So, the first of us already received their MCPs… How do they perform? Are 4 transcode realistic? How snappy is the server itself?
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One of the employees did a benchmark for me. 4K -> 720p at 5x real-time speed single activity. That is seriously impressive. Everyone is just now getting them as well. Based on the 5x performance, I think the claim of 4 simultaneous will pass the tests with flying colors.
That would be wonderful… I am kind of underwhelmed with the shield… It actually deleted all my content of my 4tb hdd while trying to acces files on it (long story… Everything is lost though) and it kept crashing a lot of times in the 1 day I tried using it. Now with this NAS I have higher hopes that it will work as advertised 
I’m getting the WD Passport Pro to put in the car as my mobile media server. It supplies the media and hotspot, any laptop or phone does the serving
So Plex is actually supporting hardware transcoding with those to boxes? I might be going for them then…
They do indeed… Getting mine later today or on Monday… I hope they are as speedy as promised as they are not that cheap 
Got my PR4100 today. Moving some media to test later today.
But the frustrating part is Plex on the PR4100 cannot see any other network shares (that I can find). So the only media accessible is what is on the device’s hard drives (local only). I have another NAS & a server, and would love to see this box as a backup server that could transcode the media from those network devices too. But for the life of me, I can’t get the My Cloud (or Plex on the My Cloud) to access anything other than local files. I’ve tried a number of different syntax in Plex (ex.: \192.168.1.2\Files, \COMPUTER-PC\Files, smb:\192…, smb:\COMPUTER-PC…, etc.). There does not appear to be an option to mount/map any network shares as local drives on the NAS either.
Wondering how to fix this, or if I should just send back…
@dissentingd, thanks for the info, I was considering one, but without the ability to be able to connect to other network shares that could be a bit of a deal breaker. Do keep us posted if you find a way.
@dissentingd said:
Got my PR4100 today. Moving some media to test later today.But the frustrating part is Plex on the PR4100 cannot see any other network shares (that I can find). So the only media accessible is what is on the device’s hard drives (local only). I have another NAS & a server, and would love to see this box as a backup server that could transcode the media from those network devices too. But for the life of me, I can’t get the My Cloud (or Plex on the My Cloud) to access anything other than local files. I’ve tried a number of different syntax in Plex (ex.: \192.168.1.2\Files, \COMPUTER-PC\Files, smb:\192…, smb:\COMPUTER-PC…, etc.). There does not appear to be an option to mount/map any network shares as local drives on the NAS either.
Wondering how to fix this, or if I should just send back…
There have been a few reports of having to do restarts and checking with the app center/store.
If it’s a real nas and not just the ‘Twonky Media Server’ with Plex on board, you should have a mount tool. On synology it’s buried. It’s in File Station (the file browser), Tools → Actions → Map network share.
I’ve been able to successfully map a drive from the Synology 414 to the PR4100, and I’m copying media now. I’ll get PlexPy going to see how fast it is speedwise once the transcoding starts. So far, it works, but Plex is a version or two or three old (.9.17.0, IIRC - an early June release, not 1.xx2261, the current PlexPass release) and it doesn’t (or hasn’t yet) updated my TV content with show descriptions and such.
Also, even though the WD documentation says I should be able to run NZBGet on this, I’ve yet to be able to do so. I can’t find it in the apps list. The apps list, FWIW, is really, really small compared to Synology (which I’d expected — but I did expect to see the NZBGet app at least, and I had hopes of Sonarr working too…)
@dscorn@gmail.com said:
I’ve been able to successfully map a drive from the Synology 414 to the PR4100, and I’m copying media now. I’ll get PlexPy going to see how fast it is speedwise once the transcoding starts. So far, it works, but Plex is a version or two or three old (.9.17.0, IIRC - an early June release, not 1.xx2261, the current PlexPass release) and it doesn’t (or hasn’t yet) updated my TV content with show descriptions and such.Also, even though the WD documentation says I should be able to run NZBGet on this, I’ve yet to be able to do so. I can’t find it in the apps list. The apps list, FWIW, is really, really small compared to Synology (which I’d expected — but I did expect to see the NZBGet app at least, and I had hopes of Sonarr working too…)
I would love to know how this performs please post your results. I would also ideally like to get sonarr working on this as I am thinking of grabbing one and moving away from a remote server.
Which part are you interested in? The TV content metadata is now updated, so that part is working (it required a PMS restart, which appears to be a known issue (aka bug) in Plex.) Let me know and I’ll post updates when I have more data.
@dscorn@gmail.com said:
Which part are you interested in? The TV content metadata is now updated, so that part is working (it required a PMS restart, which appears to be a known issue (aka bug) in Plex.) Let me know and I’ll post updates when I have more data.
Ideally I would like to know if you can get Nzbget and sonarr on there.
But ultimately how many 1080p 20Mbps streams, or whatever the top quality setting you can play back that is transcoded and not direct play. I play my streams back original quality which doesn’t put much strain on the hardware but people I would be sharing the server with will most likely be transcoding.
They are quite hard to get hold of so far in the UK
@carnagerover said:
@dscorn@gmail.com said:
I’ve been able to successfully map a drive from the Synology 414 to the PR4100, and I’m copying media now. I’ll get PlexPy going to see how fast it is speedwise once the transcoding starts. So far, it works, but Plex is a version or two or three old (.9.17.0, IIRC - an early June release, not 1.xx2261, the current PlexPass release) and it doesn’t (or hasn’t yet) updated my TV content with show descriptions and such.Also, even though the WD documentation says I should be able to run NZBGet on this, I’ve yet to be able to do so. I can’t find it in the apps list. The apps list, FWIW, is really, really small compared to Synology (which I’d expected — but I did expect to see the NZBGet app at least, and I had hopes of Sonarr working too…)
I would love to know how this performs please post your results. I would also ideally like to get sonarr working on this as I am thinking of grabbing one and moving away from a remote server.
To add to the data points being collected… I will share again what one of the Plex employees did for me:
He took the PR4100 and transcoded from a 4K high bit rate to 720p at 5x real-time speed. Given that direct measurement, it looks like it will hold up under fire. 
I’m using PlexPy (installed on a Mac) to analyze the speed of PR4100 playing a 1920x1080 MKV (data sent to my web Plex client in Chrome/MacOS: about 800k/s) – the PR4100 is doing 1.8x-2.0x real time.
Video: Transcode
Audio: Direct Stream
H264
Anyone tried 4x 1080p 20Mbps transcodes?
How many direct streams?
Also what are the read and write speeds when copying data on a gigabit network?
I get 80-100MB/s when copying data on a GB network. This is from an ARM-based Synology to the PR4100. Gig-E speeds are pretty good.
@dclive said:
I get 80-100MB/s when copying data on a GB network. This is from an ARM-based Synology to the PR4100. Gig-E speeds are pretty good.
That’s not too bad, have you done anymore testing yet with multiple transcodes?
I haven’t. Multiple transcodes aren’t my typical use-case.
@dclive said:
I haven’t. Multiple transcodes aren’t my typical use-case.
Any chance you could give it a try and post some results?
If not no worries
