Questions about NAS and Home Network

[Tx Redneck]

This is what 7 concurrent streams looks like from my server, notice cpu load and upload bandwidth.https://goo.gl/photos/BK65hzoexUpgJuiy8
Edit:this is on my 3770k@4.2ghz

[motoman]

Should I convert my MKV to MP4?

Not if you Want to downgrade your quality.

[LS1Goat]

I may have mentioned this before in another thread on this topic.

If you want to make streaming from your NAS simple and painless, get a WD TV Live media player from Amazon. It natively supports just about every file type/container under the sun. No transcoding will ever be necessary. No having to convert a specific file type to something that a particular client can support. Plug and play right out of the box.

I stream .m2ts, .mkv, handbraked .mkv, .vob, .flv, .mpeg, .avi, .mp4, .wmv, flac audio, etc..from my NAS using this player. It will even recognize and play an ImgBurn .iso (minus the disc menu) as long as you search it as a network share, not through the media server. I have it hooked up to my network via Gigabit Ethernet. It's plays Bluray/DVD .mkv rips seamlessly.

[Gasser64]

How much space do you need? I've said it before, but I'm still a proponent for just plugging a couple HDD's into the back of your router. I got a linksys ea6500 router, and its got 2 ports on the back. Not even an expensive router. Some routers may even have more ports. And it'll function just like a NAS.

So if you're not needing more than what... 6Tb, just plug them in there. Wam bam, cheap NAS. Way cheaper than the prices they want for some of these half decent NAS'es.

Even if you don't have such a router, you're still going to get out cheaper buying a router, and 2 HDDs. Then again, maybe you don't care about the money or you need more than 6Tb. I say 6Tb because I think that 3Tb is the limit on individual drives these days, but I haven't looked in a good while. Guess if you had a 4 USB port router, maybe you could go as high as 24Tb. Not sure but newegg will tell ya. I'm doing it right now with just 1, 1Tb drive. Works great.

[Silverback]

I will tell you from my experience with Plex, you're better off running it on an old PC with an x86 processor than a NAS with an ARM processor.

I'm about to switch back to a PC in the closet for the running Plex, and just using the NAS to store files. Especially with NovaRoma, Sickbeard, CouchPotato, etc. The versions that run on the ReadyNas really bog it down, and not being able to decode certain file types, including some .mkv files makes it almost useless. I'll probably power up an old PC or laptop to just run PLEX on to manage the files, and encode/decoding.

[big_tiger]

I use a Gen8 HP microserver with a Intel Pentium G2020T CPU. 8GB of RAM, 240GB SSD, 4x750GB (which will be changed soon) in the four bays, and 12 GB NAS iSCSI'd to the HP server.

I haven't finished configuring my plex library, but it works great with whats in there.

[Silverback]

Just installed Peppermint Linux on an old P4 Optiplex I had laying around with 3GB of memory. I mounted my NAS drives, and it's 10 times faster at least when it comes to updating libraries and actually does the encoding for files that wouldn't play before.

My NAS is still running sickbeard and Sabnzbd. Still can't get couch potato on the NAS to work tho.

[8mpg]

I love my synology nas. In fact I originally got a ds214 (two bay) and upgraded to a 5bay. It will not do 1080p native streaming with plex though. I use a home theater pc thats hooked up to a tv. Roku/FireStick/Chromecast may work well accessing the files across the network. Im all about having a RAID setup with a NAS to protect my data.