Is it worth the effort setting up a NAS? Do you watch all those films you transferred from disk?

Eddy555

Part of the appeal for me is setting up the infrastructure and getting it working as well as sorting out my library and getting it all nicely organised. I find it very satisfying (when it's all working of course)

Bl4ckGryph0n

Oh undoubtedly it’s fun. But even then, in the early days I build my own 1u pizza box servers, linked them all together with the zfs file system on Solaris. Then used an iSCSI virtual client to serve them as network drives and provide some media server service that made it iTunes compatible. Had the network separated and all sorts.

Later I just bought a Synology NAS. Quieter, uses less power, is cheaper requires no maintenance.

Definitely fun. But useful is another matter

chrisloudon

If you are an audiophile with a movie's sound track just as important (if not more) than the video quality then i would recommend keeping the NAS or at least local disk / file playback as streaming services like Netflix / Amazon / Hulu don't support lossless audio formats like TrueHD / DTS-HD.

mushii

I used to rip my DVDs to my Synology. Then Blu Rays came along. I replaced what I really wanted with Blu Rays and 4ks and deleted all my rips. I now enjoy putting a disk in and playing it when I want to watch a movie in my cinema room. Everything else I stream.
My Synology is now a music server and a photo repository.
Plex is my platform of choice.

exponential

Hi guys.

Sorry to butt in but can anybody recommend a reliable NAS set up?
I have a budget of around £500 for both NAS (Inc drives) and external Blu-ray reader for ripping.
I don't have a huge film/music collection but plan to expand in the future so a decent amount of storage will be required.
I plan to use Plex via an Nvidia Shield to access my content.

I'm sorry if I've posted in the wrong section.

Mike.

tich77

Synology Disk Station. Or, an HP Microserver, Gen 8 and replace the CPU with an E3-1265 4core Xeon, and a low profile Radeon 6xxx card. You can install Synology's DSM OS, or use a lightweight OS such as Kodibuntu, LibreElec; your NAS is now a media player.

Go the whole hog - install a hypervisor, dedicate two CPUs to Synology DSM as a network storage system, install a second VM with Kodi/Libre, and you have the NAS and a player in one box.

xxGBHxx

Your requirements clash with your budget. Synology, Qnap, WD, Buffalo all make decent small (2-5 disk) enclosures but you'll pay £200  for a 2 disk and £400  for a 4 disk WITHOUT disks. You can get a 8TB for about £300 but being 2 bay will be almost impossible to expand you'll just have to buy another one. Larger disk enclosures push the price well over £500.

8TB will disappear fast if you rip the Blurays in native quality (no point if not you might as well just stream) so you can bank on about 250ish films in 8TB (averaging about 30GB per film though many will be more if you want the extras and additional languages). Obviously add to that you music (tiny in comparison of course) and all the other guff you'll fill it with you're probably looking at 200. For that you'll get zero redundancy.

You could maybe DIY with something like a HP Microserver if they come on offer again and run FreeNAS but it's not for the faint hearted. This is what I have.

Spinny disks are not cheap

G

exponential

Hehehe.

I don't think I'm quite at that level yet mate but I appreciate the info.
It all sounds great but how much would all that cost?

exponential

Thanks G.

That's very useful information! I kind of realised last night as I was browsing the stores regarding cost!
Not cheap at all.
I only have a small collection of movies right now (around 30) but do intend to expand that.
I'm thinking that maybe I should buy a single bay synology NAS and add a 4Tb WD Red just to start me off.
I'm sure that drive will last a good few years and it will be a good starting point for a beginner.
I know, there will be no redundancy but, at my budget, it was never going to be on the cards anyway.
Especially considering I have to buy the bluray ripper too.

I can always buy a dual bay in the future and add redundancy at a later date.

Is that something you would entertain? As a complete beginner that is....

exponential

And yes, quality is my utmost priority as, like you said, what's the point.
I hate streaming on Netflix/Amazon as the quality is poor and the sound isn't the best either!