Network storage media player

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Super simple setup and remote access, top-notch streaming, and uber-quiet operation make the Seagate Central a suitable media streamer for your AV setup. Second—and more enjoyably—a NAS box can store your media libraries and stream files to any PC or networked audio device in your house examples include devices in the AirPlay , NuVo , and Sonos product ecosystems.

You can also stream your favorite movies and digital photos to your smart TV or to your dumb TV, if you have a streaming box or home-theater PC connected to it.

Better NAS boxes make remote access possible, so you can access your stuff from—and stream your media to—any device anywhere you have Internet access. Would you buy a Lamborghini strictly for driving to the corner store? Barring a spectacularly successful PowerBall encounter—probably not. Follow the same principle when shopping for a NAS box. One caveat: Though single-bay NAS boxes are cost effective, they provide no data redundancy.

The hardware configurations proved to be surprisingly similar: Each box uses a 3. However, each manufacturer added widely different features and amenities on top of the hardware. Unfortunately, it fell off the pace in copying files, its UI was rather slow to respond, and configuring many of its features—including remote access—proved to be less than intuitive.

Video transcoding Many NAS boxes employ CPUs that offer hardware-assisted video transcoding; that is, altering the dimensions and bit rates of the original video before streaming it. We're big fans of this box's all-metal construction and world-class performance. We also like its user interface, although it could be easier to use, and we wish it could be administered fully using its front-panel controls, but this is a great product overall.

A Windowed browser interface, and a multitude of apps including video surveillance and Web serving spice up the deal. But the price of admission is steep, and the box is overkill for the average user. It's also not particularly easy to set up or use.

This top-notch 2-bay box sports 2. It doesn't get much better, but you pay for the privilege. It's a great addition to a home multimedia setup. This diminutive NAS box is designed for 2. It's packed with media-streaming and other features, and it runs very cool and quiet when populated with SSDs. We were excited to see this two-bay box arrive, but the performance of its NVMe caching wasn't high as we expected, and the lack of multi-gig ethernet limits throughput.

It's a fine box with a great OS and software, but it already seems a tad dated. It has 99 percent of the features offered by the competition, and the OS is extremely clean and logically laid out. This super-affordable without drives dual-bay NAS box handles multimedia and backup with the best of them. This box ticks all the corporate boxes; it's also fast and it uses the state-of-the-art BTR file system. Only minor multimedia glitches and a couple of oversights kept it from a four-star rating.

An absolute steal in terms of its hardware, the F's software remains a work in process. The OS is slick and handles the streaming basics, but configuration of some of the apps can be tricky and there are oversights. As the most affordable model in Naim's latest standalone network music player series, the ND5 XS 2 may have a minimalist aesthetic, but what it offers is anything but Yamaha NP-S Since the demise of the iPod Classic and the rise of the smartphone as the portable audio device of choice for the majority of users, the digital audio player market has struggled to flourish.

Google Chromecast Audio. Our recent Group Test of entry-level network music players HFC showed there are some very impressive low-cost models to help you get started in streaming, but Google perhaps offers the bargain of the lot. Novafidelity X I am sure plenty of us have spent enough time grappling with network-attached storage hardware and CD-ripping software to know that there has to be a more elegant way of cataloguing our music libraries.