QNAP TS-219pII vs. Synology DS-212

[MR_AWESOME55]

For the past month or so, I have been searching for a 2-bay NAS for my home. I am planning on having it wired with CAT 6 ethernet cable to a TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND Ultimate Wireless N Gigabit Router, and everything else on my network is gigabit LAN capable.

I plan on using my NAS for monthly or bi-weekly network backup for two computers (one with 80GB and the other with 200GB), and I will also be using it with either my DLNA enabled TV (Samsung PN51D550) or my PlayStation 3 to stream 1080p H videos, among other things. I think the most I will be doing with this at one time is perhaps downloading torrents on the NAS as well as streaming HD video

Another feature I thought was neat but not life changing was the ability to access all of my files as long as I had an internet connection and a laptop or smartphone, and it would be nice to be able to either stream videos over the internet or copy them to local storage over the internet at the very least.

What I am mainly looking for here, though, is for this NAS to be relatively future-proof. On Amazon.com, both the QNAP TS-219pII and the Synology DS212 are priced at $299, but I am unsure of which one will fulfil my needs. I noticed that the QNAP has faster hardware, but it also lacks the USB 3.0 ports. I also hear that Synology's DSM is very good, but that QNAP has a lot more apps, and that many more are being developed for them than for Synology, although this may be from a while ago.

I'm kind of at a loss here. Last week, I'd figured that I'd be getting a Synology DS212j, but when I posted onto their forums, I was told that the DS212j would not be able to support my needs. I then looked into the QNAP TS-212, which seemed to have a bit more functionality, but I have not yet gotten any replies on their forums.

Anyone have any insights into this? Is there a company or product that is better than either of these at a similar pricepoint? Do you think that the DS212j or TS-212 actually does offer what I need?

Thanks for any help!

 

[Pinhedd]

You're better off building yourself a small formfactor PC than going with an expensive QNAP NAS drive

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

Alrighty, I've got a couple questions the formfactor PC.

1) If I wanted to make it capable of RAID 1 at the very least, how much would I need to spend for a decent RAID controller? Would it be a better idea to do hardware or software RAID?

2) How much am I looking at here? Looking at my other thread, you had suggested that I get a µATX mobo, a cheap CPU, and an AMD Fusion APU. As much as I can look them up on Amazon, I'm not all that tech savvy, so I don't know what I should be specifically looking for. I assume that I will also need to buy the tower in order to house all of this too.

3) I also noticed from the other thread that I'd need an HDMI output on the tower, so I'm assuming that it will need to plug directly into the TV in order to be used. If I could get a high enough streaming rate with gigabit ethernet, do you think I could bypass this altogether and perhaps just stream videos over the PS3, or will I be better off with going directly from the box to the TV?

4) Would I be able to set up something similar to a cloud server, where I could access all of my files as long as I had an internet connection?

I will probably have some more questions once I've gotten more answers, but for now, this is what I'm looking into.

Thanks!

 

[dechy]

Hi,

I was in your situation ~2 years ago; high end NAS or dedicated mATX PC. I went with a Synology DS209 and have not regretted it.

It's first mandate was for streaming movies for the kids using XBMC on the XBOX which worked perfectly. Obviously also used for storing games/apps/pictures/music/etc... using RAID 0 on 2x500GB HDs. I wasn't sure how much data I'd rack up, but I need to rectify the fact that I have no tolerance and mirror as I rarely have more than 400GB total (it would only peak temporarily).

My old rear projection LCD died in November and the timing couldn't of been better with black Friday and I got myself the EXACT same TV you have for insanely cheap (I was afraid of Plasma & kids leaving the TV on for HOURS on pause or something, but I educated them well on that front). After showing the kids how to use the Samsung equivalent of XBMC for streaming movies, I got rid of the XBOX altogether.

The only difference is I had to enable the media streaming through DSM (adds specific folders by default).

It's quiet, extremely fast, small, looks good, DSM as you've said is extremely easy to use & powerful and they keep updating it regularly.

It wasn't cheap, but all the cheaper solutions (better known brands for everyday consumers like Netgear, Seagate, WD, etc... really don't stack up... you get what you pay for).

You might have already checked it out, but smallnetbuilder.com has awesome reviews/charts comparing a TON of different NAS devices. You can't go wrong with either QNAP or Synology

 

[Pinhedd]

Alrighty, I've got a couple questions the formfactor PC.

1) If I wanted to make it capable of RAID 1 at the very least, how much would I need to spend for a decent RAID controller? Would it be a better idea to do hardware or software RAID?

2) How much am I looking at here? Looking at my other thread, you had suggested that I get a µATX mobo, a cheap CPU, and an AMD Fusion APU. As much as I can look them up on Amazon, I'm not all that tech savvy, so I don't know what I should be specifically looking for. I assume that I will also need to buy the tower in order to house all of this too.

3) I also noticed from the other thread that I'd need an HDMI output on the tower, so I'm assuming that it will need to plug directly into the TV in order to be used. If I could get a high enough streaming rate with gigabit ethernet, do you think I could bypass this altogether and perhaps just stream videos over the PS3, or will I be better off with going directly from the box to the TV?

4) Would I be able to set up something similar to a cloud server, where I could access all of my files as long as I had an internet connection?

I will probably have some more questions once I've gotten more answers, but for now, this is what I'm looking into.

Thanks!

1. Almost every chipset ships with firmware raid capabilities. This is not as good as a dedicated RAID controller but unless you absolutely under no circumstances can have any data loss they will work just fine. Software RAID will work just fine as well

2. I remember that thread! You will probably be able to get all that you need for around 600-700 bucks. What you get for that money will be significantly more usable, powerful, and flexible than any QNAP or Synology NAS drive. You will however need to load it up with an OS and configure it (Ubuntu works great for this). If you don't trust yourself to build and configure it on your own you might be able to find one that's prebuilt, however this is a great place to start as building PCs is always a fun project.

3. I would recommend getting a motherboard with HDMI output. The AMD fusion APUs are amazing for this because it's all done onboard. You could bypass this and use the PS3 as your media server but the PS3 has gimped codec support and is a vastly inferior player to any of the PC based ones (XBMC is one of the best and a personal favorite of mine). For example, the PS3 will not play Matroska container files and getting MPEG-4 video and 5.1/7.1 audio working together is an effort in futility. If you have an HDTV and/or surround sound system you are much better off using a standalone PC as you will not be bogged down by artificial restrictions put in place purely for marketing reasons. Playback on the PS3 might "seem" like its working but it is very common for it to downscale or do other nasty things

4. You certainly can. There are a number of remote streaming and remote access tools which let you access files stored at home when you are on the go. Setting up a VPN is probably the safest and best route but there are other solutions which are less technical

As always, best of luck!

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

Hi,

I was in your situation ~2 years ago; high end NAS or dedicated mATX PC. I went with a Synology DS209 and have not regretted it.

It's first mandate was for streaming movies for the kids using XBMC on the XBOX which worked perfectly. Obviously also used for storing games/apps/pictures/music/etc... using RAID 0 on 2x500GB HDs. I wasn't sure how much data I'd rack up, but I need to rectify the fact that I have no tolerance and mirror as I rarely have more than 400GB total (it would only peak temporarily).

My old rear projection LCD died in November and the timing couldn't of been better with black Friday and I got myself the EXACT same TV you have for insanely cheap (I was afraid of Plasma & kids leaving the TV on for HOURS on pause or something, but I educated them well on that front). After showing the kids how to use the Samsung equivalent of XBMC for streaming movies, I got rid of the XBOX altogether.

The only difference is I had to enable the media streaming through DSM (adds specific folders by default).

It's quiet, extremely fast, small, looks good, DSM as you've said is extremely easy to use & powerful and they keep updating it regularly.

It wasn't cheap, but all the cheaper solutions (better known brands for everyday consumers like Netgear, Seagate, WD, etc... really don't stack up... you get what you pay for).

You might have already checked it out, but smallnetbuilder.com has awesome reviews/charts comparing a TON of different NAS devices. You can't go wrong with either QNAP or Synology

Interesting! So then streaming movies from the DS209 to the TV has worked very well in your situation? Also, what else do you have connected to your home network? Has streaming videos ever caused any issues in term of internet speed and the like? And lastly, do you know if it is capable of backing up things over USB? Like, if I were to connect the DS209 to my laptop with only a USB cable, am I able to backup my files that way?

Thanks!

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

1. Almost every chipset ships with firmware raid capabilities. This is not as good as a dedicated RAID controller but unless you absolutely under no circumstances can have any data loss they will work just fine. Software RAID will work just fine as well

2. I remember that thread! You will probably be able to get all that you need for around 600-700 bucks. What you get for that money will be significantly more usable, powerful, and flexible than any QNAP or Synology NAS drive. You will however need to load it up with an OS and configure it (Ubuntu works great for this). If you don't trust yourself to build and configure it on your own you might be able to find one that's prebuilt, however this is a great place to start as building PCs is always a fun project.

3. I would recommend getting a motherboard with HDMI output. The AMD fusion APUs are amazing for this because it's all done onboard. You could bypass this and use the PS3 as your media server but the PS3 has gimped codec support and is a vastly inferior player to any of the PC based ones (XBMC is one of the best and a personal favorite of mine). For example, the PS3 will not play Matroska container files and getting MPEG-4 video and 5.1/7.1 audio working together is an effort in futility. If you have an HDTV and/or surround sound system you are much better off using a standalone PC as you will not be bogged down by artificial restrictions put in place purely for marketing reasons. Playback on the PS3 might "seem" like its working but it is very common for it to downscale or do other nasty things

4. You certainly can. There are a number of remote streaming and remote access tools which let you access files stored at home when you are on the go. Setting up a VPN is probably the safest and best route but there are other solutions which are less technical

As always, best of luck!

1. As long as I can easily replace the drives, then I don't think this will be too big of an issue.

2. 600-700 might be a bit too steep for my budget currently. Would you happen to know how many watts this would generally use while in use and idle?

3. Yeah, that's one thing I have always disliked about some SONY products is their lack of MKV support. My Samsung TV uses something called "AllShare" which seems to be a better choice than using the PS3, if I decided to avoid a mobo that has an HMDI output because of cost. Actually, how much more would a motherboard be if it had an HDMI output than if it didn't?

4. Alright, that's good. Now I will assume that all the speeds will be based on my upload speeds...

5. What kind of read/write speeds would I be potentially looking at here? If I stayed near $600, could I get components that would allow read/write of over 100Mb/s if I'm using gigabit LAN?

EDIT: 6. How small would I be able to keep this, and also, would I be able to do backups over USB as well?

 

[Pinhedd]

1. As long as I can easily replace the drives, then I don't think this will be too big of an issue.

2. 600-700 might be a bit too steep for my budget currently. Would you happen to know how many watts this would generally use while in use and idle?

3. Yeah, that's one thing I have always disliked about some SONY products is their lack of MKV support. My Samsung TV uses something called "AllShare" which seems to be a better choice than using the PS3, if I decided to avoid a mobo that has an HMDI output because of cost. Actually, how much more would a motherboard be if it had an HDMI output than if it didn't?

4. Alright, that's good. Now I will assume that all the speeds will be based on my upload speeds...

5. What kind of read/write speeds would I be potentially looking at here? If I stayed near $600, could I get components that would allow read/write of over 100Mb/s if I'm using gigabit LAN?

EDIT: 6. How small would I be able to keep this, and also, would I be able to do backups over USB as well?

1. It depends on the case but it shouldn't be an issue. One disadvantage of small formfactor PCs is that they're larger than NAS drives. Most small formfactor cases only have room for 1 or 2 2.5 inch hard drives, you'll have to shop around for one that supports multiple 3.5 inch hard drives. If you get lucky you might also find one that has hotswap bays, I know they do exist but they come at a small price premium due to the low demand

2. 600-700 bucks is on the high end. I'm Canadian so prices tend to be a bit higher up here. If you shop around and take advantage of discounts you might even be able to fit it in the 400-500 range. Unless you get extremely lucky it will cost you more than an equivalent capacity QNAP. The power consumption will be minimal, sub 200 watts under load for sure and far less when idle (assuming an AMD A8 APU)

3. I have a Samsung TV as well which has Allshare as well. It's pretty decent but still lacks a number of format supports. My biggest gripe with gimped media players is that they have to have support for the container format, the video format and the audio format.

AVI is just plain horrible in every imaginable way and has horrible h264 support (means no HD video).

MKV is god but unsupported because it's heavily associated with piracy.

The only one that works for both HD video and surround audio is the MPEG container and even then it has sketchy support for AC3 and DTS. It has official support for AAC but AAC support is gimped on the XBox, plus no one uses it.

The only success that I ever had in streaming stuff to the PS3 involved using an MPEG transport stream (basically the same format used for broadcast TV) with an h264 video stream and AC3/DTS audio stream. Unfortunately this means that any downloaded HD videos will have to be transcoded before they can be played.

Using a soft media server (meaning that the player simply serves up a media stream rather than reading the file directly) will make things worse because it will transcode it on the fly to suit whatever format the endpoint is capable of handling. It's not uncommon to see a high bitrate h264/DTS video transcoded into a choppy MPEG-2/MP3 stream, ugh.

4. Yes it will be dependent on your upload speeds, not much to be done about that. If there's anything that you want to make available you should use an actual cloud storage service or sync service such as Dropbox (dropbox even keeps revisions of documents, this has saved my ass more than once)

5. The read/write speeds on most NAS drives are crap, pretty sure I covered this in our last discussion. QNAP R/W speeds are better than other NAS drives but still no where near as good as an actual chipset controller. Even though I'm talking about a small formfactor PC, it is still a fully functional PC. The limiting factor will be the platter drives, not the chipset. Typical R/W speeds are 125-150MBps for a 2TB 7200 RPM hard drive. However, if you're looking to save a few bucks you can get away with some 2TB 5400 hard drives. They won't be as responsive for random response tasks but they will serve up media just fine.

6. http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=32938&vpn=MI-008&manufacture=Apex%20Computer%20Technology&promoid=1360 is about as small as you're going to get.

That's an mITX formfactor. The only thing you're going to fit in there (within your budget) is an AMD E-450 all-in-one board such as this one

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_CPU_on_Board/E45M1I_DELUXE/

That together with two hard drives and some RAM you'd be pretty much set (that has HDMI and gigabit LAN, CPU is included)

Alternatively you could go with a slightly larger mATX formfactor (PSU may not be included)

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=57786&vpn=ML03B&manufacture=Silverstone%20Technology

with this motherboard

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_FM1/F1A75I_DELUXE/

and this CPU

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=66665&vpn=AD3870WNGXBOX&manufacture=AMD

I personally think that the bottom one looks a hell of a lot cooler, and is certainly a lot more powerful but it's also going to be about 300 bucks more expensive. The mITX PC is only going to be good for media playback and storage, the bottom one could be used for a lot more, including some amateur gaming.

 

[dechy]

Interesting! So then streaming movies from the DS209 to the TV has worked very well in your situation? Also, what else do you have connected to your home network? Has streaming videos ever caused any issues in term of internet speed and the like? And lastly, do you know if it is capable of backing up things over USB? Like, if I were to connect the DS209 to my laptop with only a USB cable, am I able to backup my files that way?

Thanks!

Indeed it has, the ONLY problem is the file system can't take 4+GB files, so this obviously creates a no-go situation with MKVs. It's a non-issue for me as I don't download such massive files (I did acquire some through friends); 720p is perfectly fine for me in terms of file size/quality ratio.

I have a Galaxy S2 phone, PS3, XBOX (former), WII, NDSLite & NDSi, Asus Transformer, Asus eeePC 1001HA, HP 8450p & the desktop in my member computer configuration profile.

The ONLY hardware sometimes giving me troubles is the PS3, but that is because of the codecs, so I use PS3 Media on Windows 7 and let my desktop transcode on the fly if the codecs don't work for the PS3.

In terms of speed, if doesn't affect anything, at least not in the configuration I have it running @ (raid 0). That is; the kids could be watching a 720p movie to the TV, I could be transferring data to the NAS while the GF listens to music and no one would get corruption/choppiness to the media running... I would get slower transfer rates, but I'd rather that than hear the kids scream that the movie is buffering lol.

If I'm alone on the wire, I'm always getting a consistent 45MB/s transfer speed, which is literally 10x more than I used to get with an old NetGear single drive NAS (I NEVER saw more than 5MB/s on that thing). I'm not even using jumbo frames on this because I have too many different devices and I'm pretty sure that the Nintendo stuff would probably crap out.

The USB on the DS209 seems horrible, thankfully I don't use it, but I've plugged in USB flash drives & hard drives through USB and it was INSANELY slow, and it's sort of a known fact of my model. I just transfer through my desktop to NAS and it's MUCH faster that way. I've never tried to plug the NAS device directly to the desktop through USB, but I'm pretty sure it would be slower than the 45MB/s I'm getting through 1GB network, even if USB 2.0 is theoretically 60MB/s max.

I haven't read all the new & improved features of the 212j, 212+, etc..., but I'm sure they are better than the 209, and the 209 is a solid product in my books.

Pinhedd: My TV runs MKVs perfectly fine through USB flash/drive (not NAS as it can't handle such big files ) ; either you have an older model which Samsung decided not to update the firmware to decode it straight through Allshare or maybe you haven't updated your TV?

 

[Pinhedd]

Pinhedd: My TV runs MKVs perfectly fine through USB flash/drive (not NAS as it can't handle such big files ) ; either you have an older model which Samsung decided not to update the firmware to decode it straight through Allshare or maybe you haven't updated your TV?

I haven't even tried updating the firmware on my TV. I should give it a shot. I have a Samsung PN50C540 which I know to be a slightly gimped version of the more expensive 550 (but not gimped in any way that would actually bother me)

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

1. It depends on the case but it shouldn't be an issue. One disadvantage of small formfactor PCs is that they're larger than NAS drives. Most small formfactor cases only have room for 1 or 2 2.5 inch hard drives, you'll have to shop around for one that supports multiple 3.5 inch hard drives. If you get lucky you might also find one that has hotswap bays, I know they do exist but they come at a small price premium due to the low demand

2. 600-700 bucks is on the high end. I'm Canadian so prices tend to be a bit higher up here. If you shop around and take advantage of discounts you might even be able to fit it in the 400-500 range. Unless you get extremely lucky it will cost you more than an equivalent capacity QNAP. The power consumption will be minimal, sub 200 watts under load for sure and far less when idle (assuming an AMD A8 APU)

3. I have a Samsung TV as well which has Allshare as well. It's pretty decent but still lacks a number of format supports. My biggest gripe with gimped media players is that they have to have support for the container format, the video format and the audio format.

AVI is just plain horrible in every imaginable way and has horrible h264 support (means no HD video).

MKV is god but unsupported because it's heavily associated with piracy.

The only one that works for both HD video and surround audio is the MPEG container and even then it has sketchy support for AC3 and DTS. It has official support for AAC but AAC support is gimped on the XBox, plus no one uses it.

The only success that I ever had in streaming stuff to the PS3 involved using an MPEG transport stream (basically the same format used for broadcast TV) with an h264 video stream and AC3/DTS audio stream. Unfortunately this means that any downloaded HD videos will have to be transcoded before they can be played.

Using a soft media server (meaning that the player simply serves up a media stream rather than reading the file directly) will make things worse because it will transcode it on the fly to suit whatever format the endpoint is capable of handling. It's not uncommon to see a high bitrate h264/DTS video transcoded into a choppy MPEG-2/MP3 stream, ugh.

4. Yes it will be dependent on your upload speeds, not much to be done about that. If there's anything that you want to make available you should use an actual cloud storage service or sync service such as Dropbox (dropbox even keeps revisions of documents, this has saved my ass more than once)

5. The read/write speeds on most NAS drives are crap, pretty sure I covered this in our last discussion. QNAP R/W speeds are better than other NAS drives but still no where near as good as an actual chipset controller. Even though I'm talking about a small formfactor PC, it is still a fully functional PC. The limiting factor will be the platter drives, not the chipset. Typical R/W speeds are 125-150MBps for a 2TB 7200 RPM hard drive. However, if you're looking to save a few bucks you can get away with some 2TB 5400 hard drives. They won't be as responsive for random response tasks but they will serve up media just fine.

6. http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=32938&vpn=MI-008&manufacture=Apex%20Computer%20Technology&promoid=1360 is about as small as you're going to get.

That's an mITX formfactor. The only thing you're going to fit in there (within your budget) is an AMD E-450 all-in-one board such as this one

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_CPU_on_Board/E45M1I_DELUXE/

That together with two hard drives and some RAM you'd be pretty much set (that has HDMI and gigabit LAN, CPU is included)

Alternatively you could go with a slightly larger mATX formfactor (PSU may not be included)

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=57786&vpn=ML03B&manufacture=Silverstone%20Technology

with this motherboard

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_FM1/F1A75I_DELUXE/

and this CPU

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=66665&vpn=AD3870WNGXBOX&manufacture=AMD

I personally think that the bottom one looks a hell of a lot cooler, and is certainly a lot more powerful but it's also going to be about 300 bucks more expensive. The mITX PC is only going to be good for media playback and storage, the bottom one could be used for a lot more, including some amateur gaming.

Very, very interesting. I'm definitely starting to warm up to the idea of building this...

What I noticed first of all about the mITX was the fact that it doesn't support RAID, so I think I'll just go ahead and look into the mATX instead.

Now considering what Dechy mentioned, if I was so inclined, I could just use Samsung's AllShare if it turned out to be a decent media player, yes? And if I did that then I wouldn't have to worry about plugging in an HDMI cable? I'm just looking at it because it's one less cable to buy, but I mean considering that this will be a very immobile device, I'll probably end up going with the HDMI cable and XBMC anyway.

Also regarding the media playback, how exactly would I control XBMC through my TV? Actually, how will I control the comp for anything? Would I set it up such that I could access it remotely through my laptop or desktop?

Basically what this sounds like to me is a very very powerful NAS right? I mean, in a way, it is still very much an NAS in the sense that I will be backing up my all of my data through my home network. But it's also a lot better than an NAS because it has more room for expanding, it's a lot more open as it's a PC, it seems to be a lot more future proof as you can replace the parts inside of it, it is better as a media server because I can use the best programs to be able to play basically anything on everything I want, and it's capable of RAID. Is that an accurate-ish description?

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

Also, after further research, I guess the appropriate term for this device would be an HTPC/NAS combo...

 

[jasonaztw]

I'd say QNAP TS-219P II should be no problem being an all-purpose multimedia server and backup server.
It has faster speed at 2Ghz and more RAM (512MB) for multi-tasking (downloading lots of torrents & newsgroup can be resource intensive)
The built-in DLNA Server can stream contents to DLNA devices (up to the decoding capability of your clients).
It works with PS3 & Samsung TVs.
The good thing about these NAS compared to an HTPC is the low power consumption with 24/7 operation.
The out-of-box solution for RAID 1 is no brainer design and very easy to upgrade to a larger capacity with QNAP's online raid capacity expansion.
If you want remote access to your files at home, I think QNAP also offers FTP, WebDAV, web-based file manager. Currently there's QMobile for multimedia access on iOS & Android. I heard from the support team that more apps are being developed for the file access and NAS management.
If you want secure access such as VPN, their latest firmware also offers VPN server with MyCloudNAS Connect client utility for easy connection.
I think the time you saved on building your own HTPC and the $ on the energy bill will be worth it if you go with a NAS device.
QNAP does offer a lot more apps (they are called QPKGs) for expanding the NAS functions. Their community seems a lot more active (http://forum.qnap.com/viewforum.php?f=121)

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

I'd say QNAP TS-219P II should be no problem being an all-purpose multimedia server and backup server.
It has faster speed at 2Ghz and more RAM (512MB) for multi-tasking (downloading lots of torrents & newsgroup can be resource intensive)
The built-in DLNA Server can stream contents to DLNA devices (up to the decoding capability of your clients).
It works with PS3 & Samsung TVs.
The good thing about these NAS compared to an HTPC is the low power consumption with 24/7 operation.
The out-of-box solution for RAID 1 is no brainer design and very easy to upgrade to a larger capacity with QNAP's online raid capacity expansion.
If you want remote access to your files at home, I think QNAP also offers FTP, WebDAV, web-based file manager. Currently there's QMobile for multimedia access on iOS & Android. I heard from the support team that more apps are being developed for the file access and NAS management.
If you want secure access such as VPN, their latest firmware also offers VPN server with MyCloudNAS Connect client utility for easy connection.
I think the time you saved on building your own HTPC and the $ on the energy bill will be worth it if you go with a NAS device.
QNAP does offer a lot more apps (they are called QPKGs) for expanding the NAS functions. Their community seems a lot more active (http://forum.qnap.com/viewforum.php?f=121)

If I were to use the Twonky media server along with my Samsung TV, will I be able to play a WIDE range of video and audio formats? Where would I go about finding a list of supported formats?

I'm kind of a n00b to the whole media streaming thing, so bear with me. If I were to get an HTPC, basically that box will handle all of the media streaming and decoding itself, while with that NAS, it would hold all of the media, but the TV or PS3 itself will have to do the decoding, so it's limited by those, right?

Also about the NAS, I was wondering if it has the capability of USB backup. Like, if I were to plug my computer into that NAS via USB, could I back up all of my information that way? This is kind of important because I currently have Win7 Home Premium, which doesn't support network backup, and I'd like to be able to backup my current stuff on the NAS while I do the upgrade.

And very very last question for now, how future proof is this device? Does it have enough modern stuff and features that it will last for a while?

Thanks

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

Actually, I ended up finding the User Manual for my TV here (under the "Manuals" drop-down box [don't use the "Quick Guide"]):

http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/PN51D550C1FXZA

The supported video and audio formats can be found on page 178. Does that look like it is acceptable?

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

I think I have decided what I am going to do.

For now, I'm going to just get the QNAP TS-219p II. It seems to be a better value than the Synology DS212, which is the same price; I can live without the USB 3.0 ports. I will use this as a backup location and media server for now, and in the future, if I decide that the media options are insufficient, I will make an HTPC in the future, but I will still store all of the media on my NAS; the HTPC will just handle all of the decoding.

My main reason for this decision was ultimately power consumption. I am currently living with my parents, and I am not paying for any part of the power bill, so I'd prefer to use a device that use as few watts as possible. Another issue I have with the power consumption is that I am currently using a power bar that is already very full, and I think adding one more power hungry device to the mix is just asking for trouble.

Thank you all very much for all of your help!

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

Best answer selected by MR_AWESOME55.

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar