Synology does not allow Plex to transcode. Synology only transcodes through video station or media server and then only if the nas is capable of transcoding (where this only a small list of their models that can transcode). Network Attached Storage (NAS) for home and business, Synology is dedicated to provide DiskStation NAS that offers RAID storage, storage for virtualization, backup, NVR, and mobile app support.
[Updated April 18, 2018 with lowered prices on Amazon. The RT2600ac is now available for less than an AirPort Extreme, with a lot more features and range.]
These days, many Apple users are looking to improve and update their home Wi-Fi connections. With Apple seemingly having abandoned any true hardware updates to their AirPort router line, Apple users are looking to third-parties to fill the gap for an AirPort Extreme replacement. To that end, Synology is among the cream of the crop in the standalone router market and provides many features never found in Apple’s offerings.
Synology gets even better w/ version 5.0: Why every Mac & iOS user should have a DiskStation. Available to stream and download from the DS audio app. Synology has done an excellent job of. How to use Synology Chat for PC and MAC. You can run all Android games and applications on your PC or MAC computer. Using a free software called Bluestacks, you don't need to purchase anything but games or applications it self if it isn't free. The login history is shared between Synology Mobile Apps for more convenience (hostnames and account names) Opening a document with DS file from another app now allows to choose the destination (local files or on the DiskStation itself). Once loaded, you can access your movies and TV shows through a variety of apps. There’s a browser-based client for Windows and Mac, as well as App Store downloads for iOS, Android, Apple TV.
Synology App For Windows
Mesh Wi-Fi is all the rage – and for many good reasons that our How-To-Buy Mesh Wi-Fi piece explains – but for folks with modest-sized homes and centrally-placed Internet entry points, having a single, standalone router still works quite well. With that, I’m often asked, “Which is the best standalone router?” and I almost universally answer: the Synology RT2600ac. With its coverage range, Apple-focused feature set, price point, and easy setup, it’s a no-brainer.
Time Machine
Being able to have a single Time Machine destination on your network is one of the reasons people buy Apple routers. Both Apple’s Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme support this, the latter by way of attaching a USB disk. The good news is that Synology’s Router Management web interface (SRM) supports this, as well. Just attach a USB disk, enable Time Machine support in SRM, and you’re good to go. All the users on your network can backup to this just like it was an Apple router.
Connect a USB drive to your Synology router and then enable network Time Machine backupsAirPrint
One thing that Apple’s routers have curiously never supported is Apple’s own AirPrint technology, which affords users the ability to print to an attached printer from your iPhone. Many newer network printers support AirPrint out-of-the-box now, but even if you shared your USB printer from your Apple router, it still wouldn’t appear as an option from your iPhone or iPad. Synology’s SRM solves this, too, by allowing you to enable AirPrint (and Google Cloud Print) on any USB or network printer you have. Again, it’s as simple as enabling the option in the SRM web interface and assigning the appropriate driver.
Synology’s AirPrint support means you can print from your iPhoneVPN – Inbound and Out
The past few years have seen VPNs gain popularity, and for many good reasons. It’s convenient to be able to tunnel back into your network at home, and it’s also great to have a secure way to browse when you’re out on a public Wi-Fi network. Additionally, with the possibility of your home ISP sniffing your packets and selling your data to marketers, some folks want the option of connecting their entire home networks to a third-party VPN. Synology’s SRM software supports both of these use-cases.
Inbound VPN is managed by Synology’s excellent VPN Plus Server, a freely-installable “package” that Synology has built for SRM. From there you can set up one or more VPN options, including L2TP (natively supported on your Mac and iPhone), OpenVPN, and Synology’s own SSL VPN with which I’ve had great luck traversing even the most locked-down networks.
With support for many types of inbound VPN services, you can always find a way back home.Cloud Station Server – Your Own Personal Dropbox
Many of us use Dropbox or iCloud Drive to store and sync our files, but generally that means both storing our data on someone else’s server (aka “the cloud”) and paying for that storage. Synology’s Cloud Station allows you to create your own, private cloud. You manage the storage, it’s accessible from anywhere (as long as your Internet connection is alive), and their Mac syncing app is elegant and simple.
Mobile App
Synology is a very Apple-user-friendly company, with countless mobile apps for all the different services you can run. DS Cloud and DS File can be used to connect to your Cloud Station files, and DS Router can be used to manage your router from anywhere.
For DS Router, Synology employed the same philosophy they used for their web interface: simple-and-elegant to start, but it goes as deep as you like. Their DS Router app lets you both tweak your router’s configuration and see reports no matter where you are.
With DS Router you can easily see and manage information on your router from anywhere.Price
Synology Software For Mac
With an MSRP of US$239.99 the Synology RT2600ac can currently be found on Amazon for $194.99 (as of April 18, 2018). Its little brother, the RT1900ac, can be found for just $119.99. The RT2600ac is a dual-band, 4×4 router, whereas the RT1900ac is a dual-band, 3×3 router making either a perfect AirPort Extreme replacement. That extra antenna on each of the bands makes the range of the RT2600ac nearly double that of both its predecessor and the AirPort Extreme in our tests. For a single-floor apartment the RT1900ac can likely handle the job quite well for you, and both Synology routers use the same SRM software so you get all the same options regardless of which you choose.
Synology’s RT2600ac is a dual-band, 4×4 router with that classic “router” look.Synology Router’s Other Features – Your AirPort Extreme Replacement
It would be unreasonable to dig into each and every feature available in SRM. Like the DiskStation Manager (DSM) upon which SRM is based, there are many, many layers, far too many to cover at once. Some of the additional features include: Smart Connect/Band Steering, Single SSID for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios, support for multiple simultaneous Internet Connections, IPv6, Port Forwarding/Triggering, Guest Network, DHCP Reservations (for both IPv4 and IPv6), customized IPTV support, Parental Controls, full-on Intrusion Prevention, Advanced Traffic Monitor with Reporting, service-and-device-specific customizable firewall, and a DLNA server to act as a hub for your movies and music. You can learn all about these direct from Synology, where they provide videos to explain some of the more esoteric features.
I’ve recently been testing the brand new Synology DS-216+ NAS ($299), a network-attached-storage product meant for consumers. Although Synology products include a variety of features, I will be focusing on two primary functions that I consider most essential and most useful to people today: Mac backup and home media management (TV shows and movies).
With Apple no longer shipping optical drives in most of their products, I think now is a great time to convert your home movie collection of DVDs and Blu-rays to digital files, which a NAS is great for storing. The Apple TV 4 was another big factor: with an app, I can now view all the TV shows and movies, stored on my NAS, from my TV.
Before I owned a NAS, I was worried about two things: whether the features would be useful and how much hassle would be necessary to get everything up and running. Hence, my review starts with an explanation of the setup steps involved …
Hardware Setup
At its dumbest, the Synology NAS is a USB hard drive. At its smartest, it’s an always-on network computer that handles a wide array of data, media and backup tasks. For any of this stuff, though, you need hard drives for storage. When you buy a Synology, you typically buy it standalone with empty drive bays.
This means the first task to getting the NAS configured is to decide what kind of hard drives you want: speed, capacity, reliability, manufacturer and such. You can get away with any consumer OEM 3.5 inch drive really, it’s personal preference.
Anything from Amazon will suffice for home consumer needs. Storage capacity depends on what you plan to use the NAS for, of course. Given the ever-falling price of HDDs however, it’s pretty cheap to pickup several terabytes worth of space. To get started quickly, I’d suggest getting two equal-sized drives from the same manufacturer. For my setup, I went with 2 x 3 TB WD-Red NAS drives from Western Digital, costing about $200 in total.
Installing the drives into the Synology is very easy. The main NAS caddy contains two bays. Take one of the bays out and remove the side strips. Then, slide a hard drive snugly into the bay. Re-attach the side strips to secure the hard drive in place, and then slide the whole lot back into the Synology. Just make sure to insert the bays the right way up and you can basically do no wrong — there’s a right-side-up indicator engraved into the plastic. Looking at naked hard drives can be scary for some, but installation into the NAS is very straightforward and simple. The clever design of the Synology bays eliminates the need for screws, or any tools at all.
Aside from hard drive installation, the Synology hardware is as simple to configure as any other home appliance. Plug in the Ethernet and power cord, then switch it on.
Software Setup
Before I tested this unit, I wasn’t sure what to expect with regard to setup. I knew about the easy-to-switch drive bays, but I had this feeling that the software configuration would be finicky and annoying. For the most part, I was very wrong. Setting up the Synology system is a breeze. After plugging in the unit, you visit a special website URL that acts as the web setup portal for the NAS. There’s a fair amount of waiting for initial loading to complete, but generally you just tick the boxes and progress.
Eventually, you gain access to the real Synology system — again exposed through a web UI. It looks like a desktop GUI, a weird conglomeration of OS X and Linux elements, but it’s all in a browser. This is fine but it is sluggish; any click takes at least a second for something to happen. Clicking on things is not as responsive as a real desktop computer by any means, however much it tries to ape the visual appearance.
Still, you don’t have to spend that much time in the fake OS, after you have set up stuff. I used the File Browser to configure some shared folders; one for Movies, one for TV Shows and one for the Time Machine backup destination. I wouldn’t say that ‘anybody could do this’ but if you have ever done anything remotely technical to a Mac before, there is nothing scary here. It’s mostly filling in a few forms and clicking Next. There are hundreds of online tutorials if you really want pictorial step-by-step guides for any feature, and the manual PDF included with the Synology is pretty good to boot. I think I referenced the official how-to guide once.
Synology bundles its own movie / TV show server apps, but I think they are mediocre. The iOS apps are bad. There is an Apple TV app now (search ‘DS video’ in the tvOS App Store), but I prefer a third-party solution. I use Plex. Just like an iOS App Store, the Synology NAS has a Package Manager. Downloading Plex to the NAS is as simple as clicking Install from the web GUI. Plex then asks for pointers to the folder structure; these are the shared folders that were configured earlier. And that’s about it. From then on, the Plex service runs autonomously. Client apps (available for Apple TV, iOS and much more) connect to the server automatically — you don’t have to fiddle with the server side unless you want to change something structural with the server itself.
Time Machine backup setup is a bit more intricate. You have to do things like create a new user, add a Shared Folder, allocate X GB of space to the Time Machine client, etcetera. Could Synology design this setup to be simpler? Does it really matter? Probably not. Like with Plex, the steps only needs to be done once and then it can be left to its own devices. On the Mac side, OS X sees the Synology just like a Time Capsule, as another Time Machine destination with the size allocated as defined in the setup.
Obviously, there is a lot more the Synology can do beyond Plex and Time Machine. You can run your own email mailbox, host a web server on it, replace Apple Photos and much more. I want to focus on media and backup in this review because that’s what I find most compelling … and that’s what I use it for every day. I think the important takeaway is none of this is as hard or as scary as the alphabet soup of acronyms could imply. It could be simpler, for sure, but you really shouldn’t see it as a barrier to adoption. With setup over, it’s time to look at what using the Synology as a home NAS is like. Spoiler: It’s pretty great.
Using Plex and Synology as a Media Server
Loading content into Plex is straightforward. It’s a simple matter of dragging and dropping media files into the designated folder on the Synology. Plex will happily import most file formats, as it automatically transcodes the content on-the-fly to optimize the viewing experience for whatever device you are using to watch.
To help Plex attach the correct metadata, it is recommended to name files in a certain way. For instance, films must be labelled like ‘Daddy’s Home (2015)’. The rules are very simple — read the documentation on this for more information. Acquiring such content is the real tricky bit here: the official method is to rip your movies from optical media, using a disc drive and HandBrake. Obviously, there are other avenues to find TV shows and theatre films digitally. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Once loaded, you can access your movies and TV shows through a variety of apps. There’s a browser-based client for Windows and Mac, as well as App Store downloads for iOS, Android, Apple TV and many more devices. The great thing is, because everything is being hosted on an always-on network-connected NAS, you can access your library outside of your home network too. It’s like a private cloud: you can be anywhere in the world and stream your personal video library to your devices.
A big draw for me was the Apple TV compatibility. With older Apple TV models, you had to jailbreak to get some semblance of a Plex interface. Moneycontrol app for mac. With Apple TV 4, Plex can simply offer an official client in the App Store as a free download. The app is great. The home screen displays shortcuts to the different libraries, shows and films that were only half-watched in a previous sitting (so you can quickly continue watching), and new unwatched episodes of a series (‘On Deck’).
The UI uses TVML extensively, meaning that the components and grids mirror Apple’s system apps. The app is logically structured, with shows separated by season. You can also just press Play at the show level and it will pick up where you left off. The detail views look good, assuming you have correct metadata for your content.
Big, blurred, poster art act as the backdrop for ratings, description info and other details alongside a cast list in the sidebar. Use the navigation bar at the top of the page for a myriad of discovery options including the ability to view your movie collection based on cinema air date, not just when the title was added to the Plex library. Plex also generates related recommendations for other movies in your library, automatically finding films by other actors or directors that you own.
Synology Store
The downside to Plex being based on TVML is that it can be slow to load on occasion. For example, after finishing a TV show, the whole page has to visibly reload so that everything is up to date. I think a truly native app would not have these issues. It is also easy to get lost in a deep navigational hierarchy, where the only path of action to get back is to spam-press the Home button to eventually return to the main screen.
Overall, these are minor niggles. I love the Plex Apple TV app. It even supports the Apple TV’s Top Shelf feature, so if you put the app on the first row of your Home Screen, it will display dynamic ‘Recently Added’ and ‘Continue Watching’ content in the shelf area.
Using Synology with Time Machine
With regards to using the Synology as a Time Machine box, there isn’t too much to say as the premise of Time Machine is that it gets out of your way. After doing the aforementioned setup, the Synology appears as a target drive in the Mac Time Machine preferences. It then proceeds to automatically backup at regular intervals. If you disconnect from the network and rejoin, it does the intelligent thing and remounts the drive without user intervention.
I have used standard USB network-connected drives with Time Machine before and have always encountered some friction or annoyances. The Synology works flawlessly. I haven’t had to troubleshoot anything since setting it up. The folder rollback feature on the Mac (where you enter the single-window timeline mode) does not seem to work with the Synology Time Machine’s implementation. I don’t really care about that though: for me, Time Machine is used as a straightforward, automatic, backup only. I have tested the restore to another Mac from Synology and it completed successfully, seamlessly.
My only criticism is that, whilst a Time Machine backup is happening, the Synology gets noisy as the hard drives spin up. If you store the Synology in a cupboard or basement, then this is a non-issue. If you keep the NAS in your living room, this is something to consider. Outside of Time Machine operations, the machine is barely audible.
Synology Desktop App
Conclusion
Getting a Synology NAS has dramatically improved my life. I’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do, of course. In the future, I want to experiment with using the Download Station functionality, so it will automatically grab files from RSS feeds whilst I sleep. There’s so much more possible with a home NAS beyond backup and media server. But those two features alone are fantastic and make it worth a purchase for me.
The Synology DS-216+, the unit I reviewed, is available to buy for $299. Synology offers many different models, with differing feature sets and number of drives, for respectively more or less money. Compare all the available models on the Synology website.