new NAS help

petrolhead

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looking to buy a new Nas. Looking at the synology ds120j.

this will be used only for streaming movies to my TV

I will probably use Serviio (unless you have a better idea) as I believe Plex will struggle with the spec.

so will this be OK for mainly 1080p and some 4k files?

should I be looking at any other or upping the spec and getting a better spec Nas
 
AFAIK, there is little difference between Plex and Serviio in hardware requirements. If you need to transcode because the client can't support the native file format then both will consume resources. Both support Intel Quicksync on windows at least, don't know about NAS OS.

If you don't need to transcode, i.e. your playback device understands 4k files then what you are doing is a straight forward file share and you will have no performances issues with your NAS.

What are using for playback, TV App, Firestick or something else ?
 
just got a LG 48" oled

how important is it to buy specific nas hdd
 
I have a 2 slot Synology from 2016 - low spec CPU etc and use a firestick with Kodi on it to play the movies/TV on the nas, hence it can be low powered as its just pure storage and the firestick 4K does all the work on playing. I play 15GB 4K movies etc no problem - note I am wired not wireless for this to the firestick though for preformance reasons.

So get something to play the files at the TV end and the NAS can be as low end with no issues as long as it can supply the files quick enough to be played.
 
just got a LG 48" oled

how important is it to buy specific nas hdd

NAS specific drives are generally designed for:

  • 24/7/365 operation (designed to last a larger number of hours use)
  • work in higher vibration environments (not really an issue with a 2 bay)

is your plan to mirror them, or one as main and other backup?
 
NAS drives are also tuned for RAID arrays with regard to error timeouts, spinning down and other timing tolerance. Basically for a few quid difference you might as well get them my array now has Toshiba N300 that I picked up on the cheap. Only thing is they only have 3 years warranty, come of the Seagate and WD NAS drives are 5 and I think Seagate include data recovery in the warranty period.
 
Personally I would go for at least a 2 Bay NAS and go for a better spec. The j series are very low spec and hence performing, fine as a file server but not good enough for 4k transcoding and I think the j series only has 1gb of ram.

I still use a WHS 2011 server with 6 HDD and none of them are NAS specific drives, I tend to replace each drive one at a time every 4 to 5 years when they look like they are failing.
 

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