NAS to USB "out"? Does this exist?



Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone /forum/post/14131344

http://www.everythingusb.com/synology_usb_station.html


Would this work?

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Not quite if I understand its operation correctly. This unit allows one to connect a bunch of USB peripherals such as hard disks/printers and then be able to access them via the LAN. This eliminates the need to have a PC (or something like a NAS box) within which we place the hard drives.


Nonetheless, the "media" (hard disk, printer, etc) is still connected to the USB port and the "access" is from the LAN.


I want it to go in the opposite direction ... the "media" is connected to the LAN port (as another PC or a NAS unit such as the Infrant ReadyNAS) and the "access" is through the USB port bya media player etc. which is able to recognize a USB drive.


I've tried to draw a picture (not very good though) of what I'm trying to achieve ... all the PCs etc connect via the Ethernet switch to the LAN (including this new "USB thingie box"). Then the DVD player connects to the box via USB and sees the drives on the network we decide to expose (possibly using a web interface) as USB storage media from which it can play stuff.

I believe that "thingie" that you mention could very well be a USB "iSCSI adapter" (which doesn't exist today). That way, you expose a volume on your network via iSCSI and the adapter makes it look like a local USB drive by mapping the USB to iSCSI commands/signals. Technically this is actually not even that difficult, I'm just not sure if a market exists for it, hence no product like it. It could actually be quite useful for things like adding additional storage to cable/sat boxes if they support USB drives. Extend the concept to e-sata (instead of USB) as well, and you'd have a killer product.



Quote:
Originally Posted by steven975 /forum/post/14131925


so it sounds like you want to share network drives (be it on a PC or NAS), and "trick" the Oppo player into thinking it is a LOCAL USB storage device?


Nope, don't think that's possible. If it is not connected to the LOCAL USB controller, the local USB controller won't see it...ever.


Something like that may be possible on a Firewire interface as it is a peer to peer network. USB has a master/slave relationship, and the Oppo is the Master here.

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That is what I feared - that since the connection to the USB drive had to be "dedicated", we could not use a drive that could be shared by other connections. However, I was wondering if someone had figured out a way to trick the USB master to thinking that it had a slave at the other end.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone /forum/post/14132078


I believe that "thingie" that you mention could very well be a USB "iSCSI adapter" (which doesn't exist today). That way, you expose a volume on your network via iSCSI and the adapter makes it look like a local USB drive by mapping the USB to iSCSI commands/signals. Technically this is actually not even that difficult, I'm just not sure if a market exists for it, hence no product like it. It could actually be quite useful for things like adding additional storage to cable/sat boxes if they support USB drives.

Extend the concept to e-sata (instead of USB) as well, and you'd have a killer product.

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Indeed! Imagine being able to stick an add-on PCI card in your PC that would make all the storage resources of your network available (speed and sharing issues need to be contended with) to any peripheral that supports USB (or e-Sata as you suggest) drives ... sigh ... maybe we are indeed ahead of our times



Quote:
Originally Posted by steven975 /forum/post/14135638


such a device could be made, basically it would have to be a Linux-type box that offers network shares and local drives in a certain way.


But, of course, the host device would need drivers for it...good luck with that.

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Oh it can be done, and actually it doesn't even need to be Linux, or any other O/S for that matter. What you need is:


- an iSCSI NIC/bridge chip (easily available today)

- USB HID bridge chip

- e-SATA bridge chip

- The custom "bridge/chip that will translate things back and forth. Most of this is electrical signal conversions, and are actually not that difficult since the specs for the various signals is easily available.

- various connectors and headers, like USB, eSATA, RJ45 etc.


What you do is, create a device ID of type "USB Flash Drive" for the USB connector and "e-SATA storage device" for the e-sata connector. The actual install and connection will in fact not require ANY driver install, since these are standard device types.


Now, you'll need someway to tell this device, "which" volume to use as the device, from your network. Since this is an external plug and play device, you really can't have a BIOS on it (no interrupt 9 capture from plug and play external devices). You could theoretically have a second USB connector (and custom software/driver) on the device for the host configuration. This would be needed only for the one time configuration of the device and the device could store those parameters on non volatile RAM. Since it can draw power from the USB bus or discrete power, it should work just fine.


Damn, I really should build something like this.



Quote:
Originally Posted by fitbrit /forum/post/14141697


Maybe you should look at a networkable player instead, e.g. Popcorn hour? It might be a less hassle solution unless Kapone makes your USB thingy.

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Good idea - actually I have tried media players (the Eureka and MediaGate) - they work fine but none of them allowed me to send out 480i via HDMI to my external scaler (VP50 which then scales the image to 1080p/24) - something which the Oppo 980H allows. Since the VP50 has better upscaling algorithms, I find that sending 480i to it is visibly better than sending either 480p (and de-interlacing in the VP50) or sending an upscaled 1080p directly.


Hence my preference to use the Oppo first, followed by ffdShow through my HTPC (still does not quite match the Oppo/480i/Vp50 to 1080p/24Hz combo) and last the media player route.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone /forum/post/14136330


...

Damn, I really should build something like this.

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No ... you really should build TWO of them!

Sankar, I have also been recently trying to figure out a way get content from a NAS device to play through an external video processor. I like the creativity of using your Oppo I can't believe there aren't more people trying to do this. I would have thought you would be able to use an HTPC with some type of video card / driver / front end software combination that would provide a video pass through mode where decoding was done by the HTPC but de-interlacing and scaling were left to the video processor. It doesn't seem that hard. Aren't you really just asking the hardware/software in the HTPC (or streamer for that matter) to do less not more? Is it just that there isn't enough demand for this to warrant somebody adding the support? Or are there inherent technical limitations to this (that would surprise me a lot).

Maolq, I wish I knew how to send unaltered 480i from my PC. I tried the 720x480 30Hz setting but that didn't do it - the image was not that clean. So I've given up and am using ffdShow with avisynth and spline36resize - the image is nice but it does use up almost all of my dual core cpu (Athlon X2 6000+)! Maybe one of these days ffdShow will be able to utilize the gpu on my mobo like PowerDVD etc.


I also saw some threads a few months back where some folks were asking about sending unaltered 480i out of their PCs via HDMI, but the questions didn't seem to generate much interest. From this I conjecture that there aren't too many of us who want to do that. I for one would LOVE to know how though!

What if you had a motherboard that had COMPOSITE out for video? Like the Gigabyte 690g, which has a bracket for component/s-video/composite (and plugs into an onboard header)? Wouldn't the composite be 480i by default? I'm not sure if it'll be "unaltered" but it's a thought.


I know this doesn't solve your "480i over HDMI" issue, but something to chew on.



Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone /forum/post/14159263


What if you had a motherboard that had COMPOSITE out for video? Like the Gigabyte 690g, which has a bracket for component/s-video/composite (and plugs into an onboard header)? Wouldn't the composite be 480i by default? I'm not sure if it'll be "unaltered" but it's a thought.


I know this doesn't solve your "480i over HDMI" issue, but something to chew on.

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Nope.


Composite is analog I think. It will not be the original YCbCr 4:2:2 480i info stored on the dvd.

I believe that the quality via composite is lower down the ladder than even S-video which in turn is lower than VGA, Component or "upscaled" HDMI.


Being able to send a 480i 4:2:2 signal via hdmi from a SD-DVD will provide quality similar to a SDI transmission - it does not get better than that if you have a good external scaler that can scale to the native resolution of the display.

Hi sorry about posting to this topic so late.


Had a thought regarding this.


USB1.0 port on DVD Player detects all external USB drives (usb hard drives and usb keys, pen drives etc.) FAT32 format.


NAS storage device contains an IDE or SATA drive packaged in an external enclosure accessible over an RJ45 network link.


Is the USB port on the NAS only for administration by linking it to a PC for setup? - I am sure I read somewhere that the USB port on the NAS can be used to link an external hard drive to the usb port.


This would suggest that the NAS has read write capability to the USB port?


Now how could we link the NAS USB port to the DVD Player USB port and what would we see?


I think the reason this might not work is that the NAS software controls access to the HD's and the usb port won't allow USB access like a removable storage device.


Perhaps a possible solution would be to have 2 controllers with a selector switch one for straight USB drive operation and one for NAS device operation.


An external USB drive controller could be wired to operate like this through the selector switch.


The power connectors to spin up the drive would probably be able to be used from the NAS setup (dependant on enclosure setup)


This option would allow you to use the device in NAS for file transfer/maintenance and switch to usb to play through your DVD Player.


A might complicated - probably the reason why people choose to go down the NAS Media player route and pay the extra £100.


Anybody else see any reasons why this option might work/not work?

this line of products actually exists, but there are not many options.


I would post the URL but I just signed up. Its called a Buffalo DriveStation FlexNet.


I need something exactly like this.


Just picked up a sling player, and I want to be able to download something on my computer, send it to a NAS connected to my router, and then have my slingcatcher pick up whatever I downloaded as if it is reading it from an external USB drive.


Both the NAS and the slingcatcher would be connected BOTH to the network, AND to eachother via USB.



basically I need a combination NAS server and USB external drive, as I understand it.



The link is all i have found and looks cumbersome, but I am continuing to look, if anyone finds something better, please let me know!

Hi there


Maybe I misunderstand the issue, but I don't recall anybody mentioning that there are two (2) type of USB ports. You cannot connect any 2 USB ports together without first knowing what type each port is.


PCs (and media players) seem to only have host (or hub) USB ports. The host port supplies the +5 volt USB power, and controls the bus activity.


Device USB ports are what are on cameras, flash drives and all those other USB gadgets. These are slave devices to the USB host. Each device has to be able to identify itself to the host, and the host needs to have a device driver to control that device.


A USB host cannot connect to another USB host. A USB device cannot connect to another USB device. A USB device connects to only one USB host.


So IF these was a USB device port that could be installed in a PC, then that port would have to be configured to emulate a well known, existing type of USB gadget (e.g. a single disk drive).


Rather than look for USB connections, perhaps an Ethernet network, which offers peer to peer connectivity, is the solution. There are network devices that accept USB drives, and make them appear as network attached storage.


Regards