[H-GEN] Home NAS box and video streaming: how to choose a processor?

[Benjamin Fowler]

Hello,

So now I have a better idea of how I'm going to build my home NAS box on
open source software (I'm going bespoke, because Thecus/Drobos cost more
than I'm willing to pay).

The big question right now is choosing a CPU/mobo.  However, I'm pondering
streaming video to a small home theatre PC or Xbox from this NAS I'm
speccing out, which is going to have an impact on what processor I'm going
to get.

A lot of modern network-enabled TVs and game boxes can handle UPnP streaming
across a LAN, although their codec support is usually pretty rotten, which
means that some transcoding usually has to be done.  So does this mean that
I'll have to stick a big, beefy processor into my custom NAS box to handle
video transcoding?  This could be a problem, since I intend for the NAS box
to be low-power, always-on, which works against my requirement for streaming
video to my TV.

What are peoples' experience with this little requirement?  Do they put
beefy processors in their NAS boxes?  Or do they build fast media centre PCs
to do the transcoding and use those?

Cheers, Ben.
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