NAS Suggestions for home use/Audio/Video/Kodi

If I had the money, I'd get this loaded up with 10TB drives.
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/tvs-873e

I currently use an AMD based PC with a few drives as my Plex Media server and use the Plex app on my Apple TV's, iPhone, and tablets.

you can build your own little NAS with this case,
https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-...id=1525751933&sr=8-1&keywords=silverstone+nas

or use the larger one if you need an ATX board,
https://www.amazon.com/Silverstone-...1525752043&sr=1-1&keywords=silverstone+CS380B
 
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Zepher said:
If I had the money, I'd get this loaded up with 10-12TB drives and a few SSD's.
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-1277

I currently use an AMD based PC with a few drives as my Plex Media server and use the Plex app on my Apple TV's, iPhone, and tablets.
Click to expand...

Mmm, but wouldn't you want to use Western Digital Reds? They only go up to 10 TB. Or are you talking about WD Golds?

I'm pretty noob about NAS, I'm actually asking around for a friend...

Do you need a PC with a NAS to play your media files via Kodi on your TV?

He's not wanting to use Plex.
 
If your not opposed to building your own I would go that route. Much better bang for your buck.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Meeho
like this
If you are using Kodi, all you need to do is have the NAS share the folders and whatever device is running Kodi should be able to see them.
You don't need a PC and a NAS to play the media to the Kodi device.

I personally use Plex since I like the Netflix like interface of it,
plex-media-4-2018.jpg
 
Zepher said:
If you are using Kodi, all you need to do is have the NAS share the folders and whatever device is running Kodi should be able to see them.
You don't need a PC and a NAS to play the media to the Kodi device.

I personally use Plex since I like the Netflix like interface of it,
View attachment 72122
Click to expand...

Ok, so if I understand correctly, the NAS (contains all your Movies/TV shows via HDDs) > Share folders

In order for you to play those Movies/TV shows on your device (whatever that may be) Phone, PC, Tablet etc., needs to have Kodi installed on it and from there you add the NAS shares and you can view all the files?

So technically he would need a HTPC/PC (whatever you prefer to call it) connected to his TV (with Kodi installed on the PC) to view the Movies/TV shows from the NAS on the TV?

'cause you're kinda confusing me with this: "You don't need a PC and a NAS to play the media to the Kodi device"
 
FenFox said:
Ok, so if I understand correctly, the NAS (contains all your Movies/TV shows via HDDs) > Share folders

In order for you to play those Movies/TV shows on your device (whatever that may be) Phone, PC, Tablet etc., needs to have Kodi installed on it and from there you add the NAS shares and you can view all the files?

So technically he would need a HTPC/PC (whatever you prefer to call it) connected to his TV (with Kodi installed on the PC) to view the Movies/TV shows from the NAS on the TV?

'cause you're kinda confusing me with this: "You don't need a PC and a NAS to play the media to the Kodi device"
Click to expand...

you can use a Raspberry Pi or any other device that can run Kodi hooked to your TV to play the media from the NAS, or an HTPC running Kodi.
The NAS is a just a storage device, NAS means Network Attached Storage.

My brother uses Kodi and a few Raspberry Pi's in his house, they are relatively cheap, $30 or so for the base unit.
I bought one to use for my Retro Gaming setup that I am building,
IMG_1479.JPG


testing it out here,
IMG_1451.JPG
 
Zepher said:
you can use a Raspberry Pi or any other device that can run Kodi hooked to your TV to play the media from the NAS, or an HTPC running Kodi.
The NAS is a just a storage device, NAS means Network Attached Storage.

My brother uses Kodi and a few Raspberry Pi's in his house, they are relatively cheap, $30 or so for the base unit.
I bought one to use for my Retro Gaming setup that I am building,
View attachment 72166

testing it out here,
View attachment 72167
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know about Pi's. My friend has one and I've researched them quite a bit.
Not up to the level of performance we'd like for a HTPC.
I was gonna get one for emulation as well as I spent a lot of time researching that topic.
It's good for many different emulators/games but struggles on others or they're entirely unplayable, but hey, it's cheap so can't really complain.

I think technically since you can get Kodi on a phone, tablet, etc you should be able to run it from those devices and have content delivered from the NAS I imagine.
And this works even if you aren't at home?
 
ya, it can work if you are not at home as long as you have the router configured properly.
Plex does it seamlessly which I like, I can be waiting somewhere and as long as I have decent LTE or Wifi, I can stream my media to my phone.

before I was using Plex, I would use a program called StreamToMe which would allow me to stream shared media to my iPhone and iPad in home or out an about.
I just never personally used Kodi, so I can't really answer anything about it.
 
FenFox said:
Yeah, I know about Pi's. My friend has one and I've researched them quite a bit.
Not up to the level of performance we'd like for a HTPC.
Click to expand...


Really? Unless you're doing h.265 the RPi should be fine. It supports hardware decoding for the standard DVD/BR codecs (though you need cheap license keys for MPEG-2 and VC-1). The only performance gotcha I've come across is that Kodi's built-in NFS and SMB clients are dogs, but I was able to get around that by mounting shares directly from the OS.
 
I would recomment Plex if he needs to access his media remotely.
Plex-5-2018.jpg


IMG_1974.PNG
 
If you're just going to use Kodi to play media off of shares, then you need to make sure your media is in a format that whatever device is running kodi can handle.

Plex is simpler, backend server handles any transcoding that may be required by the end client, instead of the client handling it on its own. You can run Plex directly off of a NAS, but you'll want to make sure your NAS can handle transcoding.

Link at the bottom is the current compatibility guide: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201373803-nas-compatibility-list/
 
I agree with everyone else. How much space do you need and what kind of format is it in? If your just serving up NAS data I would just recommend a Ryzen cheap Quad Core, 8GB ram, Node 202 case, Win 10+ Storages spaces to pool your drives and a 4 4-6TB drives and add a nice cheap SSD for caching. Run Plex and call it good.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
Really? Unless you're doing h.265 the RPi should be fine. It supports hardware decoding for the standard DVD/BR codecs (though you need cheap license keys for MPEG-2 and VC-1). The only performance gotcha I've come across is that Kodi's built-in NFS and SMB clients are dogs, but I was able to get around that by mounting shares directly from the OS.
Click to expand...

Some of my files are H.265
Not only that, but when scrolling through a large library of files in Kodi I notice that It's kinda sluggish. I'm sure It's good enough for 95% of the people out there, but I have high standards/expectations.

I'm a bit jaded toward lower quality gear. Bought 2 HTPCs in the past that shouldn've been 'good enough' but ended up not using them after a very short period of time due to various issues that I couldn't fix. Never again. I go all out now, but not excessively so.
 
Zepher said:
ya, it can work if you are not at home as long as you have the router configured properly.
Plex does it seamlessly which I like, I can be waiting somewhere and as long as I have decent LTE or Wifi, I can stream my media to my phone.

before I was using Plex, I would use a program called StreamToMe which would allow me to stream shared media to my iPhone and iPad in home or out an about.
I just never personally used Kodi, so I can't really answer anything about it.
Click to expand...

What are the main difference between Plex and Kodi in the context of using a NAS? Bullet points?
I know that many people use and prefer Plex to Kodi when using NAS, but I never looked into WHY.

"Does it seamlessly" ?

Personally, I've had terrible experiences with Plex in the past and all of my Kodi experiences have been excellent.
I tried using Plex once before about 5-7 years ago and of the 10-12 video files I played, 50% of them stuttered horribly. I think it was mostly the high file sized movies that caused issues, yet Kodi played everything flawlessly.
So I don't have a whole lot of interested in Plex even if It's much better now.
 
ND40oz said:
If you're just going to use Kodi to play media off of shares, then you need to make sure your media is in a format that whatever device is running kodi can handle.

Plex is simpler, backend server handles any transcoding that may be required by the end client, instead of the client handling it on its own. You can run Plex directly off of a NAS, but you'll want to make sure your NAS can handle transcoding.

Link at the bottom is the current compatibility guide: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201373803-nas-compatibility-list/
Click to expand...

Simpler how?
This is the NAS my friend is getting. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/synology-diskstation-418play-review/
But again, neither of us are really all that interested in Plex.
As I mentioned in another post, when I used Plex 5+ years ago, my video content was very stuttery and I could never fix it. Zero issues with Kodi.
 
Plex has come a long way. Plex plays 99% of my video library and works exactly the same across multiple clients.
 
FenFox said:
What are the main difference between Plex and Kodi in the context of using a NAS? Bullet points?
I know that many people use and prefer Plex to Kodi when using NAS, but I never looked into WHY.

"Does it seamlessly" ?

Personally, I've had terrible experiences with Plex in the past and all of my Kodi experiences have been excellent.
I tried using Plex once before about 5-7 years ago and of the 10-12 video files I played, 50% of them stuttered horribly. I think it was mostly the high file sized movies that caused issues, yet Kodi played everything flawlessly.
So I don't have a whole lot of interested in Plex even if It's much better now.
Click to expand...


You just log into your free Plex account on your server and your device and have remote access enabled and the Plex service automatically routes it for you.
I have never used Kodi so I can't really compare the two, I just know it uses local shares since that is what I saw when my brother was browsing for media on his Raspberry Pi's.
 
FenFox said:
Simpler how?
This is the NAS my friend is getting. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/synology-diskstation-418play-review/
But again, neither of us are really all that interested in Plex.
As I mentioned in another post, when I used Plex 5+ years ago, my video content was very stuttery and I could never fix it. Zero issues with Kodi.
Click to expand...

If you just want the "Kodi" experience, than that NAS will probably work, although like most people here will tell you, the Plex experience is much better. That Synology will not work well with Plex as most Synology's don't since they're all under powered hardware with good software. Once you start comparing prices, Synology loses to QNAP every time on the hardware front.
 
Another Vote for Plex. Been using it for about 6 years now and it has come a long way and works great across all my devices

I have it running on my Synology Ds2415+ Which runs fine with Plex. With 12 bays and only using 6 at the moment, I'm pretty set. It also runs File shares, iSCSI, Cloud Drive, and a few other apps and doesnt bog down. The J units are the ones you need to steer away from.

edit-- I would choose my Synology over the Qnap anyday. You dont have to have a powerhouse to run things. Not trying to start anything, but Qnap is for a different ball game than a NAS with a few apps on it.
 
Last edited:
Some questions for the OP:

What is the budget?

Just how much media does the 'friend' have?

How much needs to be online?

What quality video output is needed?

How many simultaneous streams does the NAS need to support?

A simple NAS can be had fairly cheap: http://sharecenter.dlink.com/products/DNS-320
Add your own HDs.

As requirements grow, costs grow also. Budget is the prime determining factor. If high enough, pick an off the shelf solution and install. I would avoid a home build solution unless you are prepared to be the support person for the life of the NAS.
 
FenFox said:
Simpler how?
This is the NAS my friend is getting. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/synology-diskstation-418play-review/
But again, neither of us are really all that interested in Plex.
As I mentioned in another post, when I used Plex 5+ years ago, my video content was very stuttery and I could never fix it. Zero issues with Kodi.
Click to expand...

If you haven't tried Plex in quite some time you owe it to yourself to give it another go. From what I see it's pretty much the standard these days, personally I love it. On the other hand, I used Kodi not too long ago and didn't care for it. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
 
I don't have nas but run Serviio from a desktop with 2tb drive. It works fine, any format, any device:
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot at 2018-05-12 06-31-49.png
    Screenshot at 2018-05-12 06-31-49.png
    641.4 KB · Views: 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top