So I read yesterday for a few hours threads in this subforum. So I get that these devices can play pretty much any format of video/audio on the network, nas, its own internal hdd or attached storage. Is that it?

I have an hd dvr like many of you on my main tv. Computers and tvs all over the house. Not all TVs have directv. Cell phone with unlimited data transfer. What I want is for all of the to be interconnected. By that I mean media that is on my computer can be accessed from all the above. Live TV and recorded shows on the directv dvr can be accessed from all the above tvs/computers/cell phones.

I understand that all tvs will need one of this boxes, maybe without the internal hdd b/c only the one connected to the hd dvr will need one, and if more space is needed a nas will do the trick. Also I understand that pcs/laptops might need a software for sharing to run at all times. Given these though is there any thing that can do what I'm looking for? Or maybe a combination of devices ie a Tvix and slingbox on the main TV and one of the cheaper options for the rest of TVs.

I don't see as useful the torrent option in some of the devices, I mean you can download things on any of the computers and unzip on the dsm easily but I see as useful the browser capability which I guess would allow you to watch (low quality) video streams or flash video clips.

I put a lot of things out there please enlighten me as I haven't seen that many places with as much knowledge as here in avs forums.

So I read yesterday for a few hours threads in this subforum. So I get that these devices can play pretty much any format of video/audio on the network, nas, its own internal hdd or attached storage. Is that it?

I have an hd dvr like many of you on my main tv. Computers and tvs all over the house. Not all TVs have directv. Cell phone with unlimited data transfer. What I want is for all of the to be interconnected. By that I mean media that is on my computer can be accessed from all the above. Live TV and recorded shows on the directv dvr can be accessed from all the above tvs/computers/cell phones.

I understand that all tvs will need one of this boxes, maybe without the internal hdd b/c only the one connected to the hd dvr will need one, and if more space is needed a nas will do the trick. Also I understand that pcs/laptops might need a software for sharing to run at all times. Given these though is there any thing that can do what I'm looking for? Or maybe a combination of devices ie a Tvix and slingbox on the main TV and one of the cheaper options for the rest of TVs.

I don't see as useful the torrent option in some of the devices, I mean you can download things on any of the computers and unzip on the dsm easily but I see as useful the browser capability which I guess would allow you to watch (low quality) video streams or flash video clips.

I put a lot of things out there please enlighten me as I haven't seen that many places with as much knowledge as here in avs forums.

Are you talking about a NAS (Network Attached Storage)? I think you may be mistaken on the function of a NAS. NAS is nothing more than a storage on the net that is share. Well, bit more than that. Typically, NAS is a RAID'ed disk drives that emulates a remote server so anyone on the network can share the storage space. Basically it's a computer that does two things well, storage and network.

What people are talking about is the smart software layer that exist to emulate other media server types. Since there are many different media server devices out there, NAS can emulate some of the "slave" function and store any data on it's storage system so it can be streamed or downloaded to other media servers.

Before the explosion of the media server, NAS was nothing more than a bunch of storage that is protected via redundancy to store data from multiple computers and share data between them. The new media really pushed the use of NAS in that environment.