Hey everyone, after doing a lot of searching and reading I've come to the forums to seek advice. I purchased a DS418play recently and I'm blown away with how awesome a home server is. But I'm experiencing some small hiccups along the way.
I'm having buffering issues with the DS418play while casting to both my chromecast devices with 1080p .mkv files - media info here.
Chromecast 1: It could not handle the 1080p video at all, I had to change playback settings to 720p 2mbps
Chromecast 2: It did a better job, I switched it to my 5ghz network connection which the pinned chromecast thread says not to do but seemed to help in my case. However, still suffered from buffering issues on occasion particularly at the start of a new episode and had trouble gaining steam. I did manage to get through one episode with almost not issues on the Chromecast 2.
Specs:
Using Plex Version 1.13.0.5023
I do not have Plex Pass currently and I am using my iPhone 7 with the Plex app as a remote to stream the content to the chromecast.
It appears a lower playback quality is the one thing helping me out here but that's all I could confirm. As a total noob to owning a NAS, I wasn't exactly sure how to troubleshoot if the DS418play is not powerful enough for trans-coding my files or if it has something to do with my network. I don't really plan on streaming 4k, 1080p is my maximum and it would be great to have a worryless solution. I've been looking at the DS918+ as an alternative since I'm still within my return window of the play. But I want to be sure that it's not the NAS before I make the switch.