Plex looks like my ideal solution as I have a lot of home automation and my movie collection is the last thing to get “automated”. I’ve started ripping my Bluray collection and will be playing this through TV’s and HD Projector.
I’ve ready lots of pages on setups but nothing seems definitive regarding setup (horses for courses naturally). I was considering upgrading my NAS to run Plexserver on it but reading between the lines it looks like getting a decent nas and then using a HTPC would be a better option and perhaps more future proof (due to NAS generally not having a lot of grunt in the processor).
I’ll be mostly using this in the house and my main goal is the best possible quality in the home system (might do some outside streaming but very little).
I was thinking something like a Synology DS416PLAY and a NUC with an i5 or i7 in it might be a good setup. anyone with similar care to comment if this seems a sensible thought ?.
Thanks that makes sense, good idea to go with lower NAS and spend more on drives. Looks like WD “red” drives get a good write up. That said I’ve been using a Readynas Duo for years with 2 “normal” drives in and have had very little bother with them, however jumping up into serious storage capacity makes me feel a higher quality drive is a good idea.
Or an nvidia shield instead of a HTPC. Cheaper and it can play it all. It can also act as a plex server so you can connect right to it. But I run Plex off of my desktop PC with an attached drobo.
In terms of drives the Seagate NAS drives seem to review better than WD Red drives. It’s what I went with for my Drobo 5D and they haven’t failed me. I do have a ton of WD Green, Blue and Black drives and have had several failures. Though there’s no hassle getting them replaced under warranty.
That’s an interesting idea, I’d seen a few review and set ups online using the shield some were not so positive but I guess you get that with everything. I might start there and build my system onward from there as needed.
Thanks for the input re the drives, always useful to the perspective of someone that’s got first hand experience. I think I’ll go for Synology NAS and pack it out with Seagate drives.
Seagates sometimes seem to get more reviews because the name is better-known by the masses so it ends up being more popular on name recognition alone.
But if you dig into the techs who really know this stuff (data centers, NAS tech pros, etc), you’ll see the failure rate of Seagate is now abysmal compared to WD or pretty much anyone else. Plus they run cooler and are quieter.
You may buy a bunch of Seagates and never have a problem. But if you want the odds to be in your favor, get the WD Reds.
