February 15th, 2011

Synology DS210j NAS

Feature Use Continued

The next feature that I investigated was the Download Station. This allows you to setup the DS210j to download all your favourite legal torrents and files from supported services like Usenext and Emule. These are natively supported, but like every other option on the Synology device, must be turned on. Once they are however off you go. Torrents and files however are added via URL, so unless you want to constantly jump back and forth between tabs it saves time to download a bunch of torrent files in one go and then add them.

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The 3rd fleshed out option is the Audio station which works exactly the same way as the Photo Station, except that it plays music instead of slideshows of photographs. Again you must load your collection via standard network drag and drop, or attaching a storage device like an MP3 player and downloading tracks.

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This station comes with a build in audio player that displays plenty of information about the tracks you’re listening to. Playlists can be created, songs can be shuffeled skipped, ignored, rated; this is a fully featured audio player.

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The final Station on the Synology NAS device is the Surveillance one. This one allows those with networked webcams to use them as security cameras, tracking motion or turning on and off based on a time schedule. Unfortunately I didn’t have any webcams handy so was unable to test this feature, but it seems intriguing.

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The only other Station option is the iTunes one. This allows you to download iTunes tracks straight to the NAS device.

Cost

This NAS drive, without included hard drives
s quite pricy, but so are most devices of this type. Costing around the £160, it may put a few of you off but you’d be hard pushed to find a better deal elsewhere.