4-Bay NAS mainly for Media (Advise)

Last updated on 30 Mar 2018 📧 Subscribe
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1 What can I connect to a Synology?
1.1 Wireless Speaker Sonos
1.2 Casting devices
1.3 Amazon Fire TV
1.4 nVidia Shield TV

I currently run an old TS-809 Pro and one of the fans is faulty. The fan is no longer available so I’m looking for a new QNAP. I got this device second hand and it has served me well. I only used 4 bays of it. Therefore, I’m only looking for a new 4 bay QNAP. I use the QNAP to back up my photo’s and PLEX. I just want to make sure that PLEX runs well on the new device. I use a small PC as my plex client connected to my TV so does much of the grunt work. Other than that I rarely stream plex on the mutiple client at the same time.

I was looking at the TS-451A. Looks like a good unit but I’m concerned that it may run PLEX Media server well. It’s approx. $600 AUS.

I have considered the TS-453B but its approx. going to cost nearly $950 AUS. Any advice would be great.

I have shortlisted the NAS options for Plex server. They all will cope with Plex functions the only difference will be how quickly and how many simultaneous streams they will do. TS451A will be the cheapest option as it is the weakest NAS between selected ones. TS453A is the most popular choice for Plex, it works very fast and also supports several streams at the same time. TS451+ is slightly faster for even more streams.  TS-453Bmini is most powerful and yet quietest and least power demanding NAS which will look nice besides the TV. All of them feature HDMI for some 4K media streaming.

TS-451A-2G
TS-453A-4G
 TS-451+-2G
TS-453Bmini-4G
compare/TS-451A-2G-vs-TS-453A-4G-vs-TS-451+-2G-vs-TS-453Bmini-4G/58871-52841-51039-60929

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What can I connect to a Synology?

Wireless Speaker Sonos

The great thing about Sonos is that you don’t need to pay for music subscription service. With the cheapest NAS at home like DS115j or any other, you can have your backups done for all of your devices and still use your network drive as a Sonos music library. Sonos will connect to your NAS via your network and let access your provided music library. If you have little more of IT knowledge, you can even set up your Alexa or Sonos with Alexa built in to play music on your voice commands (“Alexa! Ask DS Audio to Play Music!”).

Casting devices

Nowadays it is so cheap to upgrade your old TV and make it smart. All you need is Google Chrome or EZcast alternative plugged into your HDMI port at the back of your TV. Now you have great functionality added to your TV to send a video file directly from your NAS to a TV. No need for wires and chargers and other mess. You can use your phone as a remote to go to your movies or family videos and cast that content on your TV during family or friend gatherings.

 

Amazon Fire TV

You may not have a smartphone, or you just simply prefer to control your content with a remote in that case Amazon Fire TV will be a great addon to get to your TV. It also plugs into your HDMI port and will play content from your NAS to a TV. No wires no mess.

nVidia Shield TV

It gets even better! If you want some more entertainment and all previously mentioned functions – nVidia TV is a great thing to get. You can use it for playing games and watching movies from your NAS. The greatest thing is – shield TV does video transcoding. So even if you have a cheap NAS with a weak CPU, in a combination of shield TV you can now automatically on the fly change video file size and format for a destination device. It is a great way to reduce network load and let older devices to play video content which normally was not supported on the device.



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