It is wired thing
December 26, 2010 9:46 AM   Subscribe

What is the best "wired" home-network solution? A NAS drive connected to my router or a powerline ethernet adapter that allows me to connect an ethernet cable to the computer in my bedroom?

I have a Boxee Box (media streamer) connected to my tv in the living room. The Boxee Box has a wired ethernet connection to the router that is on living room also. I also have a mac in the bedroom connected wirelessly to the same network and it has most of my media content. Most of this media content is in high definition and I was wondering what is the best way to get this content from my mac in the bedroom to the boxee in the living room and came up with two options:


1) Have the computer connect through the router in the living room through ethernet. Since the rooms are far the best way for me to do this would be to have a powerline ethernet adapter such as this one:

http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-XAVB101-Powerline-Ethernet-Adapter/dp/B001AGM2VI/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_2


2) Connect a NAS hard drive to the router in the living room and have all my media there?

Mefites, which one do you think is better? My main concern is getting high definition content from my computer to the boxee box.

Thank you.
posted by The1andonly to Technology (1 answer total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: CHEAPEST: Go ahead and stream it from the Mac wirelessly. I do this on occasion and other than some giant 1080 files there's no issues.

CHEAP: Connect a big USB hard drive to your boxee box and turn on file sharing in settings. Boxee box will show up as a server on your network and you can put all your files there (for media purposes it basically becomes a NAS).

Installing another NAS on your network will also work. I currently do this because my roommate already had a NAS prior to me buying a boxee. Its "better" for this because you can have multiple hard drives in a dedicated NAS and thus more storage. Quite expensive though (relatively).

A power line connection seems like the worst option out of everything because it's another thing to buy but you don't gain the convenience of not having to power up you're computer every time you want to use boxee. If I had to recommend one thing it'd be using the boxee box as a NAS.
posted by Patbon at 10:27 AM on December 26, 2010


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