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

[Benjamin Fowler]

Thanks for all the fantastic advice guys (especially, David, Greg and
Bruce).

On 6 October 2010 07:06, David Harrison <davidharrison at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I would definitely agree with what Greg says and add that the problems with
> video are often exacerbated when you go down the transcoding route. I've got
> a modded (original) Xbox at home that has been running XMBC for several
> years - it has never missed a beat and has handled almost everything in
> terms of media that I've thrown at it. The only thing it can't deal
> gracefully with is HD content; the CPU in it just isn't fast enough to
> handle it.
>
> So to get around that I tried using my (unmodded) Xbox 360 with a
> transcoding system, running ps3mediaserver (
> http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/) off my PC (which is a core 2 duo
> somethingorother). It was just able to keep up with the transcoding (most of
> the time) but I would regularly have problems with out of sync audio/video
> and some other occasional weirdness.
>

Suffice to say that perhaps a NAS is the wrong place to transcode video,
despite a lot of all-in-one NAS boxes supporting transcoding... it seems
complex to get right, and I have a feeling that an off-the-shelf NAS, or a
custom NAS with a stock OS running on lower power hardware won't do
transcoding flexibly, or well enough, and that a 'real' PC or HTPC can be
powered on when needed to do the job, and the NAS left running
continuously... just needs to be big and fast enough to serve files as
quickly as possible.

I love Bruce's suggestion, of perhaps rigging a lower power NAS to do
background transcoding, since most of my video is either Freeview (digital
TV), downloads or DVD rips.  Especially feasible, because I plan to build
this NAS box with lots of storage to begin with.  I could automate this
nicely, and AIUI, if worst comes to worst, libraries like gstreamer aren't
too bad to work with.

Then, if batch conversion isn't good enough, then I can look into a better
solution involving beefy PCs, GPUs, what-have-you.

Thanks for the advice!

Cheers, Ben.
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