I am very new to absolutely everything surrounding Plex and NAS technology. That said, I am absolutely shocked by how good my new DS220j that i snagged for $130 on Prime Day has been. I’m slowly converting all of my blu rays and dvds to MP4’s with Handbrake after ripping to MKV’s which has been agonizing. Once the files are finally on my NAS I can stream locally and remotely (remote wifi or on mobile data) without any problems to at least 2, maybe more devices in 1080p on an inexpensive home network setup which is only capable of 100mbps down / 20mbps up on a good day. I was concerned about the mixed reviews of this NAS for use as a Plex server and whether or not it would be worth it for me to spend the extra few hundred dollars to get something more substantial.
For my use-case: Backing up our family photos, syncing my family’s mobile devices, and backing up/streaming my physical copies of music and movies- I can’t imagine needing more power than this. As the world transitions slowly to 4k-everything my opinion may change. I haven’t tested anything in 4k yet. For now, 1080p still looks great on all of my devices (including my 4k TV). It seems that as long as you don’t need a device capable of transcoding (which based on what i’ve read is actually not necessary for many people) this device does a fine job for an entry-level device with such a low price tag.
Does anyone have any words of caution to users who are initially tempted by the small price tag who might eventually end up regretting their decision to run Plex on a budget?
I did the exact same thing… got it on Prime Day as well, for the price I had to jump on it, and since the same research led me to the same conclusion not having or needing to do any transcoding, I took the leap!
VERY happy so far! The only thing grinding my gears now, is that I can’t move playlists from my old Plex server… and that I am finding that for some reason Plex has decided to rename some songs and artists on the DS220j to completely wrong names, which were/are not named that on the old server. I may open a thread on that, after I search around a bit.
Been messing around with Handbrake as well, if you have any tips on settings for that, feel free to pass them on, I am kind of new at all that as well, and not sure the best bang for buck settings when doing that.
as long as the client can direct play the video, you can get by with a very low powered server (like small nas and rpi boxes).
the overall experience (browsing library, scanning speeds, etc) are still going to be limited by whatever power cpu the system has, but yeah direct play serving can be done on many lower power devices.
Interesting- Are the files themselves renamed or is it just in the Plex UI when you go to actually stream it? It could be that plex has changed how things are indexed/named since you last set it up or that Plex is now using a different database to check your files against. You can manually change song/artist names from within the UI, but i can imagine that could be frustrating if it happened to a lot of your library. Make sure your folders and files follow these naming conventions:
As for handbrake- I’ve been using that as well. Unfortunately what I’ve gathered from the research i’ve done so far is that just about every setting is argued over by the handbrake community when it comes to best picture quality vs file size. I ended up just following a guide on YouTube and tweaking it slightly.
For DVD’s I did end up using the settings from this blog/site but changing the “constant quality” setting to 18 from 21. So far everything looks pretty good!:
They have a blu-ray settings guide as well but i haven’t checked it out:
Yeah, my library is already set up like that… I literally copied it directly from the WD MyCloud drive I have, to the DS220j. I’m finding more and more incorrect, so I may wipe it all and start over.
Thanks for the handbrake tips, I will mess around with it.
I was looking into the ds220j, but got scared from the reviews. All my content direct plays on my apple tv, so I dont need transcoding (i’m even thinking about buying Infuse and using that as player).
is it true that plex is no longer available to download from package center on the ds220j and it must be manually installed?
Due to Synology policies the version in the Package Center is outdated. This is for all Synology NAS, not just the 220j (or at least all that use the 64-bit Intel build, not sure about ARM). For example, the Package Center version for a DS918+ is 1.18.5.2309, and the current version from plex.tv/download is 1.20.4.3517.
A manual update takes all of two minutes.
Download update
Stop Plex via the Package Center
Install update via Package Center
Start Plex via the Package Center
Settings → General indicates if an update is available.
You can subscribe to the Plex Media Server announcement thread to be notified when a new release is available. Scroll to the bottom of the thread and change Normal to Watching (the same as for any other thread on the forum).
If you’re actually direct-playing all of your content you’ll likely be quite impressed. When I’m at home direct play is just about perfect. When I’m remote everything’s a tad slower but once something is playing I’ve never had to buffer.
Good to know. Thanks, maybe I will save some money then and get the ds220j vs the 220+. I dont watch plex outside of my home. Since all my stuff direct plays, it sounds like the ds220j will fit the bill.
I should emphasize again that I have not yet tested any 4K content- If you need 4K you should definitely do a little more research before pulling the trigger.
I have an Apple TV which direct plays all my content. I also have Infuse Pro on my apple tv. So no transcoding needed. Does the DS220J have enough horsepower to allow me to smoothly scroll my library on my Apple TV?
Browsing the library is exactly the same for SD, HD, and 4K UHD HDR 60FPS REMUX content. The posters and show info all stay the same size.
In addition to the transcoding points above, ingesting and analyzing higher quality media takes longer. Generating video preview thumbnails, performing media analysis, and doing intro detection, are significantly slower for high-bitrate 4K HEVC videos on systems with slow CPUs.
Usually that’s not a problem because it only needs to happen once, in the background, and not in real time. It doesn’t interfere with media browsing or Direct Streaming playback.
