looking into until i get my self more comfortable with transcoding...

azazel1024 said:

Frankly I move away completely from worrying about any kind of on-the-fly transcoding as I just transcoded all of my DVDs and BRs when I ripped them, same with any new movies. Easy enough to do and done at very high quality settings, most movies suffer no noticable loss in quality.

Click to expand...

Makes sense - can you recommend any particular programs to do this ? [i know some might object to posting that info , so you can always PM or email me the info if you dont feel comfortable posting it here]

Again thanks for the insight... perhaps ill try transcoding some stuff and test how dumb my "smart tv " is...

Can you or anyone comment on any of the dedicated NAS devices that can stream directly (have hdmi output)
is there any upside/downside to do so ? vs connecting NAS to a laptop (or intel compute stick like device) ?

A wdtv / Amazon fire tv / Roku, which is just an appliance to stream data also can be controlled from smart phone apps.

Then your data lives on a nas where it can be backed up and allows for growth to multiple drives.

For Transcoding I use Handbrake. You can use the presets, which work fine for the high profile ones with decent quality. It can take awhile with a bit of a learning curve if you want to eek the last bit of quality as well as compression without impacting noticable visual quality out of Handbrake. However, that isn't particularly necessary.

You can also setup a queue for bulk encodes, which is nice when you are transcoding lots of videos. In terms of performance it is on par or better than a few of the alternatives I've used. Just keep in mind, it is going to take awhile to transcode everything. I haven't used the presets in awhile, but I want to say the performance is roughly double with the presets compared to my own settings (see eeking the last bit of quality AND compression out of each file). That said, figure on something like an i5-3570 running at 4GHz (my desktop) I can encode a typical 480p source at around 60-80FPS, a 720p source at around 30FPS and a 1080p source at about 9-10FPS. This is from 480->480, 720->720 and 1080->1080. Again, figure a good doubling of performance if using the high profile preset. So figure a 1080p transcode done roughly in real time and a DVD at about 4x realtime. So if you've got 200hrs of BR and 400hrs of DVD source material, it would probably take about 300hrs of straight transcoding to transcode the entire library (IE about 2 weeks straight). Quite awhile. However, benefits are probably worth it (IMHO, again, why I've been doing it with all my movies).

As KenZ71 mentioned, most of the current crop of streamers have smart phone apps. I generally prefer to use my remote, because I am mostly not typing things in, but my Apple TV and Fire TV remote apps on my phone work nicely and work great keying things in to Netflix and similar (because they'll pop up a keyboard on the phone's screen).

Most streamers also use vastly less power than your laptop will and are completely silent. My Apple TV uses 2.3w my Fire TV Stick uses something like 3.5w. My i5-3217u laptop uses about 10w from the wall (windows says 8w, but the AC-DC adapter isn't exactly 100% efficient) with the screen off streaming movies over HDMI and it isn't always silent either. For VOBs, I think that the WDTV supports them. Apple TV does not AFAIK. The Fire TV/TV Stick do not. That said, it is possible that both with Plex may support them. Its been a couple of years since I've looked at Plex.

azazel1024 thank you for that most informative post, id also like to say thanks to kenZ71...

I did some homework and now think i might try the streamer route as - you are correct that the laptop is very loud in living room.. that being said i was looking at WDTV Live, Roku3 or Sony GTV box as a streamer, or maybe even a G-Box MX2, but not sure.... there are seemingly a ton of different WD streaming variants as well... but these are the brands im giving serious consideration.

Now being that being that im interested in a more utilitarian NAS device - which would be better - qnap or synology as my nas - or should i do DIY (low power media server).... I was originally looking for something that could function as a plex server and also have a HDMI output.... something easy to use and have a lot of support / and applications available for it so I can to stream or possibly record(upload) or play to an android device.

So before i look at DIY id like to narrow down the off the shelf NAS first so as to compare to DIY to figure out which approach give me the most functionality yet not be an electricity hog.

I was particularly interested in the QNAP Turbo NAS (TS-470 Pro) or the Synology Disk Station (DS415+) and dont know if im totally off base.. or perhaps there are other options I am not considering.Ive hear some people were a bit disappointed with the DS415+ but dont know enough to make an educated decision.

There is a wealth of info here & ill continue to do more looking over the weekend but if you guys have any comments or observations im all ears.

My only thoughts are the Apple TV is simple and has better sound quality than a Roku. I am not an Apple guy but I own both. The only thing I see wrong with the Apple TV is it won’t stream Amazon Prime and Roku will. My wife has an iPhone , iPad and a Windows 8.1 machine with iTunes and it is dead simple to make it all work together.