On the smaller side of things, I recently replaced my home router with a Linksys e3000, which has a USB port.
Being a curious sort, I plugged a USB microphone into it and yelled at it. No response.
USB keyboard provided no joy either.
an external SATA dock and a 640gb disk I had lying about, however, proved a LOT more interesting.
Per the router, and per my experimentation, the hard drive is now available as a UPNP/DLNA media source, so devices such as my PS3 should be able to play appropriately formatted video directly off that disk without the intervention of an (expensive, power hungry) server.
So on the bottom-bottom end of this discussion, you can have a PS3 head end ($399) fed off of the wifi from your Linksys e3000 ($160) that gets the associated movie data from an external hard drive enclosure ($85) with a pair of Seagate 3tb disks in it ($240 each), which gets you an absolutely massive 6tb onto your screen for $1124
The kicker being that you can setup with a Linksys e3000 ($160), an El Cheapo Grande external enclosure ($30), and whatever hard drive you have lying around ($70 for 1tb), and use a laptop or 'spareware' PC for a head end, and get started for $260 - which kicks the pants off of most commercial/higher end setups, for people who don't need or want all that excess capability.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
Being a curious sort, I plugged a USB microphone into it and yelled at it. No response.
USB keyboard provided no joy either.
an external SATA dock and a 640gb disk I had lying about, however, proved a LOT more interesting.
Per the router, and per my experimentation, the hard drive is now available as a UPNP/DLNA media source, so devices such as my PS3 should be able to play appropriately formatted video directly off that disk without the intervention of an (expensive, power hungry) server.
So on the bottom-bottom end of this discussion, you can have a PS3 head end ($399) fed off of the wifi from your Linksys e3000 ($160) that gets the associated movie data from an external hard drive enclosure ($85) with a pair of Seagate 3tb disks in it ($240 each), which gets you an absolutely massive 6tb onto your screen for $1124
The kicker being that you can setup with a Linksys e3000 ($160), an El Cheapo Grande external enclosure ($30), and whatever hard drive you have lying around ($70 for 1tb), and use a laptop or 'spareware' PC for a head end, and get started for $260 - which kicks the pants off of most commercial/higher end setups, for people who don't need or want all that excess capability.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies