I plan to buy a Synology NAS (DiskStation DS1515+) with 5 Bays and at the beginning with 2 Harddrives: 2x Western Digital 6 TB RED -> 12 TB. I want to add more Harddrives in the future if necessary.
Right now I have a collection of sth. about +500 movies in Full HD with a high bitrate (yet not untouched) and high sound quality (mostly DTS) which needs a space of sth. around 9 TB. All these movies are .mkv-containers.
I do not plan to buy a Computer, so the Plex Media Server shall run on the Synology NAS. (1) is this NAS suitable for running the Plex Media Server? I mean, do the Cover and all the Meta Information show up as soon as I have selected the movie on the client? Or does it lag because of the huge collection of movies?
The client runs on my Apple TV 4 and shows the movies on my Television (4k2k). I had no problems in playing mkv movies in higher bitrate (I tested this with my PC running the Plex Media Server). The Movies were played directly without any transcoding done. But I have two Questions here: (2) I have read often that when it comes to subtitles, the Movie has to be transcoded. Will this be fixed in the future? Does this problem occur with every subtitle added? Usually I don't watch movies with subtitles, but it would be nice to have this feature.
(3) My sound receiver shows up PCM instead of DTS on its little screen when I watch a movie with the Plex App on my Apple TV 4. I heard that PCM is losless, does this mean I don't loose anything in terms of quality of the sound?
**Does everything I mentioned so far works as I think it will? ** Apple TV 4 + Synology NAS
Of course I have thought about the future, especially about 4k2k Movies. Thats why I plan to buy a NAS to which I can add more harddisks in the future. I talked about that in the beginning: At first I just want to install 2 harddisks with 6 TB each.
Todays Blurays can contain 25/50 GB. In the future the Blurays (I just read about it, I hope its true.) will be able to contain 66GB/100GB. With 5 Bays I can store up to 5*6 TB = 30 TB. Do you think this is enough space if we assume I get every movie i now have (+500) in 4k2k instead of 2k and still have enough space for more movies?
What I think is: the network, the nas and the television are able to handle 4k2k movies. Its just the Client who determine if the setup works, because transcoding wont be possible on the NAS, so the client must be able to direct play the 4k2k movie. (4) Is my assumption correct, that the NAS can handle the future bitrate of 4k2k-movies?
The apple TV 4 is not able to show 4k2k movies today, but an amazon fire TV is. Because I dont have any 4k2k movies yet, I don't plan to buy an amazon fire TV now or in the near future; (5) But if I get many movies in 4k2k and want to watch them on my Television, will I be able to do this with an amazon fire TV (or another media player which can handle 4k2k?) I mean, without any transcoding, because this wont be possibly done by the NAS?
We talk about the future, I know it's difficult to answer: (6) Do you think its realistic, that there will be 4k2k media players out there (like the apple tv/roku tv/amazon fire tv/ etc.) with which I can play directly the 4k2k movies without letting them transcoded by the NAS?
With all these questions I want basically assure that my setup is possible to handle the future of 4k2k material. Paying <200-300€ for a new media player which can handle 4k2k movies is no problem, but it would make me very angry to see, that the NAS setup can't handle 4k2k movies, because the cpu is too slow or whatever. The NAS and the harddisks are very expensive and cost ~1000-1100€.