Convince me to get unraid

[willy]

At the moment i'm using my own pc (i7 oc to 4ghz, 6gb, xonar d2x soundcard, 2 x 1tb raid 1 for hd film and 500gb for os, music, photos, etc). Built the machine mainly for photo editing and gaming at the time but in the last one year i've put xbmc and run hdmi from my gfx to my tv and optical to my receiver.

 

In the last few weeks i've been thinking to cut the cost of electricity down a bit and thinking about getting synology nas and boxee box until i came across unraid. I'm thinking about getting HP Proliant microserver n40l or maybe just build one myself with Lian Li cube case or Chenbro. I prefer compact size as my pc case is totally massive already taken a lot of space at the moment.

 

A few questions regarding unraid if you guys don't mind convincing me why should i get unraid instead synology, lol;

1. I like the idea of mobile apps for ipad and iphone on synology (DS mobile, file, audio, etc) so wondering if there are apps for unraid that i can use for streaming video and music to ipad/iphone?

2. Is there and app that i can turn on/off unraid remotely when i'm away on holiday?

3. Can i watch my video and play music or access photo library when i'm away on holiday?

4. Will i lose my existing data if i add more drives in the future?

 

Main priority is to stream hd contents to boxee box, access music, video, photo on my ipad/iphone when i'm away on holiday. Which option better for my use, synology or unraid?

 

Hope i'm not asking too much guys and what a great forum btw

 

Thanks

[bigdog66]

I wanted to chime in until I think that I read you are ditching xbmc for boxee box...I think my eyes have to be playing tricks on me so i must move on lol

[willy]

To be honest I prefer xbmc but can't really get media streamer that I can install xbmc apart from apple tv 2 and don't really want apple tv 2 because won't do 1080p and 3d contents which I use quite often.

 

After searching and played about with boxee interface, I think quite similar to xbmc.

 

I don't really want building another pc for htpc as I would rather when I turn it on straight to the interface and I can switch it on with a remote. I know I can fiddle with shell command but still to get a mobo that support wol the price going to be a bit for that.

 

I wish wdtv or other streamer can run xbmc

[dgaschk]

AirVideo is easy to install and will do what you want. Install the free version of unRAID and the install the unMenu add-on. unMenu's package manger includes AirVideo.

 

Remote access will require a VPN in your router to be done securely. Buffalo routers come with dd-wrt installed and this includes a VPN.

 

You can turn the system off remotely. But you can't turn it on.

[tritron]

Well the best option would be to get one of the hp neo based server. It has low power usage and gives nice amount of storage. Right know 2tb can be had for $80 but later in the year they should come down even more.

Once you start storing movies perfect quality blureys take from 17gb to 30Gb each  you can go down to 2GB to 6gb but once you start our storage nees will grow. It is much better to have riped blureys then on disks.

Access is much faster and movies can be watched on diffrent devices at the same time.

[fitbrit]

Off-topic... is this RFD willy?

[brian89gp]

To be honest I prefer xbmc but can't really get media streamer that I can install xbmc apart from apple tv 2 and don't really want apple tv 2 because won't do 1080p and 3d contents which I use quite often.

 

AppleTV 1 with the crystal HD card, full blown XBMC install (NOT the plugin).  Does 1080p without even blinking.