New NAS for Plex media streaming

Mr_Orange

Calling all NAS gurus!

I currently have a Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4  which is honestly running fine except that Plex Media Server no longer supports it and I am stuck on an old version. So what, you say... well the Plex Web App, Android app and LG SmartTV app all refuse to connect to my version of the server leaving me stuck. Therefore, I am looking at a new NAS.

I have always bought Netgear but am not averse to another brand. Doing some research on 4 bay boxes, I have come up with the following (which are in budget):

ReadyNAS RN424; orSynology Diskstation DS918 .Can anyone provide feedback on either of these two options or indeed suggest alternatives noting that I live in Australia.

TIA.

Sanders79

Hello!

I have a QNAP TS-451  and it works just fine. It’s probably way more low-end than others here will have but it’s good for me. I have all my movies stored as MP4s, just for watching on tablets or smaller TVs around the house (if I want the full fat, full picture, surround sound experience, I put the blu ray on in the living room).

The QNAP seems to cope fine with transcoding on the fly whenever I have asked it to, but most of the time I just need it to direct play so not much hassle for the NAS really. If you’re putting fully featured MKVs or whatever on yours and expecting to need it to transcode multiple streams at once, you might want something with a bit more grunt. It has struggled with transcoding when I tried some VC-1 files, but I think that might be more a Plex problem (I’m no expert on this point).

The QNAP I have has the option to upgrade the RAM. I did so as it was fairly inexpensive to do, honestly it made no discrenible difference to performance

I found the Synology UI to be good, intuitive and had all the features I needed. Setting up backups of photos folders to the cloud was easy and it never failed. I slightly prefer the QNAP UI, but this will just be a matter of personal taste really.

I did have a Synology previously, a 2014 model, and I replaced it because it kept crashing randomly even when not actively serving up files. I suspect this was either just bad luck on my part or some deep-hidden check box I needed to tick, rather than a reflection on Synology as a whole. The 4 bay QNAP handles my movies and I have a 2 bay version for everything else (music, photos, documents...)

N3ptun3m00n

Synology... Only way to go!

Will I Aint

Can't speak for other NAS makes but I have 2 synology, DS213J for music and 1515  for mkv. You haven't stated what your media player is but you don't need to transcode on the NAS if your player can manage the media.

I just serve up the files with filestation and use Nvidia shield TV to play everything native. That way you can stream to multiple devices with hammering the CPU on the NAS. Also helps if you are running a wired connection.

Mr_Orange

I'll be using the Plex app on my LG SmartTV.

The whole network is wired and it is highly likely, I will only be using one stream at a time. I'm currently ripping all my DVDs to mp4 and, once that is done, I'll buy a BD drive for my PC and then start on the BD collection.

I used to use a Netgear NeoTV 550 but decided I didn't need it with Plex but now Plex have screwed me over, a new NAS is one of the choices I have along with dusting off the NeoTV.

The NeoTV is definitely EOL, although it largely worked for me.

Sloppy Bob

Instead of buying a new NAS, you could buy a Nvidia Shield TV which makes a great Plex server and client.

Your TV will be forcing everything to transcode which is where you need a more powerful NAS, but if you do away with transcoding then you can use the NAS you have and not spend a fortune on a powerful NAS to do something you don't really want to be doing anyway when it comes to streaming to your TV. Transcoding reduces quality.
Ideally, a NAS is used to serve data, if you need more than that it gets expensive.

Other option with the Shield is to use Kodi instead, Kodi plays files natively and does away with the client/server model of Plex, the Shield does all the hard work and will stream full fat 4K with HD Audio with no issues. Again you don't need to replace the NAS as it's just serving data.

Lastly you can run Kodi, using Plex as a backend with PleXBMC, so plex does all the organising and scaping while Kodi does the actual playing.

Mr_Orange

Thanks @Sloppy Bob, I hadn't appreciated that the Nvidia Shield could act as a Plex server. That would appear to be a much more cost effective option.

It would also possibly fix another issue to do with app support on my 2014 LG SmartTV because the Shield uses the Google store for apps.

Sloppy Bob

I'd do a bit of research first, I don't use Plex myself. Tried it and moved back to Kodi, it has it's place, just not for me.

Camillo112

And what if you replace Plex to Emby?
Support forum to your NAS

Mr_Orange

I've never heard of Emby so what if I do replace Plex with it?