New to NAS, Synology DiskStation 216Play 2 and Plex question.

johntmanic · 13 Aug 2017 at 21:04

Good evening people,

I am new to NAS but looking to dip my toe into the water so currently watching a lot of videos and reading a lot of reviews for various NAS systems.

I am looking for it to play films/music and also be a server for my work files and the one that interests me the most is the Synology DiskStation 216Play 2 bay but I am reading/hearing mixed things with it - am I able to use it for all my films, including 4k in the future using Plex? Some people say you can and some people say you can't?

Can anyone let me know and let me know if what I am thinking of getting is the step in the right direction.

Thanks a lot.

johntmanic · 13 Aug 2017 at 21:27

Or should I be looking at the Synology DS216+II?

neodude · 14 Aug 2017 at 12:01

CPU power comes into it when you want to transcode. As long as you are only watching Plex content on your local network without any transcoding then either of those will do. If you require transcoding then the general rule of thumb is 2000 CPU mark score per stream.

pcfarrar · 14 Aug 2017 at 14:04

johntmanic said:
Or should I be looking at the Synology DS216+II?

The DS216+II is significantly better than the 216 play 2 for Plex. The DS216+II is a 64bit intel based system.

It can currently support full hardware transcoding in the plex transcoding preview server.

The hardware transcoding is going to be added to the release version of Plex soon so it should then work out of the box.

neodude · 14 Aug 2017 at 14:38

It has less than 1000 CPU marks though. I wouldn't imagine it would be up to transcoding plex.

pcfarrar · 14 Aug 2017 at 17:33

neodude said:
It has less than 1000 CPU marks though. I wouldn't imagine it would be up to transcoding plex.

It doesn't matter with hardware transcoding the CPU usage is minimal on the DS216+II. It will transcode a 1080p video with ~30% CPU usage.

neodude · 14 Aug 2017 at 17:42

Hmmm, I remain unconvinced that it will handle multiple Plex transcodes with a CPU that underpowered.

pcfarrar · 14 Aug 2017 at 17:43

neodude said:
Hmmm, I remained unconvinced that it will handle multiple Plex transcodes with a CPU that underpowered.

CPU isn't doing anything, it's the GPU doing the work now with hardware transcoding.

HungryHippos · 15 Aug 2017 at 22:35

The DS216+II also supports Docker, which is a pretty good way of rolling out new things with little hassle.

lude1962 · 16 Aug 2017 at 08:39

pcfarrar said:
CPU isn't doing anything, it's the GPU doing the work now with hardware transcoding.

The problem is that the architecture change means some third-party apps won't work, such as Plex. As of now, there's no news about when (or indeed if) Plex support will be added, so don't buy a DS216play in the hope that it will.

pcfarrar · 16 Aug 2017 at 12:34

lude1962 said:
The problem is that the architecture change means some third-party apps won't work, such as Plex. As of now, there's no news about when (or indeed if) Plex support will be added, so don't buy a DS216play in the hope that it will.

The DS216play will likely never have hardware transcoding support in Plex. Only Synology intel systems are supported. You can use hardware transcoding right now on the DS216+II in Plex if your a plex pass subscriber.