Sub £300 NAS capable of playing 4k + subtitles

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

Hi all,

Had the chance to use PMS briefly on an old laptop and loved it.
I’m however looking at restructuring the IT infrastructure of our house by getting a NAS to have photograps back up, one shared place for music and, of course, running PMS from there.
The NAS ideally would be connected to the TV straight through HDMI.
We will be playing some 4k content that needs transcoding, i.e. subtitles; 90% of the stuff we watch has subtitles.
Are my fears right that NASs capable of doing the abovementioned are machines that retail at £1000+ ?
Our budget was ideally £2/300 , without HDDs.

Thank you

2

Yeah your fears are accurate…

Plus most NAS don’t have HDMI out they are meant to be stored far away from the TV and connected via Ethernet.

3

Our TV is a smart TV so indeed don’t need the HDMI connection, the whole PMS is based over network sharing actually! :joy:

Am I then better off putting together a small x86 server with 10y old components?

4

Unfortunately there is an X factor as soon as you mention 4K. Either you have to match all your media to your equipment capability or you have to have a beefy server that can handle any mismatches. 10y old CPU won’t be in the ballpark. Minimum cpu would be a Plex Pass with i5-7xxx or newer.

5

Oh dear, nothing is ever too easy, is it!

Are my following assumptions correct:
. Playing 4k content to TV locally, no transcoding
. Playing 4k content to phone locally, requires transcoding
. Playing 4k content to TV locally WITH subtitles, requires transcoding

I’m then thinking of installing PMS on my desktop machine, it’s a fairly decent i5 4690t ( passmark 6478)

6

Assumptions are incorrect. 4K has many variables, HDR(+,10), lossless audio, bit rates etc that could be incompatible with your tv.

Fun read.

7

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