Thank you for the fast reply.
I’ll get in touch with them to let them know of my concerns, and I’ll make sure to do so in a tone that is more likely to get info and/or results than just writing them an angry letter to vent my frustration will 
I’ll make sure to let you know if I hear something interesting back from them.
Please do. Anything official from them will help us to stay in sync and avoid any confusion.
@ChuckPa since I’ve been doing testing with this alpha build, is there a plex-based way of communicating a Message of the Day/announcement to my server users if/when I run updates/bring it down for maintenance?
Not really unless you wish to create a “PreRoll” video / Image which consists of a JPEG with your message on it. The info on how to do that is in the Support Pages
You’ll find it under Server - Settings - Extras
I’ve contacted Synology about Plex accessing the devices hardware acceleration API information.
My message:
“My new Synology DS418j is fantastic! thank you so much for making it so easy to install, setup, configure and install others apps. Is there any chance Synology would consider sharing hardware acceleration API information with Plex so they can correct configure their software to use hardware transcodes. This is the only issue I am having at the moment, so I fix would be amazing. Thanks for reading.”
Synology response:
Greetings Richard,
I am pleased to hear that you are enjoying your DS418j and that the user experience has been a good one for you!
On the matter of Plex’s transcoding features, as of Plex version 1.9.3 hardware-accelerated transcoding (Intel x64 only) is supported for Plex Pass members only. Plex Pass is a paid service and the transcoding feature should work on all Intel-based Synology products that include hardware transcoding features (devices that have this function will indicate it in their specifications information). You need to download the Plex Pass version of the application directly from Plex’s site in order to make use of it in addition to having the Plex Pass service.
However, since Plex is third party software, that is the extent of the information we can offer about the subject, as further development on the Synology side would require Plex’s outreach to us."
I have replied:
“Thank you for your speedy reply. I am a Plex user and do have access to hardware transcoding on other devices. However, Plex do not have access to your hardware API and therefore cannot configure their software to fully utilise your hardware acceleration. Is it possible for Plex to have access to your hardware API on your NAS boxes?”
I will let you know, any further replies.
We do fully support the documentation API at the Linux level, because it is generic Linux and works on all X86_64 Linux systems with Intel QSV support integrated into the CPU through the udev API mechanism.
Synology has a proprietary solution available in their products which has not been made available to us.
This would allow support on more Synology devices, such as the ARMv8 (DS418j) as well as X86_64 systems without Intel QSV support (e.g. DS1815+). It has always been this acceleration API information we have sought . Video Station can utilize it with ease however, due to codec licensing issues, Video Station is unable to play most popular titles.
I will be sure to clarify this if they contact me again. Cheers
Hi Chuck, I am in the market for a new Plex server that can direct play a maximum of 2 4K h265 @ 60mbps+ streams and various h264 1080p @ 4mbps, my media is encoded so that it doesn’t need to transcode on the devices that have access to the various libraries, however you “Up to 20 Mbps DirectPlay / DirectStream” is possible. does this mean that none of these rtd1295/6 will be able to handle the above, and would these chips be able to do DVR transcoding.
I have a much less capable DS1815+ (Atom CPU) which can do 58 Mbps HEVC directplay so you should be ok.
In this testing, I am reporting that which has been observed here. It is not to be considered the absolute.
Also, as this alpha gets closer to final, I will retest with the JellyFish suite.
It is my general observation, if you are in the market for an ARMv8 CPU instead of an Intel J3455 based with QSV hardware transcoding, get the quad core. Otherwise you’ll be hard pressed to process the audio in a dual core (e.g. DS418j).
In this device class, I would opt for the J3455 with 8GB of RAM in it. QSV does all the video possible leaving the quad core to do audio trivially.
Hi Chuck, sorry I should of specified, I have been looking at the low cost TS-228A and TS-328A
The TS-328A will serve you far better. It’s a quad core. PMS can be handling read/decode, convert audio, remux, and transmit with ease in the quad. It’ll be harder pressed in the dual.
Also 2GB or RAM versus 1GB. That should be the no-brainer 
After some days of testing with the previous SPK the music playback interruptions (flac-files) have increased on my Sonos One, my Android phone and the Web-Player (Chrome). So the interruptions seem to increase with days the server is running. Are you interested in protocols (DEBUG-level) of the “hickups” or have you gotten enough “research material”? Regards
Btw: In the notification area I can see the message “Connection to DS118 closed” when the connection got lost.
Are these specific to the ARMv8 or PMS-induced? There have been Sonos issues in PMS in general.
If you can replicate in regular PMS then I must defer you to regular PMS.
Hi and many thanks for the hard work already done.
My testing contribution if it helps :
Installation error on:
Synology machine : DS418 with 68% space free
os system : DSM 6.2-23739 Update 2
package PlexMediaServer-1.13.6.176-dd1845234-aarch64.spk
context : package downloaded on macOS 10.13.6
I tried to manually install from the package center
just after selecting it on my mac and submitting : “processing, wait”, then “operation failed”.
Feel free to ask if any other information needed
I’m not sure wether I got you right. The problem is ARMv8 specific and not only reproducable with Sonos. Today I was listening to flac-Music via the Plex Web FrontEnd and the browser lost the connection to the media server several times (during playback the music stopped unexpectedly). The same happened with the Plex Android App. It seem’s that the frequency of the disconnects increases with the PMS runtime.
When I say ARMv8 specific, I mean: Does this also happen with another PMS installation?
I ask this because our purpose here in this Alpha is to make certain the ARMv8 implementation is functioning the same as it would on a Mac, Windows, or Linux x86 / x86_64 machines as well as other ARMv7 implementations.
There are limitations inherent to the ARMv8 due to the 1GB & 2GB variants
What you are describing, without actually seeing error logs (recreated and captured) for me to examine, sounds very much like a core PMS issue and not a Procesor-Specific fault meaning the same fault will occur if you were using a workstation or laptop just as the same as you’re seeing on the NAS.
Still, I would very much like to see the log files from the failure to be absolutely certain it’s not a fault in the porting/rehosting process.
Does that make more sense?
Would you please try the download with a different browser?
I’ve seen that error when the file is incomplete or corrupted.
DSM uploads the file, then unpacks it in the NAS. If the file is short, it will fail in the way you describe
Thank you very much for your explaination - I think I got it. Unfortunately I have no chance to test against a “final” PMS since the Plex support for my second NAS (DS 213+) was canceled in 2017. How can I send the protocol-ZIP to you? PM? Regards
Yes, You can send me what you have via PM. Please remember to include the link to this thread so I can jump back easily. (it helps my sanity haha)
Thanks for your quick update ChuckPA. I tried to download it with Chrome instead of Safari, same result.
But when reopened DSM 6 with Chrome, and tried to install it, it works like a charm.
I’ll test when libraries fully updated
