Inside Peek - My Home Media Setup with TwonkyMedia and NAS4220.
Since getting my XBox 360 last Christmas, I’ve been looking at ways to get my media shifted around my flat. The thought of having a central store for all my movies and music and Alexs photos really appealed to me. So I spent some time investigating all the ways I could do this, and after several hours surfing the web, I took the plunge and caughed up the dough for a Icy Box NAS4220-IB Network Attached Storage Device.
Having now used it for a month, I couldn’t be happier!
The living room is dominated by new shiny new Samsung 40″ 1080p HD TV, with my XBox 360 connected via HD Component cable. The NAS is connected to my Gigabit switch in the study, which in turn is linked to my Router, 360, and PC.
The choice to go with a NAS was a simple one with few requirements.
- It had to be low power consuming (not like my gaming rig of a PC)
- It had to be SATA compatible and have at least 2 drive bays
- It had to support UPNP for XBox streaming
- Expandability was desired
Now that’s where the Icy Box NAS4220 came in. It ticked all the boxes for me, and as an addition, came with MAC support, application expandability, and Bonjour services. As well as all the usual stuff, like RAID and JBOD.
After whacking in my SATA disks and firing it up on my network, the configuration was a breeze, and I quickly shuffled through and setup my shared folders for Music, Videos and Photos.
I purchased a license for TwonkyMedia for about £20 from their site, and installed it directly onto the NAS. This is the software which allows the XBox (or network media extender) to communicate with the NAS and stream your media. Installation again was a piece of cake, and after uploading my data to the NAS, I was streaming happily ever after!
I use it mostly to stream HD content that is converted from MKV to AVI using the awesome XenonMKV application detailed here, which outputs beautifully to my TV.
The only downside, It puts regular TV quality to shame. Now if I could only get SkyHD…
