NAS or WDTV?

[SoulBrother]

I've been streaming movies to my TV via DLNA or playing them off a flash drive or USB hard drive. While this isn't much of a hassle I've been giving some though to just having a dedicated drive for movies.

I had been looking in to a NAS enclosure (maybe 2 bay) and just putting my movies on that and connecting that to the TV via USB and while having it networked so I may copy movies on to it from whatever computer I download them to.

I'm wondering a few things...

- Is it better to get a multi-bay NAS unit or a device like Western Digital's Live TV and just get a hard drive enclosure to connect to it's USB port?
- If I get a NAS or even a hard drive enclosure, it seems as if having it connect to power off with my receiver might be unwise. I imagine I could damage a disk or lose data by suddenly cutting power like that. DO THE NAS UNITS have a timeout/standby period? It seems foolish to have this hard drive powered all the time even when not in use.

Thank you all in advance.

 

[VenomXt]

Not exactly your scenario but i use a WD NAS 2 TB connected to my router as a drop drive for multiple TV's. The differences is i have Xbox's on them that are what I use to display to the tv.

The only bad things i have to say about cheaper NAS's is they are slow to transfer to. And from what i can tell they are always on. If they are off for some reason i have to restart them.

Hope this helps a little.

 

[Nemo128]

Here's my setup:

WDTV Live Plus
Thecus N5200Pro NAS enclosure
5x1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 HDDs

The NAS enclosure supports Wake On LAN so I could power it down if I want. Also it forces graceful shutdown.

If you're gonna go NAS, go NAS right. Those 2 drive models are in my opinion a waste of money. Get your own enclosure, get some drives, and put it together. Or find an old case and build one using one of the many applications out there (FreeNAS, openFiler, etc).