People will be voting cold because cheap servers like the HP, Dell or Lenovo units you see are cheaper with the cashback offers.

Of course that completely ignores the simplicity of plugging one of these in and the power consumption differences but hey ho.

​Why are you wasting CPU transcoding?
Are your client devices that poor?
Or are your network links insufficient for HD content?

I really don't understand why people are transcoding these days.

Doesn't include brains either.

Those voting cold, please tell me where it's cheaper so I can cancel my order and re-buy! :smile:

wish they'd add an HDMI connection to these.

any cheap 4tb disks about?

Cold, not included hdd

I am not voting anyway but I think the HP microserver with the cashback at around 120 is a better deal. It has also 4 bays

apparently you can also install http://www.freenas.org/for-home/ to it.

Any reason why DS216play better than DS216J?

Showing OOS ....

Good price, would much rather have a good NAS than a microserver.

​Is the microserver capable of 4K transcodes? That is what sets this apart from most other NAS devices.

I prefer a do it yourself, but if video transcoding is what you are after, this is a great low power option.

Pretty sure it runs plex, so you could just use it as a Plex Media Server and use a microserver for a home lab.

​Why are you wasting CPU transcoding?
Are your client devices that poor?
Or are your network links insufficient for HD content?

I really don't understand why people are transcoding these days.

This ,with all the boxes that can run kodi aswel

I have this model, working beautifully for over one year now.

OOS :disappointed:

unbelievable web os on these. top marks

Much better off getting a microserver and installing xpenology.
You then have a much more powerful device for a lower cost with the synology software.

Transcoding to lower bitrate to stream movies from Plex to your phone over 3G/4G.

Web only and out of stock. Expire

Good deal. I'm still looking out for a DS415 though.

​You really do not understand why people are transcoding these days, yet you provide 2 good reasons that people might in your response?

Further to the 2 you provide, the biggest reason for me (and many others) is watching content externally, specifically on my mobile phone with a 3G/4G connection (transcode to lower quality = lower speed and data use requirements).

That was the point I was trying to make with giving 2 examples.
But if your watching 4k content over 3g on your phone your obviously not bothered about quality.
Taking a 4k video down to a crappy bit rate sufficient for 3g hardly requires the best CPU in the world, I would love to see an argument for why it's imperative to watch 4k on a phone screen over a mobile connection. Surely 1080p would suffice for mobile?
Surely with the money you would save buying a Microserver you could replace all your poor clients with better hardware.
I certainly wouldn't lock myself down to a single purpose device with only 2 bays for the sake of 3g/4g streaming to a phone.
My microserver has never let me down streaming plex to my phone.

my seagate central died last week. This. This right here I believe is the right replacement :smiley:

I was just trying to help people not waste money on restrictive hardware.
Yes my configuration is probably better than yours was. But it's fairly standard stuff.
I'm running an Xpenology VM through ESXI 6 alongside an OPNSense router VM for my Router/Firewall.
I have added an additional 2GB RAM that i had spare from my old N54L putting the tota RAM to a pitiful 6GB.
My Internet is 76Mb/20Mb although these days its more like 60Mb/18Mb.
I run the Plex Synology package alongside Deluge, Sickrage, Couchpotato and HAproxy as my reverse proxy to internal services.

I was just saying you can get a better solution for less money, something more versatile with more drive bays.
Your inability to configure such hardware does not make it any less capable.
Just because you aren't buying their hardware does not mean you cannot benefit from their easy to use interface.
3G/4G are the most inconsistent connections available and spending extra money will not guarantee you a problem free solution.

Most home users could spend an extra £60 on a couple of RPI3's if their clients were the issue, this would give them the better experience and still work out cheaper.

Just trying to help people save money, this is a site where saving money is a primary focus.
It wasn't supposed to be a snarky comment. Just a warning to the lesser informed that not everyone needs trans-coding and using it as the base argument for spending an extra £80 is not good advice.

​I, like you, prefer do it yourself solutions, especially where there is money to be saved. (I also run ESXi for various uses)
I particularly appreciate discussions about technical solutions and their merits on HUKD, like this one.

Similar to the Android vs Apple argument, and many others, simplicity for some is all they want, and are more than willing to spend the extra money.

A non techy friend of mine wants a similar setup to me. A solution like this NAS would be great with some cheap NowTV boxes for clients (sell vouchers, come with all accessories including remotes, run Plex well enough).
I can quickly and easily set it up in an evening, and more importantly, probably never have to do much with it again (unless a drive goes, but even that will be straight forward to swap out).

Horses for courses as they say.

At home, I've got an N54L with 12TB using Debian + SnapRaid (excellent btw - my music's on an SSD and so I can listen to RAID-protected music with no spinning disks). Then - in Spain, where I work half the time - I've got my own J1900 build, an Ubuntu server with the same content, all synced regularly. So I'm well aware of the advantages - and disadvantages - of build-your-own.

However, for many people - and virtually all non-techies - something like the DS216play would be a decent choice for a home Plex server: set it up and forget it (mostly.) And here it is cheaper than normal (thanks OP!). So as whizzey says, it's "horses for courses" :-)

Edited to add my maxim for HUKD: "Remember, just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad deal!"

If you like the idea of owning a Synology but can't afford the hardware just get one of the Microservers like that and install XPEnology. It's the Synology firmware reverse engineered to run on regular x86 hardware and is all perfectly legal as it GPL'd code.

It's not about affording it, it is about the use of the hardware. I much prefer the microserver as I'm running a couple of visualised servers on it. After reading the above comments, I see a lot of people are using it with Plex, something that I don't need. Probably for them the NAS is more useful. Personally, I disabled RAID as I prefer to have a backup solution on not only fault tolerance.

You can get something different for a different price. "Better" is subjective and determinate on situation. Personally I'd rather run a NAS that uses two and a half times less power, is quieter and has a much smaller footprint than a MicroSever because it suits my situation but I can also see some situations where a MicroSever might be better.

FYI, Plex doesn't use the hardware transcoding capabilities of this NAS and the cpu isn't powerful enough to use instead. You need to use Synology's own apps if you want to take advantage of the transcoding, which are fine, just don't be disappointed if you planned on using Plex.

​Seriously? For nigh on 200 quid these are stupidly overpriced for an enclosure with no drives in. The least they could do is offer some discounted drives through one of the drive makers.

​You could also spin up enterprise grade NAS like NetApp Ontap on a micro server too.

Maplin now have stock again. Just ordered one

a NAS with video output is a computer.

use a Chromecast with it

Would be perfect if not for the price of HDD

Appears to have gone up £219.99 or was the price in conjunction with a cash back?