Help for complete newcomer please

abc1970

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Hi,

Throwing myself at your mercy here.

I'm planning to set up a home network as I want to get a SONOS system.

Leading on from this I thought I'd set up streaming video to a tv in my bedroom.

Here's the advice I'd like:
1. What 32" LED TV do you recommend - looking at the Samsung smart tvs like 32ES6300. Do I need a smart tv or am I better getting a non-smart one and some kind of media player device. If the latter, which media player
2. Planning to get a PS3 but this doesn't handle mkv so will be no good as media player
3. What NAS should I get - is the NETGEAR ReadyNAS duo any good if not, what alternatives should I look at and what hard drives are recommended.
4. Will have Vigin Media piped into the room so that's who's providing broadband and hub router. V+ box has iplayer and other catch-up stuff on it
5. Not massively bothered about internet access through the tv, lovefilm etc. But ps3 can do that anyway.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks
 
Welcome to the forum abc1970 :hiya:
1. What 32" LED TV do you recommend - looking at the Samsung smart tvs like 32ES6300. Do I need a smart tv or am I better getting a non-smart one and some kind of media player device. If the latter, which media player
Personally I would suggest getting a dedicated media player as it will support far more media formats. The Smart TV's are getting better but some are still very poor at supporting common formats and then you are unlikely to be able to get cover art displayed.
There are many good media players for not too much money like the WDTV Live SMP that will cost around £70. I personally use a Dune media player that are a little more expensive but are about the best players going IMO. They start at around £85 for the TV101 and go up to over £300. It all depends on what features you want as to how much you need to pay.
2. Planning to get a PS3 but this doesn't handle mkv so will be no good as media player
If you run some of the DLNA server programs on a PC they can do on the fly file conversion, but this means the PC needs to be on all the time.
3. What NAS should I get - is the NETGEAR ReadyNAS duo any good if not, what alternatives should I look at and what hard drives are recommended.
If no file conversion is required then any NAS should be fine.
4. Will have Vigin Media piped into the room so that's who's providing broadband and hub router. V+ box has iplayer and other catch-up stuff on it
For streaming around your home from a NAS or PC the internet is not used, so that doesn't make any difference for what we are trying to get setup here :p
5. Not massively bothered about internet access through the tv, lovefilm etc. But ps3 can do that anyway.
This is becoming a big selling point for many media players, but it can just be ignored if not wanted.

Mark.
 
If you run some of the DLNA server programs on a PC they can do on the fly file conversion, but this means the PC needs to be on all the time.

And pretty powerful - picture transcoding can be a processor intensive task.
 

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