Media Server Or Media Extender - Which Do You Need?

With all the new gadgets you can get for your home network it can be a bit confusing. Some of the names and acronyms can come to be like a blur some times.

So you want to stream videos, music and other files out to the other computers on your home network but your not quite sure how you want to go about it. While looking colse to you may have come over two very similar sounding terms.

Home Media Server

Media server and media extender.

Both achieve close to the same function but in very separate ways.

Media Server

I media server is basically further storage space for your network. It's normally a hard drive or series of hard drives associated to some electronics that allow you to way the files you store on it certainly from over your network. It's not quite a full-fledged computer but very close. Media servers are also refereed to as Network Attached storage or Nas for short. Most Media Servers come with back up software that can be used to back up the computers on your network.

Media servers are certainly configured from a built-in web interface you can way by typing in the devices Ip address into you web browser and entering your username and password. normally you'll connect a Nas gadget to your wireless router using an ethernet cable which allows you to way it wirelessly straight through the router.

Media Extender

The word "extender" in this context means you are "extending" way to the media files on your Pc to your Tv and home entertainment center. Once your Pc is associated to a media town extender it becomes sort of like the Media Server mentioned above. The big dissimilarity is instead of streaming all its data out to other computers on the network it converts the data on your Pc to a format that can be accessed straight through your Hdtv.

Now you can way all your music, video and picture files from the relax of your living room with a remote and favorable menu options on your Tv screen! If you have an Xbox360 or Playstation3 you already own a media extender!

You can also purchase standalone media town extenders.

Media Server Or Media Extender - Which Do You Need?