Hi, I am looking at simplifying my plex setup, I am currently running a core 2 desktop running plex and an old Athlon running Xpenology with SHR, I want to replace all of this with a consumer NAS, (no longer want to hack stuff together), at most I only need a 4 bay NAS with the ability to do at least 1 “direct stream”, most of my media is MP4/aac with blu-ray rips MKV/ac3 for my Xbox One S, so nothing will transcode but I am considering getting an ATV4 which would require my blu-ray rips to direct stream. I am looking at around £300 budget, also do other NAS vendors have an equivalent to SHR, as I find it simple for me to just add an extra drive to a volume.
Don’t forget to look at the Asustor line either. Asustor makes the 610X and the 620X models that are comparable to either of the Synology or QNAP models in their price ranges. And the OS is fairly stable.
I run PMS on a 7004T, and my only regret with this system is that I didn’t go with an 8 or 10 bay model. I know it’s a lot higher priced, but it truly is bullet proof.
If you have a good Internet connection before spending hundreds on hardware you really should look at Plex Cloud . It has a limit of three simultaneous transcodes which should suit most domestic arrangements although probably not those who share their libraries with friends & relatives. The only cost is Plex Pass plus £6.99/month for G Suite Business.
Plex Cloud does an outstanding job of transcoding 4K. I uploaded a 65GB 60Mbps 4K UHD Blu-ray rip & this happily plays on all my devices (Roku 3, Roku Ultra, iPhone 6s Plus, Amazon Fire TV 4K, web app on my Retina MacBook Pro etc). It even plays nicely on the iPhone on 3G/4G cellular when away from WiFi.
Plex Cloud is a game changer. Anyone thinking of buying hardware for their own Plex Server should think again. provided you have a decent Internet connection Plex Cloud can provide a better Plex experience than local hardware & the cost saving is enormous.
I would second the DS916+. Right now the hardware transcoding requires workarounds but I think its quite likely they will get it baked in to the official release fairly soon and once hardware transcoding is enabled it will be a very capable nas.
And personally I don’t trust the cloud. This has been debated to death in that forum tho. Just far too many questions with the cloud service for me to trust it with my content. IMO its much safer to keep everything local.
The thing about hosting the media on the cloud that has me concerned the most: You give up control of your media to a party who doesn’t really care if it’s safe, and can delete it, move it, change it or modify it at any point without your permission. (Read the fine print on the agreement. It’s there on any of the Cloud provider’s agreements.) As it sits now, you can’t encrypt your data, so there’s another negative.
Hosting it on your own hardware and maintaining the media yourself reduces the risks that someone who doesn’t care about your media is going to do something to it. YOU have control. That’s worth the expenses for a lot of people. A couple of years of paying for a Cloud service and you paid for the hardware.
@MikeG6.5 said:
The thing about hosting the media on the cloud that has me concerned the most: You give up control of your media to a party who doesn’t really care if it’s safe, and can delete it, move it, change it or modify it at any point without your permission. (Read the fine print on the agreement. It’s there on any of the Cloud provider’s agreements.) As it sits now, you can’t encrypt your data, so there’s another negative.Hosting it on your own hardware and maintaining the media yourself reduces the risks that someone who doesn’t care about your media is going to do something to it. YOU have control. That’s worth the expenses for a lot of people. A couple of years of paying for a Cloud service and you paid for the hardware.
Do you host your own email?
