DIY Netflix: Create the ultimate personal media server
SO YOU’VE GOT A NAS BOX, NOW HERE’S HOW TO GET IT SET IT UP AND SERVING ALL YOUR MEDIA TO ALL YOUR DEVICES.
HAVING A MEDIA server is awesome, but it’s the kind of thing a lot of people can’t appreciate until they’ve had their own. A media server puts you in complete control. It lets you watch all your movies and TV shows, listen to all your music and see your entire photo collection on any device, whenever you want. You don’t have to fiddle with USB drives or burn things to discs. If you download a movie, you can just copy it across to your media server and, suddenly, it’s available everywhere.
It’s possible, of course, to turn your PC into a media server, but the best kind of media server is a network-attached storage device. They’re built for it. They’re always on, have custommade apps for media services and the hard drive capacity to store all your stuff. So here, we’re going to walk you through how to turn your NAS into a kickass media server.
THE BEST KIND OF NAS FOR A HOME MEDIA CENTRE
Nearly every NAS on the market right now can function as a capable home media server. Even your $200 two-bays can get the job done, though some of the more advanced features might be out of their reach.
At a very base level, all you really need is file sharing services, so that you can upload your media from your PC to the NAS; and DLNA support, which is the most common type of media service protocol, supported by the majority of devices. These don’t require much processing power, and every NAS on the market supports them right now.
If you want to do more with your NAS, however, you might want more processing power and a model with support for a greater number of features. For example, if you want live transcoding that adjusts video streams for different devices and networks, or if you want to have the NAS automatically download TV episodes for you, then a NAS with more capabilities would be a good choice.
As a rule, we’d recommend looking for a NAS from Asustor, QNAP, Synology or Thecus, since those have the widest range of easily installable apps available for them. You should also look for a NAS running on an x86 processor (such as Atom, Celeron, Pentium or Core) rather than a ARM processor — the x86 processors are, in general, considerably more powerful and also have substantially wider application compatibility, whereas ARM users might find certain NAS apps simply not available, or much harder to install and with flaky performance.
How many bays the NAS has and how big the hard drives are will come down to your storage needs and price limit. In terms of application availability, there’s almost no difference — a two-bay NAS from Synology runs the exact same software as a four-bay NAS from Synology, for example.
We should reserve one special note as well for a new kind of NAS we’ve seen coming from QNAP and Asustor. These NASes have HDMI ports, allowing you to plug them directly into your TV. These aren’t just media servers; they’re also media players. They run Kodi, and media playback can be controlled with a remote or by your phone. This makes them perfect if you don’t have a smart TV or console available for media playback — you can just use the NAS itself.
BASIC MEDIA SERVICES WITH DLNA
As we noted above, to get basic media services working on your NAS, all you need is support for DLNA — and that’s something that pretty much every NAS has.
So what is DLNA? The short answer is that it’s the standard protocol that media players use to communicate with media servers. Your NAS is the media server and it ‘publishes’
your media using the DLNA protocol. Your various media players can use DLNA to talk to your server and browse and stream media from it.
Built upon universal plug and play, DLNA is by far the most common and widely supported media streaming protocol. When it comes to media players, it’s supported by most smart TVs, by a number of mobile and PC media player apps (including Kodi, Infuse and VLC), by some game consoles and most set-top devices.
Setting up your NAS box should be fairly straightforward. You’ll need to log into your NAS’s admin console. On most platforms, it will be found in the system services, under DLNA or Media Server. It will often be switched on by default.
In some cases, you’ll need to enable the Media Library/Media Indexing service to get it running (you’ll be warned when you try to start it up). This simply specifies the directories of files that you’d like to have shared with DLNA — when you browse the NAS with your media player, these are the files that will show up. In other cases, you might find the directory settings in the DLNA configuration itself.
In most cases, once you enable DLNA, the NAS itself will create some default folders for media. For example, a Synology or QNAP NAS will create folders for Videos, Pictures and Music for you, and anything placed in these folders will automatically be shared over DLNA. You may be able to add additional directories in the media indexing settings.
Once you’ve enabled DLNA on the NAS, and configured which directories you’d like to publish, the rest is pretty much automatic. Because it uses UPnP, your media players should automatically find it if they’re on the same network.
So all you have to do is just fire up your DLNA-capable media player and allow it to browse the network for DLNA/UPnP shares. It should automatically find your NAS. Select it, and then browse and select the file for playback.
Although it’s nearly always used in a ‘pull’ fashion (where you browse and select media from the media player device), DLNA does technically support ‘push’ playback, where the server asks a media player to play a particular file. Some NAS boxes support this, including QNAP and Synology through their Media Streaming apps.
CHROMECAST AND APPLE TV
Not every device natively supports DLNA playback. Apple TV and other Apple devices don’t, because Apple would rather you use its proprietary AirPlay protocol (which is functionally very similar to, but completely incompatible with, DLNA). The Chromecast uses Google’s Cast protocol, and can’t natively receive DLNA streams without a mobile app.
Fear not, Apple TV and Chromecast owners — the solution isn’t difficult. On the fourth-generation Apple TV, you can simply install Infuse, a third-party app that supports DLNA. Otherwise, you can use an AirPlay relay (more on that in a second). Meanwhile, any app with DLNA support and Cast capabilities can be used to direct the Chromecast to play media stored on your server.
Pretty much the perfect solution for both Chromecast and Apple TV owners is a mobile app called LocalCast for Chromecast. It’s available on both Google Play and iTunes, and (in spite of the name) works for both Chromecasts and AirPlay devices like the Apple TV. It actually also works for DLNA media players that support the ‘play to’ (push) functionality of DLNA.
What it can do is grab files from your NAS and then beam those up [“...Scotty!” — Ed] to your Chromecast or Apple TV. (It can also, incidentally, do that for files stored on your phone or tablet as well). It’s super simple, and it serves both as a relay and functional remote, since you can browse your DLNA media shares in the app, choose the media you want to play and effectively say “play this on my Chromecast/Apple TV/Xbox/ Whatever”, at which point, it will push the stream to the selected device and start playing it.
BUILT UPON UNIVERSAL PLUG AND PLAY, DLNA IS BY FAR THE MOST COMMON AND WIDELY SUPPORTED MEDIA STREAMING PROTOCOL. WHEN IT COMES TO MEDIA PLAYERS, IT’S SUPPORTED BY MOST SMART TVS, BY A NUMBER OF MOBILE AND PC MEDIA PLAYER APPS (INCLUDING KODI, INFUSE AND VLC), BY SOME GAME CONSOLES AND MOST SET-TOP DEVICES.