I would like to stream downloaded films, tv programmes etc to my tv. Is a Synology Diskstation/WD Media Streamer the best combination of price/performance? Also, would prefer wireless because of the position of the router. Thanks for any advice.
Hmm... Qnap makes some good and affordable NAS. But you could aswell go with simple external USB-drives.
If you have a smart tv, by that I mean it has internet capability as well as DLNA, then building a cheap system from spares is the best solution in my opinion. I made a NAS using my old C2Q Q6600, Corsair PSU, Corsair Memory and a cheap case, put windows 8 on it and installed Serviio, placed it in the attic and its an awesome server, media streamer. Serviio, transcodes files so they are compatible with the device reading them, so as most TV's are fussy over which formats they can use, you wont need to worry about it as Serviio converts them on the fly and sends them to the TV. You can get a pretty cheap AMD system theses days which will be more than enough with low power usage. As mine is on all the time, I also installed uTorrent so it can download and upload files and once downloaded, automatically re-locate the files to a directory Serviio scans at regularly intervals for new media ready for streaming
