DS418play - hardware transcoding

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
22

Sorry to bump this old Topic, but any feedback on this ? I am about to go for a 418Play and was wondering if the 918+ wouldn’t be the better deal ?

23

I bought the 418Play and then 918+ because the 418play seemed to struggle at the time I was trying to set it up. But after 3 months of tuning the 918+, I’m happy about it but I’m not sure I needed to go from 418Play to 918+ because it turns out that the Synology hw transcoder is not compatible with mpeg2video format. Mpeg2video files causes stuttering issues when playing my files on Apple TV.

Now, I make sure all my fill are not mpeg2video. I bought the HD Homerun Extend which has an onboard transcoder that produces H.264 file format. I use the hw transcoder on my 918+ Synology as well and my cpu never struggles anymore. In H.264, most of my files can be directly streamed to my Apple TV which barely affect the Synology CPU.

Caveats:

  1. I had to set my Hd Homerun Extend conversion down to 720p for my live TV to play smoothly on my Apple TV. I don’t know why yet but decided to live with it for now.
  2. I only used my Apple TV as player so I have no experience with other players.

Hope this helps.

Here is the link to my post on hw transcoder issues. I had already switched to the 918+ at the time.

24

Thanks for this.

I must say that my setup is different. I ripped my Videos from DVD/BD myself using H.264 and left the Audio untouched. And I’m using FireTV to stream the videos to my 1080p TV.
Most of the Videos don’t require Transcoding, so I guess it won’t make a big difference for me then.

Now I’m waiting for a Plex Pass discount Code :slight_smile: