back to article Verbatim MediaShare 1TB Nas

Verbatim is best known for its range of straightforward and affordable hard disks, memory sticks and other storage devices. However, its new MediaShare drive is a little more ambitious. The low-profile aluminium chassis bears more than a passing resemblance to Apple’s Mac Mini or AppleTV, but it’s essentially a good-looking Nas …

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  1. Tim Parker

    Codecs

    "To be fair, these file format problems tend to plague other media-streaming products as well"

    To be fair, there's really no excuse for it these days. The number of proprietary/licensable/free/open-source codec packages, handlers and streamers is legion - and we've seen very complete coverage from other, more cut-price NAS boxes and media streamers, so i'm again struggling to understand the problem here.

    That said, i'm also struggling to actually find out what media formats this things support full stop, the FAQ, user manual and other documentation seem to omit any mention of it that I can find - perhaps this is something that could have been mentioned in the 'review'.

    I'm not knocking the NAS capabilities of this unit (or others) but if you're going to offer media handling it really isn't too onerous a task (or expensive) to get it right.

    Apart from that - sounds like quite a nice little box....

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    terrible price

    For much less than £200 you could buy an Intel D510MO (about £50 for a dual core 64bit atom cpu, gigabit network, video, sound, etc.), a case, some ram, a 1 terabyte HD (another £70-80) and have £70-80 leftover for a windows media PC license, a really nice TV card, more storage, whatever. For something with a mere 1 terabyte of storage and what sounds like a terrible interface and no ability to hookup to your TV/stereo/etc. I have to say that £200 sounds pretty overpriced for basically a hard drive with a network port.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Price

      How about if it was £150 for 1TB and £200 for 2TB? (As per the article)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So....

    ...What use is it if you don't have an internet connection?

    Why oh why do manufacturers go down the route of setting things up via the internet? There are people I know that don't have internet - no phone lines unless large amounts of money handed over and then no guarantee that anything other than dial-up would work - that have an extensive home network. They got a netgear nas that required an internet connection to set up - didn't say that on the box - found it couldn't work in their situation so returned it. Now they have a D-Link DNS-343 that just works.

    As far as I can see any box that will not work on a network with out an internet connection is not a NAS box but something else.

  4. frank ly
    Stop

    Lock-In!

    You have to load Verbatim software onto your PC to use it? You have to register on their website to use it? That is crazy.

    A Synology DS110j (single bay, empty NAS box) can be had for £107, ordered from Scan and other places. Fit the SATA drive of your choice and you're away with a very well featured and very flexible NAS box that you can load up with many different services, including media streaming, and much more.

  5. BristolBachelor Gold badge
    Thumb Down

    Cheap NASs

    I have bought and hated cheap NASs in the past.

    How well does it stand up to sustained work? Some die while you are trying to copy multi-GB to them (uploading the contents of your digi-cam or cam-corder).

    How fast (or slow) is it? I take it for granted that you can read files off it, but does it take all week?

    What is this software you talk of? It doesn't work without it? It is a VERY long time since MS PCs needed extra software installed for file-serving. Are Verbatim living in the 80's?

    These extra USB / eSATA ports for additional storage, how do they work? Do they all show up as separate drives? How does that work in their viewing software? How much slower are they?

  6. Rinsey
    Coat

    Verbatim is best known for...

    5.25" floppies. Mine's the parka with the JEDI patch sewn on

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like another Axenta software Hipserv version

    Looking at the picture, the services and the description it is just another Hipserv implementation from Axentra just like Netgear Stora or LaCie NAS. Which by the way you can easily tailor to your own wishes because they are running a form of Linux.

  8. Christoph
    WTF?

    Log in to their server?

    I have to register with them to use a drive on my local network?

    I have to log in to their server to use it over the net? Exactly how much of my usage are they logging, and why?

    I have to rely on their servers being available? If they go down, or get attacked, or decide to terminate the 'service', my access over the internet vanishes?

    Somehow I don't think I'll be using this.

  9. handle

    Power consumption?

    You should be bothered to plug all the always-on hardware you review into a cheap energy monitor. It's easy to do and it would be very useful to know.

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