Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The Result

I am really satisfied with the result. It practically fulfills all the requirements I had for a cheap HTPC and NAS.
It plays 720P material fluently (but chokes on 1080P)  as well as 1080P after installing the Broadcom HD decoder, it is easy to control using either the iPod or a wireless mouse. One of the few gripes I have, is that the experience would be more seamless if I did not have to use an external player to get smooth playback. The fact that I use an external player means that I am unable to pause, rewind etc. using the iPod when playing videos. For that I have to use the mouse.

One of the really nice things though is that I can browse and play my music using the iPods interface without having to turn on the plasma.

As a NAS it works flawlessly with much higher transfer speeds than my previous QNAP 109II. And for a much cheaper price. For once upgrading hardware actually made me money instead of costing me money.
Before I had a QNAP 109II as NAS and a laptop with a broken screen as HTPC. I sold these two items for about 400$ and then spent 180$ on building a better replacement. What's not to like?

No comments:

Post a Comment