Help me with what to purchase.

Froberg wrote:
I just worry about array failure with that option. My thinking was to back-up my data on external WD Green drives and keep 'em stashed outside my home. The data doesn't change that frequently, so it could work.

Are you are thinking that you'd pull a NAS hard drive, replace it, and store the old one off site? That is not a good way to do it. Replacing a drive requires rebuilding the array, which is stressful on the remaining drives and carries some risk. Also, although the drives can be removed easily, the connectors, etc. are not intended for a lot of swapping. The better approach is to use USB drives, or back up to another NAS.

Froberg wrote:

I have a DLNA enabled Samsung Blu-Ray player which should serve, for now. I'm planning on setting up a htpc box as well, since the DLNA mode on the blu-ray player is lacking. Specifically with my test-rips with embedded subtitles in .mkv files the player cannot display them. Nor will it let me use the chapters correctly, so I figure a small htpc would do that job nicely for me, with a remote attached. With a blu-ray drive it should be able to replace my blu-ray player entirely. I'm thinking of locating some sort of media centre build which will allow me to have a home-library on display, which supports the functions I'm looking for as well. It would then pull the library from the NAS. I've got an older model HP homeserver at present, on to which I've managed to force an installation of Ubuntu. I've upgraded it's celeron CPU to a c2d E5400, and it features four drive bays. I was looking at the ReadyNAS as an alternative to this for its ease of use.. but if it severely limits my options I might reconsider actually using this homeserver instead. It's a HP EX490 MediaSmart. The only issue is that it requires me to use one drivebay for system operation, which naturally will decrease the storage potential of the thing.

Plex seems to work out well as a ReadyNAS DLNA server. It's built into the RNxxx models, but can be installed on the x86 products as well. It probably could be installed on one of your existing systems if you wanted to see how well it works.

There are two main issues - one is whether you need on the fly video transcoding. If so, you need a good CPU in the server. The RN516 has the fastest CPU, the Pro line is faster than the ultra.

The second is how you access your media when you on the road. Is that something you are doing successfully now? If so, how?