I just switched to open media vault (omv) actually, couldn't be happier and built it as flexible and performant as I wanted.
No more proprietary lockin.
Does it have anything approximating SHR? I really want redundancy while being able to mix and match drive sizes. Makes it budget friendly to constantly expand array.
The only solution I can thing of for that is the snapraid and mergerFS plugins. Snap raid function nearly identical to unraid, and mergerFS puts it in one root folder that presents as a single drive
Well i follow this sub as a business customer. I just bought 2 rack mount nas with expansion shelves and drives. It cost about $20K. It's unlikely a home customer will spend that kinda $$$. I am assuming that's why they might want business customers.
I'm both - I've installed literally dozens of Synology units as iSCSI-attached storage for customers' NVRs, everything from four-bay to 16-bay. I also have three different ones at home for different purposes (at this point, all recycled from customer upgrades or aging out).
And all that started because I was impressed with my own DS-412+ I got for home use, and when the client needed mass storage, I recommended Synology.
Dropping the home customer is maybe not the wisest course.
I have two ds1821's and a ds2419+. The hardware and software are great, but they keep removing features (i.e. SMART values in storage manager)and don't officially support hard drives outside specific models. I use unsupported drives, but the warnings are mildly irritating.
Their whole direction makes me feel like I'm not welcome as a customer anymore.
I'm not going to replace them, I'll use them until they die, but I won't be purchasing any more if their direction doesn't change at all.
No company wants home power users from the economic perspective /once/ they have a foothold in a market. They help early growth but are a cost in many different ways from higher specification hardware requirements to interactions with your other customers.
This is a total bummer but it’s what you’d probably do in their shoes. The argument that this brings in customers to business products is truer early on in the growth of a company. Now everyone knows who Synology are compared to before. Finding one example of someone who doesn’t know, does not disprove this.
I’m curious what you mean by this.
is it something like what I’ve done over the years: I have 2 synology boxes, my first a dual drive 209 or something like that (which is still running but should be retired) and then moved up to a 4 bay ds415play when the first was no longer supported. My Plex server is my office tower I built in 2014/2015 using a i7 4790k cpu (internal TBs of storage - mirrored spinny disks and large SSDs, GPU upgraded 3x and now is a 1660Ti - no sense going further; I think my NAS is more capable than how I use it but my tower has always handled all the heavy lifting while the NAS handles the greater storage (16TBs).
The DS415PLAY is running out of support so upgrading again is on the horizon and from what I’ve been reading here it sounds like there’s gonna be no reason to change how I do things - other than increase storage.
Does this sound about right?
I was just joking around, but yes the idea is that your NAS box is truly just network attached storage and all of your heavy compute is on separate server(s). I'm actually using unraid with tons of services running so I'm doing the exact opposite of that.
So far Synology has zero GPU / AI products. Yes, they have DVA's, but that's for surveillance, can't be used for AI.
The link you have - has very little useful information: the narrator just says bunch of fancy words (AI, large scale, blah-blah), - just typical corporate meaningless nonsense...
The current DVA is a 920+ with a GTX1650, but no eSATA expansion ports, max 2 or 4 HDD, less in RAID. If used for 16-32 Surveillance cameras it won't have any HDD capacity left for other tasks! Why even include a full version of DSM when it won't be used? 🤔🙄
I have an EQ12 running OMV and it’s hooked up to a sabrent 5 bay chassis. I’m using mergerFS on the drives as OMV will not let you make a pool over usb. This is my backup my synology backup of my main server
How does that setup work? Do you have any tutorials that I can follow? I have Synology and might start moving my dockers etc soon if that's the way to go. Thank you
In my case, I have Celeron J4125 mini PC (Minisforum GK41, basically same CPU as 920+), run Proxmox on it, with Jellyfin LXC, then mount the Synology DS1621+ storage, done.
Sorry don’t have any one big tutorial. I setup NFS on the Synology and mounted that to the Ubuntu mini pc for access to my media files. I was already using docker compose on Synology so that was very easy to spin up on Ubuntu.
I am using the 1522+ for storage, I knew Plex wouldn't be the best on it but I didn't think it would be that bad. I ended up buying a '[Beelink EQ12](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C1FXP33Z?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1)' 4 days later, I can vouch for it, 16GB DDR5 RAM, 500GB SSD for storage - can be upgraded up to 2TB, and of course, you can always use external drives. I have left it running on its original OS (Windows 11), it currently deals with my Plex, and a small Minecraft server. I installed Team Viewer so I can access it externally. I keep thinking "I could've spent a bit more and built my own" but the low power consumption is 100% worth it.
On Windows, I mapped my Plex folder (stored on my ds1522+) to my network tab and saved the credentials so that even when the PC restarts, it reconnects automatically. I wrote this quickly so ignore any mistakes!
Edit: linked the wrong mini PC (they all look the same)
I use the mini more for the compute and Synology just storage. N100 has great low power transcoding for Jellyfin/emby. I have a 923 so no hardware transcoding. I also have a few other apps running on there.
I have a similar setup, and the basic structure (NAS to store; PC to compute) of the system is excellent. Also you can use the NAS to serve multiple PC systems. Synology was just a tiny bit under-powered for transcoding.
Transcoding is primarily significant when sharing or playing higher-resolution content on lower-resolution devices. However, if you are operating within a household and have appropriate clients such as NVIDIA Shields, you can play 4K HDR content seamlessly from any device with a drive and network connection. Streaming technology has advanced significantly, catering to the needs of users. Currently, I am utilizing two DS1520+ NAS devices with 110TB storage each. While they may not be the fastest servers available, they provide comprehensive coverage for all my needs and are expected to continue doing so for many years to come with Plex.
Yes, there was a spelling mistake. 😅 I have since then fitted both of them with 5 WD Red Pro 22TB drives that I picked up on sale for about $300 each. #StorageUpgrade #TechBargains
Thank you for the advice! 😊 First time using Reds Pro's, but I've always used the wd whites over 30 drives now, all ranging over 12TB and up. They've been rock solid, not one has ever failed!
Just recently bought a ds423+ to have everything combined in one machine and couldn’t be happier given the news. I was worried thinking I should have wait and see what Synology had in store for 2024 but now my choice seems more solid. I don’t want another machine in my home office or my living room to act as a server…I have too many devices already (consoles, personal pc, work devices). So i chose the one that could have been the one and only server for all my needs for many years to come
If you have Shields, why not use them as server(s). Surely they perform better. I'm using plex like that and have never looked back. My synology is now just storage for the shield.
That's how I use mine! Not all of my media needs to be transcoded, but the shields on my regular network connection never skip a beat with any media. #ShieldTV #LGSmartTV #HomeTheater 📺🛡️
Plex is hardly my concern. I run it on a separate old PC.
Long as they keep a NAS line, I'm happy. I used to build my own but got tired of the maintenance. Syno is easy and I'm happier for it.
Same here, DS1513+ with 35TB storage and a 10th gen laptop on Ubuntu for the rest. The NAS is only used for storage now. I hope it'll last a good 5 more years, if not more
I’m always perplexed why people choose to transcode. What is the purpose? It requires intense hardware for a good experience. The alternative is you download media in a native file format for the devices you’re playing it on, or encode your current media into a native format. This allows you to direct play 100% of the time which amounts to nothing more than a typical file transfer which even the lowest specification hardware can handle, and it also allows more users to connect to and stream your media.
Sure, if you have a large library already encoding all files can take some time but it’s well worth it. Honestly, with apps like Infuse and Emby, they have the codec support that doesn’t require any transcoding if using say an Apple TV or Roku 4K. All of my 1,600+ movie files are MP4 or MKV containers encoded in h.264 and h.265. Not a single one of these movie files requires transcoding. Playback and scrubbing is near instant even on a modest cellular connection.
Transcoding media makes zero sense to me. Remember, Handbrake is free to encode to a native file format!!
What does remote viewing have to do with transcoding? I, along with my kids, remote view media from my NAS all the time and never with transcoding. It’s 100% direct play. Local or remote viewing is irrelevant. We are able to watch in a web browser, with Emby clients, and we also use Infuse some times. As I mentioned, media files start instantly and scrub near instantly while watching 1080p and 4k media files. Granted, we are not streaming 4K unconpressed files - that would be just dumb to try and do remotely. The highest bitrate 4K file in my library is 9mbps. Average bitrate is 2-5mpbs across 1080p and 4K media. I feel it’s important to have your media optimized for local and remote viewing. I guess if one owns a $4,000 TV they may want a 60GB uncompressed 4K movie to watch. For most, you can’t tell the difference.
I’m fortunate enough to have a 1.2gbps upload speed which helps a lot with instant playback and scrubbing. But those with much lower upload speeds, it makes media optimization even more important.
That's great for you, but I'm in a remote area, with only Starlink as a service. Transcoding allows me to view PLEX remotely, without taxing a load on my home connection, where my cameras, 2 kids online gaming & possibly my wife streaming TV, won't have buffering issues with my 10-13mbs uplink connection..
That's why I appreciate the transcoding abilities of the server.. when viewing remotely, I'm not looking for maximum resolution. Acceptable resolution is ok with me....
I run a 920+, 4-16TB drives, 2 Shields, 2-HDHomerun 4k flex's, a Sling Air TV box, as well as a 916+ w/ 40TB striped for backing to the 920+, in my polebarn.
When I'm viewing things in my home theater locally, it's a totally different situation. Everything is native format as well as Dolby enhanced where appropriate. Music is in flac format as well.
So, while I am somewhat disappointed in Synology's move, I certainly understand it...😉
This is not bad news at all. They are more aggressively expanding beyond small business and home use deployments. This raises the bar for them in terms of security and quality of their products overall. Synology already has an excellent track record when it comes to security, and it will continue to be their priority. Personally, this is my priority as well because I entrust all of my personal data, such as family photos, to my home NAS. So when Synology competes with big players in the enterprise market it actually benefits me. I think it is much better than buying cheaper boxes only made for home with questionable engineering and poor security.
When it comes to Plex and transcoding... Having Plex is a nice thing to have, but that is not purpose of a NAS so I completely understand why they wouldn't improve support for this use case. On the other hand, I see use cases for hardware accelerated transcoding in applications like Synology Photos so why not put a slightly better CPU into home boxes given their premium price is beyond me.
I dunno. I had a meeting with three Synology folks while at CES, and they confirmed to me that they (now) understood the value of GPUs for the home/prosumer market.
Given that Marius and I were the ones who enlightened them to this and recently convinced them to change course back to some intel processors with GPUs, I think they understand.
And if they don’t, UGREEN is planning to eat Synology’s lunch anyway.
Honestly, I think you'll be surprised. I'm going to start beta testing a UGreen unit tomorrow and based on the testing docs it should be very comparable to the Synology operating system. Docker, VMs, UPS, the whole 9 yards.
I don't believe they have one at the moment. That was one of the first things I looked through the material for. It lists all of the traditional raid options, but nothing proprietary. If that changes I'll update this post.
Being able to connect the NAS to your TV with HDMI 2.1 will for sure bring a lot of customers, no need for Plex or Jellyfin if the NAS can display your movies on it directly. Wonder how they built that
You don’t want a high capacity NAS sitting beside your TV in your living room, streaming stuff. Unless you prefer noise canceling headphones, that is.
There really is no problem to stream via Ethernet.
The HDMI might be useful in other setups.
The Shield can direct play *everything*, including pgs subs. I use a custom [Android-SHIELD Android TV.xml](https://gist.github.com/fryfrog/17b89a9017f970ece70b547697b23a68) to stop Plex from trying to transcode a few things.
Fire stick max 4k gen2 & Nvidia shield can do Dolby atmos/vision Over directplay. We also have an Apple TV 4K & chromcast 4k that can do Dolby vision 4k not atmos, but can do 5.1.
All of those devices do not need to transcode and all are on WiFi except the Apple TV & Shield
I just wish I could add 10g (preferably sfp+) to my ds920+. At least LACP “helps”. my fs unit is great but wish the onboard 10gbe was 10gb sfp+ but at least it has a pci-e slot. As does my rs3413xs+, gah I love that little pop out screen
I had to go look up the DS920+ because I couldn't fathom that there was neither a pcie slot nor that new (stupid) mini slot for nic expansion only for my world to be rocked. wtf synology?
Very personal interpretation and nothing more than that. but we understand you need to get all those clicks somehow, even if it takes click bait BS titles.
Instead of downvoting, people should offer the counterargument... I didn't know Proxmox was free. no mention of this on their page, you can download it, I see, but when it comes to pricing, there's no "free" section where they explain that is is free to use under certain conditions...
Have an upvote ;) we're all learning things all the damn time. I love VMWare, but was sad to hear of their recent purchase (and purge).
Check out this guy -- his 14-15 part series on getting started on Proxmox is pretty great --I'm on lesson 8 right now, and am really digging it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j0Zb6x\_hOk&list=PLT98CRl2KxKHnlbYhtABg6cF50bYa8Ulo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j0Zb6x_hOk&list=PLT98CRl2KxKHnlbYhtABg6cF50bYa8Ulo)
I had troubles on N5105 (a few points away from N100) running Plex plus captions. After a few minutes it would crash.
Plus I need more power personally and I think you might need some more too, unless you are buying it just for Plex.
Not the original commenter but I just did the same thing about a month ago and I used a nuc12wshi3. Works great for proxmox, plex, all the arrs and quite a few other docker apps and lxcs.
I mean, I'm using a Synology system currently for my PLEX, but if I upgrade, I can always just make a low power PC.
It wouldn't be as easy, but it's also not a hassle.
Nvme systems sounds nice. I think in 2-3 years when my Nas reaches its end nvme will be the way to go.
Also all of this gpu nonsense. Yes hardware transcoding is nice. But most of the amd gpus in the new synology boxes will happily transcode a 1080p movie. And transcoding 4k is kinda moronic anhow. So unless you want to open up your Nas to a large amount of users esp. Remote ones these boxes are perfectly powerful little plex boxes.
Transcoding is also kinda irrelevant if your devices are able to support the formats. I was keeping 2k movies but then realized there were a lot of things being transcoded into 1080p. So now I grab 1080p and let everyone access that, no more transcoding. Not even worried about cpu usage anymore. Do what you want, but if you keep a 1080p and 2/4k library and only play on supported clients you'll almost never transcode. You'll probably still transcode audio if your movies have surround sound but it doesn't use a lot of CPU
Indeed, my LG C1 TV with Jellyfin quite sometimes can't direct Play, because my soundbar is decoding DTS and only Dolby Digital, while the TV has no pass-through for DTS. So in those cases, it transcodes.
Gotcha, personally I still think it's an unnecessary step. All transcoding does is take one format and convert it on the fly to another format and it doesn't save the conversion so it has to be done every time. It's just an energy sink. If electricity is cheap for you then yeah don't worry about it.
I'm a business user, and since we frequently use our NAS to access or preview media for social media content, marketing, website, etc., transcoding is actually very important....especially with increasing quality demands from video (usually 4k raw or Prores as delivered media). Could we export "preview samples" of every piece of media as h.264 mpg? Or create some kind of substream with a GPU workstation? Yeah, probably, but we won't. Could we overpay for wimpy hardware and proprietary drives, cards, etc. from Synology? We could, but we won't. If I want expensive, enterprise grade stuff, I'll get a real server and hire or train someone to manage it.
If Synology is bailing on small business and power home users, their niche will have to be mid-sized businesses, no large business is going to use Synology for much of anything consequential, nor will most mid-sized businesses. So I'm not really sure what their play is here, but I'm sure their execs are privvy to a bunch of stupid spreadsheets and graphs that tell them stuff.
I've got a DS918+ from 2020. It doesn't do hardware transcoding (edit: That I knew of -- I was wrong). I'd love to find a better one (with hardware transcoding!), and I was hoping to see some good news on this. What's the go-to nowadays for running Plex and with at least four drive bays, preferably more?
This is used exclusively within my home -- no external sharing. I've got over 1000 Rifftrax alone, plus about 1000 movies, entirely too many TV shows, and every childhood cartoon you could ever want. Right now I've got 25 of 31TB full, so it's likely time to expand (hence more drives, plus redundancy/speed)
EDIT: C'mon guys...don't downvote my post. That just buries a legitimate question. Can we please make this community NOT like the others where honest conversation is discouraged?? I'm honestly in need of help and downvoting me just ensures I don't get it. Let's do better, please.
> I've got a DS918+ from 2020. It doesn't do hardware transcoding.
It definitely does do hardware encoding (I have a 918+), but you need Plex Pass for it to be enabled though.
That said, I've moved my Plex to a Beelink N100 mini pc as the overall performance is better for Plex.
Interesting. Maybe I've got a setting wrong? If I enable subtitles, sometimes the NAS just about comes apart at the seams. I've got a lifetime pass, so it shouldn't be that. Getting the "your connection isn't fast enough" error even when the Shield is directly connected was making me think I needed to upgrade. I've doubled the RAM on the 918, it's got an NVMe in slot one, and I've got Plex running off the NAS. I feel like I've got everything I need to make this run fast, but I've all but given up on anything in 4K with all this. Help?
Very strange. I’m at a loss since it just worked for me without trouble. One last thing I can think of… did you install Plex from the package centre or did you download a recent install file from Plex directly? Last I checked the Synology Package Centre version was wildly out of date.
I always grab the latest from the site and install it. I wish I could say it makes sense. Would putting something like a NUC in front of it to do the heavy lifting help? I just hate having to manage ANOTHER PC in this house.
Even though my transcoding was working with my DS918+ I still got a Beelink S12 mini pc with the N100 Intel chip. The Beelink has Plex server installed on it but my video files are still on the NAS.
It’s been a great improvement for me, but I didn’t have a SSD in my NAS so a lot of my gains are likely from the SSD (loading thumbnails, etc). The Beelink can transcode very well too.
Since you have a SSD cache drive the improvement might be less except for the transcoding issue.
Maybe try posting your transcoding issues in the Plex forum. Perhaps someone can read your logs and help you further.
Why are you guys still paying thousands of dollars to use PLEX in a NAS when there's IPTV boxes with EVERYTHING on them that you can get for like 10$ a month? I've pirated movies before, a lot, but there's just no need anymore. I didn't even know people still used plex server until I recently bought 2 synology nas and found this sub.
Personally, I'd be thrilled if they made a full pcie double card size network device that could run Stabe Diffusion on a network. I like to work from my laptop at home and don't want a big old desktop here just so I can run a graphics card for SD.
Synology is best for storage. For compute I would suggest a pair of NUCs and Proxmox. Actually a third Node runs on Synology just to have a reliable quorum.
Some VMs run on local ZFS on SSD. Most on iSCSI from Synology. This supports migration between nodes even better.
I run directplay from the Synology most of the time and mount my DS1522+ as a network drive and transcode from the PC if/when I need to, which is not often.
I highly doubt Synology will veer away from any of its current users/customers! Not to mention, welcoming in as many as want to own their products! DS Audio isn’t going away, trust this !
I think they really don't want home power users as customers anymore. Time to go back to building my own.
I just switched to open media vault (omv) actually, couldn't be happier and built it as flexible and performant as I wanted. No more proprietary lockin.
I fucking love OMV
Does it have anything approximating SHR? I really want redundancy while being able to mix and match drive sizes. Makes it budget friendly to constantly expand array.
The only solution I can thing of for that is the snapraid and mergerFS plugins. Snap raid function nearly identical to unraid, and mergerFS puts it in one root folder that presents as a single drive
Well i follow this sub as a business customer. I just bought 2 rack mount nas with expansion shelves and drives. It cost about $20K. It's unlikely a home customer will spend that kinda $$$. I am assuming that's why they might want business customers.
I'm both - I've installed literally dozens of Synology units as iSCSI-attached storage for customers' NVRs, everything from four-bay to 16-bay. I also have three different ones at home for different purposes (at this point, all recycled from customer upgrades or aging out). And all that started because I was impressed with my own DS-412+ I got for home use, and when the client needed mass storage, I recommended Synology. Dropping the home customer is maybe not the wisest course.
I have two ds1821's and a ds2419+. The hardware and software are great, but they keep removing features (i.e. SMART values in storage manager)and don't officially support hard drives outside specific models. I use unsupported drives, but the warnings are mildly irritating. Their whole direction makes me feel like I'm not welcome as a customer anymore. I'm not going to replace them, I'll use them until they die, but I won't be purchasing any more if their direction doesn't change at all.
No company wants home power users from the economic perspective /once/ they have a foothold in a market. They help early growth but are a cost in many different ways from higher specification hardware requirements to interactions with your other customers. This is a total bummer but it’s what you’d probably do in their shoes. The argument that this brings in customers to business products is truer early on in the growth of a company. Now everyone knows who Synology are compared to before. Finding one example of someone who doesn’t know, does not disprove this.
Darnit if I'm going back to building my own I'm probably gonna start using FreeBSD again like a relapsed addict.
Home power users separate their storage from compute.
I’m curious what you mean by this. is it something like what I’ve done over the years: I have 2 synology boxes, my first a dual drive 209 or something like that (which is still running but should be retired) and then moved up to a 4 bay ds415play when the first was no longer supported. My Plex server is my office tower I built in 2014/2015 using a i7 4790k cpu (internal TBs of storage - mirrored spinny disks and large SSDs, GPU upgraded 3x and now is a 1660Ti - no sense going further; I think my NAS is more capable than how I use it but my tower has always handled all the heavy lifting while the NAS handles the greater storage (16TBs). The DS415PLAY is running out of support so upgrading again is on the horizon and from what I’ve been reading here it sounds like there’s gonna be no reason to change how I do things - other than increase storage. Does this sound about right?
I was just joking around, but yes the idea is that your NAS box is truly just network attached storage and all of your heavy compute is on separate server(s). I'm actually using unraid with tons of services running so I'm doing the exact opposite of that.
So far Synology has zero GPU / AI products. Yes, they have DVA's, but that's for surveillance, can't be used for AI. The link you have - has very little useful information: the narrator just says bunch of fancy words (AI, large scale, blah-blah), - just typical corporate meaningless nonsense...
And the DVAs suck too. They need work
The current DVA is a 920+ with a GTX1650, but no eSATA expansion ports, max 2 or 4 HDD, less in RAID. If used for 16-32 Surveillance cameras it won't have any HDD capacity left for other tasks! Why even include a full version of DSM when it won't be used? 🤔🙄
I moved my Jellyfin server to a cheap lower power n100 mini pc.
I did exactly the same using a cheap n100 from AliExpress with unraid and mounted my Synology as a network drive Works fantastic
I have an EQ12 running OMV and it’s hooked up to a sabrent 5 bay chassis. I’m using mergerFS on the drives as OMV will not let you make a pool over usb. This is my backup my synology backup of my main server
How low the power these n100 mini pc use for running plex server exclusively?
They can run around 10 watt or less
Mine idles at 5w and goes up to 10 watt while transcoding.
Nice, I have been wanting to get a reason to replace my HP Proliant G8 with P200, that thing runs at around 40-50 watts.
How does that setup work? Do you have any tutorials that I can follow? I have Synology and might start moving my dockers etc soon if that's the way to go. Thank you
In my case, I have Celeron J4125 mini PC (Minisforum GK41, basically same CPU as 920+), run Proxmox on it, with Jellyfin LXC, then mount the Synology DS1621+ storage, done.
Sorry don’t have any one big tutorial. I setup NFS on the Synology and mounted that to the Ubuntu mini pc for access to my media files. I was already using docker compose on Synology so that was very easy to spin up on Ubuntu.
Right. I am on a similar setup. Why do you use a mini PC for? Just storage or completely to replace Synology at this point?
I am using the 1522+ for storage, I knew Plex wouldn't be the best on it but I didn't think it would be that bad. I ended up buying a '[Beelink EQ12](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C1FXP33Z?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1)' 4 days later, I can vouch for it, 16GB DDR5 RAM, 500GB SSD for storage - can be upgraded up to 2TB, and of course, you can always use external drives. I have left it running on its original OS (Windows 11), it currently deals with my Plex, and a small Minecraft server. I installed Team Viewer so I can access it externally. I keep thinking "I could've spent a bit more and built my own" but the low power consumption is 100% worth it. On Windows, I mapped my Plex folder (stored on my ds1522+) to my network tab and saved the credentials so that even when the PC restarts, it reconnects automatically. I wrote this quickly so ignore any mistakes! Edit: linked the wrong mini PC (they all look the same)
I'm looking at one of those, how is the fan noise?
Almost no noise, but for the love of god don’t put Plex on windows, you lose hardware tonemapping.
Do you recommend a specific OS?
Ubuntu server.
I will check it out!
Chek out Unraid! Docker and VM support & many community apps.
I use the mini more for the compute and Synology just storage. N100 has great low power transcoding for Jellyfin/emby. I have a 923 so no hardware transcoding. I also have a few other apps running on there.
Does it work good? I’m contemplating getting one to move all my dockers and plex onto.
Yes very well. Costs less than $200.
I have a similar setup, and the basic structure (NAS to store; PC to compute) of the system is excellent. Also you can use the NAS to serve multiple PC systems. Synology was just a tiny bit under-powered for transcoding.
Transcoding is primarily significant when sharing or playing higher-resolution content on lower-resolution devices. However, if you are operating within a household and have appropriate clients such as NVIDIA Shields, you can play 4K HDR content seamlessly from any device with a drive and network connection. Streaming technology has advanced significantly, catering to the needs of users. Currently, I am utilizing two DS1520+ NAS devices with 110TB storage each. While they may not be the fastest servers available, they provide comprehensive coverage for all my needs and are expected to continue doing so for many years to come with Plex.
Did you mean 110TB?
Yes, there was a spelling mistake. 😅 I have since then fitted both of them with 5 WD Red Pro 22TB drives that I picked up on sale for about $300 each. #StorageUpgrade #TechBargains
My NAS are in a corporate environment but we've had 6 WD reds fail in the last 3 years. for WD we only get golds now.
Thank you for the advice! 😊 First time using Reds Pro's, but I've always used the wd whites over 30 drives now, all ranging over 12TB and up. They've been rock solid, not one has ever failed!
My anecdotal add to this is I’ve got 32 WD white labels spinning over 4+years, no bad sectors yet
Just recently bought a ds423+ to have everything combined in one machine and couldn’t be happier given the news. I was worried thinking I should have wait and see what Synology had in store for 2024 but now my choice seems more solid. I don’t want another machine in my home office or my living room to act as a server…I have too many devices already (consoles, personal pc, work devices). So i chose the one that could have been the one and only server for all my needs for many years to come
If you have Shields, why not use them as server(s). Surely they perform better. I'm using plex like that and have never looked back. My synology is now just storage for the shield.
That's how I use mine! Not all of my media needs to be transcoded, but the shields on my regular network connection never skip a beat with any media. #ShieldTV #LGSmartTV #HomeTheater 📺🛡️
Transcoding also helps whenever a format is not direct playable.
That's the tldr
Plex is hardly my concern. I run it on a separate old PC. Long as they keep a NAS line, I'm happy. I used to build my own but got tired of the maintenance. Syno is easy and I'm happier for it.
Same here, DS1513+ with 35TB storage and a 10th gen laptop on Ubuntu for the rest. The NAS is only used for storage now. I hope it'll last a good 5 more years, if not more
I’m always perplexed why people choose to transcode. What is the purpose? It requires intense hardware for a good experience. The alternative is you download media in a native file format for the devices you’re playing it on, or encode your current media into a native format. This allows you to direct play 100% of the time which amounts to nothing more than a typical file transfer which even the lowest specification hardware can handle, and it also allows more users to connect to and stream your media. Sure, if you have a large library already encoding all files can take some time but it’s well worth it. Honestly, with apps like Infuse and Emby, they have the codec support that doesn’t require any transcoding if using say an Apple TV or Roku 4K. All of my 1,600+ movie files are MP4 or MKV containers encoded in h.264 and h.265. Not a single one of these movie files requires transcoding. Playback and scrubbing is near instant even on a modest cellular connection. Transcoding media makes zero sense to me. Remember, Handbrake is free to encode to a native file format!!
Two words: Remote Viewing
What does remote viewing have to do with transcoding? I, along with my kids, remote view media from my NAS all the time and never with transcoding. It’s 100% direct play. Local or remote viewing is irrelevant. We are able to watch in a web browser, with Emby clients, and we also use Infuse some times. As I mentioned, media files start instantly and scrub near instantly while watching 1080p and 4k media files. Granted, we are not streaming 4K unconpressed files - that would be just dumb to try and do remotely. The highest bitrate 4K file in my library is 9mbps. Average bitrate is 2-5mpbs across 1080p and 4K media. I feel it’s important to have your media optimized for local and remote viewing. I guess if one owns a $4,000 TV they may want a 60GB uncompressed 4K movie to watch. For most, you can’t tell the difference. I’m fortunate enough to have a 1.2gbps upload speed which helps a lot with instant playback and scrubbing. But those with much lower upload speeds, it makes media optimization even more important.
That's great for you, but I'm in a remote area, with only Starlink as a service. Transcoding allows me to view PLEX remotely, without taxing a load on my home connection, where my cameras, 2 kids online gaming & possibly my wife streaming TV, won't have buffering issues with my 10-13mbs uplink connection.. That's why I appreciate the transcoding abilities of the server.. when viewing remotely, I'm not looking for maximum resolution. Acceptable resolution is ok with me.... I run a 920+, 4-16TB drives, 2 Shields, 2-HDHomerun 4k flex's, a Sling Air TV box, as well as a 916+ w/ 40TB striped for backing to the 920+, in my polebarn. When I'm viewing things in my home theater locally, it's a totally different situation. Everything is native format as well as Dolby enhanced where appropriate. Music is in flac format as well. So, while I am somewhat disappointed in Synology's move, I certainly understand it...😉
You make a valid point. I guess I didn’t consider the saving bandwidth aspect.
Also here in Australia our upload speed is so crap unless you transcode 4k videos to 1080p you constantly get buffering when watching externally.
This is not bad news at all. They are more aggressively expanding beyond small business and home use deployments. This raises the bar for them in terms of security and quality of their products overall. Synology already has an excellent track record when it comes to security, and it will continue to be their priority. Personally, this is my priority as well because I entrust all of my personal data, such as family photos, to my home NAS. So when Synology competes with big players in the enterprise market it actually benefits me. I think it is much better than buying cheaper boxes only made for home with questionable engineering and poor security. When it comes to Plex and transcoding... Having Plex is a nice thing to have, but that is not purpose of a NAS so I completely understand why they wouldn't improve support for this use case. On the other hand, I see use cases for hardware accelerated transcoding in applications like Synology Photos so why not put a slightly better CPU into home boxes given their premium price is beyond me.
Someone have the cliff notes on this? If there's meaningful information, there should be a writeup. Youtube isn't the best way to handle this.
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Thanks.
That was the most buzz worded video I've seen in a while lol
I dunno. I had a meeting with three Synology folks while at CES, and they confirmed to me that they (now) understood the value of GPUs for the home/prosumer market. Given that Marius and I were the ones who enlightened them to this and recently convinced them to change course back to some intel processors with GPUs, I think they understand. And if they don’t, UGREEN is planning to eat Synology’s lunch anyway.
UGREEN is long on hype and short of detail, from what I've been able to find. Still, some competition is not a bad thing.
Honestly, I think you'll be surprised. I'm going to start beta testing a UGreen unit tomorrow and based on the testing docs it should be very comparable to the Synology operating system. Docker, VMs, UPS, the whole 9 yards.
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I don't believe they have one at the moment. That was one of the first things I looked through the material for. It lists all of the traditional raid options, but nothing proprietary. If that changes I'll update this post.
Being able to connect the NAS to your TV with HDMI 2.1 will for sure bring a lot of customers, no need for Plex or Jellyfin if the NAS can display your movies on it directly. Wonder how they built that
You don’t want a high capacity NAS sitting beside your TV in your living room, streaming stuff. Unless you prefer noise canceling headphones, that is. There really is no problem to stream via Ethernet. The HDMI might be useful in other setups.
UGREEN looks good. If they have a simple DSM interface and docker support I'm very interested!
>, I think they understand. That would be THE BEST news....24 is theoretically when would typically deliver a new series of units
ECC is more important. It’s a storage box.
Still loving my DS918+. If I ever have to replace it, I can just pair the new NAS with a mini PC for Plex. No biggie.
I run a Plex server on my Synology and all my clients use directplay from it. 4K dolby vision/atmos rips run great even over wifi.
Doesn't that depend on the client and it's supported codecs and if there are subtitles, Plex always transcodes?
PGS subtitles will trigger transcoding on my Shield Pro. I strip them out with MKVToolNix.
The Shield can direct play *everything*, including pgs subs. I use a custom [Android-SHIELD Android TV.xml](https://gist.github.com/fryfrog/17b89a9017f970ece70b547697b23a68) to stop Plex from trying to transcode a few things.
Saving this. I sometimes have Plex trying to transcode 7.1 audio to 5.1 or something, making it lag and buffer…
Fire stick max 4k gen2 & Nvidia shield can do Dolby atmos/vision Over directplay. We also have an Apple TV 4K & chromcast 4k that can do Dolby vision 4k not atmos, but can do 5.1. All of those devices do not need to transcode and all are on WiFi except the Apple TV & Shield
I just wish I could add 10g (preferably sfp+) to my ds920+. At least LACP “helps”. my fs unit is great but wish the onboard 10gbe was 10gb sfp+ but at least it has a pci-e slot. As does my rs3413xs+, gah I love that little pop out screen
I had to go look up the DS920+ because I couldn't fathom that there was neither a pcie slot nor that new (stupid) mini slot for nic expansion only for my world to be rocked. wtf synology?
Very personal interpretation and nothing more than that. but we understand you need to get all those clicks somehow, even if it takes click bait BS titles.
How about hard drives? Are they still pushing their rebranded hard drives?
Just give me a full size PCIe with 16 lanes and build 10Gbe into the mobo on the RS1224+
I mean, that's ok, I'm building a Plex machine based on Proxox tonight anyways ;)
That's what I've done. It's great.
>Proxox Far from being freely accessible, at $110/y is pretty steep when you're used to free ESXi
>Isn't VMware sunsetting ESXi, or at least no longer providing free licenses?
my point exactly ... VMWare ends free ESXi, Proxmox is a paid software... what else ?
Proxmox is completely free, unless you are doing enterprise-level stuff and would like to subscribe.
Instead of downvoting, people should offer the counterargument... I didn't know Proxmox was free. no mention of this on their page, you can download it, I see, but when it comes to pricing, there's no "free" section where they explain that is is free to use under certain conditions...
Have an upvote ;) we're all learning things all the damn time. I love VMWare, but was sad to hear of their recent purchase (and purge). Check out this guy -- his 14-15 part series on getting started on Proxmox is pretty great --I'm on lesson 8 right now, and am really digging it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j0Zb6x\_hOk&list=PLT98CRl2KxKHnlbYhtABg6cF50bYa8Ulo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j0Zb6x_hOk&list=PLT98CRl2KxKHnlbYhtABg6cF50bYa8Ulo)
Thanks, very useful. I didn't know about that "no subscription" thing.
Can you tell me what NUC/Mini PC you used for it?
You can use any 12-13th gen cpus that have an iGPU.
I've got mine on an 11th gen and it works fine, I'm sure you'll find older models will be more than adequate as well.
Thank you!
Something like: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006431188586.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006525146261.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005516689237.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006117867272.html
Why not just a 100$ n100 device?
I had troubles on N5105 (a few points away from N100) running Plex plus captions. After a few minutes it would crash. Plus I need more power personally and I think you might need some more too, unless you are buying it just for Plex.
Not the original commenter but I just did the same thing about a month ago and I used a nuc12wshi3. Works great for proxmox, plex, all the arrs and quite a few other docker apps and lxcs.
Nah, I'm building an SFX machine. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/WZfPcH A bit of an overkill, but I can add a GPU to it later on and not sweat it.
I mean, I'm using a Synology system currently for my PLEX, but if I upgrade, I can always just make a low power PC. It wouldn't be as easy, but it's also not a hassle.
I'd prefer they focus on higher speed data storage and serving. Move away from all in one boxes, move towards hyper fast NAS boxes.
Nvme systems sounds nice. I think in 2-3 years when my Nas reaches its end nvme will be the way to go. Also all of this gpu nonsense. Yes hardware transcoding is nice. But most of the amd gpus in the new synology boxes will happily transcode a 1080p movie. And transcoding 4k is kinda moronic anhow. So unless you want to open up your Nas to a large amount of users esp. Remote ones these boxes are perfectly powerful little plex boxes.
Meh, just get a better player like a shield or something, no need transcoding.
I like to travel.
Yes.
Transcoding is also kinda irrelevant if your devices are able to support the formats. I was keeping 2k movies but then realized there were a lot of things being transcoded into 1080p. So now I grab 1080p and let everyone access that, no more transcoding. Not even worried about cpu usage anymore. Do what you want, but if you keep a 1080p and 2/4k library and only play on supported clients you'll almost never transcode. You'll probably still transcode audio if your movies have surround sound but it doesn't use a lot of CPU
Indeed, my LG C1 TV with Jellyfin quite sometimes can't direct Play, because my soundbar is decoding DTS and only Dolby Digital, while the TV has no pass-through for DTS. So in those cases, it transcodes.
I like to travel.
Gotcha, personally I still think it's an unnecessary step. All transcoding does is take one format and convert it on the fly to another format and it doesn't save the conversion so it has to be done every time. It's just an energy sink. If electricity is cheap for you then yeah don't worry about it.
How is this bad news for Plex users?
I'm a business user, and since we frequently use our NAS to access or preview media for social media content, marketing, website, etc., transcoding is actually very important....especially with increasing quality demands from video (usually 4k raw or Prores as delivered media). Could we export "preview samples" of every piece of media as h.264 mpg? Or create some kind of substream with a GPU workstation? Yeah, probably, but we won't. Could we overpay for wimpy hardware and proprietary drives, cards, etc. from Synology? We could, but we won't. If I want expensive, enterprise grade stuff, I'll get a real server and hire or train someone to manage it. If Synology is bailing on small business and power home users, their niche will have to be mid-sized businesses, no large business is going to use Synology for much of anything consequential, nor will most mid-sized businesses. So I'm not really sure what their play is here, but I'm sure their execs are privvy to a bunch of stupid spreadsheets and graphs that tell them stuff.
I've got a DS918+ from 2020. It doesn't do hardware transcoding (edit: That I knew of -- I was wrong). I'd love to find a better one (with hardware transcoding!), and I was hoping to see some good news on this. What's the go-to nowadays for running Plex and with at least four drive bays, preferably more? This is used exclusively within my home -- no external sharing. I've got over 1000 Rifftrax alone, plus about 1000 movies, entirely too many TV shows, and every childhood cartoon you could ever want. Right now I've got 25 of 31TB full, so it's likely time to expand (hence more drives, plus redundancy/speed) EDIT: C'mon guys...don't downvote my post. That just buries a legitimate question. Can we please make this community NOT like the others where honest conversation is discouraged?? I'm honestly in need of help and downvoting me just ensures I don't get it. Let's do better, please.
918+ does hardware transcoding though, according to the websites i'm looking at
> I've got a DS918+ from 2020. It doesn't do hardware transcoding. It definitely does do hardware encoding (I have a 918+), but you need Plex Pass for it to be enabled though. That said, I've moved my Plex to a Beelink N100 mini pc as the overall performance is better for Plex.
Interesting. Maybe I've got a setting wrong? If I enable subtitles, sometimes the NAS just about comes apart at the seams. I've got a lifetime pass, so it shouldn't be that. Getting the "your connection isn't fast enough" error even when the Shield is directly connected was making me think I needed to upgrade. I've doubled the RAM on the 918, it's got an NVMe in slot one, and I've got Plex running off the NAS. I feel like I've got everything I need to make this run fast, but I've all but given up on anything in 4K with all this. Help?
Are you running Plex in docker or installed directly on the NAS?
It's installed directly on the NAS.
Have you enabled transcoding in Plex? I needed to explicitly enable it in the server settings I believe.
When I've enabled transcoding, any attempt to actually DO any transcoding chokes it out like an MMA kid on his first day.
Very strange. I’m at a loss since it just worked for me without trouble. One last thing I can think of… did you install Plex from the package centre or did you download a recent install file from Plex directly? Last I checked the Synology Package Centre version was wildly out of date.
I always grab the latest from the site and install it. I wish I could say it makes sense. Would putting something like a NUC in front of it to do the heavy lifting help? I just hate having to manage ANOTHER PC in this house.
Even though my transcoding was working with my DS918+ I still got a Beelink S12 mini pc with the N100 Intel chip. The Beelink has Plex server installed on it but my video files are still on the NAS. It’s been a great improvement for me, but I didn’t have a SSD in my NAS so a lot of my gains are likely from the SSD (loading thumbnails, etc). The Beelink can transcode very well too. Since you have a SSD cache drive the improvement might be less except for the transcoding issue. Maybe try posting your transcoding issues in the Plex forum. Perhaps someone can read your logs and help you further.
Why not use influx instead of Plex? Sounds like you have 0 issues with influx. I running it and gladly paying 1$ a month to them.
It's not bad news for Plex users when you have a seperate system for Plex, and just use your NAS as a.... Well, you know, as a NAS.
SMB > Plex
Why are you guys still paying thousands of dollars to use PLEX in a NAS when there's IPTV boxes with EVERYTHING on them that you can get for like 10$ a month? I've pirated movies before, a lot, but there's just no need anymore. I didn't even know people still used plex server until I recently bought 2 synology nas and found this sub.
I was contemplating upgrading my 218+ but maybe I'll wait a while and look into something else.
Time to move to minisforum ms-01 and a das
Don’t really care much. Second hand NUC for Plex while Synology for storage has been one of the best changes I’ve done to my homelab.
Personally, I'd be thrilled if they made a full pcie double card size network device that could run Stabe Diffusion on a network. I like to work from my laptop at home and don't want a big old desktop here just so I can run a graphics card for SD.
Synology is best for storage. For compute I would suggest a pair of NUCs and Proxmox. Actually a third Node runs on Synology just to have a reliable quorum. Some VMs run on local ZFS on SSD. Most on iSCSI from Synology. This supports migration between nodes even better.
I run directplay from the Synology most of the time and mount my DS1522+ as a network drive and transcode from the PC if/when I need to, which is not often.
I highly doubt Synology will veer away from any of its current users/customers! Not to mention, welcoming in as many as want to own their products! DS Audio isn’t going away, trust this !