Nas or htpc

[HiTi]

I'm sure this is similar to a mac vs pc question, but I'm looking for something low maintenance,easy to use (wife friendly) and be able to torrent and stream content to a single tv. Maybe 2 at the absolute most
I've never had a nas so I have 0 experience with them and what they offer. 8- 12 tb would be the most storage wise
I have no problem with the htpc but no matter what I build, it never feels finished or I want to add something to it.
Synology has a few 2 or 4 bay products that look to tick all the boxes for functionality but are they really useful with the low spec hardware ?
Sorry for the alphabet soup of a post...typing this in between customers

 

[Izerous]

I run an older synology but mainly for archival purposes, I never tried to stream from it. I do know a few people who stream from newer synologies even on remote connections.

One extra aside a 4 bay synology with 2 disk failover to have the storage you want isn't going to be overly cheap endeavour.

4x 4TB
1 disk failover = 12TB
2 disk failover = 8TB

4x3TB
1 disk failover = 9TB
2 disk failover = 6TB

Older ones with windows 10 are a bit more difficult to use as Samba 1? has been disabled for various reasons in windows 10 and the older ones only support that. The newer ones not such as issue. With my older one to access via windows 10 I'm resorting to FTP right now.

 

[MARSTG]

why don't you get an old corporate i5-2400 machine and run freenas on it?

 

[JD]

A bunch of QNAP's have HDMI ports on them, so you can hook it up to your TV and use Plex or Kodi. I'm sure Synology offers similar products too. But yes, they're generally pretty low spec, so if they support 4K now for example, they won't be able to run 8K.

You're likely best off getting a Chromecast or FireTV Stick to plug into the TV and running Plex either on a NAS or a PC. That's likely the most "wife-friendly" interface/setup.

The back end of downloading shows and such is a little more complex though. You'd have to look into things like Sonarr, Radarr, FlexGet, etc.

 

[Shadowmeph]

A bunch of QNAP's have HDMI ports on them, so you can hook it up to your TV and use Plex or Kodi. I'm sure Synology offers similar products too. But yes, they're generally pretty low spec, so if they support 4K now for example, they won't be able to run 8K.

You're likely best off getting a Chromecast or FireTV Stick to plug into the TV and running Plex either on a NAS or a PC. That's likely the most "wife-friendly" interface/setup.

The back end of downloading shows and such is a little more complex though. You'd have to look into things like Sonarr, Radarr, FlexGet, etc.

thats probably what I would do next time I was actually using raspi3 but I was having issues trying to run samba off of my PC to the raspi3 and the raspi3 would be pretty warm when watching hires movies

 

[HiTi]

The more I read about nas solution, it definitely seems like a great option but at the same time it's pretty limited compared to a htpc. I think I'll use some hardware I have here and see if I can try some of the frontends or programs you guys suggested. I doubt I'll really ever use the back up features of a nas other then have multiple copies of photo back ups over multiple drives, and I doubt you can browse or do basic games on the nas. Funny how you can talk yourself out of something when you read your own posts...
Just would hate to spend $300 plus on something that I would be very disappointed with
Thank you for all the input