ATV 4, Plex and NAS

[Spankey]

Sorry if a bit OT. This NAS looks very interesting to me. Do people think this will be somewhat "future proof"? Any others I should be considering in the same price range? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I basically want it for PLEX and some other basic data backup uses.

TIA!

Future proof? That all depends...pretty much on 4k. Will there always be faster models year after year? Yes. Are you planning on upgrading your library to 4k any time soon. Probably not. I have a little over 15TB of storage. I have a collection of about 600 movies (all blu-ray), 7 HD TV series, and a little over 1TB of lossless music. I have not saved the HD audio from Blu-ray. DD streamed to Apple TV at 640kbps is really close in SQ in my HT, at least when it comes to movies. My Blu-ray rips end up averaging anywhere from 7-12GB. Still a larger file size and better PQ than anything iTunes offers. Again, on a 110" screen the difference in PQ compared to blu is all but imperceptible to anyone without a trained eye.

My NAS is the best investment I have made. My receiver supports DTS Play-fi so I can easily stream ALAC music from my NAS.

 

[off_piste]

Future proof? That all depends...pretty much on 4k. Will there always be faster models year after year? Yes. Are you planning on upgrading your library to 4k any time soon. Probably not. I have a little over 15TB of storage. I have a collection of about 600 movies (all blu-ray), 7 HD TV series, and a little over 1TB of lossless music. I have not saved the HD audio from Blu-ray. DD streamed to Apple TV at 640kbps is really close in SQ in my HT, at least when it comes to movies. My Blu-ray rips end up averaging anywhere from 7-12GB. Still a larger file size and better PQ than anything iTunes offers. Again, on a 110" screen the difference in PQ compared to blu is all but imperceptible to anyone without a trained eye.

My NAS is the best investment I have made. My receiver supports DTS Play-fi so I can easily stream ALAC music from my NAS.

What file type/settings are you using to achieve that quality in 7-12gb? I'm currently keeping full-size mkvs and using handbrake to have mobile device ready files (phones, iPads, etc.). I've thought about keeping a single version but I really dislike watching the compressed files for my mobile devices on my tv.

 

[Spankey]

After I rip the file to MKV, I use Handbrake to convert to MP4 using High Profile(which reverts to normal), Encoder Options - Medium, Quality RF-18.5 and create a 640kbps DD track and a 256kbps AAC stereo track.

I have had larger files up to 20GB. I've been finding that films with a lot of film grain really tax the encoder and require a larger file. The Godfather movies came in around 23GB while Guardians of the Galaxy was only 5.15GB.

 

[sim667]

The files in the OP are huge, whilst it may work I'd certainly say that the constant buffering would be frustrating.

I'd try and get encodes down to about 3-4 gb max in all honesty.

 

[KennethS]

Future proof? That all depends...pretty much on 4k. Will there always be faster models year after year? Yes. Are you planning on upgrading your library to 4k any time soon. Probably not. I have a little over 15TB of storage. I have a collection of about 600 movies (all blu-ray), 7 HD TV series, and a little over 1TB of lossless music. I have not saved the HD audio from Blu-ray. DD streamed to Apple TV at 640kbps is really close in SQ in my HT, at least when it comes to movies. My Blu-ray rips end up averaging anywhere from 7-12GB. Still a larger file size and better PQ than anything iTunes offers. Again, on a 110" screen the difference in PQ compared to blu is all but imperceptible to anyone without a trained eye.

My NAS is the best investment I have made. My receiver supports DTS Play-fi so I can easily stream ALAC music from my NAS.

Sounds like an incredible media collection! And your NAS looks like a great unit from the specs. A bit more than I was hoping to spend, but I know quality comes with a price.

I am hoping that whatever NAS I buy it will last at least 5 years. I don't have any 4K content at present, but expect I may during that timeframe. So, the ability to output 4K is what I am getting hung up on. I realise I won't be able to transcode down from that resolution within the NAS, but I would like a unit that could output at that resolution to a device that will accept it. I may be hoping for too much....

 

[Spankey]

I think we're quite aways off from worrying about 4k. I'm sure we could probably find some 4k files online and test it on the NAS and see how it works, but for right now 1080P is pretty damn good. Especially as a backup source. As long as you keep your drives healthy, maybe switch them out after 5 years we should be worry free.

As for smaller file sizes. 4GB is usually the size we are getting from iTunes. I have problems with those files in terms of banding and other artifacts. The file size will also be bigger depending on the audio format you choose to save. I work with my settings and each movie is different but the resulting PQ is close to transparent.

 

[jdag]

This is not to downplay the value of a NAS, but to point out considerations for media storage. I am not considering web hosting, remote access, surveillance camera use, etc. capabilities of a NAS. That being said, there's nothing you can do with a NAS that you can't do with a DAS. Anyhow...

By nature, NAS boxes offer relatively low power and memory as compared to a PC. Yes, many can be upgraded, but not all. Further, they offer proprietary methods of data storage. Therefore, they are not as "future proof" as using a PC with directly attached storage (DAS).

DAS can take the form of portable USB hard drives on the low end up to multi-bay Thunderbolt boxes on the high end. They attach to a PC and act as an external drive that iTunes, Plex, and other media managers can access. (Note: a NAS can act as a dumb hard drive too, if you don't want the NAS to be the main processing power.)

So ultimately, a primary difference between a DAS and NAS in the context of media storage is that a NAS can be a 1-box solution if it is powerful enough to handle the media you throw at it.

But if/when that box cannot handle processing duties (too many simultaneous streams, too high of bit rate media, etc.), then you can't use the NAS to its potential and would need a separate PC anyhow. And if you ever want to upgrade to a new NAS box, you may need to rebuild your hard drives because you can't simply slide them into a new NAS. With a DAS, you just plug into a different PC.

 

[MacFanBoi]

This is not to downplay the value of a NAS, but to point out considerations for media storage. I am not considering web hosting, remote access, surveillance camera use, etc. capabilities of a NAS. That being said, there's nothing you can do with a NAS that you can't do with a DAS. Anyhow...

By nature, NAS boxes offer relatively low power and memory as compared to a PC. Yes, many can be upgraded, but not all. Further, they offer proprietary methods of data storage. Therefore, they are not as "future proof" as using a PC with directly attached storage (DAS).

DAS can take the form of portable USB hard drives on the low end up to multi-bay Thunderbolt boxes on the high end. They attach to a PC and act as an external drive that iTunes, Plex, and other media managers can access. (Note: a NAS can act as a dumb hard drive too, if you don't want the NAS to be the main processing power.)

So ultimately, a primary difference between a DAS and NAS in the context of media storage is that a NAS can be a 1-box solution if it is powerful enough to handle the media you throw at it.

But if/when that box cannot handle processing duties (too many simultaneous streams, too high of bit rate media, etc.), then you can't use the NAS to its potential and would need a separate PC anyhow. And if you ever want to upgrade to a new NAS box, you may need to rebuild your hard drives because you can't simply slide them into a new NAS. With a DAS, you just plug into a different PC.

Yep the NAS isn't the perfect solution for everyone but it does have some advantages which is why I got one. Having everything in one box that is easy to hide out of the way is nice and not needing multiple power bricks powering a bunch of external hdd's is also good. While my mac mini barely uses 30w of power its always turned off unless im using it.

Only downsides of a NAS I see are the cost of them because to get a good one capable of transcoding high def you need a good high end one which starts at around $570AUD for only a 2 bay one up to $1000 for a 5 bay like mine. Upgrading is also expensive because you either need to buy another nas or a expansion box which adds more drive bays.

 

[Rigby]

Yes, many can be upgraded, but not all. Further, they offer proprietary methods of data storage. Therefore, they are not as "future proof" as using a PC with directly attached storage (DAS).

If you use a DAS with multiple drives, it's no different from a NAS. It will use some scheme to distribute the data across the drives, be it RAID, JBOD, striping or whatever. If the enclosure fails, you'll have exactly the same problems getting the data off the drives as with a NAS if it uses a non-standard scheme.

So ultimately, a primary difference between a DAS and NAS in the context of media storage is that a NAS can be a 1-box solution if it is powerful enough to handle the media you throw at it.

But if/when that box cannot handle processing duties (too many simultaneous streams, too high of bit rate media, etc.), then you can't use the NAS to its potential and would need a separate PC anyhow.

There are plenty of inexpensive NAS units that can easily handle multiple video streams at Blu-ray quality. Realtime video transcoding is a different story, but personally I avoid this anyway. I'm currently running a QNAP TS-451 and it handles everything nicely. I'm even running a Windows VM with iTunes as Homesharing server on it (I upgraded the RAM to 8GB for this). Power consumption is between 15W (with drives sleeping) and 25W (all drives are running), so it's no problem to leave it running 24/7.

And if you ever want to upgrade to a new NAS box, you may need to rebuild your hard drives because you can't simply slide them into a new NAS.

If you stick with one manufacturer, the NAS enclosures are usually backwards compatible with drives formatted on earlier models. That's why it's a good idea to use one of the established manufacturers and not some off-brand model.

 

[KennethS]

This is all very helpful, thanks folks. I am drawn to the one-box solution idea of the NAS. I have been running Plex media server on my iMac, but I am looking for a more permanent option that frees up the iMac and also lets me permit it to go into sleep mode. I keep getting drawn to the QNAP TS-453A, but am open to any suggestions for alternatives. I have to say I have been quite happy with Plex running on the iMac and streaming to an ATV4. So the possibility of going the DAS route is also something I now need to consider.

 

[jdag]

MacFanBoi and Rigby, I totally agree with you both. We are all pointing out pros and cons of both NAS and DAS solutions. There are definite advantages to NAS options under the right circumstances. And for DAS under others. I hope it all helps the OP.

 

[MacFanBoi]

MacFanBoi and Rigby, I totally agree with you both. We are all pointing out pros and cons of both NAS and DAS solutions. There are definite advantages to NAS options under the right circumstances. And for DAS under others. I hope it all helps the OP.

I've been using a nas as my main storage system for the past 8 years and it really is the simplest way imo. Plug in power and network, pick what raid you want and away it goes. The only thing I've done to mine is schedule a start time of 3am and shut down of 11pm and it really is set and forget.

 

[benny gsr]

SOrt of bring back the thread from the dead, but after a little more research, have made my decision. Thanks for the advice here:
I will be getting the almost outdated Qnap ts-651 (6 bay dual core model). Great bang for buck at the moment. I haven't decided if I'll bother maxing ram and likewise haven't decided on whether I'll do raid or JBOD. Afterall, they are just back ups and aparrently even with raid 5 (one disk redundancy, I am led to believe the rebuild is dangerous in itself, and quite frankly, I don't really want to have 3 used, 3 spare either?

If the qnap doesn't have the power to do my mkv files (which it probably won't) for my ATV 2 jailbroken, instead of spend 30% more for a ts-653, I'll just buy a mac mini and keep my NAS as a NAS, and not for any transcoding or anything.
I think this will be more futureproof than buying the 653 as its still not as powerful as the mac mini anyway?

 

[jdag]

Since this thread was started and I posted thoughts about NAS vs DAS, I've done some additional research that might be helpful.

There are several operating systems, including FreeNAS, NAS4Free, UnRAID, OpenMediaVault, and others that can be used with dedicated servers such as the Lenovo TS140. The advantage is that you get a dedicated NAS setup but with much more processing power.