4k UHD - 4 bay Nas - Help needed.

[LLOYD-AF]

Hey guys, I need a new Nas as I'm currently using a Synology Ds218+ and need more storage but more importantly 4k playback (HDR 10bit etc). I was going to buy the Ds920+ but a lot of reviews say it struggles with 4k transcoding and to go with a Nas that has i3/i5/i7. I've had a look around and can't find any 4 bays with a I core CPU. I don't know much about Nas so I need some help selecting a model that will play high quality 4k files to my TV. I don't need any other fancy features that's all I'll be using it for.

 

Sorry for all the text I wanted to explain as much as possible, if there's anything I forgot to mention let me know.

 

Thank you for any help

[tikker]

What will you use for playback. Plex or similar?

 

Most stuff will struggle with transcoding 4k really. Except maybe the high end stuff nowadays, but it will likely still eat up a significant portion of CPU usage. Plus (in the case of Plex at least IIRC) you'll lose the Atmos and HDR parts when transcoding the audio and video streams, respectively.

 

If you are using Plex, make sure the playback device can Direct Play or Direct Stream (will transcode audio, but not video). In such a scenario it's a tiny load. In any case you want to avoid having to actually transcode the 4k stream.

[LLOYD-AF]

10 minutes ago, tikker said:

What will you use for playback. Plex or similar?

 

Most stuff will struggle with transcoding 4k really. Except maybe the high end stuff nowadays, but it will likely still eat up a significant portion of CPU usage. Plus (in the case of Plex at least IIRC) you'll lose the Atmos and HDR parts when transcoding the audio and video streams, respectively.

 

If you are using Plex, make sure the playback device can Direct Play or Direct Stream (will transcode audio, but not video). In such a scenario it's a tiny load. In any case you want to avoid having to actually transcode the 4k stream.

 

How could it be avoided? I have a LG CX 55", and will be getting both ps5 and Xbox series x. Will any of them play the files without transcoding?

 

Again I don't know enough about this subject so sorry for silly questions.

 

I have my Nas tooked away in the corner but everything is connected via cat 6. But if connecting it directly to the TV eliminates transcoding then I could look into it, just the drive noise can get annoying hence why I have it in a different room.

 

Thanks again for any advice you can give.

[tikker]

4 hours ago, LLOYD-AF said:

 

How could it be avoided? I have a LG CX 55", and will be getting both ps5 and Xbox series x. Will any of them play the files without transcoding?

 

Again I don't know enough about this subject so sorry for silly questions.

 

I have my Nas tooked away in the corner but everything is connected via cat 6. But if connecting it directly to the TV eliminates transcoding then I could look into it, just the drive noise can get annoying hence why I have it in a different room.

 

Thanks again for any advice you can give.

I have no experience playing movies stored on a NAS from an Xbox or Playstation. That aside, I also couldn't find any news about the supported audio codecs by PS5. The Xbox Series X (look at the audio section) can only decode DD and DTS it seems, with the rest only supported as passthrough.

 

What you could do if you go for the Synology is set up Plex Media Server on that. Then you can use the Plex or Xplay  app on the TV. The 2020 LG <something>X series do not support DTS anymore, so they won't direct play files with that.audio, but I think 4k HDR stuff should be fine this way (video transcoding is the heavy part anyway, audio not so much).

 

Also quite important: make sure you have a gigabit (ethernet) connection between the NAS and the playback device when playing high quality 4k content, or at least more than the usual 100 mbps connection. Blu rays have bitrates typically around 70-80 mbps and can spike happily to 100+ mbps. You will see buffering without it. The CX does not have a gigabit port, but people have gotten adapters to work.

 

Finally, I don't know what your sound setup is (if you have any), but to play the uncompressed TrueHD, DTS-HD audio codecs and Atmos/DTS-X without transcoding anything at all you'll need something that can decode those or pass it to a device that can (called "passthrough") which can be either the TV, an AVR or a soundbar. Something that is pretty well regarded as the "ultimate" playback setup is Nvidia Shield Pro 2019 plus an AVR. This sill play practically anything you throw at it, but you'll have to invest more money in the Shield+AVR+speakers and is mostly only relevant if you're aiming for a surround sound setup.

 

TL;DR it mostly depends on what your movie files are. The playback device will need to be able to 1) understand HDR 2) be able to decode the audio codec. Not being able to do 1) will result in video transcoding, a big nono. Not having 2) will yield audio transcoding, which usually isn't that big of a load. Both your TV and the Xbox Series X (and likely the PS5) understand HDR and a load of video codecs, so video transcoding likely won't be an issue. Audio will be transcoded probably, but if you are using the TV speakers that won't be a noticable loss in quality anyway.

[Donut417]

11 hours ago, LLOYD-AF said:

Will any of them play the files without transcoding?

Depends what's the format of the video files. Each device should have supported Video and Audio codecs and containers. I would check. I will say this, on the Plex Forum's they suggest NOT transcoding 4K content because it does require a bit of processing power. 

[LLOYD-AF]

15 hours ago, tikker said:

I have no experience playing movies stored on a NAS from an Xbox or Playstation. That aside, I also couldn't find any news about the supported audio codecs by PS5. The Xbox Series X (look at the audio section) can only decode DD and DTS it seems, with the rest only supported as passthrough.

 

What you could do if you go for the Synology is set up Plex Media Server on that. Then you can use the Plex or Xplay  app on the TV. The 2020 LG <something>X series do not support DTS anymore, so they won't direct play files with that.audio, but I think 4k HDR stuff should be fine this way (video transcoding is the heavy part anyway, audio not so much).

 

Also quite important: make sure you have a gigabit (ethernet) connection between the NAS and the playback device when playing high quality 4k content, or at least more than the usual 100 mbps connection. Blu rays have bitrates typically around 70-80 mbps and can spike happily to 100+ mbps. You will see buffering without it. The CX does not have a gigabit port, but people have gotten adapters to work.

 

Finally, I don't know what your sound setup is (if you have any), but to play the uncompressed TrueHD, DTS-HD audio codecs and Atmos/DTS-X without transcoding anything at all you'll need something that can decode those or pass it to a device that can (called "passthrough") which can be either the TV, an AVR or a soundbar. Something that is pretty well regarded as the "ultimate" playback setup is Nvidia Shield Pro 2019 plus an AVR. This sill play practically anything you throw at it, but you'll have to invest more money in the Shield+AVR+speakers and is mostly only relevant if you're aiming for a surround sound setup.

 

TL;DR it mostly depends on what your movie files are. The playback device will need to be able to 1) understand HDR 2) be able to decode the audio codec. Not being able to do 1) will result in video transcoding, a big nono. Not having 2) will yield audio transcoding, which usually isn't that big of a load. Both your TV and the Xbox Series X (and likely the PS5) understand HDR and a load of video codecs, so video transcoding likely won't be an issue. Audio will be transcoded probably, but if you are using the TV speakers that won't be a noticable loss in quality anyway.

Thank you for all that information. Makes it easier to get my head around. From doing more research after the points you made, in going to grab the 2019 model Nvidia shield and hook it up to the speakers so I get DTS etc. Thanks again for all the help I would never have figured this out. I didn't know the TV didn't have 1g ethernet for example, I just assumed in 2020 it would be a given.

[LLOYD-AF]

8 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Depends what's the format of the video files. Each device should have supported Video and Audio codecs and containers. I would check. I will say this, on the Plex Forum's they suggest NOT transcoding 4K content because it does require a bit of processing power. 

So I don't know alot but the files are x265 REMUX, I've decided to go with the shield route and hopefully that will hold up.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, LLOYD-AF said:

So I don't know alot but the files are x265 REMUX, I've decided to go with the shield route and hopefully that will hold up.

Well that's the thing. I didn't know a lot of info about how file formats mattered when I started Plex. But you gotta learn. Hopefully the shield works. 

[tikker]

2 hours ago, LLOYD-AF said:

So I don't know alot but the files are x265 REMUX, I've decided to go with the shield route and hopefully that will hold up.

You can grab MediaInfo and see what your files are format wise. It can tell you the video and audio codecs, their bitrates and more.

2 hours ago, LLOYD-AF said:

Thank you for all that information. Makes it easier to get my head around. From doing more research after the points you made, in going to grab the 2019 model Nvidia shield and hook it up to the speakers so I get DTS etc. Thanks again for all the help I would never have figured this out. I didn't know the TV didn't have 1g ethernet for example, I just assumed in 2020 it would be a given.

Yeah my "cheap" 500 euro Samsung had gigabit, but the 1000+ OLEDS don't In the end the majority of users will probably be either streaming their content, which is not bandwidth intensive due to heavy compression / low bitrates, or playing directly from a Blu-ray player. For most people network won't be a bottleneck.

 

How will you hook it up to your speakers? Keep in mind that the Shield only supports DTS and TrueHD as passthrough:

You still need to hook it up to something that can decode it such as an AVR or a soundbar (as in this case your TV cannot decode DTS). As @Donut417 mentions that's definitely something to check.

 

[LLOYD-AF]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

You can grab MediaInfo and see what your files are format wise. It can tell you the video and audio codecs, their bitrates and more.

Yeah my "cheap" 500 euro Samsung had gigabit, but the 1000+ OLEDS don't In the end the majority of users will probably be either streaming their content, which is not bandwidth intensive due to heavy compression / low bitrates, or playing directly from a Blu-ray player. For most people network won't be a bottleneck.

 

How will you hook it up to your speakers? Keep in mind that the Shield only supports DTS and TrueHD as passthrough:

You still need to hook it up to something that can decode it such as an AVR or a soundbar (as in this case your TV cannot decode DTS). As @Donut417 mentions that's definitely something to check.

 

I'm looking into getting the Sony str dn1080 and some klipsch 5.1 speakers. From what I can tell having the shield feed to that and then that feed into the TV. Should be good. For gaming I'll have the Xbox feed into the TV for 120hz as the dn1080 is only 4k 60hz

 

[tikker]

7 hours ago, LLOYD-AF said:

I'm looking into getting the Sony str dn1080 and some klipsch 5.1 speakers. From what I can tell having the shield feed to that and then that feed into the TV. Should be good. For gaming I'll have the Xbox feed into the TV for 120hz as the dn1080 is only 4k 60hz

 

That sounds great. It will be exactly as you say: Shield to an HDMI in on the receiver and then the receiver HDMI out to the TV. Looks like the DN1080 will work as you can use eARC to send the audio from the TV to the receiver and still get the benefits. Either that or see if you can stretch the budget to fit a receiver with HDMI 2.1 support. Then you can plug in everything to the back of your receiver and have one cable going out to the TV. The new Denon X2700H looks like it supports 4k 120 Hz passthrough and isn't much more.

[LLOYD-AF]

11 hours ago, tikker said:

That sounds great. It will be exactly as you say: Shield to an HDMI in on the receiver and then the receiver HDMI out to the TV. Looks like the DN1080 will work as you can use eARC to send the audio from the TV to the receiver and still get the benefits. Either that or see if you can stretch the budget to fit a receiver with HDMI 2.1 support. Then you can plug in everything to the back of your receiver and have one cable going out to the TV. The new Denon X2700H looks like it supports 4k 120 Hz passthrough and isn't much more.

I was going to do that but assumed it would add delay for gaming. I guess I can buy it and if it does then go direct to TV for the console.

[tikker]

3 hours ago, LLOYD-AF said:

I was going to do that but assumed it would add delay for gaming. I guess I can buy it and if it does then go direct to TV for the console.

Ah yeah fair point. That's why the "passthrough" bit is important. The added lag would be from additional processing that the AVR would do, but the whole idea behind passthrough is to not that and to "pass through" the signal to the TV without doing anything to it besides extracting the audio stream. Just like "game mode" for TVs which disable all or as much as possible additional processing.