I am about to purchase the DS916+ and would really like to have PLEX use the transcoding capabilities of this NAS.
Is this a possibility for a future update to allow this.
I understand that a WD NAS with the same cpu etc can do this.
Apparently, a lot of people are also asking about this NAS and PLEX.
Regards,
Kris M.
Moderator: moved to appropriate forum.
I ordered the 2016 Synology four bay DS916+ 8GB yesterday along with 4x WD Red Pro 6TB. Hoping to see some huge numbers in the like box of TS post above 
Link to a (for me) very interesting post about ‘unofficial’ HW accel enabled [root] transcode for DS216+ (That’s 916+ little brother/previous year CPU; Celeron N3050 dual core [Celeron N3060 dual core is in this year DS216+II - compared to Pentium N3710 quad in the 916+) forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1217006/#Comment_1217006
And the mandatory spec sheet link
synology.com/en-us/products/DS916+#spec
Storage Review (2 GB version, unfortunately no Plex testing) here in case someone is interested.
edit: I would happily pay (some kind of reasonable amount) to help out making HW accelerated transcoding happen. [-O< Anyone else feel the same?
edit2: Techpowerup review (7/28) here. 2 or 8 GM memory version? It’s not mentioned in the text/specifications (but their box shots clearly shows 8GB). At page 11 there is a small test of direct play using Plex:
Techpowerup review:
! We initially tried a 24 Mbps media (bird24.mkv) file, which was reproduced just fine. This raised our interest and we increased the bar with the 34 Mbps version of the same media file, which the server’s hardware managed just fine. To cut a long story short, we were able to stream up to 55 Mbps media files to our devices; however, such high bitrate streaming took some time to initialize. We even tried 4K media (NASA: Thermonuclear Art), which produced a delay of around 20-25 seconds at the start but was reproduced without frame drops and pauses afterward. The only problem was the very slow seek function. In general, Plex’s performance was pretty good. We were prepared for very daunting results since Plex doesn’t exploit the transcoding capabilities of the Intel N3710 CPU, but that was thankfully not the case.
edit3: This is interesting, thanks @rtfmoz! (link to thread)
@rtfmoz said (my markdown):
I’ve had a talk with Synology about opening up hardware transcoding on their platform to Plex. This was their response.“Regarding hardware transcoding through Plex, we have actually been communicating with Plex for a long time about whether they can implement this. However, it might be because Plex supports too many types of devices and it’ll take up a lot of their resources to optimise the software for each device (I’m not 100% sure), this just hasn’t happened yet. There are other third-part app that has utilised hardware trascoding on Synology NAS, so we are not hiding the secret from anyone, especially not Plex.”
The DS415+, the new DS916+ support hardware offloading of transcoding tasks on the NAS. To give you some idea of the benefits, currently doing a low bandwidth 1080p transcode on the 916+ uses about %90 CPU. The same video in the Synology video station uses %30 CPU. This is a massive difference in performance.
There literally a hundred thousand people who would benefit from having this feature supported in Plex. I realise it may not be a road you want to travel but if you change your mind. Please let Synology be your testing platform. I for one would only be too happy to use my DS415+ as a test platform for code. I am chasing up Synology for more information on how to utilise the hardware in the current version of disk station manager (DSM). In fact I signed up to PlexPass just so I could make this post. I have been looking closely at the PMS early releases and hope that one day we will see a feature like this pop up for testing.
Fingers Crossed.
Count me in too, I have a DS916+ and would love HW Transcode support
I Don’t know if this is THE topic where te votes are counted for de Plex transcoding for the ds916+ but I realy would like this feature.
I wanted to buy the ds916+ (I almost hit the buy buttom ) and then I read about that the NAS can’t even play a single 1080p file because of this missing feature in plex.
thats a great bummer because plex media server is the reason I would buy a NAS.
Someone please make this happen
+1; Count me in
+1; Count me in
I’ve recently bought a DS916+ to replace my aging DS411j and this would be perfect for me, please make it happen.
Same for me!
Running Plex on a DS716+ and it is great… Just the load on the cpu is too heavy with 2 or more transcodes.
DS Video as a alternative is not that bad actually, just running into other problems when streaming over the internet, subtitles, etc…
It would be great to get a statement from the plex developers here in this thread so we understand when yes, no or maybe hardware accelerated transcoding will be supported.
@Batcompu said:
I Don’t know if this is THE topic where te votes are counted for de Plex transcoding for the ds916+ but I realy would like this feature.I wanted to buy the ds916+ (I almost hit the buy buttom ) and then I read about that the NAS can’t even play a single 1080p file because of this missing feature in plex.
Apologies, i’m not following this bit. Why wouldn’t plex work to play 1080p files? Or do you mean that the server, not NAS, will transcode?
Just bought a DS916+. I have been running PLEX with my iMac without any issue but i would like to run PLEX without computer.
Please count me in.
@MRVivekB said:
@Batcompu said:
I Don’t know if this is THE topic where te votes are counted for de Plex transcoding for the ds916+ but I realy would like this feature.I wanted to buy the ds916+ (I almost hit the buy buttom ) and then I read about that the NAS can’t even play a single 1080p file because of this missing feature in plex.
Apologies, i’m not following this bit. Why wouldn’t plex work to play 1080p files? Or do you mean that the server, not NAS, will transcode?
I’m Always watching with subtitles so Plex always needs to transcode.
I’ve read that with the transcoding option on it can’t play a single 1080P file.
But I still bought the ds916+ because nobody can know it better for yourself then your own experience.
And I can say that if it’s 1080p with about 15mb’s troughput the NAS can trancode the mkv file to de samsung smart tv app without a problem. If you go higher then 15Mb’s the movie pauzes every 10 sec for 30 sec for transcoding.
So I just need to watch witch movie quality i’m getting and then the NAS works great but I realy would like to have the transcoding.
It not a network related option that it buffers because when I let my pc to the transcoding with the files from the NAS the movie even with greater trougput then 18mbs plays without a problem.
+1; Count me in
+1 Moving from QNAP to Synology and we push a lot of subtitles here.
Hmmm. This thread has me questioning my desire for the 916, without it I could just build a PC fileserver or get a low end Synology.
I most certainly would like to see hardware acceleration implemented on Synology NASs (for at least the Intel based procs, as we know it is possible). I have a 415+ and will likely get a much larger one in the future. Other than as a file backup repository, all the server does is serve as my main PLEX hub/server.
+1 Count me in on wanting this.
+100 on this - just transcoded my library and it literally took weeks producing a 720p, 4Mbps mobile ready variant (average transcoding time for a two hour movie was between four and five hours). Would be fantastic to have hardware transcoding on the server instead of relying solely on CPU.
Thanks!
+1 and liked 
+1 like
+1, Liked
I have a DS916+, and although almost all of my media is in mp4/m4v format for direct playing, it would be very beneficial for CPU intensive tasks like generating the thumbnails upon new media being added to a collection, and for mobile users.
