DS415 Play - Synology you've let me down!!

Neilc28

Neilc28

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Currently own a DS214 Play and can't fault it, but have always had the plan that I would go to a 4-Bay system when Synology release one that has hardware transcoding. Well along came the DS415 Play and getting my hopes up only to find it has a single gigabit connection, still only supports 1 transcoding operation at a time, doesn't have SD card slot, and no copy button.

Now please don't get me wrong, I think Synology NAS appliances are amongst the best, if not THE best in the consumer market, but by not offering these features that I would've expected they are not getting my cash for the moment!

Rant over :(
 
Single gigabit is fine unless you're serving 10+ TVs concurrently (and unless you are careful on setting the disks up right, you may find 2x gbit would be throttled by the disks. As to transcoding... well, it's quite expensive to do, so I always get my media in a format that all will play - or more precisely, only buy output devices that play absolutely everything you have ;)

No particular input on SD card slot or copy buttion, but hey :)
 
What he said, the only ones that have/need twin nic are the SMB models.

I'm pretty sure even my old SMB 1010+ did one transcode stream. But like andy said use a format all of your devices can use.

SD card on a Nas? I'm not even sure why you'd want that.
 
Has the Nas got copy function through the USB port? Could you add a card reader to act as a hard drive?
 
I beg to differ, I use a DS414 at work and that has dual NIC's that I've utilised in Link Aggregation, did a test and there is definitely an increase in performance, which will be even more prominent as I'm looking at utilising iSCSI LUN's in conjunction with the various devices around the house.

The SD card slot is actually quite useful as more of an easy way to offload the camera images whilst I go and make a coffee, thought it was gimmicky at first, but after a while it does turn out to be quite convenient.

And finally, most of my content does not require transcoding, my Chromecasts have effectively reduced this considerably, it was only ever used with the PS3 DLNA which always used the hardware transcoder, even in standard formats that the PS3 does support.
 
Bandwidth benching is great, however in the real you most likely won't need/use it on twin nic in a home environment.

If the sd card works for you then great, personally I want all of the working files straight on to ssd for best editing performance. I'd suggest its a very niche feature otherwise they'd have implemented it on more models :)

So you still only need 1 stream then? :p
 
Neil I would place money on the face that at least 25% of users in this forum don't have a typical home environment ;)

And yes, I personally only need 1 stream, but thought it a bit odd that they didn't expand upon it

As for the SD and USB copy, its useful, especially if you work from the NAS
 
if the requirement from the end user isn't there or its not cost affective for the RRP then the feature wont make it to production. supply and demand and all that :)

typical home environment meaning not multiple users doing simultaneous heavy file access.

personally id still always prefer to transfer from a PC, gives you a chance to make sure the files are good, no corruption during copy etc etc
 
Neilc28 said:
I beg to differ, I use a DS414 at work and that has dual NIC's that I've utilised in Link Aggregation, did a test and there is definitely an increase in performance, which will be even more prominent as I'm looking at utilising iSCSI LUN's in conjunction with the various devices around the house.
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Ahh... That typical home user application iSCSI.... :D

I assume you have everything wired into a fully managed switch directly then?
 
Surprised your slumming it with a nas, thought a san system would fit your enterprise solution :D
 
No spare equalogics at work, so the Synology will have to do lol ;)
 
Just ran across your post. Synology soecificallynstates concurrent streaming, so im curious where you found info it supports only one transcoding session? What happens when instigating a second
. Massive cpu spike? I just ordered one tk replace my 413 but if it is truky that limited theres not much point.

Cheers for the info
 
It does support multiple concurrent streaming, however if you enable the hardware transcoder then only 1 transcoding operation can be run at a time, I've run into this problem twice in 6 months so it's not exactly frequent. It's also only due to formats which are not native to the device and endpoint, so as long as you stick to an official standard such as H.264 (Regardless of container) it will be absolutely fine. I can't find the referenced document, but the message within DSVideo stating that the Hardware Transcoder was busy with another stream was enough for me.

DS214 Play + Multiple Chromecasts, DONE!

I will try and find the source for you :)
 
So on the 413 if you have say MKV with 5.1 ac3 it remuxes the audio and passes through the video when streaming to Apple TV or iOS. Not so smooth to chrome cast. This takes about 45% of the processor but runs faster than real time with buffer. PLWX DOES THE SAne using much kess processor but again chokes on avI.

The problem with the 413 is video station completely ignores a Avi divx files because it doesn't have the oomph to transcode..


The way a anandtexh broke it down it seemed like there should be an interrupt session happening with multiple streams. It loos like plex doesn't support any of it and id be ok with using video station but I can see times where more than one avi will be streamed in my house. I have no doubt it will deal with the remuxing of 'compliant files' that need audio remix better but considering it's costing me $200 to change from the 413 to 415 play. It's a pointless expense if I still can't deal with divx files and multiple streams. I may as well keep my desktop active and also run playon to get full episodes for shows well full seasons vs hulus last three or four.


Any chance you can test what happens with the 415 play if you start to stream a divx to one device and then fire up another divx to a second device. Via video station. Assuming it no longer ignores a avI / divx files.

From what in reading all the soc isbasically only making audio remuxing on the fly a bit less processor intensive. Vs synology claiming whole home serving which it appears it can't do.

If it can't stream two avI files without crushing the system I may as well refuse delivery. There's no point in the upgrade to me. That 200 can be spend shrinking my very fast desktop to micro atx or stetxhed to a small NUC. TE DESKTOP which I under clocked to 1800 MHz and then it steps to 4.2 as needed. And never draws much more than 35-45 watts via my kill a watt. Which still isn't excessive.

I appreciate your help as I'm getting nowhere on the synology forums and their the support know absolutely nothing about the technicals.

I'm a bit bunmed. I was ready to be ok moving from plex to video station and give up play on just to have a single easy device that could stream everything. And while most Of my newer stuff is ripped to h264/x264 there is avI content and plenty of it.

Sorry for the lengthy message and thanks for your response.
 
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Leave it with me and I will try multi streaming DivX content, I'll give Xvid a go too, you can disable hardware transcoding which I believe will handle multi transcoding but be very CPU intensive, and I believe the spec of the CPU is the same as my 214 Play.

Don't be too disheartened by what I've put, I'm still going to get the 415 play as my 214 has performed admirably and nothings occurred that is a showstopper :)
 
h00ligan said:
So on the 413 if you have say MKV with 5.1 ac3 it remuxes the audio and passes through the video when streaming to Apple TV or iOS. Not so smooth to chrome cast.
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The only guaranteed way of streaming stuff is to make sure all your playback devices can playback everything you have natively. Which means either changing your playback devices or recoding off line (remuxing is a different process to recoding BTW). IMHO of course...
 
I'm surprised no-one has suggested the Qnap with a 10gbit gbic :-)
 
Ah so you dont have hands on yet...maybe someing has changed....maybe a new ffmoeg buikd kr hardware prioritizarion.

To the below commemt about recoding vs remuxing. The whole idea of hardware transcoding is avoiding recoding. If you have to recode when theres a hardware transcider. Wgats te point. I added a couple drives in a steiped raid tk my desktop which kicked me up tl 130 watts running full time at 4.2 ghz. I plan on wiaitnging fkr the 415 and testing but it does look identical in hardware to the 214 play

The cpu iw nowjere near steong enough for muktiple transcoding sessions wjthout q hardware transcoder.

So when did you get the errir message. Wheb it was just renuxing audio on the fly wjth pass theough video or? Iso to ? The claims they mske on the sales page would say yes we can to streaming anything anywhere ans tk multippe devices but thags cerrainky not the imoression I get from 214 owmers, and the cpu is identical. Though we dont know if a new version of dsm is soon to follow streeting of the 415 pkay.
 
h00ligan said:
To the below commemt about recoding vs remuxing. The whole idea of hardware transcoding is avoiding recoding. If you have to recode when theres a hardware transcider. Wgats te point.
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The point is you recode once on the main machine and then just stream the recoded stream from then on from the NAS. With transcoding (which is a recode anyway) you are recoding every time.

It also seems you are mixing terminology. Remuxing is taking the streams and putting them into a different container without changing the streams. recoding is taking the different streams, decoding one or more of them and then recoding those streams with a different codec/bitrate and then remuxing into a container. Transcoding is the same as recoding, it is just doing it on the fly with no write back to storage. Bottom line - if you are transcoding, you are simply recoding but without any intermediate storage.
 
h00ligan said:
Ah so you dont have hands on yet...maybe someing has changed....maybe a new ffmoeg buikd kr hardware prioritizarion.
Click to expand...
A new build of ffmpeg won't help one iota....
 
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