Focus of this week will be on trying to find an acceptable network attached storage (NAS) solution for my home that is compatible with my home devices, as I have already proven that they can at least be connected to the PC. I would like to be able to not have to run my PC every time I want access to my files (video, music, pictures, etc.)
After a quick google search and some reading some review, I came across some potential NAS servers.
After a quick google search and some reading some review, I came across some potential NAS servers.
While the reviews were useful, I was unable to find something that suited my needs (at least initially). The WD My Cloud was the most promising one. While looking through the features, review, and customer reviews, I learned that it would not support Plex. As of right now, Plex is the most convenient solution I have for streaming video to my TV.
Plex support was not important before, but seeing how easy it made everything, it has made itself a feature to look for when searching for a NAS. Deciding to temporarily drop the WD NAS, I attempted to search for Plex compatible NAS drives. Thankfully, Plex had the following google doc with the most updated list of compatible NAS drives. Everything is neatly organized, one of the categories being video quality support. Unfortunately for me, all the 1080p compatible NAS drives were well over $800. For half of that I can build a low power computer built specifically to be my home server. If and when I can spare that much, I will look into NAS Plex compatibility, in the mean time, The WD NAS is a very viable option now. I tried searching for some NAS drives in the $100-$200 range with good reviews on newegg.com, but that just resulted in a diskless drive.
Supposedly the WD NAS has DLNA and UPnP compatibility. This means that it should be easy (in theory, in practice it could be very time consuming to set up) to have my files accessible on my home network. My TV also is supposed to natively support .mkv video files and if all goes well it should be this easy:
Plex support was not important before, but seeing how easy it made everything, it has made itself a feature to look for when searching for a NAS. Deciding to temporarily drop the WD NAS, I attempted to search for Plex compatible NAS drives. Thankfully, Plex had the following google doc with the most updated list of compatible NAS drives. Everything is neatly organized, one of the categories being video quality support. Unfortunately for me, all the 1080p compatible NAS drives were well over $800. For half of that I can build a low power computer built specifically to be my home server. If and when I can spare that much, I will look into NAS Plex compatibility, in the mean time, The WD NAS is a very viable option now. I tried searching for some NAS drives in the $100-$200 range with good reviews on newegg.com, but that just resulted in a diskless drive.
Supposedly the WD NAS has DLNA and UPnP compatibility. This means that it should be easy (in theory, in practice it could be very time consuming to set up) to have my files accessible on my home network. My TV also is supposed to natively support .mkv video files and if all goes well it should be this easy:
The review for the WD NAS appeared to be fairly positive, hopefully the write speeds are not hampered by my router as it not a gigabit router.
Diigo Research
Diigo Research