NAS + Media Streaming

James_N · 3 Jan 2014 at 15:58

Hi All,

I'm getting an upgrade and virgin superhub next week. Hopefully this will fix the wifi issues upstairs (very weak signal, even with powerline adapters). Anyway I have a load of stuff on a portable external hard drive that I would like to be able to stream to my TV via DLNA.

I figure I need some network attached storage. I was looking at a Western Digital My Book Live Personal Cloud Storage 2 TB but I understand these are a bit crap?

What would be the best solution to stream films and media over a home network?

I'm kind of new to all of this if you hadn't gathered

Many Thanks!

MartynB85 · 3 Jan 2014 at 16:07

Don't expect great things from the superhub, they aren't great at the best of times.

James_N · 3 Jan 2014 at 16:27

MartynB85 said:
Don't expect great things from the superhub, they aren't great at the best of times.

Gotta be better than the 7 year old cable modem and useless TP link router which doesn't seem to transmit unless your sat right infront of it!

welshdragon · 5 Jan 2014 at 08:18

Hi James

What's your budget?

The Asustor 202TE is good value. Fast and with HDMI out is also a HTPC. If you didn't need the HTPC side of things it is still a well built nas that should handle everything with ease.

A dedicated nas although pricier than say the Western Digitals or Seagates will be faster and more flexible with room to grow as your need expand.

Richdog · 13 Jan 2014 at 11:00

Does anyone know if the ASUSTOR NAS series (AS-202TE and above) can stream Netflix in HD via the integrated Chrome browser, or is that not possible?

Pug · 13 Jan 2014 at 11:30

My only comment on this topic is make sure you have the network infrastructure to support moving/streaming these files from NAS to device etc. It may make sense for example, if you have a slow network, to position the NAS on a switch near to the device that will be consuming the content. This way you can send the files in the background (and they can take as long as they need) but when watching back the speed is better making for an enjoyable experience.

I would be very surprised for example if the superhub can stream HD files over WiFi from a NAS to a TV...

MartynB85 · 15 Jan 2014 at 00:44

I'm still using the superhub at the moment, and did stream 720p movies to my mac mini for a week or so. Did work fine on 5ghz, wouldn't use it permanently though.

ASE001 · 15 Jan 2014 at 10:02

Some routers have the ability to priorities types of network traffic, some try to do it automatically others you have to configure to do it by IP. But typically you can set media streaming and VOIP as priority network traffic. Not sure if the superhub has these features though?

You could also try and get a 'Wifi Analyzer' app like the one for the Android devices 'WiFi Analyzer' that is a free and monitors the Wifi channels used. This will suggest which channel to set your WiFi router to use. From my experience channels 1-4 8-13 are very congested and have set my Wifi router to use channel 7. My Wifi router when set to automatic seemed to always pick the most congested channel.

I rarely have any issues now with my WiFi now!