Home theaters are quickly becoming popular amongst many homeowners. In a sense, it allows people to bring the qualities of a movie theater that many of us enjoy into the home. It can come in all forms and sizes, from living room setups to dedicated home theater rooms. They allow us to have an escape from the stresses of reality right in the comfort of our own homes without the repetitive cost of a movie ticket.
However, home theater equipment can be very expensive at times – especially when you think that you have to purchase a different device to do each of the different things that you want to do with your home theater. For example, if you want to watch movies recorded on optical media such as DVD or Blueray, you’re going to have 1 piece of equipment just for that. Then of course, you might also want to play music over the network on your home theater setup, again, another equipment will be dedicated just for that. Taking everything into account, you will most likely spend lots of money (and lots of time) looking for and trying the different equipment until you find which ones you really need. And of course all of that different equipment might lead to problems with compatibility between them – although this is quickly becoming a thing of the past, with standardized home theater connections.
There is, however, a way to get around the expenses of having many different devices for several of the things that you might want to do with your home theater setup. In a sense, it allows you to get rid of some of the equipment you might need to complete your setup. Imagine a device (or two devices actually) that can get rid of the optical media player, music player, internet media player, and other audio-video devices in your home theater setup. I’m talking about an HDD media tank with network support.
An HDD (or hard disk drive) media tank is basically a device quite like any other media player that plays media not from a dedicated reader such as in a DVD player, but will play files of different formats directly from a hard disk drive that is installed inside the media tank or an external drive that is plugged into the media tank. There are also media tanks that have equipment built in that allow it to function as a digital TV receiver. And many HDD media tanks will also include support for local area network file sharing and have features that will allow it to access web-based content – and is the variety we will mainly focus on.
Using an HDD media tank with network support, you can get rid of the DVD and Blueray player by accessing a Blueray or DVD drive built into a computer via the network. This same networking capability also allows it to play media files on different computers. So in a sense, the actual need for dedicated equipment is reduced if you can setup a dedicated computer running on adequate specifications that will play host to all the media you want to play in your home theater. In total, the cost of having a computer carry all the equipment used to play the different types of media and the HDD media tank itself will be lower than the cost of the sum of all the individual equipment you would otherwise use.
What’s more, HDD media players with network support allow you to take advantage of the giant information resource that is the internet. You can easily rent or buy and download movies from an online media store like Blockbuster or Movies Unlimited and play them on the HDD media player. You can also watch Youtube videos using the device.
Because of all the functionality that the HDD media tank brings to the home theater floor, it can play a dominant role. But the best thing about HDD media players is that most of them are cheaper than your standard single disc Blueray player! Such quality at a fraction of the cost is the best reason to go ahead and get one – whether or not you’ll be replacing equipment in your set up with it. However, you’ll be surprised to know that many high end equipment manufacturers like Sony, Philips, or Panasonic have not yet caught on to producing media tanks. In fact, the technology behind media tanks has evolved mainly out of China, of all places! And so far, the easiest way to get your hands on one is through a Chinese electronics wholesaler, and many of them now sell different brands and models with different capabilities, so be sure to check them all out and compare their features to make sure you get what you want today.
