Hi all, I'm a reasonably competent PC and Mac user and am thinking of dipping my toes into the NAS world for the first time. I have 2 young kids who love watching TV shows; I currently have plenty on my iPad and Airplay them to my TV, but I want a solution the kids can use (I don't trust them with my iPad unsupervised but will let them use the PS3!) I've been looking at the Synology range of home NAS kit, specifically the DS214SE based on an earlier Bit Tech review. What I want is a NAS that can hold all my videos and photos and stream them to either my PS3 or Apple TV - is the Synology a good bet for this? I know it can act as an iTunes server, but is it suitable to be used to back up my wife's Macbook via Time Machine as well? This is very much a secondary aim, I am more than happy to just manually drag and drop photos/vidoes/music for storage on the NAS as required. If it is relevant, I've only got a wireless network (D-Link DSL-2890AL) running in my house at present. I plan to plumb in ethernet in the future, but the family doesn't give me much spare time... I'd appreciate and advice or steers you guys can give me. Thanks, Jimmy
It will probably work with Time Machine without problems. The only thing for TM needed is an HDD it can find through the network (not something that has to be accessed by a proprietary control panel or anything like that). The problem with the Apple TV is that it may be able to catch the iTunes server from Synology, but this means that the movies and TV shows need to be in an iTunes friendly video format. That's usually not the case. I don't know but, could there be an "app" for the PS3 to through a NAS and play files. That shouldn't be difficult unless Sony is stopping it. In the end, as someone in the same situation as yours, I've always seen one solution: a computer right next to the TV. Although I don't have it, a Mac Mini with external storage is, for me, the perfect setup (for playing videos and downloading 24/7). ¿Trusting your kids? They only have the keyboard and trackpad and you can create a guest account inside Mac OS X. Hope it helps!
"It may not" It will not. What Apple mandates you to do in this case is to share from a Mac. The Synology will show up on Macs looking for a shared library, but not on other Apple devices such as the ATV. Although it requires the least neurons to set up which is why most people start into it, once you get into it a Mac setup is inflexible and constrained, even when not taking into account the Barbie-grade hardware. Time Machine over a LAN on third party hardware is still totally hit and miss - heck, even on first party hardware it belies the lowest common consumer denominator crap it is. You're best served with a USB HDD - works every time (at least I've never yet had to rebuild a TM archive on a USB HDD. LAN - a lot, to the extent I've given up). The PS3 is a DLNA DMP (at least when I was using them) and as such you shouldn't have problems in getting the Synology to recognise it as a media source once you set up the DLNA server on the Synology.
Hmmm. Thanks for the replies guys. Based on what you've said, I'll probably ditch the Apple TV streaming idea and just use the PS3. I would love to setup a computer of some sort beside the TV for the kids but I can't afford it at the minute.
