hard drive for music attached to tv/soundbar

twohooter_2

I am in the process of buying a PANASONIC
VIERA TX50CX802B 50 inch 4K Ultra HD 3D Smart LED TV Freetime Freeview HD freesat HD with a Sonos playbar. Rather than having to have my laptop turned on to access my music library I would like all my music to be stored on a hard drive and connect this to my TV so it can be played though the Playbar. I have looked into a NAS drive and have had some advice from this forum but as a non techie person am concerned it may be a bit complicated to set up. Is there any chance a portable hard drive such as a 1TB Seagate could be plugged into the TV and music accessed that way or do I really need to go down the NAS drive route?

googler

If the specifications for the Panasonic (or the playbar) state that it will play back music, in the format in which you have it stored (mp3? FLAC? WAV?), from a USB portable HDD like this, then OK.

I suggest a thorough read of the User Manuals for both.

You may want to investigate how the music should be sorted and tagged so that you can find items easily...

mcompton69

If you are dipping your tow into the Sonos world, firstly congratulations and secondly you should not have many problems.

The Sonos app has a very good interface, its easy to change tracks. Do you have Spotify? It's great with that too.

Regarding the NAS, i would DEFINITELY invest in one for your Sonos setup. You can park the box out the way and leave it on all the time, using very little energy and so you cant hear it (if it has loud fans), mines in my cellar.

The NAS market is very competitive, and so they compete not only with price and specs, but with features and the UI too. They are easy to setup even for a novice and fun. You are likely to find other users for it too, storing photos, films for TV, backup laptops and even CCTV.

Here is a list of recent reviews, however many are high end and more expensive than you need: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/pc-peripheral/11-best-nas-drives-2016-uk-3217608/

If you want the data you put on it to be TOTALLY SAFE then get a NAS with RAID 1 or RAID 5. This means the data is spread across multiple physical drives, and if one dies, the data is not destroyed allowing time to replace the dead drive.

Ensure it has a 1GBit/s network interface as a minimum. 100MBit is not enough.

Then is just choosing size and make.

Nearly all consumer NAS drivers support DNLA, this is important to allow Sonos to easily identify the shared music and access it without much knobbing around.

Drives that only have 1 hard drive can be as cheap as this one http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/review/nas-network-storage/synology-ds115j-single-bay-nas-drive-review-3591479/


Hope this helps!

twohooter_2

Thank you very much for your help. Yes, I am dipping my toe in the world of Sonos I have just bought a Play5 and am having fun streaming tunes from my laptop - the sound is incredible. When my new TV and Playbar have been set up I think a NAS or similar will be pretty much essential if we are to get the most out of the new set up. At present all the music in this house is on my laptop and ideally we need to be able to access it from ipods, ipads and phones. I think I need to be brave and bite the bullet - not being very techie I am nervous about being able to get it up and running. So many reviews online (Amazon and the like) talk about how difficult it is for a novice. Time for me to be brave I think and give it a go. Thanks for the advice on spec - that is very helpful as is not something I would have known.