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[DHarvey44]

Currently I am running 2 400GB NAS with no problems streaming video to the xbox. I have The Nexstar LS and the LanDrive NAS. Got 2 different ones to see which one was better. Right off hand, not really much differance. The Nexstar LS is more compact and looks nicer. About the same price too. Also stream music from one. No problem there, but the exbox does not like overly excessive amounts of files. I tried creating a playlist of all my music but noticed the playlists could not hold much over 7,000 files withouth causing problems.  Also, if using SAMB with the xBox, the root folders will show up, but that is all. If I ftp to the NAS's, no problem. Transfering files is much slower when connected via cat5 rather than USB, but not too terribly slow. When ever I am transfering large amounts of data,  I connect via USB.

  I am in Iraq right now, so the two NAS are perfect for my needs. If I were in the states, I would have taken an old tower and put several large hard drives in it, and converted it into a file server. Thats probably the cheapest and best way to network your xbox for streaming. Using an old box, depending on the OS you were running on it, you could change the user permissions on all the folders and subfolders. With the NAS, you can only change the permissions on parrant folders, and editing folders is not as easy as if it were connected usb to the computer. If you do the server idea, check out the ccXgui_Lite. This will allow you to set up an SMB server.  The only problem is space, which I dont have much of out here.

  Has anyone else had a problem playing avi files with mplayer? I cannot play any avi files that I created with CloneDVD on there with mplayer. I have to use dvdplayer. Am I missing a codec or something? Or am I doing something wrong when I create the avi file.

This post has been edited by DHarvey44: Mar 9 2007, 09:45 PM

[DHarvey44]

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This post has been edited by DHarvey44: Mar 9 2007, 09:56 PM

[jcaspar1]

QUOTE(Funky_K @ Feb 26 2007, 05:52 PM)

http://www.lacie.com...t.htm?pid=10645

That looks great but isn't this a lot more expensive than just building a dedicated server? I keep looking for NAS solutions and keep coming back to just building a computer to function as one. Two 500GB HD's are only 300$, another 300$ for the computer. Wouldn't need a floppy or even a CD/DVD drive once it was up and running.

The other option would be to use Apple's new airport as your router and plug in one or more external USB Drives

[jtclark]

Infrant ReadyNAS

Everyone has their favorites. I have two of these with about 3.5 TB between them.

Support from Infrant has been very good and I've been able to add disks as needed.

Even though they stream in several formats, I've been accessing them with XBMC via SMB shares over a wired network.

I've been so happy with the setup I'm up to 3 softmodded Xboxes and will probably add two more.

I had tried several devices before being pointed to this setup over on the AVS Forum, then learned how to do it here.

Thanks to all the developers who've worked so hard on XBMC!

This post has been edited by jtclark: Mar 10 2007, 10:23 PM

[neurosurge]

I'm using an old PC that was given to me. I upgraded the RAM, threw in some HDDs, and loaded Windows Sever 2003. I just share my movies through the Workgroup. I have no trouble streaming movies over the network.

[BoberFett]

Just to throw in my 2c.

I've been evaluating all my storage/format options for a while and have just started ripping. I'm currently through most of my CD collection ripped to FLAC, then I'll start on DVDs. I'm going to use DivX as opposed to XviD. I checked out XviD and AutoGK, and it just seemed to immature to me. I like the fact that it's open source, but after doing some test encoding I was seeing some weird artifacts that definitely weren't in the VOBs. I'll probably use Dr. DivX, a free encoder that uses the DivX codec.

For hardware, I just put together a cheap box mostly out of junk I had lying around. An old Celeron 400 with 160MB RAM and a 20GB boot drive. Then I added a couple of 160GB drives for storage. I wanted a separate boot drive so that the data drives could spin down when not in use. The plan is to eventually add four 500GB (or more depending on prices when I upgrade) in a RAID5 setup, then RAID1 those 160s for more important files. I'm running Win2K Pro on that "server" and even with a weak processor and puny amount of memory, I've been serving movies and shows just fine. As far as a desktop box goes, it's pretty quiet and doesn't make a lot of heat.

I looked at standalone NAS boxes, and for the price they weren't what I wanted. A small NAS appliance does have one advantage, and that's being small, quiet, and lower power than a full server. If those things are important you may want to go that route. But they are more expensive, and not as configurable, for instance I can download torrents on my server, letting me shut down my power hog of a main machine. So both have pros and cons.

[Mcoto]

There are definately a number of options out there.  I use a NAS (terastation and readynas) to store music, videos and pictures.  They are located in a closet and streamed to 5 seperate xbox's with XBMC.  The nice thing about this setup is that you can watch different or even the same thing in multiple rooms at the same time.  I run everything on CAT 6 but you can do wireless streaming depending on your signal stregnth.

I burn everything in .ISO format so I preserve the orginal quality and all the special features and menu structure.  I use anyDVD with DVDencrypter for ripping.  The anyDVD is worth it for me because it is updated a lot and I can strip off all the crap at the start of a disk so when I launch the DVD it goes directly to the title menu.

One thing to keep in mind is data backup.  Ripping media is time consuming.  I like the NAS boxes because they can run in raid 5 so I should be able to recover from a single HD failure.  

The boxes themsleves are small and do not consume too much power and they can store all sorts of other information ( I run weekly backups of my main rig to the NAS just in case   )  A homebrew computer array will work just as well.  I just didn't have a spare rig lying around.  Betwenn the ReadyNAs and the terastation.  For just XBMC I'd take the terastation for economic reasons.  It has worked great right out of the box.  Its quiet and has  a print server and does automatic backup to a small attached USB HD of my critical info (you can also expand the storage by adding usb HD, but you lose the RAID 5).  The Infrant is better supported and has some nice features (such as slimserver) but XBMC doesn't need the slimserver and the better interface isn't worth the $$$ in my book.

M