Create A Media Center Solution – Thecus N4810

Introduction

Long gone are the times where your NAS only served the single purpose of holding all your files in a centralized location. Today’s NAS are equipped with powerful processors that can do so much more than serve you your files and thanks to their built-in iGPU they are even able to deliver 4K content directly to your TV. Today I’ll take a closer look at this scenario and show you how to set up an amazing home theater experience with just your Thecus NAS and a TV.

For this article and test, I’ve got the Thecus N4810 4-bay NAS in and it is going to be a blast to play with it. I’ll also be using four of my 6TB WD RED drives in it and with that combination, we have a solid base for anything we could dream up to do with this NAS.

The Thecus N4810 is quite the powerful device with its embedded Intel Celeron N3160 Quad Core CPU and 4GB DDR3 memory. The classic tower design might not be the optimal solution for every location, but it is still a beautiful device. It features a front LED display for quick diagnosis, but that’s not really needed for our setup today. The horizontally mounted drive trays also provide a solid base for the installed disk and each of the bays can be locked individually to prevent people from popping your drives.

The device is running the relatively new ThecusOS 7.0 that looks beautiful and comes packed with all sorts of features, functions, and apps. Among all those apps are the features which we will be using today. These include the LocalDisplay feature for seamless 4K Multimedia playback via HDMI (and DisplayPort) output and within that we’ll have apps such as VLC, KODI, and Plex to deliver a great experience. We can even connect the NAS to our digital sound system via the SPDIF output, providing crystal clear audio for music and movies.

Using the NAS as a remote media station isn’t a problem either thanks to DLNA/UPnP streaming as well as Apple TV and Chromecast streaming. Your consoles and mobile phones can also easily connect to the Plex server, even when you’re on the go. Built-in DDNS features and mobile apps make it a breeze.

The NAS even comes with a 99% virus prevention thanks to the bundled Intel Security. A great bonus to have on the device which holds all your precious memories.