Back in 2012, I purchased my first Synology NAS: a five-bay DS-1512+. I added a five-bay DX-513 expansion unit a few weeks later, and for seven years I’ve been using it to store 1180+ movies and 2300+ TV episodes in MKV format. Because that Synology came with a weak Atom CPU, I had to use a Windows computer (a small Gigabyte BRIX) with a Core i7 CPU to run Plex on because the MKVs needed transcoding for most devices. That’s less the case now that so many devices are powerful enough to use Direct Play, but if I access my videos off-site they need to be transcoded. This system worked great for years, but I’ve been hoping to simplify my overall setup and get away from needing the BRIX.
When I got the DS-1019+ things changed: although it has a relatively wimpy Celeron CPU (to my external frustration, Synology refuses to put out a product with a Core i-series CPU – they go straight from Celeron to enterprise-level Xeon, with price tags to match) it has Intel QuickSync video transcoding capabilities.
The DS-1019+ was something I’d been waiting for because I’d read many reports of how well the hardware transcoding features of the Celeron CPU worked with Plex so I was eager to test it. When I got the new Synology set up, I asked some friends to help me by streaming a movie from it.
Continue reading Synology DS-1019+ Plex Hardware Transcoding: This is Magic!