Pimp my network (and entertainment center)

[Eightball]

Newegg has the WD Red 3TB drives on sale this weekend for $135 (down from $160.)

Went to jump on it, but I don't notice a sale right now. WD30EFRX on Newegg is still displaying at $159.99. I'll keep an eye on my inbox in case it's still upcoming.

However, the newegg reviews for the drive are pretty spooky. Something about a 25% failure rate.

EDIT: Anecdotes suggest that the failure rate is higher for OEM drives, especially from newegg. Shouldn't really be a problem if I can RMA them, since it's a long-term project.

[Mission Difficult]

[quote author=Mission Difficult link=topic=6842.msg264171#msg264171 date=1364654838]
Newegg has the WD Red 3TB drives on sale this weekend for $135 (down from $160.)

Went to jump on it, but I don't notice a sale right now. WD30EFRX on Newegg is still displaying at $159.99. I'll keep an eye on my inbox in case it's still upcoming.

However, the newegg reviews for the drive are pretty spooky. Something about a 25% failure rate.

EDIT: Anecdotes suggest that the failure rate is higher for OEM drives, especially from newegg. Shouldn't really be a problem if I can RMA them, since it's a long-term project.
[/quote]

You need to use the promo code EMCYTZT31569 (I think you might need to be signed up for the newsletter for it to work, not a big deal either way.)

They also have the DS712+ on sale for $400.

EDIT: They also have this Samsung TV on sale for $1000.

[Eightball]

[quote author=Eightball link=topic=6842.msg264172#msg264172 date=1364655637]
[quote author=Mission Difficult link=topic=6842.msg264171#msg264171 date=1364654838]
Newegg has the WD Red 3TB drives on sale this weekend for $135 (down from $160.)

Went to jump on it, but I don't notice a sale right now. WD30EFRX on Newegg is still displaying at $159.99. I'll keep an eye on my inbox in case it's still upcoming.

However, the newegg reviews for the drive are pretty spooky. Something about a 25% failure rate.

EDIT: Anecdotes suggest that the failure rate is higher for OEM drives, especially from newegg. Shouldn't really be a problem if I can RMA them, since it's a long-term project.
[/quote]

You need to use the promo code EMCYTZT31569 (I think you might need to be signed up for the newsletter for it to work, not a big deal either way.)

They also have the DS712+ on sale for $400.

EDIT: They also have this Samsung TV on sale for $1000.
[/quote]

Nice, promo code was accepted with my email. Thanks! I will probably spend some time mulling it over today and order them tonight or tomorrow. Pray for no failure...

The DS712+, according to the Plex NAS bible isn't a great choice, and won't run it well. Seems kinda weird to me that the DS213 supposedly would, but I'm okay with holding off for the time being. The TV looks nice too, but currently space constraints will prevent me from buying one until I'm moved in (July).

[zaneyard]

I didn't think it was out yet.
I feel xbmc is the best software, it just needs good hardware.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Yeah I was just wondering if anyone had any speculation/etc. on it.

[Eightball]

Still waiting on a price drop on the DS213. Don't think it'll actually come though, so I'll probably order it around ACEN so I can play with it before moving apartments. Speaking of which, I have a pretty good idea of the amount of space I'll have (read: little) and how I'll lay out my stuff. So I'm starting to turn my attention to some other electronics.

Been a while since we've talked about it, but I'm still leaning towards a "dumb" HDTV, probably Samsung but maybe VIZIO or Sony. Sceptre makes some stupidly cheap units which people report have passable quality, but I think I'll pass. My viewing distance will probably be about 5' or 60" (told you, small space), which according to a lot of buying guides puts my ideal TV size between 20" and 40". I'm pretty sure I'm going for the very upper end of that range. Pretty sure I want a local dimming LED set. That pretty much nails it down: 40", LD-LED, 2+ HDMI, preferably without 3D or smart features. I'll edit or reply when I get a good range of choices. I was thinking of wall-mounting it to the TV/media cabinet for aesthetics, but I don't really trust particleboard's durability. Besides, it'll fit just fine on its stand.

Printers too. I'm done with Inkjets, having experienced headaches with what, 6 different ones? Ugh. So I'm in the market for a laser printer with scanning abilities. It looks even the lower end of color printers is pretty expensive. So, I might just go with a monochrome unit. I can count on one hand the number of times I have benefited from color in the past year, so hopefully I won't mind not having that ability. I'm researching how I can configure a router to act as a print server. Some routers can connect directly via USB to do that, right?

[Mission Difficult]

Still waiting on a price drop on the DS213. Don't think it'll actually come though, so I'll probably order it around ACEN so I can play with it before moving apartments. Speaking of which, I have a pretty good idea of the amount of space I'll have (read: little) and how I'll lay out my stuff. So I'm starting to turn my attention to some other electronics.

Been a while since we've talked about it, but I'm still leaning towards a "dumb" HDTV, probably Samsung but maybe VIZIO or Sony. Sceptre makes some stupidly cheap units which people report have passable quality, but I think I'll pass. My viewing distance will probably be about 5' or 60" (told you, small space), which according to a lot of buying guides puts my ideal TV size between 20" and 40". I'm pretty sure I'm going for the very upper end of that range. Pretty sure I want a local dimming LED set. That pretty much nails it down: 40", LD-LED, 2+ HDMI, preferably without 3D or smart features. I'll edit or reply when I get a good range of choices. I was thinking of wall-mounting it to the TV/media cabinet for aesthetics, but I don't really trust particleboard's durability. Besides, it'll fit just fine on its stand.

Printers too. I'm done with Inkjets, having experienced headaches with what, 6 different ones? Ugh. So I'm in the market for a laser printer with scanning abilities. It looks even the lower end of color printers is pretty expensive. So, I might just go with a monochrome unit. I can count on one hand the number of times I have benefited from color in the past year, so hopefully I won't mind not having that ability. I'm researching how I can configure a router to act as a print server. Some routers can connect directly via USB to do that, right?

I believe all of the Synology products can act as print servers.

Yeah, I wouldn't mount a TV to that thing.

[Eightball]

I believe all of the Synology products can act as print servers.

Yeah, I wouldn't mount a TV to that thing.

All right, I'll have the option of making the Synology a print server, having the router handle it, or just getting a printer with good wireless and doing it the old-fashioned way. Well, slightly-old-fashioned way.

Pretty sure the ASUS RT-N56U is the router of choice. Seems pretty solid. I plan to keep this, the modem, and the synology in a small cabinet with cable routing to reduce clutter. Wireless signal can probably deal with it. It's possible that there will be more than 4 devices that need an ethernet connection (2 desktops, the NAS, a video game console or two); we'll be hanging onto my WRT54GL to act as a switch if it's necessary.

Back to TVs. Although I won't be buying for a couple of months, I don't think that the dumb, non-3d TV segment will be changing a whole lot in that timespan, so I'm going ahead with the research. Looks like the Samsung LED 6000 series is a solid choice. Thoughts? Going to start amazon price tracking.

[Mission Difficult]

That Samsung looks like a great buy.

You should get something with more ports. You're going to want to have your Roku on a gigabit port.

[zaneyard]

So I took the time to set up XBMC for movies and TV shows today. Looking around online and I found this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFjg_4fP...RN&index=5

I might end up setting up a bunch of roms and emulators for this just for the fun of it.

[Eightball]

That Samsung looks like a great buy.

You should get something with more ports. You're going to want to have your Roku on a gigabit port.

Since routers with >4 ports are pretty elusive (eh? meh?), I'm going to figure you're talking about picking up a gigabit switch. So, something like this or this or this.

I've also started tracking the VIZIO E420D (smoke weed) since it's a pretty good quality and cheaper than the LED 6000 despite having 3D and Smart features. Might hunt for a dumb Vizio unit too, more research to come.

EDIT: Make that the VIZIO E420i-A1. No 3D, save $30-$40.

[Mission Difficult]

[quote author=Mission Difficult link=topic=6842.msg264962#msg264962 date=1365900563]
That Samsung looks like a great buy.

You should get something with more ports. You're going to want to have your Roku on a gigabit port.

Since routers with >4 ports are pretty elusive (eh? meh?), I'm going to figure you're talking about picking up a gigabit switch. So, something like this or this or this.

I've also started tracking the VIZIO E420D (smoke weed) since it's a pretty good quality and cheaper than the LED 6000 despite having 3D and Smart features. Might hunt for a dumb Vizio unit too, more research to come.

EDIT: Make that the VIZIO E420i-A1. No 3D, save $30-$40.
[/quote]

Yeah, sorry. I meant switch. I've heard that TP-Link stuff is pretty cool but I haven't used any so I can't say for sure.

[HeK]

I have a bunch of TPLink. It's Chinese built, but all reference designs. It all works pretty well, and their firmware is decent. Most of their routers support DD-WRT.
I'd use their switches where you don't need a managed Cisco, and their routers are ok. You'd prolly want to go Asus over them for a router, if you can't fit a pfSense.

[Eightball]

Mkay. Pretty much confirmed at this point that I'll be getting a mid-range ASUS router, probably a RT-N16 or RT-N56U. Both devices seem to pretty good spec-wise, with the biggest complaint being that the factory firmware is hit-or-miss. If the latter, I can install DD-WRT (I think; I have no experience with it). EDIT: DD-WRT isn't supported on the N56U, so I think I'll go with the RT-N16 regardless.

Already sketched up a preliminary network map, I can already name 7 devices which would benefit from a wired connection. So I'll probably invest in an 8-port switch. I'm just a little giddy about this whole thing, the devices are already largely color coded (victor=red, tango=blue, nas=green, roku=purple) so I can go order 8 different colors of cat6 cables, aha.

[Versus]

nerd

[kaese]

nerd

[Eightball]

Ugh. Started encoding media again and remembered why I had taken a hiatus from it. I still don't have a good way to burn in plaintext subtitles. Handbrake can really only handle .ass/ssa subtitles, and every other converter I've played with just...sucks. Freemake recognizes and burns in, but the output quality is bad and filesize is bloated. Xvid4PSP looked promising, but was really slow, and now I just found out that the batch that I just encoded all loses audio at 20min, 40sec (wtf???). On top of this, I've had to download a ridiculous amount of tools for handling the .srt files (subler, mkvtoolnix, avidemux, ogmdemux...). I think I'm literally better off deleting the remaining media or redownloading it in a different format.

The Samsung LED 6000 series TV's pretty much gone from Amazon now. I can still get it on Newegg I think, but it might be better for me to look at an older 5000 series (here) or go with the Vizio e420i-a1. Some people say Vizio sets don't have quite the picture quality that Samsung has. But some people also say that Samsung sometimes sells units which actually contain panels from other manufacturers (panel lottery). Ergh.

also wow

[Eightball]

Bit the bullet and bought the DS713+. Reviews really agree that it can act as a full-featured web server. Hopefully I'll be able to get the extra $230 worth of utility out of it. Will begin playing around with it after May 2nd.

still, ouch, my wallet

[Eightball]

NAS is here! Got it set up last night, which really just amounted to popping in the hard drives and conecting it to the network. I'm going to need to spend some time learning its nuances, but I've already got Plex installed on it and have successfully streamed media to my Roku, which means that this does what I wanted it to at the most basic level. Once all my media's up there, I'll try transcoding to mobile or roku.

A nice side-product of hand-encoding all my media is that my entire media library is only 200GB now, down from like 350. I'll probably go ahead and encode what's convenient to mp4 anyway from here on out for this reason alone.

Buying a switch and some cables now so I can keep playing with it without disconnecting anyone else's ethernet.

[FlyingMongoose]

NAS is here! Got it set up last night, which really just amounted to popping in the hard drives and conecting it to the network. I'm going to need to spend some time learning its nuances, but I've already got Plex installed on it and have successfully streamed media to my Roku, which means that this does what I wanted it to at the most basic level. Once all my media's up there, I'll try transcoding to mobile or roku.

A nice side-product of hand-encoding all my media is that my entire media library is only 200GB now, down from like 350. I'll probably go ahead and encode what's convenient to mp4 anyway from here on out for this reason alone.

Buying a switch and some cables now so I can keep playing with it without disconnecting anyone else's ethernet.

How is it's buffer/packet queuing? Does it work smooth even with temporary interruptions in signal.

[Eightball]

[quote author=Eightball link=topic=6842.msg265985#msg265985 date=1367518465]
NAS is here! Got it set up last night, which really just amounted to popping in the hard drives and conecting it to the network. I'm going to need to spend some time learning its nuances, but I've already got Plex installed on it and have successfully streamed media to my Roku, which means that this does what I wanted it to at the most basic level. Once all my media's up there, I'll try transcoding to mobile or roku.

A nice side-product of hand-encoding all my media is that my entire media library is only 200GB now, down from like 350. I'll probably go ahead and encode what's convenient to mp4 anyway from here on out for this reason alone.

Buying a switch and some cables now so I can keep playing with it without disconnecting anyone else's ethernet.

How is it's buffer/packet queuing? Does it work smooth even with temporary interruptions in signal.
[/quote]

From my limited understanding (I don't know how to directly measure this), it's pretty good. No interruptions at all except for when it was intentionally disconnected. After reconnection it got itself re-established pretty quickly and handled a pretty large transfer faithfully. I could try testing it by quickly unplugging and replugging it during a transfer...

The only inconvenience I've encountered is that I occasionally have trouble accessing the drive on my Network browser in Win7. Sometimes it defaults to guest credentials, and I have to kill my connection from the web control panel to be prompted to enter admin creds. But, this is probably something on the Win7 side, rather than NAS side.

EDIT: Yes! It can handle at least low-level transcoding. I can at least stream to my mobile at 720kbps rate without maxing out my CPU usage. Going to try with other bit rates, subtitles, and weird media formats.