[markusA]

Hi, I'd love some advice on hardware to run Kodi on.
These are my needs...
Hdmi for the TV, I mostly watch content stored on my NAS and some YouTube. No real need for surround sound or anything like that. My library is quite expansive and my NAS is no longer up to the task of indexing the files. It works fine as a pure NAS but not a media server. I would like to be able to handle a large library without lag.
Audio/music needs a toslink/spdif output for my standalone DAC. My music is quite large and after deleting a bunch I still have +50000 flac files.
It would be nice to have something small and energy efficient like my current Apple TV but I'm open to different options.
Either use my NAS for file storage or build a htpc with with room for 5 discs. (4 raided 3.5" and a 2.5" SSD)
Oh, it needs to be completely quiet, my old NAS is driving my crazy with fan noise.

So, bulletproof fast responsive UI with stable streaming performance. Quiet, energy efficient and small size.
Any advice you can give me is greatly appreciated.

[johnnyspice]

Hi There,

I've been a long-time NAS+streamer user and I can definitely recommend staying with this approach, if only for the option of adding another client and being able to stream things from the same source from a device dedicated to doing this.

I've been very satisfied with my Synology NAS but I'll be upgrading this with a newer model soon. Having a NAS ticking away upstairs renaming and indexing my files has been quite satisfying.

I'm currently in the market for a device to use as a client only after using a Boxee box for so long.

[shabuboy]

The current most popular choices are AFTV and Chromebox. Check out the wikis

I currently have the AFTV streaming videos and music from my NAS. Love the price and the remote. However, I do not have a large library, so not sure if thumbnails would be an issue for your case.

+1 on keeping NAS and client separated on hardware. Personally I think... HTPCs are a thing of the past.

Also see here or search for this forum. This is s very popular question.
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=215851