I am going to start with my current setup to play movies and stuff, wich is an ATV 4K with Infuse + Core i7, 16 GB RAM Notebook with Plex + 4TB external drive. My ATV is connected to the router via an ethernet cable and my notebook with Plex is in another (near) room connected via Wifi. Unfortunatelly, I don’t have cables through the walls of that room.
Well, my main objective is to stream 4K movies and, on the majority of time, I am able to do it without problems, but I feel that this is not the best setup. I don’t like to rely on a Wifi connection to watch those huge movie files. So I am considering some options and I would like to get some help/advices please.
Things I am considering to do in order to make my system more reliable:
Buy some powerline adapters to hook up the notebook via ethernet cable. Though I have to say that my Wifi signal on the notebook room is almost at 100%.
Buy a Mac mini to hook up directly on the router and forget about my currently notebook.
Also, I have another question: The only way I can watch movies without an internet connection is to make my files avilable through SMB?
For best performance I recommend wiring the source up to the router. And yes… SMV would be best to play offline. My recommendation would be to invest in a cheap 2 bay NAS and hard wire that to your router this will free up file serving duties off your notebook. Take a look at symbology. They have some decent units that’ll be much cheaper than buying a Mac mini.
Synology is the name, or QNAP are also well regarded… but first check your router. Many can also accept a hard drive via USB and make that drive a network drive. You could then also read/write via wifi to that drive whenever you need to, and keep it ethernet from router to ATV.
Asus routers are good - and mine does have the option to plug in a usb drive and make it network accessible… so you may not need a NAS at all ( although I do have Synology and 'tis excellent with many very useful apps available for it).
Thank you coops! I have just answered you on another topic I created about NAS recommendations. I should have concentrated everything here instead of creating another topic. lol
I am sorry about that.