At the moment we have a WD Live 1TB Network Drive, which streams uPnP to our network-ed Panasonic PVRs.
Neither's great - the WD's slow and the Panasonics crash occasionally and only seem to support MP4 and don't seem to support multiple audio tracks or subtitles.
What I'm thinking is getting a HP Microserver (the one that keeps getting £100 cashback deals), and installing FreeNAS on that (possibly with PS3 Media Server plugin for Transcoding, should it be needed). Then getting a WD TV Live to play it all back (or a Roku 3).
Does it sound like I'm heading in the right-direction?
Other questions:
-We're also going to be upgrading our AVR soon, to get DTS Master-HD support. Is it likely that any new AVRs will start supporting local video playback across the network? Means we could skip out the WD TV Live and have it all in one box.
-How should I go about metadata? At the moment our movie library is a bit crap - it's just a load of MP4s or MKVs which I've made using Handbrake from DVD or Blu-Ray, with no artwork or metadata. I downloaded "Media Center Master" and was really impressed by the fact that it could do it all for me, by looking up the movies in online databases. But then I discovered that it doesn't actually build it into the MP4 files, but rather makes a new folder with all the artwork and metadata in external .xml and .jpg files. Would this still work with the WD TV Live?
-Related to the above question, I'm looking to have all the movies arranged in a display something like the "album artwork" display in iTunes. Can the WD TV Live do this? I think the Roku 3 can, but it doesn't support as many file formats.
-What's Plex? Do I need it? It looks like loads of separate parts of DLNA - a server/transcoder, a playback app, a remote etc. - all offered under one brand name. Is that it?
Many thanks if you're able to answer some or all the questions