Netgear Launches Media Player – MSRP. $219 - Page 2

Originally Posted by HiFiFun

Yes but no one will ever tell you:
These players do not have the resources to serve files to other sources especially when playing-back locally. That is why they cost less than a HTPC.

They also do not play back OTA recordings stored by WMC 7. The are great when connected to a 2TB drive chalked full of media files. However these files cannot typically be shared to other rooms.

The Netgear 3700 router does allow sharing of hard drives connected to its USB port. Reads rates are fine for playback but writes are only 3.1MB/sec.

In this way I've "escaped" having a NAS and headaches they bring: power, backups and mandatory reformatting of already full drives to an incompatible windows format.

A small form factor Intel i3 based HTPC with ATI 5750 video card allows me to do anything and everything without constraints. I even have a USB 3 port with Blu-ray 3D playback coming shortly.

Originally Posted by HiFiFun

I looked into it and this is exactly what I've learned and want to avoid: setting up another pc just to serve files, with limited hardware compatibility and running a proprietary sole source program.
Instead multiple 2TB $130 Samsung Story USB drives are connected to a Netgear 3700 Router (which must always be powered-on). The drive spins down automatically when not in use and us 0.5 watt!
I make a simple Windows shortcut to this network drive and wait 10 seconds for it to spin-up. It uses 6 watts when on. Its portable and easy to back up.
It cheap and should last many years as 95% of the time its not running. Simpler is better.
This is also why the little media servers are so popular: they play back the format MicroSoft refuses to support (.iso and .flac, which is all I use), and they consume only ~10 watts.
But they can only serve themselves, where I demand streaming in both directions from every device. There specifications are getting very long, making comparisons difficult (understanding what they omit is usually most important).

Originally Posted by HiFiFun

Its easy to predict that all hard drives will fail, so I always have a 1-3 copies sitting on a self.
For boot disks there is one verified 7200rpm 1TB backup. For irreplaceable CD and Dvd rips I have 2-3 5400 2TB backups in stored different locations.
To duplicate/image disks I use an old Xp pc with Acronis True Image Home and use the disk clone utility. Its quite automated and a 1TB boot drive takes a whole 1 hr to backup. Never lost a single file because I developed a simple strategy and plan for the worst. Not buying Seagate also puts one ahead of the crowd.

My daughter recently lost 3 years of photographs, even though I had warned her ahead of time.