RPi makes a very good NAS and downloader, very low power and can run 24/7. Make it two Pis?

That is what I am planning to do. But can we implement some sort of a raid setup using RPi? I doubt it as you can only attached a USB storage device on the one and only USB port provided on the RPi. Unless there's a way of doing a raid on RPi, a NAS server made out of a PC is required. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I have only setup a simple samba NAS with one 3TB harddisk, not RAID. From what I read, RPi is not really suited for RAID. Whatever you do, always bear in mind the limitation of the RPi: the USB and LAN ports share the same controller.

Yeah. I checked a few online discussion regarding RPi NAS. The best thing about RPi NAS is that it consumes very little amount of power. Some even say USD 5 per year. But the worse thing about RPi NAS is the capability of making a NAS Raid, due to the reason you gave above.

Most probably I'll go for 2 RPi with one as a Single HD NAS RPi for the time being. Then when I have enough budget, I'll go for a Green NAS setup. Gotta keep the electricity bill low. Haha

Ya, go for it, sit back and enjoy.
I had been using a RPi as NAS since RPi was launched. On Unifi 5Mbps, streaming 1080p movies with DTS/DD is a breeze, but for DTS-HDMA, I need to turn off all running programs at the RPi. Not a problem really.
For XBMC, I tried OpenELEC and RaspBMC on another RPi; streaming of vides is good because of its capable graphic processor, but the overall response is laggy. Anyway I already have my HTPCs doing the job so I don't use RPi for XBMC. Another RPi with camera is used as security camera accessible from the network and internet.
Going to get the new model B+ soon.

You can try setting up a LVM SoftRAID using RPi, but the problem is that SoftRAID is handled entirely by the CPU instead of ASIC or co-processor. Performance may not be as good, especially if it involves two USB hard disks.

Install windows and flexraid (google about it) and also install xbmc on it. If the old pc doesnt have hdmi, can just get a cheap radeon for it. Clean solution, no need to get separate devices for nas and media player

Old PC can support 1080p media streaming? IIRC, my GC is NVidia 9600GT

can, 9600gt should be more than enough, make use of DXVA
but ur 9600gt got HDMI? dont think so right?

Nope. My 9600GT doesn't have HDMI port at the back. Probably can use converter no?

hmm yeah, DVI to HDMI....both are digital so I guess wont really have loss of quality, anyone please correct me if im wrong. Those converters are quite expensive though, bought one for 60 or 70 bucks on Czone a few months back. But still cheaper than new GPU

I think you really should try out the flexraid, its just a software, can uninstall if you dont like it later on

Boss the media playback I able to run at 1080p without jerk. I selected audio pass through to release the burden of audio processing from himedia and pass it to my receiver. I found that it support dts but not dts ma. Still some room for improvement there

The only device that can passthrough DTS HDMA or Dolby TrueHD via XBMC is a PC.

Raspberry cannot.
Apple TV cannot.
Mac cannot.
Android boxes cannot.

Any others?

This post has been edited by cosmicmeadow: Jul 21 2014, 10:13 PM

Perhaps a little bit more add-on for user that miss out earlier discussion, PC with Windows (not sure if Linux works). Saw on forum somewhere MAC will not work either.

if that is the case... just use native player which is good for dtshdma, dolbytruehd, 3d!

HiMedia = android boxes can dude.. it comes with a native player that allow DTS HDMA and TrueHD to passthru it without glitches

you are right boss.. anyhow i feel the PQ is better on XBMC but i am not sure if that is my bias or

I think if they do not have the copyrighted issue they might improve it on XBMC so that we can enjoy this feature in the future release..

I am an extreme noob here about passthrough audio, all the while as long I am able to hear it correctly, it is ok. mind telling me what is passthrough is all about, thanks.

Normally when you output sound, it's converted to LPCM. Some equipment like TVs (ie the LG 32LW4500 TV I use) limits LPCM to 2 channel. So if you connect your PC or android box to the TV HDMI first then use the TV's ARC to feed sound to your HT amp, (or worse, feed sound to the amp via SPDIF or TosLink because the TV has no ARC support) maybe because the amp does not have enough HDMI ports and all ports are used, the amp will only get stereo sound. However the TV will have no problems pushing 5.1 or 7.1 sound to the amp via SPDIF, TosLink or ARC if it's in Dolby 5.1/7.1. This is where passthrough comes in handy- the TV will receive a 5.1/7.1 bitstream from the PC instead of LPCM, and will pass the signal to the HT amp. So the result is true 5.1 from the amp.

You don't have to worry if your setup consists of an amp that can receive 5.1/7.1 LPCM and the XBMC PC or box connects direct to it. Only when your XMBC setup consists of trying to pass a signal through a device that can't i.e. a TV that you have to worry about passthrough.

For example, in my case, my amp is a Philips Fidelio FTL9100 soundbar, both HDMI port is used (one by PS3, other by XBox 360). Media Center running XBMC is connected to TV HDMI port 2 (Port 1 is video from soundbar).

The 32LW4500 does not support ARC and thus has an optical line running into the soundbar. As mentioned earlier it will also only support stereo LPCM, but can pass 5.1/7.1 Dolby DTS directly from HDMI to optical. So sending it 5.1 LPCM from XMBC will only have the soundbar strangely playing back the front channel sounds, surround speaker and sub not working. Using passthrough, XBMC sends the DTS raw to the HDMI port, and the TV will detect it as raw DTS and pass it on through optical to the soundbar, which will decode it as 5.1 and all channels working.

This post has been edited by RAMChYLD: Jul 22 2014, 10:10 AM

Hi, how's the transfer speed when copying files to your NAS RPi? Do you usually get around 9-10 MB/s?