Hi,
I just discovered Infuse a few days ago, and tested it with an old Lacie network hard drive with my iPhone 6 and it looks awesome.
I’m planning to update my home media center with a new NAS and an Apple TV 4 for Infuse 4 off course.
I read a lot that there is no need of a powerful NAS, will a NAS like the Seagate Personal Cloud do the job ? I have a lot of 1080p movies with multiple languages and subtitles.
Thanks!
I’d recommend QNAP or Synology.
Why not stick with the Lacie drive? See how the Apple TV works with it. I’d have thought the new processing power in that might compensate for a less powerful drive, especially if all of your films are in an Apple TV friendly format (MP4/M4V).
I have a Synology DS214Play, and it’s great, but I used to have a MyBookLive and that worked fine with Infuse with my Apple TV 3 and old iPad 2.
I’m with WimbledonEd. See how you get on with the Lacie drive.
As for alternative NAS drives, I have a Synology DS215j. It’s a really good NAS. Works well with my ATV2 running Kodi and other stuff. A word or warning though. You can’t use it with your ATV4 yet. Until Infuse drops, the only option is Plex and this doesn’t work with the 215j. Plex makes the NAS do the transcoding (which is really stupid IMO) and the 215j’s processor isn’t fast enough. That’s why I am really looking forward to Infuse!
That’s why i don’t know what to do. Buy a “cheap” Seagate NAS with an apple TV for infuse ? or buy a powerful NAS with built-in Kodi ?
I think i will stick to what WimbledonEd said, try Infuse with my cheap Lacie network drive and maybe later buy bigger network hard drive.
I have the DS215j and it works great with Infuse 4 (beta) and ATV4, as well as Plex. Few of the lower cost NAS have processors that really can do transcoding on the fly, but this is not a big issue for me as I convert to mp4 and m4v to do direct streaming. Anyway, I have used WD NAS without problem as well, but went to the Synology to add RAID redundancy. Infuse works with everything well.
It depends on your needs, really. I have a D-Link DNS-320L that I got for about 70 bucks (without hard drive). It holds all my media and works perfectly with Infuse and other samba apps. I don’t use it for anything else and it’s great.
I’ve been mizzling about a NAS for a very long time. I’ve been considering the WD Mycloud stuff, I’d love to be able to get a fully fledged NAS but I’m financially challenged so would be looking for the simplest option, no RAID required, it would just be JBOD. I’d be hoping for plex compatibility as well as Infuse. In terms of size, I was thinking that 6TB would cover all my needs and let me get rid of the multiple external drives and power bricks I currently have hanging off powerboards… fire hazard if ever there was one!
Recommendations?
If you want Plex compatibility, forget the WD MCloud. You’ll want something with a more flexible processor.
Synology DS312j is a great, relatively cheap NAS. It has an excellent set of apps for the iPhone which allow you to add torrents and view your media remotely. As with many NAS setups, you can also have it watch an RSS feed so it automatically download new episodes of series that you watch.
The only issue is Plex. The DS312j’s processor isn’t fast enough to transcode on the fly, but then you will likely have to pay a fair bit for a NAS that can do that. You can, as the dude above said, convert all your videos to MP4s, but for me, life is just too short for that! Infuse should be able to play you files, pretty much whichever format they are in.
With an apple airport extreme and ATV4 you can just build your own NAS. Just buy a 1 or 2 or 3 GB Solid State Drive and put it in a Thermaltake drive enclosure and hook it up to your airport.
I have a Synology ds1512+ with an expansion chassis of 5 bays. The DS1512+ is 5 bays and has a lower end Intel processor running it ( not really good for lots of transcoding). If I had to do it over again I would get an inexpensive two bay Synology NAS.
I run Plex on the Synology with a new Apple TV and an Amazon Fire TV which also has Kodi on it. The new ATV runs just great on the Synology and I have yet to transcode stuff ( it switches containers if the original is not MP4). Really nice. Unless you are serving out really higher end video to a number of users you don’t need a high powered server, especially with Infuse. You really want to avoid transcoding high end video which requires a lot of cpu and a NAS with that kind of power will cost a lot. The Synology products work really well with iOS devices and Android which is very handy.
My I ask why you regret the 1512 purchase? I’ve been considering the DS1815+…
I don’t regret it but I have been moving towards streaming Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, iTunes. Five bays is for someone who wants to archive. Hard drives are not cheap. I think a two bay Synology with 3 TB in each bay is more than adequate for me. You can then mirror one drive to the other as a protection from one drive failure.
That being said, the DS1512+ is really nice as is the DS18xx. Neither can handle too much transcoding. The nice thing about the Synology is I just forget about it. Really nice systems.
If it’s purely going to be a media server for your atv then the choice is simple. The atv’s 10/100 Ethernet is not going to utilise the speeds of a decent NAS, so go cheap. Seagate / WD type consumer NAS will easily saturate the ethernet bandwidth available.
Unless of course you’re going wifi. But make sure you’ve got a decent setup in that case with very good reception throughout
Yes I’m planning to link both the apple tv and my cheap NAS to my DLink router.
One advise! DO NOT USE a Seagate wireless plus ! I thought I could be a good home and away solution…but Infuse cannot correctly stream from it on ATV4…movies are always freezing
Currently I am using my MacBook Pro as NFS server. Being the laptop I also use for work it isn’t the most convenient solution. Not to mention that via WiFi the 4K streaming via NFS is to the limit, it takes time to skip back and forth, it may buffer (and sometime it does). I have the Ethernet adaptor, but then the NFS daemon may need to be restarted after wiring the MBP.
So I’d like to buy a NAS. I did a bit of research, but judging from the Amazon reviews they all have an issue or another. What I am looking for must have the following characteristics:
Actually this seems to have all I am looking for: https://www.amazon.it/ZYXEL-NAS326-EU0101F-Zyxel-NAS326-HardDisk/dp/B01A98WGRM/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&rps=1&ie=UTF8&qid=1518247485&sr=1-1&keywords=Zyxel+NAS326
Does anyone suggest it? Any other idea?
PS: Sorry for asking it in here, but I would really need it mostly for Infuse. So if there is any issue with Infuse (losing connections and all) it wouldn’t do.
PPS: Never mind. After reading some technical reviews I did some impulsive shopping and I went for the ZyXEL with 4TB Seagate Barracuda HDD.
Hello guys!
I was thinking about buying a simple NAS to watch my 4K content and I came across the DS218J Synology model, but I am not sure if it would be sufficient. If I understand everything correctly, since Infuse is going to be responsible to read and play the content on the ATV, the NAS does not have to be powerful, right? I intend to hook up everything through Ethernet cables.
Also, would it be a problem if I connect an external drive in the NAS instead of having regular drives inside it as it was designed to have? I would like to save money for now and take advantage of a drive I already own.
I have a Synology - they are very good, and the Synology OS is very good as are the range of apps available to install in them…
You’re correct that streaming to an Apple TV and Infuse means you need have no worry or care about the NAS processor speed etc - it doesn’t need to transcode or any of that nonsense, just feed the data to your ATV.
Ethernet would indeed be bulletproof - I use wifi from a Asus router and don’t have any problems even with 4k files etc.
I’m not totally sure though if it’ll boot up and work if you don’t install at least one drive in it… never even tried that, but yes you plug in an external through USB also.
I’d say you should get one internal drive for it anyway to start with…
Or first check your router - I know I could plug in a hard drive to my Asus router and use that drive as a network drive - in other words, you don’t need the Synology at all.
Just plug a drive in to a decent modern Asus router and you can then use it to feed to your ATV.