NAS Drives
We won't dwell too much on network attached
storage (NAS) drives, since we have already talked about them comprehensively
in our NAS round-up and buyer's guide, but the role of a NAS has evolved far
beyond a simple drive that provides discrete storage for computers on a
network. Modern NAS drives from top manufacturers like Synology and QNAP not
only serve data, but also double up as iTunes media servers, FTP hosts,
BitTorrent and eMule clients and even dDNS, print and mail servers. For many
users they replace the need for a dedicated server, delivering much of the same
functionality and performance in a far more affordable and compact form factor.
NAS drives range in price from less than $80 each to several thousand pounds
depending on the number of drives and performance they accommodate, but for
most home networks a simple single-disk NAS drive is an unbeatable way of
managing your backup, media serving and file sharing requirements.
This
homemade NAS drive features 16TB of RAID 5 storage and a 1.66GHz Intel
Media Center Extenders
Windows Media Center is a TV-friendly
interface built into Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows XP Media Center
Edition. It's designed to be controlled purely with a remote control and allows
easy access to all your videos, music and photos. It also has built-in support
for internet TV channels, internet radio and allows you to schedule, record and
play Freeview and Freesat television shows providing you have a compatible TV
card. This is all well and good if the PC in question is plugged into your main
television, but not particularly convenient if you have to watch all your
recorded content on your monitor! A Media Center extender solves this problem
by acting as a networked attached extension to your PC's Media Center
application. The first step is to pair a Media Center extenderto your Media
Center application within Windows. This is done by entering a six-digit code
generated by the extender into your PC. The PC will then find the extender on
your network and pair with it. No data is actually stored on the extender; it
streams content stored on your PC instead, be that recorded TV shows, live
television or movies and music using an identical interface to the one on the
PC.
Media
Center Extenders
Media Center extenders have diminished in
popularity as the capabilities of network media players have improved, since
they're typically more expensive yet support a limited number of different
codecs. It's not enough for a codec to be installed on the host computer for it
to stream successfully; it has to be supported by the extender as well. A fully
featured Windows Media Center extender is built into the Xbox 360 - currently
the only such device still in production.
Games Consoles
PlayStation
3
All games consoles currently in production
support wired and wireless networking. This allows you to use their respective
online services and download demos, 'marketplace' games and other content. In
the case of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the network capabilities now
stretch far beyond those originally implemented. Online streaming services such
as iPlayer, 4oD, Netflix and Lovefilm each have applications for both consoles,
for many replacing the need for a media PC. They can also stream video and
audio content from the rest of your network. The Xbox's close integration with
Windows makes this extremely simple, and it's fair to say achieving the same
results with Sony's console is more complicated. An easy way of bypassing the
tricky setup process is to use an application called Tversity - a media server
that supports all current consoles. The lovely thing about this application is
that it transcodes video content stored on the PC into a format fully
understood and compatible with your console, removing limitations caused by
incompatible codecs. By using TVersity you'll never have to convert videos from
one format to another just to get them working on your console!
The only downside to using a games console
as a streaming device is the noise. The latest generation Xbox 360 and PS3
consoles are both very quiet, but older versions have annoyingly loud fans that
will certainly impact on your enjoyment of music and video files. Nevertheless,
with slim Xbox 360 consoles available for less than $208 now, this is a
cost-effective way of streaming content to your television, even if you have no
interest in the excellent selection of games available!
