Multimedia Station

Enabling the Multimedia Station is simply achieved with a single check box. You can then get there via the IP address of the NAS and the addition of /MSV2/. QNAP has kept the restarts within the device to a minimum, so you do not have to suffer through the long shutdown and restarting process. Once the Multimedia Station is up and running, you are first greeted by a dialog asking you to set an administrative password. After which the interface becomes available to you right away.



You can view your pictures, video and audio files stored in the multimedia folder on the NAS drive. QNAP ships the unit with a few sample images and I have added the example pictures found in Windows 7 to the mix. You can upload the images via FTP or mapped network drive for example. You can just view your pictures in form of a gallery or select a single one to take a look at. There is also various other functionality, like the ability to add frames to the pictures - much like you would be used to seeing in those photo booths at shopping malls. There is also the option to view all the images as a slide show adding music from your collection to it in the process. You even get the ability to make pictures publicly viewable, so that they can be seen by friends and family who access the Media Station. QNAP also includes a simple account management interface in which you can select what each logged in user can see for example. Last but certainly not least, you may even upload our pictures to your favorite online service. The choice includes a blog, MySpace, Facebook, Windows Live for example.

QNAP also offers a free QMobile app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. With this you can access your media stored on the NAS wirelessly and view it on the portable device. Imagine sitting at your favorite coffee shop and tapping into your music collection while sipping on your favorite caffeine infused drink.


That said, your music collection is also easily accessible. The media playback is immediate and you can quickly skip to the next track or even fast forward so fast, it feels like you have stored the music files straight on your PC. You can also add covers to the music, but those images that do not have one assigned, just feature a large music note as place holder.


The third form of media - video - does bear a small drawback. Due to the the web interface, you can only play FLV or flash based video within your browser. This means that if you upload an AVI file, it has to be transcoded. I uploaded a a TV show, with an HD resolution to the device and it was transcoded within around 10-15 minutes. During the process you can log out of the device or do other tasks. Once the conversion process is complete, you can watch the flash video straight within the Media Station. The result is a watchable, but by no means on par with the modern standards. Those who are used to the quality of YouTube videos will be sorely disappointed. QNAP should give you an option to set the parameters for the transcoded video, so that users have the choice to see some low quality version or try to retain as much detail and resolution as possible.

Web File Manager

Then there is the Web File Manager, which is simply a file explorer viewable within the web browser. You can do all the usual tasks like moving, deleting files through this interface. There is not really much else to be said besides that. I would still prefer an FTP accessibility instead of this, but it is a nice option if the file transfer protocol is not a possibility.

Other Applications

You can use the Turbo Station NAS devices as iTunes Servers, FTP or Web Servers and even surveillance hub. The latter is probally the one very unique feature I should mention in detail. You can connect various IP cameras to the system which allows you to view them in the browser. This is a totally different area of application for the TS-859 Pro and is no longer related to NAS. Those companies who will use the unit for surveillance purposes will most likely count on the redundancy and data security along with the possibility to drive a large number of IP cameras and nothing else.