I currently am in the process of upgrading my entire setup. It’s been a good run but time to upgrade. I currently have Drobo DAS hooked up to an older Mac mini and its been great but will be upgrading my Mac mini to the new M1 soon (its on the way).
Here is my question. I am planning to use the New Mac mini M1 as my server to handle transcoding etc. My issue is I want to replace the Drobo’s as they are all older firewire 400 and want to get a NAS, maybe something with a 8 bay for expansion. I will be using a Nvidia Shield Pro in my Media Room for direct play 4K but all the rest of the streams throughout the house are with Apple TV’s or FireTvs…
I read a lot of people doing NAS and using it as a Media Server but my question is, does it matter what NAS I get If I am going to use the setup above? (MacMini as PMS, Shield and ATV/FS to stream)? My goal is to make sure the Shield can direct play 4K and the NAS is fast enough for that. I have wired Cat6e throughout.
If you’re using the NAS solely for storage, you’ll be less dependent on its capabilities. There shouldn’t be too much differences when it comes to their core functionalities of hosting and sharing your files to the PMS.
Many dedicated NAS devices can handle hardware transcoding and provide solid functionality for Plex when used as the PMS. Synology and QNAP are common prebuilt devices with good Plex support (I use Synology). This article is particularly helpful: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201373803-nas-compatibility-list/
NAS devices can do LOTS of stuff and are designed to be up and running non-stop so I personally prefer NAS based PMS over desktop but it all depends on what else you’re getting a NAS for outside of network based storage of course.
Yeah, I actually use the MacMini to run my entire Home Automation solution also which is why I’m upgrading it and planning to use it as the PMS also - Its a dual purpose machine. I also felt that since I’m spending the money on the Mini that I didn’t need to buy such an expensive NAS or could get a used DS1817+ or something. The main question is will ANY NAS handle 4K with direct play through the Mini via the Shield? Or, do I need to consider something special for a NAS to do 4K?
Direct Play of content is mostly a lift for the client side so pretty much any NAS on local wired network will be fine in that regard, particularly if it’s just storing the files for reading. Usually the roadblocks for NAS are in relation to transcoding. My old DS213+ could feed 4k content via direct play.
The Shield is considered one of the best clients for direct play support of content so you should be good as that’ll be what determines direct play vs transcoding (and audio only transcoding isn’t a heavy lift).
If you have some media info for a typical 4k file you’ll be playing that might help. It sometimes depends on codec support of the client and TV\Audio hardware being used as well.
For example, new LG\Samsung TVs don’t support DTS anymore even as passthrough so you’ll need to setup the Shield to connect to your DTS supported audio hardware before routing to the TV if you want DTS support - but maybe your audio hardware can’t pass full 4k video through it. That kinda thing can impact how things work out on the client side for direct play vs transcoding which will then impact your server CPU, but not really your storage medium. So if your current setup is playing back via direct play without issue then I would think switching storage medium to a NAS vs Drobo (and with an upgraded server CPU) you’d be just fine too.
Thank you so much with the detailed help! I have been looking at a synology 1515+ and maybe adding a 517 to it later as I need to expand. Since I’m just using it as storage and not transcoding will the 1515+ work ok? There are some decent deals out the with some 1515+ units.
Also to answer your questions on files. I use make mKV and burn with it the lossless files straight from 1080 and 4K disks.
