Suggestions for New Wi-Fi Home Entertainment and Data Storage System?

LArch on 28/06/2015 - 21:14

Hey guys,

I'm going to be starting a new household with the wife very soon, and being not the most tech-savvy, I've got a few questions I need help with. My wife and I both have iPhones, she has a macbook air and I am jumping ship from PC to macbook pro (heartbreaking, I know…)

What I'm looking for:
1. a way to wireless store and backup data
2. a way to have wireless access to this data from multiple devices (hopefully mac and PC compatible)
3. fast home wifi system
4. ideally have remote access (from outside home) to at least some of this data - e.g. photos etc or have a way of backing up my data outside of the wifi system to the central storage area
5. have a home theatre system that allows access to all our multimedia (downloaded and ripped content, online content from central storage as well as our devices)
6. have ability to play content from our devices to wireless speakers
7. have this ability to play our content wirelessly from devices (laptops, phones, ipads) to multiple tvs

we don't have a place yet, we don't own and tv or speakers - we would be setting everything up from scratch.
my current thinking -
- have a HDTV, apple tv, ac router attached to ext hard disk or NAS (OR use time capsule), and i don't know yet what i'm going to do about the speaker bit. i could play phone and laptop content to the tv via airplay.
- alternatively i could invest in a macmini and use it as the home theatre unit and connect it to a tv with an hdmi cable. i could then attach an external hard disk to the mac mini and store everything on that hard disk.

if then i had a tv in the bedroom, i don't know how i'd be accessing the hard disk's contents on the other tv or on the laptop.

someone please explain, or give ideas on how you've set up your media and storage?

cheers, AC.

Electrical & Electronics

Comments

  • pinchies on 28/06/2015 - 21:42
    +2

    I think there are a few ways to do what you are trying to do. I don't have all the answers but I've had similar goals and I thought I would share some of my experiences.

    Wifi:
    Wifi is important to be reliable and fast, especially if you plan to be doing large wireless data transfers. Depending on the size of your house, you may find that one access point (wifi router or similar) does not provide enough coverage, or a reliable speed or connection at longer distances. Don't bother with wifi repeaters, powerline networking, but if at all possible use Ethernet cabling between any wifi access points. The cost or inconvenience in setting it up may be higher, but the headaches you will save will be massive. Don't buy cheap routers - you'll only get headaches. Try netgear, Asus, Belkin or high end Dlink or tp link. Check out smallnetbuilder.com

    Backup:
    Timemachine on a Mac is fantastic. With one caveat - only via USB. If you try backing up over wifi, I have found that every few months the Mac would say "verification of backups requires you to make a new backup" and would wipe all the old backups and start again. If this kind of inconvenience is worth the benefit of having your backups wirelessly, then that's your call. For reliability and speed, if you plan on using time machine I would strongly recommend either backing up via Ethernet cable or USB. I found NAS devices to be less reliable regarding these issues compared with apple time capsule, but even then I still had occasional issues. Otherwise, check out "carbon copy" or my favourite "superduper" if you want more options to setup your own backup scheme.

    Media/Storage:
    If you plan to be setting up your own media library, then I think you get a lot of value out of dedicating a computer/device to be "always on" and do NAS/Media streaming duties. In case that hard drive fails, it's probably best to have a RAID setup, but a Mac mini with a media drive and a backup drive could be an awesome solution. I personally buy content through Apple TV and watch Netflix on Apple TV, so I think that can be a great second device to have. That also allows you to AirPlay video and music from all Apple device to the Apple TV.

  • dragong87 on 28/06/2015 - 21:49
    +1

    for the home theatre and wireless speakers i would consider sonos and an amplifer/receiver and speaker set up with the sonos connect. This will let you stream music throughout your house and have a home theatre set up of your choice.
    For streaming media throughout the house you could consider smart TV's or WD media player/Apple TV?

    Im not sure on the media storage part but im pretty sure one of the HP microservers can do what you need.

  • tin tin on 28/06/2015 - 22:32
    +1

    Yeah a few different ways to do it. Get a good Wifi router as previous suggestion. A good NAS would do nearly all of what you want, I recommend Synology. Use two hard disks in a mirror config in case one fails. You can access your files from outside your house using their software. It supports Airplay speakers too so you could use these. It also supports Apples Timecapsule feature.

  • spackbace on 29/06/2015 - 10:37
    +2

    Probably not perfect, but here's my current setup:

    Storage - WD MyCloud 4TB - This is then plugged directly into the router. These have apps to upload to, as well as it will just show as a drive on the network. Can be accessed outside the network via the apps as well (though I haven't messed around with that too much).

    Media Playing - WDTv (You may prefer Apple TV) - Again, plugged straight into router (router is next to the TV). Can access and play anything off the hard drive

    As to wireless playing of the music, not sure :) I would assume any decent hi-fi setup should have inbuilt wifi abilities.

    Oh and we have a tv in the bedroom, with another WDTv plugged in (also streams Netflix). However I had to connect this to a router (which is directly connected to the main modem/router) to get 5GHz and much more stable streaming. Neither the WDTv or Apple TV is 5GHz wifi

    Side note, 1 option might be CAT cable run from the bedroom to the area you'll have the main router, and also run the cable from where you might have a computer. Sure it seems backward (Wifi should be the new standard etc), but I reckon it will save you a lot of headaches in the future :)

  • pinchies on 29/06/2015 - 10:52

    Rather than sonos, you can buy airport express units pretty cheap new or very cheap used, and these have an optical and 3.5mm audio output that you can send music to via AirPlay. They are actually wifi routers, but you can set them up to just join a wifi network rather than making a new one.

  • Ramrunner on 29/06/2015 - 12:11

    I like all suggestions above so won't add any more but as others have mentioned, for streaming HD and data backup WiFi is NOT AT ALL you best option. Mate get a sparky to pull some Cat6 or better. It's almost guaranteed you're bottlenecking badly with WiFi.

    • pinchies on 29/06/2015 - 12:15

      I have wifi N, not even AC, and I haven't had any bottlenecking with wifi personally due to my setup. I find I get ~80-150Megabit around the house with wifi, but I have several base stations setup connected via cat5, so I have a good signal strength around the house. For a full backup that would be far too slow, but when I had time machine, the hourly/daily incremental backups would complete fairly quickly. But there are many benefits to physical ethernet for sure!

      • Ramrunner on 29/06/2015 - 14:13
        +1

        Mate, I have really good WiFi also (I'm a technician), I also set up WiFi at Taverns and other small businesses using business grade $500 Netgear Access points and Firewalls for guest networks and have a direct line to Netgear engineers due to some of the spectacular requirements I've had to deal with. We're about to do a flower nursery requiring multiple APs with auto adjusting signal strength and hand over which should be very interesting. But 80-150 Megabit just does not compare with the 886 Mbps I get over Gigabit Ethernet pulling 12Gb FullHD DTS files around the place, or streaming Full HD to 4 screens simultaneously. In addition to backups at the same time. My Samsung Smart TV from 2011 STRUGGLES with some of the Full HD stuff I ripped at full bit rate from my BluRay collection because Sammie have only put a stupid 10/100 connection at the back. Going wireless on that? Forget it!

        Wireless absolutely has it's place, I just don't think it's in MULTIPLE SCREEN video streaming or backups.

        Not having a go at you, the original poster asked for a WiFi solution so you're absolutely right in giving him one, but as someone who has to deal with customer's wireless set ups on a weekly basis when their damn Chromecast stutters or whatever, I have to wonder why deal with the headache?

        Even YOU have multiple base stations set up joined by cat5. Why blow the money on routers and access points when sometime for the same money you can pull cat 6 and with a couple of small gig switches perform 6-8x faster, and more reliable?

        A badly placed Microwave or cordless phone (or neighbour's WiFi) has no effect on ethernet.

        • pinchies on 29/06/2015 - 21:32
          +1

          All good points. My idea of "full hd" was based on iTunes movie rentals, which are just a taaaad less bandwidth heavy than DTS or bluray rips.

  • Arch on 01/07/2015 - 00:56

    Thanks for your wisdom guys. So what I've decided may not be the best or fastest way necessarily

    So far, I've bought my MacBook Pro, got a d-link viper with ac1900 dual band wifi - can be connected to USB printer to make it wifi, and can be connected to hard disk via USB 3.0 for wireless access from any computer. This router has the software to allow pc and Mac users access from within the network, as well as users access to the data over the internet if I'm away from home or overseas.

    I haven't bought my hard disk yet, and this may not be the best option but I was looking into the seagate 2tb (which realistically will be more than enough space for us both) backup plus portable hdd. Because it is portable I'm guessing it might be slower and less reliable. Also because it is slim I'm not sure whether data recovery is an issue if it crashes. It does offer its own wifi backup (inc photos from Facebook etc) without the need for my router so it does offer that Extra bit of usability if I want to carry it around with me if I'm not at home.

    I bought a Logitech Bluetooth audio adaptor from dicksmith for $30 which will turn my wired speakers into wireless.

    And that is all. May be a bit laggy on the Hard disk access front, and don't know how well this Bluetooth thing will work, but it'll do for now. Also the viper router may be overkill, but I got a good deal from wireless1 (for 279 with free tv tune from dlink) then price beat by office works for 265 who had it for 377. It has USB 3, 1900ac and wan ports so it seems like it'll be good for a while.

    Let me know what you think about the setup.

    Cheers

    • Ramrunner on 01/07/2015 - 15:34

      Definitely get a portable (i.e. 2.5" based) hard disk. I find them FAR more resilient than desktop, PLUS the fact you don't need the external plug pack. It may indeed be a little slower than a desktop drive but over USB 3.0 not exactly a big deal. THE ONLY problem I can see is make sure the router supplies enough power to drive it (it's bus powered). I've seen routers which do not.

      Excellent price on the router, I can't even get them that low wholesale - well done.

      As is evident by my responses I'm not a huge fan of wireless, but at least you haven't skimped on the router so you should at least get some of the best wireless possible. At worst it's got 4 x Gbit LAN ports so you could wire later if you have issues.

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