WDTV LIve + Netgear Powerline/WD Livewire + external USB HDD's need opinion

[tube435]

Alright guys, tell me what you think of this: I've got a WDTV Live and a couple of 2TB external USB HDD's. I love my WDTV and would like to get two more for my other TV's. I'm thinking of getting either Netgear Powerlines of WD Livewires so I can attach all of them to my network and move the HDD's to my office with my PC and router.

One problem; my HDD's are USB and I need to attach them to my network. I've been looking at some gigabit usb sharing hubs, but I'm worried about being able to get a high enough data rate through them to watch the bluray remuxes I have on the HDD's. What do you guys think?

I know I should probably just get a home server witth multiple bays or some NAS drives, but I'd like to do this as cheaply as possible and still have it all work. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[RabidDog]

A proper NAS is your best bet.. however.. they will require fresh new discs inserted.. so plan on buying NAS +disks. Once you have a working NAS then often you can attach usb disks but thats a bit untidy and requires an extra power socket. SO now your looking at a fourbay NAS ($$ large) . You start approaching the price of a cheap PC...
Your idea of gigabit usb hubs (is there such a thing? any links?) sounds like the cheapest option. Buy and try? my understanding is that as long as you are using wired ethernet 100mb is enough to play at least one HD stream (correct?)

I plan on doing something similar, when funds permits.

[jagabo]

You could put one USB drive on each WDTV Live. They can all access each others' drives over the network. The powerline networking is likely to be your bottleneck. No expensive NAS box needed.

Real world USB throughput of a USB 2.0 port is around 240 Mb/s. Well over twice as fast as the WDTV Live's 100 Mb/s ethernet port. Though I don't know about the CPU overhead the WDTV Live would incur serving an HD video to another client. In any case, you could try it first. If performance isn't satisfactory you can get a NAS.

[tube435]

RabidDog - your ideas paralleled mine on the NAS, I just don't want to do all that yet. If I can get the USB's to work now my infrastructure would stay the same and I can upgrade to the NAS/Home Server later. Yes there are Gigabit USB hubs, but most get mixed reviews. I was thinking of this one:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10521&cs_id=1052106&p_id=...seq=1&format=2

I buy stuff from them all the time and love everything. Best bang for the buck hands down.

jagabo - I never thought of that. Can I access the USB's from my PC if they're attached to the WDTV? If so I can try that as a lower cost option since I'm already planning on getting the Powerlines.

Thanks to both of you for your input.

[jagabo]

Can I access the USB's from my PC if they're attached to the WDTV?

Yes. Read and write.

The reviews of powerline networking I've seen haven't been glowing. I think you'd be better off with 802.11n.

Whatever you go with, I'm looking forward to hearing how it works out...

Here are some high bitrate test files if you're interested:
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=27616

[TBoneit]

I'll second that. I have a 1TB WD NAS and two USB drives hooked up to my Live Plus via Ethernet. I can read or write to the Live's USB drives and the WD NAS shows up as a network drive. So I can delete or move files around on all three drives I use with the Live via the computer without any unhooking or hooking up external drives as long as the live is on. It was simple using the WD Discovery software to create drive mappings. MY computer shows the two USB drives on the live as Live drives and the WD NAS shows up twice, once as public and something else that I do not recall. Sunday for example I took some HD captures and to save space converted them to MP4, then copied them to a 1Tb usb drive on the WD Live Plus. No plugging and unplugging needed. I love the feature set on the WD media players. Do yourself a favor go wired for the networking. You can plug two usb drives in and attach a NAS to your hub and have no speed issues. Even the HD captures play good from the NAS over the network. I was lucky that the old hot air heating ducts were left in place when the heat was converted to hot water baseboard. Those ducts make great wire chases.

[Billf2099]

http://www.simpletech.com/products/storage/simplenet/simplenet.php

I saw one of these on sale somewhere in the paper yesterday. This would be what you are looking for.

It appears to have been Fry's. http://www.frys.com/search?search_type=regular&sqxts=1&query_string=simplenet&submit.x...bmit.y=0&cat=0

Good luck and share how this works.

[RabidDog]

Well I have just seen something that looks interesting the "synology USb station 2" which looks like a sort of cutdown NAS. The specs say it runs DSM3.0 (NAS software ++bt etc.) but no price as yet, and of course no reviews, AFAIK this is hot off the production line. Might suit me very well.

Tube345 ; that site deals in Benjamins, I deal in Majestys