Any Streaming Media Gurus Here?

[jdwoodbury]

Ok, so I have read some articles but I am struggling to confirm the setup that I want is possible from trawling the net. Would like to see if anyone from PH has the knowledge to answer my query.

Setup I am looking for...

Central NAS device with all DVD/BR content stored (looking at QNAP with Plex Media Server)
Lounge TV (Sony Smart TV) with plex app installed
Cinema Room (4k projector) with Amazon Fire TV and Plex installed
I will be buying the Plex subscription so I can control content for the kids

Questions

- Can I stream HD and even 4k content over wifi? (running cables will be a pain)
- Does anyone know which NAS will support transcoding at 1080p and even 4k?
- Is the Fire TV the best device to run the projector?
- What's the best solution to rip DVD/BR disks, is this still MakeMKV and Handbrake?

Many thanks

[C0ffin D0dger]

jdwoodbury said:

Ok, so I have read some articles but I am struggling to confirm the setup that I want is possible from trawling the net. Would like to see if anyone from PH has the knowledge to answer my query.

Setup I am looking for...

Central NAS device with all DVD/BR content stored (looking at QNAP with Plex Media Server)
Lounge TV (Sony Smart TV) with plex app installed
Cinema Room (4k projector) with Amazon Fire TV and Plex installed
I will be buying the Plex subscription so I can control content for the kids

Questions

- Can I stream HD and even 4k content over wifi? (running cables will be a pain)
- Does anyone know which NAS will support transcoding at 1080p and even 4k?
- Is the Fire TV the best device to run the projector?
- What's the best solution to rip DVD/BR disks, is this still MakeMKV and Handbrake?

Many thanks

- Can I stream HD and even 4k content over wifi? (running cables will be a pain)

HD stuff yes, 4k not so sure. Problem is that I've never made Wi-Fi work for me in a streaming media setup, the newer 802.11ac routers maybe better but the client end has to support ac too. Part of the issue is that if you live anywhere even slightly urban then the Wi-Fi spectrum is quite cluttered, changing to 5GHz from 2.4GHz can help but 5GHz doesn't go as far / penetrate walls as easily. When I've used Wi-Fi it can work brilliantly some days and other days it's awful, loads of buffering and sometimes a complete stall. This could be down to anything, next doors leaky microwave, cordless phones, other Wi-Fi networks, it's impossible to figure out. But there is a solution - powerline Ethernet. Running the connection from my server to my TV over the mains wiring with powerline adapters has sorted all my issues and no need to run any extra cables.


- Does anyone know which NAS will support transcoding at 1080p and even 4k?

I don't but I run a micro server rather than a NAS. These do give you a lot more flexibility and you can ensure that you get one with a processor that is beefy enough to support your transcoding needs. Downside is they take a bit more setting up as you need to install an OS, software, etc.

- Is the Fire TV the best device to run the projector?

Possibly, I've heard good stuff about these but I don't think they make one yet that does 4K. Also consider an Android box, Nvidia Shield is very good and 4k, Roku stuff very good too although not sure if they have a 4k box yet. Whatever you buy make sure it can do wired Ethernet as well as wireless due to what I said above about wi-fi being flaky at times and again use powerline adapters.

- What's the best solution to rip DVD/BR disks, is this still MakeMKV and Handbrake?

Yep, MakeMKV is still pretty much all you'll need. This will rip your BR and DVDs with no loss of quality into MKV files. Only thing to note with this is that typically you'll only rip the movie itself. If you want any of the extra features on the disk then you'll need to rip those as well. You lose any sort of menu that the disk had.

There is an option to keep the entire disk contents (for DVD anyway) by ripping it as an ISO but it does depend on you client as to whether it can deal with ISO files or not. On a PC you'd normally mount these as a drive and then just play it like a normal DVD.

You won't need Handbrake, no need to transcode anything into smaller files as Plex will do this on the fly for you. It is useful if you want to download you movies to watch offline on a tablet or phone, you'll want to transcode then otherwise one or two movies will fill a memory card.

[Magic919]

jdwoodbury said:

- Does anyone know which NAS will support transcoding at 1080p and even 4k?

What do you plan to transcode?

[scovette]

jdwoodbury said:

- Is the Fire TV the best device to run the projector?
- What's the best solution to rip DVD/BR disks, is this still MakeMKV and Handbrake?

Fire Tv can't do 23.976p so there will be a slight stutter every 40 seconds or so with movies from your NAS. As mentioned above, if you want an android-based solution the Shield is the one to go for. Although if I was prepared to splash out the £££ on a HDR-capable 4k projector I'd want a source that'd be more accurate with bluray rip playback.

Maybe also budget for a 4k BR player, as you can't rip the discs?

[jdwoodbury]

Magic919 said:

What do you plan to transcode?

Well it depends on if I want to go down the option of using Handbrake on all the mkv's adding a lot of time to the conversion process.

[jdwoodbury]

Thanks coffindodger for your feedback, very useful.

I don't have a 4k projector BTW, I was just looking at future proofing the current setup so I don't have to swap it all out when Ultra HD becomes ubiquitous.

Edited by jdwoodbury on Wednesday 3rd August 17:24

[ladderino]

Plex is great, but sometimes is a little over eager with the dynamic transcoding. I've not yet been able to get it to stream HVEC h245 without it trying to convert to h264.

It will also transcode if you request one of the other media formats, e.g. requesting a 480p stream over the IOS client.

This is important, as if you go down the NAS route and need the dynamic transcoding you're going to hit issues - the processing power of a typical NAS isn't sufficient enough for an on-the-fly transcode of 1080p. If all your media is in 1080p already and Plex doesn't decide to recode, then you should be ok.

I agree with the suggestion of an HP microserver, this is the option I was looking at to replace my existing set up of using Plex Media Server on my laptop (worked well, but meant I had to go and find my laptop before watching something). In the end, I decided to give a Raspberry Pi a try and it's working well so far (ordered it on Amazon yesterday, already set up and running Plex).

[Magic919]

HEVC H.265 I presume.

[ben5575]

Re wifi , can you not use a powerline adapter and hardwire cat6 from the socket to your equipment??

[ashleyman]

ben5575 said:

Re wifi , can you not use a powerline adapter and hardwire cat6 from the socket to your equipment??

If his power cables are anything like mine, depending where the router is it might be a faster solution.

I can get 250MB/s via Wi-Fi from my Macbook to my NAS box through wifi. Same thing through a power line and it's 18MB/s.
BUT, if I put my laptop in the bedroom I'm down to 8MB/S to my NAS over Wi-Fi due to signal issues.


I currently use a Synology DS213J+ with CAT6 through a gigabit switch as a NAS and media server. The Apple TV in the lunge which is where our main streaming is, is plugged in to the switch via CAT6 and powerlines and it struggles to keep up with streaming what is on the NAS. Wether that's screen mirroring from a cabled iMac or via the DSVideo app on an iPad via Wi-Fi. Something is slowing it down. This is with SD and 720p content. I'm sure if the Apple TV was all cabled in with the best ethernet cables it wouldn't be an issue but the powerline adapters are only as good as your copper.

[jdwoodbury]

Thanks for the info here, started to look into NAS and it does indeed seem that CPU performance is critical for on the fly transcoding, looking at i3 or i5 CPU really which makes the cost of NAS astronomical. I am going to do some experiments with wifi performance round the house, from what I have read I need 5Mbps for HD streaming.

[Magic919]

If you want to avoid transcoding and plan to play BR rips, then you'll need better than 5mb/s.

Whilst storage is cheap it makes sense to just rip and play. I'd concentrate on the network and avoid wifi where possible.

[Baron Greenback]

I have a nvidia K1 tablet and reading above wonder if I could replace my Humax HD top box with Nvidia Shield 500Gb? Quick google possible but one site said it needs replacing the Kernal? Can any of the streaming boxes replace settop box or is that asking too much? Ta!

[maccas99]

jdwoodbury said:

Thanks for the info here, started to look into NAS and it does indeed seem that CPU performance is critical for on the fly transcoding, looking at i3 or i5 CPU really which makes the cost of NAS astronomical. I am going to do some experiments with wifi performance round the house, from what I have read I need 5Mbps for HD streaming.

If you want a NAS to "do it all" you will end up spending a lot. I've got a rackmount Synology DS815+ and I didn't even bother with putting Plex on that one. Like others have said, get a separate PC (I use a Shuttle) that can handle Plex and anything else you want to put on there (Can recommend Sonarr and Couchpotato).

Regarding streaming your content, if you can't run any wires, go the homeplug route. Solwise do some 500mbps ones that are decent.