I am planning to buy a NAS server to play my media in my Samsung TV mostly thru Plex Media Server. I have my media in external hard drives attached to my old laptop at the moment and works perfectly fine including subtitles. I can use Plex at home, or remotely.
However, two problems.
1 - I don’t want the laptop to be ON all the time.
2- As I have couple of hard drives it looks quite messy.
So I thought I should go for NAS. I was checking and I quite like the Synology DS218J design plus the price was ok. But then when I started to do some research about it, I found out that this version doesn’t do transcoding at all (which I have no idea what it means and if I actually need it). I don’t want to buy something that wouldn’t work so if anyone help me, I would be really appreciated.
So the questions are:
1- Can I play my media (movies) on Synology DS218J without a problem including subtitles?
2- As everything works at the moment perfectly, how can I know if my media is actually transcoding when I play it thru my PC using Plex and watching on my Samsung TV?
3-If above is not possible and I need to choose another NAS server, what would you recommend similar budget like Synology DS218J (about £160)
4-if you cant give me a brand name or etc, what would be the min specs I should look for? CPU, RAM etc.
Thank you very much for your quick reply trumpy81. It is really really helpful. I wasn’t expecting that extensive explanation, I appreciate it.
Couple of things I couldn’t understand; (I am very new, sorry about that )
Basically, when I use my laptop (Plex Media is installed), time to time I put my new media (mostly .avi) and subtitles (mostly .srt) to my external drive which is attached to my laptop . Then the new file appears on my Plex library and I just go to my TV and open plex and watch the media. Obviously something happens behind which enables me to watch my media but I cant see that.
I guess if I want to change all these and go for NAS, first of all, I need to find out if my media needs transcoding or not. If not I can go for 218J version, if it needed then I should increase my budget and go for the higher and more powerful versions. Am I understanding correctly?
Is there anyway to check if my current media is getting transcoded? How can I check that to decide whether I go for 218J or 218+ (bearing on mind the price difference is almost doubled between those devices)
Thank you trumpy81 for your answers. You have been really helpful…!
I understand quite well now thanks to you.
One last question and I will be on my way to search for a NAS device suits my needs.
In your first answer post you suggested couple of Synology products for me which does the transcoding mostly.
If I look for other brands, which brands and models you would suggest for me that does transcoding as well? Criteria would be 2 bay budget NAS and transcoding available. It is very good to have an expert’s opinion.
I also have a DS218j…however i’m using this nas as a Direct play device over LAN to an Nvidia Shield…I have no need to access this remotely or have the need to transcode…what i wanted to ask is…is it better to have the server on the nas where all the media is going to be and use the Shield as a Plex client player or have the server on the Shield using the nas as storage or does it matter either way?
Rick,
If your scenarios are all direct play, you gain the benefit of not consuming all the nVidia’s local storage which you might want to use for other things. The NAS has more than enough space to handle it.
If you have PMS on the nVidia, it must remote mount the Synology.
If you have PMS on the Synology, the nVidia can be just the console it is.
PMS on the Shield means it and the NAS must always be on. PMS on the Synology frees up the Shield for other things.
This is entirely your choice how you want to allocate the resources
)