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

Bruce Campbell bc at humbug.org.au
Mon Oct 4 22:00:27 EDT 2010


On Mon, 4 Oct 2010, Benjamin Fowler wrote:

> 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. 

Depends on whether you expect the transcoding to occur in 'real-time' or
not.  If you're fine with your videos having a certain delay from first
arriving[1] on the NAS to being streamable, then a lower-powered cpu is
quite adequate for the task, especially if you have the disk space to
keep the transcoded copies around for a while.

--==--
Bruce.

[1] Of course, if you are expecting to transcode 'live' TV, ie, from a
     capture card, then you will need a beefy cpu, unless the capture card
     delivers something useful.


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