expired Posted by iconian | Staff • Nov 22, 2022
Nov 22, 2022 5:13 PM
Item 1 of 4
Item 1 of 4
expired Posted by iconian | Staff • Nov 22, 2022
Nov 22, 2022 5:13 PM
Synology DiskStation NAS Enclosure: DS1621+ 6-Bay $720, DS220j 2-Bay
+ Free Shipping$150
$190
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Many people that have built a legitimate library of DVDs over the years have started digitizing legally due to the prevalence of streaming boxes - one of the primary Plex use cases. And when you have media on a Plex server, the media can only be encoded in one format, at one resolution (let's say 4K, Format 1).
So if you stream that 4K media file straight to a device (let's say an Apple TV with 4K) no transcoding is needed and the file is accessed as is.
But if you stream that file on your secondary 1080p Roku TV, it needs a different resolution and maybe a different format. Then the Plex server will transcode the file as it streams, converting the file from 4K Format 1, to 1080p Format 2. This requires computational resources from the CPU/RAM of the device, and the Intel/Plex combo is better suited, for deeper technical reasons.
This also applies to Synology's music and video integrated streaming services as well as other manufacturer offerings.
Now if your reference of "storing and accessing files" simply means "flat files" like documents and photos, no, transcoding is not a factor for you and yes the AMD solutions will be a general performance improvement. But many people use NAS for their significant media streaming features, as a legal digitization/streaming of their owned content, and thus the spirited conversation on this post.
Hope this helps!
Plex users aren't "made obsolete" By Synology because they've chosen to shift their "+" line to the SMB market. That has no bearing on Plex Users, Transcoding, or even the previous gen "+" models. They didn't lose QSV transcoding capability overnight. They still transcode exactly as well as they did the day they launched.
Synology has just chosen to end that product line's support for Intel iGPU assisted transcoding going forward. Weighing their customer base for these lines, and choosing SMB customer needs for CPU performance, over enthusiast Plex users.
And as for being "limited to 4 bays" there's always the DX517.
But if your storage needs are growing that much, you should either be replacing aging low capacity HDDs, or transitioning to a more robust storage solution.
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I've had the QNAP 453-Be for quite some time as a Plex server (4x8, Raid whatever he heck it would be where I could lose one drive). I store movies/DVR'ed episodes/music on it. It has been stable and reliable for me. Some say that QNAP has security issues, but others counter it and say that as long as you keep your FW reasonably up to date, you'll be fine.
Would the 2 bay variant be a good option for storing home pictures / videos of my kids? I'd like to be able to provide access to multiple phones remotely
Thank you!
If you rip movies and store them to have your own digital movie collection, then 4 bay would be wise.
*My own experience anecdotal evidence
But I have a ton of Google photos I just want to keep and put on a SSD and in the file cabinet it goes (have 3 copies at different locations) Probably won't ever look at them until 2065, if I don't die unexpectedly before then. The few movie every now and then? USB attached to router works flawlessly and I just delete media I know I won't ever watch again.
Is this the digital version of hoarding? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised with self storage still being the big business it is.
I think my years old $100 i3 NUC with 12gb of ram running ubuntu will easily run circles around this.. since it can do about 10x more things at once eating less power. Research what you can do with some NUCs in your home network. Peace out.
So many people here, not knowing the the first thing about NASes, dropping $200-400+ on a device, blindly -- asking questions like "ok, I just bought this. what drives should I put into it?" Without even once asking themselves "why am I buying it? what am I going to use it for?"
Everyone is screaming about using it for Plex -- aka totally-not-media-piracy-wink-wink. Why oh why are you using a low wattage shoebox of a computer (aka a NAS) to do transcoding? Why not use the NAS for what it excels at....NAS things....and then build a separate PC (linux, NUC/server class, whatever) with a boatload of extra RAM and CPU cores so it can gargle all the hentai anime in those totally-linux-isos you downloaded.
In other words, separate your network-storage-compute. Trying to combine them will eventually lead to compromises. Like the next gen of Synology units being AMD, which doesn't support transcoding of those linux-isos that fell off the back of a truck.
And now you get people demanding "teach me how to setup pihole on it", as if they suddenly forgot how to use google.
Synology reps, if you're reading this thread -- you must love these impulsive sales.
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For those who work with data everyday, and I do mean "work" as in "gets paid", such as a photographer or videographer, a NAS is a great centralized way to manage assets.
For those who TOTALLY-don't-pirate-things-wink-wink, that's what the Plex stuff is all about. They keep saying it's for posterity or being able watch it on any device. But they forget that the DMCA has a provision preventing breaking encryption that's on discs. And they don't NEED a NAS to achieve their goals --- any cheap external HDD and their existing computer will do the job -just as fine-. No, I'm wrong. Any old computer is going to be MUCH faster than this shoebox NAS, and those external drives are much cheaper than NAS-grade drives. No need for a NAS either, so more cost savings.
Plex is designed to "share" media. Hmm. I doubt that's an approved usage in the license agreement for those DVDs and BluRays. But remember, I'm a big ol' meanie "bootlicker" for mentioning that. Forget the fact that I disagree with those terms too, but instead of feeling entitled -- I just close my wallet and say "no thank you".
They won't spend the Netflix fee or buy a DVD because they're cheap, but they'll buy a $440 NAS + 4x $200 drives = $1240+tax without hesitation. How many used DVDs can they buy for $1200? And the bigger question, who has the time to even watch that much drivel? Either the very rich or the very unemployed.
You've obviously never used Plex, it's a seriously awesome tool, and, believe it or not, not everyone uses it for piracy!
1. RAID. If you don't know why this is important, you truly have no place in this thread.
2. Personal media libraries.
3. PC backups.
Keep using your crappy B-quality external drives that get corrupted and die. I've recovered a few from my family, it's not something I'm willing to risk for my own family. That by itself is worth the $800 that I paid for everything.
You've obviously never used Plex, it's a seriously awesome tool, and, believe it or not, not everyone uses it for piracy!
1. RAID. If you don't know why this is important, you truly have no place in this thread.
2. Personal media libraries.
3. PC backups.
Keep using your crappy B-quality external drives that get corrupted and die. I've recovered a few from my family, it's not something I'm willing to risk for my own family. That by itself is worth the $800 that I paid for everything.
Oh yeah, tons of people use plex for...."home videos". Sure right uh huh.
By the way, RAID is not a backup. RAID is uptime. RAID just means you can sustain a failure and not have your entire filesystem come screeching to a halt. It gives you time to invoke a hot or cold spare.
Personal media libraries? Man, dropping $440 for a NAS + additional NAS-grade HDDs for...what...a bunch of personal photos....instead of using common, inexpensive external HDDs. Must be nice to have money falling out of your pockets as you walk.
PC Backups? Windows has a backup function built in, and I believe you can set the target of that to an external drive.
Oh those external drives are really well loved by the SHUCKING community as hard drives for your fancy pants NAS. And remember, all hard drives die. It's a bell curve. This is why you have backups in a 3-2-1 mindset --- three backups, on two different medias, one being remote.
But hey, enjoy sailing the high seas.
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The value proposition of Synology's offerings is going downhill. They won market share by virtue of DSM being stable and user friendly, and they were benefited as well by major security snafus from their major competitor QNAP. However, in recent years the moves to further extract value from the consumer has hurt their offerings:
- They nerfed the USB capabilities as of DSM 7. This was to keep consumers from using third party solutions such as USB sound cards and USB network adapters and to drive them to buy Synology branded upgrades instead.
- They are trying to lock down memory modules and hard drives so that only Synology branded hardware will work. Currently this has not made it to the consumer end of the spectrum. However, it's telling that memory compatibility is so fickle even on a low performance system, and if you ever run into issues, Synology will ask for logs and refuse to help if you have third party RAM.
- They are still offering only gigabit ethernet when many routers and other NASs have already moved to at least 2.5GbE. Here the intent is clearly to upsell.
- The move away from Intel to Ryzen on their recent products has been criticized by some users due to lack of Quick Sync support. This may be a cost cutting measure as well as a move to further segment the market - those who need a lot of hardware transcoding can now opt for the higher end models which use the V1500B instead of the R1600. (A side note - the V2000 processors would have been nice, but perhaps they are too new).
On top of these commercial decisions, there have been a few questionable engineering decisions:- Encouraging the use of MLC NVME SSDs as cache drives. For more on this issue, look at posts from u/spss on reddit
- Using a custom version of btrfs which makes recovery difficult. Btrfs recovery can require a good amount of RAM with large volumes, sometimes more than is available on NASs. This can prevent recovery. However, up to date linux kernels cannot read the custom btrfs flags that Synology uses, so you'll have to use an older linux distro/kernel.
I've also noticed that Synology does not respect the open source community. Their software relies heavily on open source software, from linux to ffmpeg to samba, much of which is GPL. However, they do not respect the GPL as they seriously delay their derivative code releases to the "Synology open source project" - their releases are often delayed more than a year.TL;DR I used to really like the company and its products and have purchased several units for myself as well as for family, but I'm not a fan of their current direction and will look to migrate away when better solutions become available.
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