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I would have loved to read about this here instead of discovering the various pieces on my own. Maybe others will be interested…

Like many families today, we’re reasonably connected. We typically watch shows that we record or download, and rarely live TV. We also have a collection of family videos, and have ripped all of our CDs to mp3s. Like many people, we have several rooms in our house where we’d like to have access to all this media. And of course it would be nice to have it in a secure place where a failed hard drive doesn’t result in disaster.

The solution for us has been a Synology DS214play NAS, along with Plex server. The Plex server runs right on the NAS. You copy your music to the Music folder, your movies to the Movies folder, and your TV shows to the TV Shows folder. Plex takes over from there. It indexes and categorizes ALL of your media, and does a particularly good job with TV Shows, Music, and Movies. It organizes your tunes and makes them easily searchable, and organizes your TV shows by season and episode, complete with pictures from the show and a plot description for each episode. You can access all your media from practically any device, both locally and over the internet. We have Samsung smart tvs which have their own Plex client that works great. Plex also supports DLNA, so my network-enabled receiver has full access to my music collection. All your media – stored on one redundant device – accessible from anywhere…

Doesn’t take a computer genius to operate, either. The NAS has a web interface and is pretty easy to navigate. Supports connections to both Macs and Windows PCs. Does all the typical things a NAS does, enabling file storage, sharing, backups, etc. But the free Plex server makes it a must-have box for the connected home.

Well any more than this and you’d either think I work for the company, or was writing the article. Neither. Happy to provide more details if you’re interested.

I’m definitely interested! I currently use a WDMyCloud to host my online media (mostly movies). The problem is the WDMyCloud is sooooo sllooooowwww. Do you have any problems with speed when you play a movie on your NAS? I’ve tried Plex server before and unfortunately Plex has a very large problem with anything LG. Plex did not get along with my two LG TVs and they had problems with Plex also; both would lock up when I tried to play a movie. Typically Plex blames LG and LG blames Plex. Do you have anything LG and have you had any problems playing a movie from your NAS?

I’m looking for an alternative to my WDMyCloud so I’d like to learn more about the Synology DS214play NAS.

Thanks!

Craig

I would have loved to read about this here instead of discovering the various pieces on my own. Maybe others will be interested…

Like many families today, we’re reasonably connected. We typically watch shows that we record or download, and rarely live TV. We also have a collection of family videos, and have ripped all of our CDs to mp3s. Like many people, we have several rooms in our house where we’d like to have access to all this media. And of course it would be nice to have it in a secure place where a failed hard drive doesn’t result in disaster.

The solution for us has been a Synology DS214play NAS, along with Plex server. The Plex server runs right on the NAS. You copy your music to the Music folder, your movies to the Movies folder, and your TV shows to the TV Shows folder. Plex takes over from there. It indexes and categorizes ALL of your media, and does a particularly good job with TV Shows, Music, and Movies. It organizes your tunes and makes them easily searchable, and organizes your TV shows by season and episode, complete with pictures from the show and a plot description for each episode. You can access all your media from practically any device, both locally and over the internet. We have Samsung smart tvs which have their own Plex client that works great. Plex also supports DLNA, so my network-enabled receiver has full access to my music collection. All your media – stored on one redundant device – accessible from anywhere…

Doesn’t take a computer genius to operate, either. The NAS has a web interface and is pretty easy to navigate. Supports connections to both Macs and Windows PCs. Does all the typical things a NAS does, enabling file storage, sharing, backups, etc. But the free Plex server makes it a must-have box for the connected home.

Well any more than this and you’d either think I work for the company, or was writing the article. Neither. Happy to provide more details if you’re interested.

I’m definitely interested! I currently use a WDMyCloud to host my online media (mostly movies). The problem is the WDMyCloud is sooooo sllooooowwww. Do you have any problems with speed when you play a movie on your NAS? I’ve tried Plex server before and unfortunately Plex has a very large problem with anything LG. Plex did not get along with my two LG TVs and they had problems with Plex also; both would lock up when I tried to play a movie. Typically Plex blames LG and LG blames Plex. Do you have anything LG and have you had any problems playing a movie from your NAS?

I’m looking for an alternative to my WDMyCloud so I’d like to learn more about the Synology DS214play NAS.

Thanks!

Craig

I’ve read a couple of articles on these new Malwares that use “anti-analysis” tools to make sure they aren’t being tracked or detected. I wonder if you could use that against them; set up a virtual box called “Sandbox” and run your email and web from there. Then if you do happen to get infected, hopefully the malware would see the virtual environment and the name “Sandbox” and think it was being tracked and terminate. :p

Found an interesting article that lists several alternatives:

http://darrenyates.com.au/2008/09/10-free-itunes-alternatives-for-linux/268

Also have you tried WINE to emulate windows and put iTunes on there? Here’s a link on how to do that:

http://www.wine-reviews.net/applications/itunes-73-on-linux-with-wine.html

Good luck!

I also use KeePass. If you store the password file in a cloud such as DropBox or SkyDrive (now OneDrive) you can easily share it between your PC and Android/iOS phone. If you use it on the PC it has the ability to auto-enter your details into any login page. Some of my websites like Capital One Bank have the same kind of login screen that takes just my username, then a second screen to enter my password. With those I’ll just cut and paste my UserID and password from KeePass one at a time. I haven’t had a problem with KeePass yet, been using it for nearly a year now.

Craig

Doccus: that is a very interesting point! I wonder if you tried to use another PC with another installation of Boxcryptor would it be able to decrypt your files from the cloud? That’s something the article should address.

For those of you changing email addresses, you might consider buying your own domain and running email only on that. I own chattertonclan.com and I pay $60 per year ($4.95 per month) for Email and $30 every other year for the domain name. But with that I have infinite [name]@chattertonclan.com so my entire family can have email and I can set up email forwarding, etc. And I can be on any ISP/webmail and still use the same old email address.

It was pretty easy to set up.

Craig

Seems very useful and I was glad to hear that it was possible to do by iPad, but do any of these programs work for those of us with an Android tablet. I’ve read reviews of some plug-ins that supposedly work with Firefox, regardless of the platform, but they still won’t install on the droid.

I’ve been searching for a good YouTube downloader for the Android on and off for months. I think I’ve finally found a solution that works (for me).

I tried Savagess recommendation and used pwnYouTube and it worked great on my HTC Incredible! Don’t use the Java based downloaders, instead select one of the converters. I ended up using Online-Convert.com (pwnYouTube includes it as one of their links) and it converted and let me download the MP4 with no problems. A lot of hoops to jump through, but at least *finally* I can directly save YouTube videos on my Droid instead of trying to stream them.