WDTV Live Plus HD using USB NAS Cirago NUS1000

Has anyone used one of the cheap USB/NAS adapters like the Cirago NUS1000 with their WDTV ?

In one review of the Cirago, tester got 4 MBS read speeds. Hopefully this is fast enough for DVD quality (I don’t care about HD).

Everything in my house is 100 Mpbs ethernet or MOCA (Verizon Fios routers that are coax <-> ethernet).

Any thoughts?

artsd wrote:

Has anyone used one of the cheap USB/NAS adapters like the Cirago NUS1000 with their WDTV ?

 

In one review of the Cirago, tester got 4 MBS read speeds. Hopefully this is fast enough for DVD quality (I don’t care about HD).

 

Everything in my house is 100 Mpbs ethernet or MOCA (Verizon Fios routers that are coax ↔ ethernet).

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

I have a cheap Addonics adapter here at work, I can hook it up and test it for you if you want.

This is the one I bought to play around with for some project:

http://www.addonics.com/products/nas/nas2xu2.asp

Really, 4MB/sec is pretty sad.    DVDs stream at most at about 1.2 to 1.5 MB/sec, so it “SHOULD” work, if you’re only streaming to one device at a time…

Thanks heavenlydmeonic. I found a review of that Addonics unit and tester said he read 4.35GB file in 4 min 48 secs which if my calculations are correct is about 15 megabytes/sec (tested on gigabit ethernet).

The only problem with Addonics unit is it only supports 1 USB drive (even though it has 2 USB ports).

Cirago supports 4 drives each up to 2 TB.

I think I will take a chance on Chirago unless I can find another review that supports poor performance.

Thanks.

artsd wrote:

Thanks heavenlydmeonic. I found a review of that Addonics unit and tester said he read 4.35GB file in 4 min 48 secs which if my calculations are correct is about 15 megabytes/sec (tested on gigabit ethernet).

 

The only problem with Addonics unit is it only supports 1 USB drive (even though it has 2 USB ports).

 

Cirago supports 4 drives each up to 2 TB.

 

I think I will take a chance on Chirago unless I can find another review that supports poor performance.

 

Thanks.

Hey artsd! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I tested several movies and they all worked great, using both Wireless G and N, and a 100mbit connection directly to a router (no surprise that worked fine, though).

I tried three 1.x Gig MKV files ripped from DVDs using the standard “High Profile” setting in Handbrake. The WD Live reported (and my TV) reported that it was playing the files at 1080p, but who really knows for sure, ha ha! They looked great and everything stayed in sync. I let them play for about 45 minutes eat and just checked them every couple minutes while I was working at my desk.

I tried three 700meg MKV files I ripped from DVDs using Handbrake, with 2 Chan Audio as MP3, and a 700meg limit set on file size, with H.264 Video Codec. These also played awesome with no issues.

I also tried a DVD ripped to VOB and ISOs, and had a bit of stuttering, so not sure what that was all about =( Maybe just a hiccup on my end? Who knows…

 The last test was the issue Tony brought up, so I streamed two movies to two seperate WD Lives and they played fine without stuttering.

Hope that helps!

Thanks a lot heavenlydmeonic for the testing effort. Looks like the Addonics is a good solution for cheap NAS / USB. Now, if I could only find a 4-pack of Addonics for the same price as one Cirago. haha

artsd wrote:

Thanks a lot heavenlydmeonic for the testing effort. Looks like the Addonics is a good solution for cheap NAS / USB. Now, if I could only find a 4-pack of Addonics for the same price as one Cirago. haha

Hey, whatever works =) Either one should (hopefully) work out for you like you want. If you grab a Cirago would you mind posting back with your results? Maybe it will help someone else later on :wink:

I don’t know what cheap is but I have a netgear NAS with capability to be 4 TB and it works flwless on my Live plus it cost 199.00 and came with 1 TB drive

tm224 wrote:

I don’t know what cheap is but I have a netgear NAS with capability to be 4 TB and it works flwless on my Live plus it cost 199.00 and came with 1 TB drive

 He was looking for a cheap USB NAS Adapter , not a full blown NAS box. This is a dongle (usually) that costs $30 to $50 that you plug in to your router via CAT5/6/7 and then plug your USB device into, which makes it net-enabled. These are handy in that you can swap out USB devices all day long and still have the same IP, you can swap out drives without having to rebuild your RAID array in the NAS (if you made a RAID and not just using it as a JBOD, throw a printer on it if you want, etc.

 Just a heads up: A lot of newer routers are shipping with a USB port now which will let you do this as well. Kind of neat if you just want to attach a HDD to it and write a quick script to synch up media on your network, if you have mutiple WDs using a USB drive for storage, or an HTPC box in another room, etc.

Following up after my original post.

In the end I decided against the NAS. Instead, I got two Mediasonic HF2-SU2S2 which are simple 4 bay external enclosures that connect to host PC by USB 2 or eSata. I currently have them connected by USB. My PC (a cheap AMD Sempron 3400+ with 3 GB RAM running Win 7 Ultimate) is connected to Actiontec MI424WR Fios router. My WD TV Live is connected to another Actiontec MI424WR which is acting like a MOCA (coax) to Ethernet bridge. MOCA is supposed to be over 100 Mb/sec.

With this setup, I am able to watch standard definition DVD ISOs and XVID/DVIX/etc. without too many problems.

Sometimes it takes a few tries for the WD TV to find the network shares but once it does, the video and sound are fine.