So one of the things that has been keeping me very busy is setting up my home media network. This is something I wanted to do for a long time, and certainly something I had envisioned using my Xbox for. I actually don't play very many games on my Xbox, but use it extensively as a media server. I had been limited to the Xbox HD, memory cards, or other fiddly things to get my media on there though.
Over the Christmas break, I assembled the various hardware I have been slowly accumulating over time/holidays/birthdays and got everything together and running.
The files for my video, music, and photos now reside on my NAS (network attached storage) which is just a hard drive with a network card in it basically. This is then attached to my nice new (Christmas) router, making all files available to devices connected to the router.
So, I acquire new media via normal sources, iTunes, digital Cameras, etc.. and these are routed inwards via my old desktop to the NAS, which stores them all. Then I pull out the media I want to use via the Xbox in the living room, my iPod, or any computer that is on the network. It basically looks like this:
It is all up and running as of yesterday and so far everything works perfectly.
The next phase would be to enable web access to the NAS, at which point I will be able to use the NAS from any computer with an internet connection (and my address and password of course.)
I could even go so far as to stream audio and video files directly to an iPhone or iPod touch, neither of which I currently own. I am sure that audio would stream to them no problem, but I am curious to see what happens when I stream a video file to an iPhone that is not already in the correct H.264/MPEG-4 video format.
According to the manufacturer, the NAS will “render content properly for display on the smaller screen…” I am still not sure if this just means that the video resolution is downsampled, or if it is somehow reformatted. I would be quite impressed if the NAS could actually re-code and stream an H.263 file to an iPhone… I may need to enlist a tester with said hardware on that project.
6 comments:
Fraser that is pretty cool. Is everything wireless?
I'd like to do a similar set-up as I have almost identical equipment. How complicated is it?
-the NAS is wired into the router
-crappy old PC is wired into the router
everything else is wireless. Laptop, xbox, etc.
Super easy to set up and run, I like buffalo as an NAS, but it should work fine with most brands. If you want to stream to your Xbox, just make sure that your NAS is DLNA compliant.
I still have not got the web access working, but I still have to set up port forwarding on the router to do that. The autoconfig was not working.
I just got a 1tb installed in my desktop, so not sure if I can just forgo the NAS.
Do your ipod wireless connect to your NAS?
Nope, the iPod goes through itunes, which has the NAS as the library.
so the ipod is wired to the laptop, which is then getting the music off the NAS wirelessly.
If you leave your PC turned on all the time I think you could leave out the NAS. I wanted to have a solution so I could use the xbox to serve media without any other PC in the house on.
Ah I see. I think mine is a similar set-up, I just bypass the NAS in favor of my PC.
Well Dave, the glory of the NAS is also that it enables web access. I can get my files from any computer attached to the tubes of the interwebs.
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