14 Reasons Why a Media Server is Worth Your While
If you are not a computer geek, you may wonder why you need a media server. What’s the difference between buying a plain external hard drive and a Media Server like the Linksys by Cisco Media Hub?
1. Mobile. If you use a laptop or netbook, the moment you attach an external drive, bye bye mobility. In contrast, with the Media Hub you can move your laptop around. You can work in your office, at the dining room table, on the couch or outside in the garden.
2. Better performance. If you have three or four members of your family accessing video, photos and music from your hard drive, your computer’s performance will became annoyingly bad. By offloading the serving up of media to the Media Hub, your computer performance remains at its normal level.
3. Less complicated.A shared computer is a messy computer. If other members of your family or roommates are using your computer to access the music in your household, you will have to give them your password, or set up a separate account for them to access the computer. Then you need to remember to make your music public so all the accounts on the computer can access the music. It all gets a bit complicated. You can share your hard drive across a network, but that is hard to set up and it doesn’t work if you computer has gone for a walk or is switched off.
4. Fewer interruptions. If you don’t have a Media Hub, when you are deep in a project working on the computer that has access to the music library, someone may interrupt you to change the music. If you have a Media Hub, anyone in the household can review or play the music they want on the sound system in their room without interrupting you or complicating your computer setup.
5. More reliable. A Media Hub can be set up as a RAID device. Without getting too much into geek-speak, RAID simply means having the ability to make your server more reliable. You can for example set up your server so that every music file is always written twice to two hard drives. That way if one hard drive fails, and hard drives will eventually fail, you are protected.
6. Easier to find and back up. Centralizing your media content makes it easier to back up your media. It also makes it more important to back up your media, so you are more likely to do so. It eliminates that annoying situation where the song you want, the photography your wish to show, or the movie you want to play is not available because it is on someone else’s computer.
7. Easier for supporting multiple users. With a Media Hub, it’s easy to have different music played by different members of the family.
8. Works with wireless enabled music systems, existing music systems or portable music systems. Any user in the house can access the media hub from a computer with WiFi (of course, you would want to have good speakers attached to your computer or attach your computer to an existing sound system. You can purchase new wireless enabled sound systems such as the Conductor or Director from Linksys By Cisco that give you high quality sound and access to the Media Hub. And you can hook up any existing sound system with a low cost Linksys by Cisco Player. A Player extends the wireless network so that it can communicate with your existing stereo or home theater.
9. Solves the party problem. When you have a party that extends throughout multiple rooms it is much easier to control the mood of the party if you have central control with a Linksys by Cisco WiFi remote controller that gives you the ability to manage over the music playing in each room. It’s quieter too. You don’t have to cause ear damage playing music loud in your central room in order to push the music into other rooms. A great feature of Party Mode is that you can synchronize the music so every sound systems is always at the same point in the music.
10. No computer necessary. If you really don’t like computers, you can have wireless audio systems in other rooms without needing to hook up a computer everywhere you have a sound system.
11. Prevents your kids from destroying your irreplaceable or valuable content. Kids are using computers younger and younger these days. If they screw up their computers, that’s fine, but it’s really useful to make it difficult for them to destroy valuable music collections or irreplaceable photos by guarding them on server that makes it difficult for them to delete content.
12. Stream your music over the Internet. While iPods are wonderful devices, they never seem to be big enough. With a Media Hub server, you can stream music to a different location. You can listen to your music at the office without using up your battery. You always have access to your entire music collection. And you can do so without having to go on a voyage of discovery to find out what software works best for streaming. Linksys by Cisco has done it for you already in a secure way that does not require opening up your computer to the world.
13. Frees up room on your laptop. There is never enough room on your laptop. External hard drives are great, but when you travel, you don’t want to have to take an external drive with you. Networking back to your server is way more flexible.
14. Green. A Media Hub is good for the environment. When you buy an external hard drive, you attach it to you computer. That means you must leave your computer on in order to access your media. Generally, computers consume more power than a network attached hard drive like the Media Hub.
Of, course if you don’t have parties, don’t have kids, don’t make mistakes, don’t share your music, never move your laptop, never run out of room on your laptop, never take photos, don’t download movies, don’t travel and your hard drives never fail, you may have other justifications for a network server.
Posted by Johanna Fry at 09:02AM PST
Johanna Fry
Tsim Jul 9, 2009
Dear Sir,
I should be grateful if you could kindly advise me for your products if any suitable for my use :
Now I can watch the video movie on the Plasma TV by way of : Desktop > TV; but if my desktop is not function/breakdown, I cannot watch the movies. My friend tells me that there is a new tool called High Definition Media Player (by Western Corporation) that I shall be able to : USB/Harddisk > HK Media Player > TV, therefore I shall not have to use a desktop/computer. May I ask that if your proudct `Media Server’ can perform the same utility/function ? Also, where can I buy it in Sydney (Australia) or Hong Kong ?
Thanks very much for your kind attention to this email. Best regards.