Decent Budget NAS For Plex + FLAC Files

Yoinksy

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Looking for a decent NAS to keep my sounds on plus streaming to my LG CX for videos/plex.

I'm not sure if I need on the fly transcoding as most of videos are already playable via Plex to my TV using my PC as the Plex server. I do however have a few video files that need to re-encode the audio on the fly.

I'm not looking for massive storage, 2 bays should be enough. A bonus would be the ability to run a torrent client (preferably ru/uTorrent and if even possible a small home hosted webpage.

Included drives aren't important as I already have drives, so just the enclosure really is needed.
I was looking at a Synology DS218+or a DS220+ but not sure if these fits the bill. Would it be able to transcode one 4k file being streamed or even manage to run a few torrents or a web page?
I know the QNap gear seems to offer good value but I'm completely at a loss.

Thanks in advance.
 
If you only have "a few" videos that need transcoding, then you'd be better off to transcode them offline, once, using something like HandBrake than buy a NAS with CPU's and/or co-processors, etc. capable of real time transcoding every time you access them.

Real time transcoding will take as much horsepower as you can afford and still won't be enough. In order to maintain the transcode in real time if the NAS cannot "keep up," either the PQ or the bit rate will have to be sacrificed, possibly both.

If you eliminate the need to real time transcode, then you can save money on a less powerful NAS (not to mention, noise, heat and electricity whilst it's doing it.) For basic media streaming and file serving, (which are essentially the same thing,) almost anything will do.

Real time transcoding is like buying a whole load of books written in French, then employing someone to sit are translate them into English every time you want to read one. Isn't is simpler to just buy them already translated English version in the first place, or pay the translator to translate it once and leave you with the English vesrion.
 
There is a good article from last year showing which models can transcode which resolutions,

But as Mick says, if its only a few videos then transcode them offline.

These days you should only be needing to transcode if you are viewing videos over the internet.
 
Any suggestions/ideas on a NAS that will run torrents and host a small website?
 
Any suggestions/ideas on a NAS that will run torrents and host a small website?
Best to focus on getting a NAS that can support either Containers or Virtual Machines. Then you can sandbox the torrent container / VM and protect the rest of your network from it.
 
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