I have a Windows 10 PC running Plex and use the Plex app on my Sony (Android) TV. All works really well at the moment. The Sony TV can handle 4k stuff but the PC cannot (it’s 10+ years old). I’ve tested this by running a 4k file from the PC using VLC and MPC - both struggle in individual ways.
I tested a h.264 video file by plugging a hard drive directly into the TV and it played fine. I think I tested a h.265 file in the same way, which also played but I need to double check on that. Although about 20 mins from the end of the 2 hour test film, it just swirled in the middle of the screen. Not sure if that was the hard drive though (it won’t be the same hard drive in the NAS).
Based on that, I guess Plex would be able to “direct play” 4k videos to the TV from the NAS?
Based on that, which Synology NAS would be suitable (looking for 4 or 5 bay)?
Although i am no expert and don’t know Synologies lineup very well I can give you some general tips.
You should be able to direct play/stream to your tv, and that consumes close to no compute ressources, I personally use a Raspberry pi 4 as a server and that can handle at least 3 4k direct play streams.
So for direct streaming you don’t really need to consider the power of the NAS, just your storage requirements.
I think i read somewhere the DS920 can handle up to 4 1080p transcodes on cpu encoding, but also has a Hardware encoder using intel quicksync (uses barely any cpu), so maybe start looking there?
In my opinion it’s way overpriced tho (celeron, 4g ram, 4 bays for ~550€) but you’ll have to decide that for yourself.
I personally am looking at a refurbished dell poweredge R610, it has 2x 6 core cpus 16 gb RAM and 6x 2.5" drive bays for around 200€. Another 420€ for 6 2TB 2.5" seagate barracudas and it’s just around 50€ more than the DS920 but is way more powerfull and has 12TB of storage already (It’s way bigger tho, I need the extra compute power, decide for yourself).
I like the thought of a Raspberry Pi and some sort of enclosure but not sure how they’d work together.
I guess the Raspberry Pi will just provide me with a way to view the Media Server on the TV?
Although if I was just to get the NAS, do I need to get any SSD / NVME storage for anything? Or does it come with a little bit that Plex can work from out of the box?
Struggling to find any 4 bay + that is cheaper than a NAS here in the UK to make the Raspberry Pi idea work.
My Raspi setup involves a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB (I got it for 50€), one of these USB SATA enclosures, and 2 old 2 TB seagate drives i had lying around. I also used just a random 10 buck acryllic enclosure with a tiny fan for the raspi and a random power brick i had in my house. All in all ~120 € (+ hard drives in your case probably) so I’m very happy with it.
AFAIK Synology NAS do not come with any internal storage and store everything on the provided drives (don’t quote me on that). And you will have to install Plex onto this space (I think their OS does have built in tools to do that I’ve never used one).
If you want to go the Raspi route you will need some linux experience (or at least be able to follow tutorials and debug some of the errors you will inevitable encounter).
I will outline the basic steps you will have to follow here:
setup Raspian (or any other linux distro) on your raspberry
install plexmediaserver from a package manager
mount your drives
this part will most likely require the most amount of time googling, trying things and reading error logs.
You will most likely want to aggregate your drives in some way eitner via RAID, LVM or at least mhddfs (My choice).
setup permissions so that plex is allowed to read the media folders (small tip I’ve struggled with, plex needs the x - execute permission to show a folder)
setup plex via the GUI / do everything else you want to do with plex
I hope I could answer some more of your questions and help you decide which option you will choose.
