qnap tvs-473 Birthday nas

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

It my 30th birthday this weekend and my partner is allowing me to get something along the price of £1000.

I am after a new server that can play/transcode 1080p/4k to a tv in my home and also another client in a different Hosue (only need 720p for that Hosue) also being able to watch stuff from a laptop,tablet or phone while am working away.
Sick of looking and worrying about what nasto get and seen this one the qnap TVS-473-8G wondering what people thought are on this. It’s a lot of money for me and want something that will last a long time. Thanks for any help

2

Yes, that’s a lot of money. I felt the same way saving for my TVS-1282. I don’t have a partner to say ‘no’ hence why I ended up getting it :slight_smile:

From the technical perspective:

  1. The AMD processors do not have Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) capability. This means there is no hardware transcoding.
  2. The benchmark performance of the 473’s processor is 1/2 that of an Intel i7-3740.
  3. You can pretty safely software transcode 1080P to whatever you need , and definitely DirectPlay (no modifications to any part of the audio/video) anything.
  4. By “DirectPlay anything”, I specifically mean that if you have 4K HEVC HDR (UHD) in a MKV file, your Television must accept the “4K HEVC HDR MKV” stream without alteration of any kind by Plex. That particular CPU can read and transmit the 4K easily. It does not have the performance needed to manipulate it prior to streaming to the Television.

The exact performance numbers are here.

You would need a processor with performance ‘Passmarks’ exceeding 10,000 to process most, but still not enough for all, 4K HEVC HDR

3

How many 1080p transcode streams do you think I will be able to get . Say over 4G to and iPhone and iPad at the same time. ?

4

The best way to do the math is:

~2000 Passmarks / 10 Mbps for each 1080P stream being video transcoded. If you’re only converting audio, you’ll only need about 500 Passmarks of CPU to convert the audio.

5

Did you get a TVS-473? I got one last March but it developed a fault in one of the bays but QNAP replaced it for a brand new TVS-473e 8GB. Apart from that unfortunate fault it’s a great bit of kit and I love mine. It easily supports transcoding 2 * 1080p movies at the same time, one on my Sony Bravia and the kids Samsung Smart TV. It works great on my iPhone over 4G too and I’ve got a few mates who use it remotely too with no issues.