Who is using a NAS to play MKV files. (1 Viewer)

crussader

crussader

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If the thread title makes sense to you, perhaps you can help me out. That's what I'm looking to do, but could use some advice on how to do it.
 
Synology NAS setup here, and one of my big use cases is exactly what you're asking.

There's a multitude of variations on the client side however and I have no idea what you have in mind. For me, I'm exclusively streaming the files via CIFS(Samba/Windows network file sharing protocol) as well as AFP(Apple file sharing protocol) to Windows and Mac clients which play them using VLC. I have also tried Synology's Android apps and successfully streamed a MKV to my phone and played it there, but I rarely if ever do that. (I have no experience with set-top boxes or other minimal "just media streaming" devices that are hooked up directly to a TV.)

No special super-fancy configuration required for that. Just enable the respective file sharing protocol in the NAS settings, establish the connection from the client computer and open the file. It's as if the file was saved on your local hard drive.
 
My goal is simple. I've got a bunch of MKV encoded movies (about 2000), and I want to play them on my TV. Nothing more (except that I would like forced subtitles to work correctly).

In the past, with my dumb TV, I had 2 NAS boxes feeding a Mede8er unit which fed an AV Receiver and on to the dumb TV. Now I have a 4K smart TV, my NAS units are wearing out (after 8 years of service), and I'm looking to start fresh with the latest technology.

I'm ordering a DS220+ with 2 WD Red 10 TB drives. For now the TV is a 2019 model Samsung QLED. I was going to get a new media box, but doesn't look like that's the way things are done anymore (and there aren't any out there that do forced subtitles correctly)..
 
There is a DS app for smart TVs that should take care of your problem as long as tv and NAS share same network
 
Nex said:
... Just enable the respective file sharing protocol in the NAS settings, establish the connection from the client computer and open the file. It's as if the file was saved on your local hard drive.
Click to expand...

I don't mind using a computer to get things set up, but when it comes to playback, I don't want a computer in the loop.
 
From what I'm seeing here and elsewhere, I am tentatively heading in the following direction:

The Synology NAS I'm ordering supports Plex server so I load that there. My TV has a plex client, so I load that on the TV. Then I connect both the TV and the NAS to the network router. Is that basically all there is to it?

Also, once all the files are loaded on the NAS, can I just plug it into the TV, or will the TV client app not recognize it that way?
 
crussader said:
Also, once all the files are loaded on the NAS, can I just plug it into the TV, or will the TV client app not recognize it that way?
Click to expand...
The NAS and TV just need to be on the same network and the client app on the TV will connect to your Plex account which will see the server app running on the NAS.
you can also setup remote access through the Plex app if you want. I have that set up so I can access my library remotely if needed, and it works really well.
And I know there are forced ST options in the Plex server so it sounds like you’ll be all set.
 
If you want to save a good chunk of money, don't buy the branded hard drives directly. It's actually a lot cheaper to buy certain external hard drive models, opening up the enclosures and pulling out the drives.

You'll get white label drives whose product ID and other info clearly show they're essentially the same product just in different wrapping. And you even get a free external hard drive enclosure :) Warranty on hard drives was never worth anything, but if you feel the need to preserve it, there are ways to open the enclosures without destroying anything so you can put them back into the enclosures before you send them in and noone will ever notice (nor care).

There's a subreddit where you can find more info about this process they call "shucking" - /r/datahoarder. Many of the drives I use in my NAS systems are shucked.

Right now, WD My Book and WD Easystore (only 8TB and up versions that contain a single drive) are the external drive models that contain the good stuff. You simply buy the version that's currently the cheaper one.

Don't ever buy 6TB or smaller drives from WD, whether directly or shucked - they contain cost cutting technology that in turn makes them a PITA to use and outright dangerous in a NAS setup (more info? google "shingled magnetic recording" or SMR for short)
 
I run a Synology NAS with Plex for my home media server as well. The Synology OS is great, and there are a ton of resources for support issues if you need help with anything. I have mine set up to auto record shows and games we want to watch and it saves the files locally. I also have a ton of shows and movies in all sorts of different video formats. One thing you'll want to consider though is the encoding quality of your MKV files. If you have 1080p or higher, you can run into transcoding issues depending on your setup. Some of the NAS servers come with stronger processors capable of doing the transcoding directly on the NAS, some don't. I'd recommend getting one that does.
 
Transcoding in any quality and with any processor on the Synos is something you want to avoid. It really hogs the CPU with just a single stream, and the quality of transcoding is pretty much crap - lots of artifacts, sometimes choppy. I've tried this on my fairly recent DS1819+ with 1080p material in x264. I don't even want to know how bad it is with 4K material or stuff encoded in x265.

If the NAS can simply stream the original file and whatever receiving device you use can interpret that, it works perfectly fine though.
 
You also might want to research what you plan to use as your front end media player. I have a couple of Rokus, an AndroidTV, and a Raspberry Pi that I installed Linux on and run Kodi with. All of them connect to my NAS, either through Plex or Kodi. You can also use a laptop or desktop if you want, but I like the convenience of the Rokus. However, they do come with some limitations. You probably won't be able to pay your 4k video files through Roku.
 
With a 2019 model Samsung, the Plex client that runs on it will be a good choice (have it myself, with a Synology NAS running a Plex server).
 
How does my AVR fit into all this? With the Plex client on the TV does all the audio go through the ARC input? Will that support ATMOS?
 
This is my setup using the Plex Server app on my server with all my content, and the Plex media client on my apple tv (can get the app on most smart tvs, fire tv, roku, or just access via browser).
IMG_0059.jpg
 
Nex said:
If you want to save a good chunk of money, don't buy the branded hard drives directly. It's actually a lot cheaper to buy certain external hard drive models, opening up the enclosures and pulling out the drives.

You'll get white label drives whose product ID and other info clearly show they're essentially the same product just in different wrapping. And you even get a free external hard drive enclosure :) Warranty on hard drives was never worth anything, but if you feel the need to preserve it, there are ways to open the enclosures without destroying anything so you can put them back into the enclosures before you send them in and noone will ever notice (nor care).

There's a subreddit where you can find more info about this process they call "shucking" - /r/datahoarder. Many of the drives I use in my NAS systems are shucked.

Right now, WD My Book and WD Easystore (only 8TB and up versions that contain a single drive) are the external drive models that contain the good stuff. You simply buy the version that's currently the cheaper one.

Don't ever buy 6TB or smaller drives from WD, whether directly or shucked - they contain cost cutting technology that in turn makes them a PITA to use and outright dangerous in a NAS setup (more info? google "shingled magnetic recording" or SMR for short)
Click to expand...
If you do this I'd try to run a preclear script on it first to ensure the drive doesn't die an early death. I run an unraid server and it's a standard script on my end but I expect there's probably something similar on synology.

Does synology give you the option to add a parity drive for data backup?

Also I've read that nas storage is actually the ideal use for smr drives since it's mostly record data once and then playback multiple times.
 
Another vote for a Synology NAS. I love mine, well worth the investment. Plex runs on about any device and properly configured you can access your files from anywhere with internet.
I was driving home from a holiday visit the other day and was tired of hearing ads listening to podcasts. Pulled up Plex on the phone, fired up an album, and thereafter the drive went by like nothing.
 
ttttubby said:
Does synology give you the option to add a parity drive for data backup?

Also I've read that nas storage is actually the ideal use for smr drives since it's mostly record data once and then playback multiple times.
Click to expand...
Parity is not a backup. I learned this the hard way at the beginning of the year. Do not repeat my costly and painful mistake.
Always have separate drives with a real, full copy of your data. Ideally multiple copies. And keep that at a physically separate location, far enough from the other copies so that for example your house burning down or an earthquake ('murica!) doesn't destroy all the copies at once.

Yes, Synology does offer to configure the inserted drives in different RAID levels, i.e. with parity.

As for SMR, it is going to let you down...
  • when you at some point try to write more than just a couple of gigabytes to it at a time without pausing
  • fatal: when one of the RAID drives dies and you have to run a rebuild (during which the RAID is especially vulnerable)
The only place where SMR HDDs halfway make sense would be as target media for a video surveillance system. Basically infinite sequential writes and that even at somewhat low bandwidth. As a pure general purpose backup HDD it might in theory make sense, but in practice it does not - it is a PITA. You always already have a certain amount of data at the point you decide you want a backup, and even if you employ fancy incremental backup tech, the initial backup will still be large - a load of data to write in one go. That's exactly when this kind of drive will grind down to snail speed.

Drive manufacturers first tried to sneak this technology into their products without telling their customers and got caught red-handed after they screwed a couple of tech-savvy folks over with it. Now they're trying to limit damage by altering their advertising, not admitting they lied but going like "you understood it wrong". But to be able to sell that junk at all in numbers worth mentioning, they still had to advertise it for all kinds of use cases where these drives still simply are a PITA if not dangerous.
 
Last edited:
I use a NAS + Media box + Kodi + Plex in my setup.

For NAS I use Qnap. Qnap and Synology are both excellent choices with identical feature choices. I initially went with Qnap for the iscsi support as I was doing some virtualization stuff at the time. But you cannot go wrong with either Qnap or Synology. They are both top end for home NAS devices.

My NAS acts solely as a file server these days. It's backed up to several USB external hard drives and a repurposed business workstation running Windows 10 with two 8 TB drives.

I have an Nvidia Shield TV for media player that connects to my TV via HDMI. On the Shield I run Kodi. Kodi has a few advantages over Plex. For one, transcoding is simply not a thing as Kodi is used strictly for local media playback. The media being located on my NAS, as mentioned. Kodi simply plays the file directly with no transcoding and supports all formats and resolution up to 4k. It also has some nice functionality that you cannot do with Plex such as being able to populate the Favorites screen with Android TV apps that you can install from Google Play store. For example, my favorites screen has a shortcuts to Neflix app, Prime video app, Youtube app. This provides a nice wife friendly experience. She never needs to exit the Kodi environment to swap between local media and Netflix, Prime or Youtube. You can also install emulators from Google Play store and create shortcuts to them as well if you are in retro gaming with emulators. It also comes with a nice Xbox 360 style bluetooth/wifi game controller. Pretty nifty stuff.

I still have a place for Plex in my life, however. My previous gaming laptop is now my Plex server and also my Launchbox/Bigbox dedicated console connected to my TV via HDMI (with ethernet dongles so that the laptop can be in a separate room from my TV). Plex allows me to access my media collection from just about any supported device connected to the Internet. This is great while away from home, but also great for devices that do not support a local Kodi install such as my Roku smart TV in my kitchen. The plex server has a GTX 980 gpu that will transcode everything but x265 This keeps the cpu usage very low for files that are not x265. Though I do find that plex can be weird in when it decides to transcode and when not. You can tell plex not to transcode for any device on your local subnet. But sometimes I find it will transcode even an x264 file when it really shouldn't be, but that's a different conversation. Generally speaking if I play a file through plex on my local LAN, there should be no transcoding at all provided the playing device is capable of native playback for that file type. If the file is x265 then it will transcode (software vs gpu) as the 980M cannot transcode x265. I'lll have to check, but I'm not sure if the Roku TV can natively play x264 (update: it looks like the Roku cannot natively play x264, as such the plex server does transcode x264, but it's hardware accelerated due to the gtx 980, so the cpu usage is minimal). If I tried to play an x265 file on my Roku TV, the cpu on my plex server would skyrocket during playback. None of that applies to Kodi, of course.

If I never wanted a media on the go type solution, or had an Nvidia Shield type player connected to every tv in my home, then I would have no need whatsoever for Plex. But it's nice to go on vacation or visiting the in laws, etc and have access to my full media collection. So I imagine I will always maintain a plex pass for that reason alone. Also, I am a cord cutter, and with a plex pass you get access to some iptv type channels and support for a hardware tv tuner/pvr setup. Though Amazon Prime does give me access to some live tv as well, such as Reuters news channel. Kodi does not do that. It does offer support for tv tuners, but does not have any built in online channels to access for free.

Most smart TV's will have some sort of local media player/file browser built in, but it almost certainly going to suck compared to something like a Shield, or Roku, FireTV, etc. Sure you should be able to browse your NAS and play files, but you are not going to get great codec or file format support and you will get none of the juicy metadata or Netflix-esque interface. Very crude in comparison. If I were to buy a new smart tv made today, I would still attach a media player like an Nvidia Shield so that I could get that great interface, features and metadata.
 
Last edited:
naked_eskimo said:
I use a NAS + Media box + Kodi + Plex in my setup.

For NAS I use Qnap. Qnap and Synology are both excellent choices with identical feature choices. I initially went with Qnap for the iscsi support as I was doing some virtualization stuff at the time. But you cannot go wrong with either Qnap or Synology. They are both top end for home NAS devices.
Click to expand...
Re QNAP - depending on the model, be careful not to fill a disk completely (and I don't mean the system disk, any disk). I had it happen and the whole NAS became completely unusable and unresponsive (couldn't even delete files). The only way to fix it was to boot it into single user mode, mount the disk in question, remove some files, etc. NOT something a normal end-user should be expected to know how to do and be comfortable with it (luckily I'm not normal). Apparently a known bug that had been there for years.
 
My Qnap is about ten years old almost now. I have a six bay model and still have a couple of TB unused. As I mentioned, I solely use it as a file server now.

My wife recently took her medical practice completely online and virtual. The pandemic has demonstrated that she really doesn't need to have a physical location as the bulk of her business is patient meetings that are all done now via Zoom. She has an examination room that she can use in what was an adjoining Gyno's office that he has graciously allowed her to use for free on Wed afternoons. Yay! As such, I inherited a couple of Windows workstations that she no longer needed. I installed a couple of 8TB drives in one and use it to backup my NAS, but also with an eye towards that inevitable day when my qnap dies. All I really need now is basic file serving. So when my qnap dies, the workstation would be my mapping point for Kodi and Plex. I don't need anything more than that these days.

Even when that day comes, I will still have the backups on the external usb drives to fall back on. Right now I have 3 copies: NAS, USB HDD and the Windows file server. So when the qnap dies, I will still have two copies of my data. At that point, I would likely find another low end workstation and put some hard drives in it to backup the data and functionality of the current workstation. Hard drive space is not that expensive any more.

I purchased an off lease Dell R710 with 24 cores and 128 GB of RAM and 2 TB of SSD space to meet my virtualization needs. I run ESX free version on the R710. Even now, I don't use it that much. At the time I was studying for my Cisco certifications and wanted something beefy for GNS3 complex network simulations. Now I only run a small number of virtual machines. One is my firewall, a Sophos UTM community edition virtual machine. I also run my poker mavens server off the R710 on a Windows 2019 server vm. I then just use port forwarding on the Sophos firewall. The Windows server is also in a dmz. I prefer this approach vs purchasing a vps hosted server. Less cost and I can configure as many cpu cores, ram, etc as I want. Plus I don't have to expose rdp on the server to the world, or well, anywhere for that matter. I just use the Vmware VMRC to control my server. It's actually a super impressive utility that gives me rdp level performance and functionality out of band. So I don't even have rdp enabled on the server at all. I like that :)

I also use the esx server to test out linux distros for fun. Stuff like that.

Sorry, I rambled off topic a bit into nerdy IT stuff.
 
Last edited:
Nex said:
Parity is not a backup. I learned this the hard way at the beginning of the year. Do not repeat my costly and painful mistake.
Always have separate drives with a real, full copy of your data. Ideally multiple copies. And keep that at a physically separate location, far enough from the other copies so that for example your house burning down or an earthquake ('murica!) doesn't destroy all the copies at once.

Yes, Synology does offer to configure the inserted drives in different RAID levels, i.e. with parity.

As for SMR, it is going to let you down...
  • when you at some point try to write more than just a couple of gigabytes to it at a time without pausing
  • fatal: when one of the RAID drives dies and you have to run a rebuild (during which the RAID is especially vulnerable)
The only place where SMR HDDs halfway make sense would be as target media for a video surveillance system. Basically infinite sequential writes and that even at somewhat low bandwidth. As a pure general purpose backup HDD it might in theory make sense, but in practice it does not - it is a PITA. You always already have a certain amount of data at the point you decide you want a backup, and even if you employ fancy incremental backup tech, the initial backup will still be large - a load of data to write in one go. That's exactly when this kind of drive will grind down to snail speed.

Drive manufacturers first tried to sneak this technology into their products without telling their customers and got caught red-handed after they screwed a couple of tech-savvy folks over with it. Now they're trying to limit damage by altering their advertising, not admitting they lied but going like "you understood it wrong". But to be able to sell that junk at all in numbers worth mentioning, they still had to advertise it for all kinds of use cases where these drives still simply are a PITA if not dangerous.
Click to expand...
This is why I prefer unraid to raid. The array doesn't need to be rebuilt when a drive fails. Only the stuff on that drive is in danger (not the whole array). The parity drive then rebuilds the contents of the failed disk. Of course if two or more drives fail you're stuck but I don't store anything on my media server that can't be replaced or isn't also backed up in the cloud.
 

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