After what I thought was quite a lot of research I brought a Synology DS213j NAS as I wanted it to run PMS (Plex Media Server) so I could have access to my content from home or outside of my local network. Since getting the device I have found that PMS is not available on my particular NAS at least right now. This is due to the fact that even though the processor is capable of running it the motherboard on the NAS isn't supported yet. Looking round it seems that it might not be available for a while yet :(.
So this is where I get to my question. Would it be possible to buy a Raspberry Pi, install a version of linux and then use it to run PMS, while leaving all my media on the NAS. Does the Raspberry Pi have enough power to transcode the videos? Could I stream a 1080p file over to my phone over 3G?
Thanks in advance. Sorry if this is in the wrong section, feel free to move it if you have to.
After what I thought was quite a lot of research I brought a Synology DS213j NAS as I wanted it to run PMS (Plex Media Server) so I could have access to my content from home or outside of my local network. Since getting the device I have found that PMS is not available on my particular NAS at least right now. This is due to the fact that even though the processor is capable of running it the motherboard on the NAS isn't supported yet. Looking round it seems that it might not be available for a while yet :(.
So this is where I get to my question. Would it be possible to buy a Raspberry Pi, install a version of linux and then use it to run PMS, while leaving all my media on the NAS. Does the Raspberry Pi have enough power to transcode the videos? Could I stream a 1080p file over to my phone over 3G?
Thanks in advance. Sorry if this is in the wrong section, feel free to move it if you have to.
I'm sure it takes a much more powerful computer than an RPi to handle 1080p transcoding well.
What I'd recommend is to get a decently-powered normal PC to run PMS, while still leaving your media on the NAS.
You won't need a bleeding-edge supercomputer for it, but it shouldn't be too low-end either (which the RPi definitely is).
Currently I do have Plex setup with the PMS running off my iMac but its not exactly something that I want to leave running. I thought the Raspberry Pi would work well as it doesn't use a lot of electricity. I guess it would be best to keep an eye out on ebay as see if there are any cheap mac mini/netops that could do the job.
The RPi does have support for hardware H.264 encoding. If Plex would support that, and you don't need to transcode audio or audio transcode is cheap enough on the CPU, it could very well be possible.
I saw somewhere that the Pi can transcode even 1080p so I'm sure it's possible!
I have the same problem, all my medias are on my NAS (ReadyNAS104) but the NAS itself can't transcode. So I'm looking to transcode with the pi my movies and jtvshows for my iphone..
I saw somewhere that the Pi can transcode even 1080p so I'm sure it's possible!
The only arm version of PMS release that does any sort of basic transcoding is the drobo version - which has a processor roughly 16x the speed of the RasPi - your NAS processor is significantly faster.
