Setup, including NAS

[ghooton]

I've currently got a NAS, DVD/HD Recorder, XBOX 360 and TV. I'm in need of somehow playing my music and mt2s video files that are on my NAS but I don't want to have to have my TV on when listening to music. XBOX 360 is incompatible with a lot of file formats by the way so can't use that.

Obviously I'll need some speakers that I'll want to be able to use for everything (TV, music, DVD) but I've been having problems finding a workable solution to allow me to play music without the TV on, as well as play video with TV. Can anyone recommend a setup?

What I've currently thought about is:

1. Get amp, speakers and Blue Ray player with network attachment and play through that (Can always just turn off tv if player hooked up to amp)

2. Come up with some type of Sonos solution. But doesn't solve playing video issue.

3. Get amp with network capabilities and speakers (not sure about amp capabilities here in particular interface with choosing music)

4. Any other suggestions?

 

[Bubbauk]

I had a dilemma similar to yours and I decided to setup a home server running tversity/ps3ms, this eliminates the need for a nas as it can store all your files and trans code any video on the fly to a format that the xbox can support.

 

[ghooton]

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't want to get rid of my NAS, mainly because I chose it so that I could use a RAID configuration to help prevent file loss for my videos and pictures, and I don't want files in 3 different places.

I think I'm leaning to a combination of 1 and 3 as I don't have a blue ray or amp as yet anyway. I figure I could get something like the ONKYO TXNR807 which has network capabilities and looks like it will play my music pretty well with a decent user interface. Although it doesn't play video I could get a DLNA blue ray player with network capabilities that will do the video side of things.

Any comments?

 

[Bubbauk]

If thats the only reason you chose the NAS then the server will also do raid and a lot more, i built this server for less than £200 including a 2tb hard drive and its able to transcode 720p without any problems If I wanted I could convert all my 1080p stuff into a format compatible with the xbox and then I could stream all that as well, I can also stream all of my FLAC music collection to the xbox.