Synology DS-101 NAS

[gm28lab]

Hello,
It is my first post on this forum, and I cannot read German !!!!
I hope several English (or Franch) speaking M740 users will read this forum.
Does any of you, German users have connected a Synology DS-101 NAS to this wonderfull M740 AV ? I would appreciate if it shares his (her) knowledge.

The M740 AV will be available in France in few weeks, and I wish to use a NAS that will also allow the backup of my home PCs
Many thanks for any Idea
gm28lab

[johnny]

Hi!

Just to show you someone's reading your post ...


Does any of you, German users have connected a Synology DS-101 NAS to this wonderfull M740 AV ?

Someone wrote, he'd like to buy it, but this was more than one month ago; I think he didn't and neither did anyone else.

Sorry, but it seems there's nothing more to tell at the moment.

Ciao
Johnny

[gm28lab]

Hi!

Just to show you someone's reading your post ...



Someone wrote, he'd like to buy it, but this was more than one month ago; I think he didn't and neither did anyone else.

Sorry, but it seems there's nothing more to tell at the moment.

Ciao
Johnny

Thank you Johnny .... I am not alone on this thread ! ;-)

gm28lab

[NorthernMonkey]

Thank you Johnny .... I am not alone on this thread ! ;-)

gm28lab

I just bought one of these M740s of ebay, and it appears to work fine as a PVR when I tell it to record to a shared location on a computer I have upstairs (across a network). All I had to do was tell the M740 the location of this share (IP address, workgroup, username, password, share name)

If this "Synology DS-101 Disk Station" works in much the same way then you shouldn't have any difficulty. The spec for this device says that it does "File sharing between Windows clients and Macintosh Clients" and that it can "Share external USB disks through network". This sounds very much like what you want it to do.

[johnny]

it appears to work fine as a PVR when I tell it to record to a shared location on a computer I have upstairs
That's the way I'm using it. I've got a Linux-server running (upstairs :-) ) and all works fine.


If this "Synology DS-101 Disk Station" works in much the same way then you shouldn't have any difficulty.
Shouldn't! That's the point. Any type of machine that can handle SMB should do fine, but sometimes there are some "little indifferencies".

I think the DS-101 will do, but there is noone here with any experience with that NAS; and that was the question.

Ciao
Johnny

[gm28lab]

I just bought one of these M740s of ebay, and it appears to work fine as a PVR when I tell it to record to a shared location on a computer I have upstairs (across a network). All I had to do was tell the M740 the location of this share (IP address, workgroup, username, password, share name)

If this "Synology DS-101 Disk Station" works in much the same way then you shouldn't have any difficulty. The spec for this device says that it does "File sharing between Windows clients and Macintosh Clients" and that it can "Share external USB disks through network". This sounds very much like what you want it to do.

Thank you for your advice. It confirm what I thought, and I will build my network on the DS-101, and the M740 AV.
By the way, Does any of you know if there is a difference (hardware) between the M740 AV that is presently sold in Germany and the one that will be sold in France next month ? I ask this question because one can Buy a M740 AV in Germany at about 220 euros while the street price in France will be 330 euros !!!! :-(
If it is 100% the same HW, it is cheaper to buy it in Germany and download a French version of the Firmware, when available.
Many thanks in advance

[ermex]

Does any of you know if there is a difference (hardware) between the M740 AV that is presently sold in Germany and the one that will be sold in France next month ?

Hi gm28lab,
take a look at these inside-pictures of the siemens that has been sold in germany:
http://www.m740.info/html/hardware.htm

Maybe you can find some previews of the ones which you can buy in france.

regards,
ermex

[Gottardo]

Hi gm28lab
Last December you wrote "...I will build my network on the DS-101, and the M740 AV.". Did that work? I'd be very much interested in an account on that including any difficulties you may have encountered. I was not able to record directly to a DS-101 from a Notebook with external USB TV tuner and I wonder if that had to to with the Compro Tuner software. Also, I'm interested in anything you or others might have experience with the Synology Diskstation.
Thanx!
Gottardo

[gm28lab]

Hi gm28lab
Last December you wrote "...I will build my network on the DS-101, and the M740 AV.". Did that work? I'd be very much interested in an account on that including any difficulties you may have encountered.
.../...
Gottardo

I received my DS-101 3 weeks ago and I included it in my home network and backed up all my PCs with it, without any problem.
I received my M740 AV 3 days ago, and I connected it to my network.
I works but I found that the long recording stopped after 1H15mn.
I am investigating that.
Is it due to my cabling (there is a 17 m UTP cable ?)
This is not due to a disk capacity limitation since there is > 100GB free space
I'l come back later if I found something

[t-bird.de]

Hi gm28lab,

STP-cable would be better, but do not worry about the distance. For Fast-Ethernet the maximum is round about 100m (including the patch-cable length). By the way, I use UTP-cables only for patching.

Best regards

t-bird

[gm28lab]

A follow up of my previous post :

I fixed the problem of recording cancellation : Network share name !
Explanation :
In the M740 network settings, in Network share window, one can specify, user name, password, IP address, name of the shared ressource....
(Nota : I bough my DS-101 and my M740 AV in Germany, saving roughly 200 € !!! (long live the Europe!), so I use the Engish menu. FW:1.37.4)
In the french documentation, it is written : "enter the name of the PC" in the "IP address" area !!
I first entered the IP address, 192.168.0.7 of my DS-101, because I thought the menu was more exact than the French doc !

I made a test to put the DS-101 on the side :
I tried to use a shared directory on my PC, on the same network. It worked really great, using the name of my PC. (my network cabling is OK)

So I replaced the IP address of my DS-101 by its network name (DS-101) and "Voila" it works.

Nevertheless, I think the DS-101 has a limited throughput (I found an average 1.6 MB/s, with a 100Mbps network, enough for recording of 2 x TNT MPEG recordings)
I am able to record one channel and to view another one with time shifting. That means : simultaneous 2 records and 1 read. it is very good, but if I use the fast forward/fast reward possibility of the time shifting, things begin to go weird. For exemple if I go back fiew seconds and then play, frames are missed, sound is "broken". You need to stop, wait for few seconds before playing again, fluently.
I don't know if this is due to the speed limitation of DS-101 or to some bug of the M740. (any Idea ?)

I will make some recording tests tonight to confirm these good results!!!

The upper part of my post was done yesterday evening, and I add the result of my tonight test today.
It worked ! I recorded one 3 hours program without errors.
Next night I will try to record 2 simultaneous programs

[rhubarbe]

OK, this is off topic a bit but here goes for nothing, as we say.

Does anybody know why the M470 AV is not available to buy in England? There is no English manual on the Siemens web site; up until very recently there was no description of the M470 in English and yet we have DVB-t in the UK.

Does anybody know if there is any reason that the M470 does not work in the UK?

But my biggest question: can I stream live DVB-t program over wireless ethernet to my laptop so that I can watch DVB-t TV on my laptop in real time? I know that I can record an MPEG2 stream to my laptop (or any network HDD [Festplatte]) but can I watch the program while I am recording it?

[1701D]

OK, this is off topic a bit but here goes for nothing, as we say.

Does anybody know why the M470 AV is not available to buy in England? There is no English manual on the Siemens web site; up until very recently there was no description of the M470 in English and yet we have DVB-t in the UK.

Does anybody know if there is any reason that the M470 does not work in the UK?

But my biggest question: can I stream live DVB-t program over wireless ethernet to my laptop so that I can watch DVB-t TV on my laptop in real time? I know that I can record an MPEG2 stream to my laptop (or any network HDD [Festplatte]) but can I watch the program while I am recording it?
I think, one of the reasons, why Siemens is not selling the M740AV in the UK is, that currently the box cant playback radio stations.
To your second question: The short answer is NO! As you know, you may use the harddisk of your laptop as a storage. The fileformat of the stream is MPEG-TS which cant be used directly by most of the videoplayers. In addition the file is splitted every ten minutes into slices, that means, even if you use a player capable of displaying the stream you would have to open a new file every ten minutes.

kind regards

Klaus

[rhubarbe]

Vielen Dank, Klaus. So, spreche Ich ein bisschen Deutsch!

You can use this filter to play .ts files in your favourite media player:

http://www.dvbportal.de/projects/hdtvpump/

So, what's this about the M740 Av splitting files every ten minutes? Why does it do this and how, if it does do it are you supposed to play back any recording successfully if you have to open a new file every ten minutes.

I don't care about radio programmes - I have a twin tuner PVR to receive radio - I just want another two tuners to record programmes I want to watch (the wife has the first two tuners, seemingly :( ).

So, maybe the M740 AV will work for me!

[1701D]

I know, that there are player available which can handle .ts files.
But all I tried to say is, that the box is not designed to create files which can be played 'live' on the notebook. As I said before, the box is cutting the stream into slices (I think this makes it easier to navigatge through the file, in addition this prevents to run against the 4GB limit on FAT32 devices) What I forgot to mention is, the file name are dificult to figure out. The file names consist of the mac address + a timestamp + a three digits sequence number.
I think the M740AV is a great STB for watching TV on a TV and recording. but not designed as a streaming source.

kind regards

Klaus

[rhubarbe]

Thanks Klaus

I still don't understand what is the difference between using the M740 AV to watch programmes and recordings on a TV and watching them on a laptop over the network, but I guess you have an M740 AV and I don't, so I'll accept what you say. :)

I have a small HTPC which has is not connected to my TV except by a LAN connection (I use a network DVD player Transgear DVX-500E to play files stored on the HTPC on my TV) . I assume that the M740 AV could use the HTPC's HDD to store recordings and play them back on the TV using the M74 AV�?

Also, do you know any German store that will sell to me in the UK using VISA and not Vorkasse bank transfer (which costs me €45 charge by my bank)? �

[johnny]

I still don't understand what is the difference between using the M740 AV to watch programmes and recordings on a TV and watching them on a laptop over the networkI'll try to explain. The box writes the DVB-T stream (MPEG-TS) to disk/network, but not in one file! Every 5 or 10 minutes, depending on the firmware, the box will start a new chunk. When in playback mode, the box knows that there'll be another chunk, when the playback of one of these files is finished and so you'll get a seemless playback. It would be possible to do the same on your notebook, if you had the software to do this; and that's the point. There is some software out there, if you want to watch a finished recording, but until now there is no software that will recognize the next chunk of your life-recordings.

I hope you can get the point, if not, I'll try to explain more detailed.

Ciao
Johnny

[rhubarbe]

Thanks Johnny, I understand perfectly now.

Does this mean that you can't go into the hard drive where you have your recordings stored and take a recording and say burn a dvd?

If it does mean this I think I have at last found the method by which Mr Hollywood has hamstrung the mighty Siemens ;)

[johnny]

Thanks Johnny, I understand perfectly now.You're welcome!


Does this mean that you can't go into the hard drive where you have your recordings stored and take a recording and say burn a dvd?Nope. I've burned loads of DVDs since I own the M740. As I said, you can watch finished recordings; and you can burn them. You will need either PVAstrumento or ProjectX. The latter's the best, I think. It will create elementary streams (*.mpv and *.mpa, sometimes *.ac3) which you can use to cut and burn. It needs a little time; you're copying gigabytes. But the results are great.

Ciao
Johnny

[rhubarbe]

OK, thanks, you have reassured me of that!

All I need to do now is to find one that I can buy with Paypal, or Visa.

Then I have to hope that the tuner software can cope with the fact that all of the UK digital channels are offset by 176KHz......

I bought a Moditel and that didn't work.. the M740 AV is slightly more expensive, so I do hope it works :eek:

[gm28lab]

A follow up with my DS-101.

Using the DS-101 as a network share with the M740 (FW 1.37.4), I got rather bad results :
If I use the Timeshift function (simultaneous Read and Write on the same file) I got jerky images with a lot of pixellization.
It seems the DS-101 is not able to share multiple "simultaneous" accesses. I don't get that behavior with my PC as a shared resource.
I installed a new version of DS-101 firmware, no change. I have been told by Synology tech support that this is due to Hardware limitation at CPU and memory level !!??
So, at least, I am able to record on the DS-101 one program (or two)
I will investigate further

[rhubarbe]

Just to remove the obvious here. We are talking about a wired network, are we? Not WLAN?

[gm28lab]

Just to remove the obvious here. We are talking about a wired network, are we? Not WLAN?
Yes, DS-101 and M740 AV are connected by a wired LAN (RJ45 10/100 Mbps)

[rhubarbe]

So, if works on your PC with a local drive and not with a NAS drive on a network share, it has to be the data transfer speed, or the data integrity ratio of the network connection, doesn't it?

[gm28lab]

So, if works on your PC with a local drive and not with a NAS drive on a network share, it has to be the data transfer speed, or the data integrity ratio of the network connection, doesn't it?

My explanation was not clear enough. I'll try to do better

My network is built around an ADSL router DG834G from Netgear, that includes a 4 x RJ45 10/100 Ethernet Switch.
Connected to this DG834G are :
In my computer room :
- 2 x PCs (one very old Pentium 75 MHz and one old Pentium III 450 MHz)
- 1 x Synology DS-101 NAS
In my Living Room :
- 1 Gigaset M740 AV with an ~17m UTP (the M740 is close to the TV set, of course)

I planned to use the DS-101 to record the MPEG data stream of the M740 AV

If I use the 450 MHz PC as a network Share, i can do very fluently the following :
- record one program
- watch a second program, using the time-shift functionality
That means that the PC can write a file and write and read another file

If I use the DS-101 as a network share, watching a program, using the time-shift functionality leads to jerky images with a lot of freezing and pixellisation of images.
But if I do not use the time-shift functionality, I can record 2 programs without problem.

The explanation I have, more or less confirmed by Synology Tech support, is that DS-101 does not support "simultaneous" access to the same file, due to its lack in CPU and memory.
There is only 64 MB (smaller than the M740 AV MPEG files) in the DS-101, while I have 640 MB in my PC.
With the PC the files is kept in memory, and read in memory before being written on the disk.
If the memory of the DS-101 were larger than MPEG files (> 300MB) I think the time-shift should work

For the time being, I do not use the timeshift functionality anymore.

[rhubarbe]

Yes, I use the same Netgear router. My router is next to the TV. I connect to it using a P4 Sony 2.8GHz Vaio laptop and a Compaq PIII 850MHz via wireless G.

My problem was that the PVR I am using has no ethernet port, only usb (Topfield TF5800) Set Top Box (STB), so I needed a PC really close to the TV in order to make the usb connection to the STB. If I had not needed the TV proximal PC I too would have bought the Synology DS-101 :)

Instead I built a Mini-ITX PC with a Via Epia ME6000 and a Maxtor Maxline II 300GB 5400 rpm HDD. In effect the Epia PC is doing the same job as the Synology but the presence of a processor allows read and write simultaneously. The Epia PC needs no fan at all and cost maybe only a little more than the Synology DS-101. My Epia PC does not connect to my TV: instead I used a Transgear DVX-500E Media Server which does the same job as the M740 AV except that it has a DVD player instead of the twin DVB tuners.

Now I find I want two more tuners and the ability to write recrded TV shows to a network drive and this is why I think that the M750 AV is the product I need (pity that Siemens make it so difficult for me to buy one in Englad).

I think that the cause of your problem lies with the fact that the Synology has no processor, as you say.

To solve your problem: buy a Topfield TF5000PVR-t (with USB) or build a Mini-ITX PC. :)

[gm28lab]

I think that the cause of your problem lies with the fact that the Synology has no processor, as you say.

To solve your problem: buy a Topfield TF5000PVR-t (with USB) or build a Mini-ITX PC. :)

I was not clear, I think. There is a processor in DS-101 : Intel IXP420BB , and 64 MB of SDRAM
Synology tech people told me the power and the memory introduce some limitation