NAS for Movie library.

[XAKEP]

After 4-5 external HDDs and countless lost flash drives I decided to fix my Movie Library permanently. Right now I have several External Hard drives that have my entire Movie Library. From Old VHS to Digital converts to Latest Avenger in 4K with Atmos BluRay Rips.

My Goal:

I want to have an ability to access my Movies and be able to play them in it's original quality. Example. Right now I have nice .m2ts RIP of new Avengers movie in it's original quality video and audio. So right now to play this file I need to connect my external HDD to Shield TV and Shield TV to my AVR. With this setup I can view my m2ts in 10bit HDR 4K with Atmos sound. So nothing is lost. 100% of Video and Audio just like if I would of taken 4K BluRay Disc and 4K Bluray player and connected it to my 4K/Atmos capable AVR and the to my 4K HDR compatible TV.

What I do know so far. (correct me IF I am wrong)

Because my main media player is Nvidia Shield TV with Kodi as a player I can setup Kodi to access my NAS and play Files Directly from it. Also depends on NAS, some are specially designed for Movies and have software running right on NAS that can feed files to whatever you want including Straight to Smart TV (not sure about this part)

So my question is this:
High Quality MKV/m2ts file , with 4K HDR video and HD 8 channel audio. I want smooth no skip/no buffering playing. Reason I am asking because using External HDD USB 3.0 sometimes frames freeze for a second or so, unacceptable I want 100% no freezes. So, what setup I use ? Can I just take any 1GBps NAS and just connect to my 1 GBps network or I'll need to do something else before I can do what I want.

I would love to have access from my phone, tablet and internet but that's secondary. My main thing is 100% bluray quality in audio and video with Storage on NAS. Any suggestions on NAS would be highly appreciated.

Thank you so much !

 

[USAFRet]

I have a Qnap TS-453A NAS box.
Among other things, it holds the entirety of my movie collection.

All my systems, including the little HTPC connected to the TV, sees it simply as another drive latter.
Mapped drive, and it is seamless.

And although I have not implemented this yet, it can serve up directly to the TV, via HDMI. Soon, and I'll be able to remove the Windows based HTPC. The NAS can do all of that by itself.

 

[jsmithepa]

Because my main media player is Nvidia Shield TV with Kodi as a player I can setup Kodi to access my NAS and play Files Directly from it. Also depends on NAS, some are specially designed for Movies and have software running right on NAS that can feed files to whatever you want including Straight to Smart TV (not sure about this part)

If NAS has an HDMI connection to TV, it's running a Media Front End by itself. I prefer a separate box running the Front End like the Shield. I don't trust NAS running it has enough horsepower.

If SmartTV can play video from NAS via network that means DLNA. Run away from this dinosaur. Shield 10x more advanced.

I like my NAS to be a NAS-only, one simple job, dish out bytes to me as fast as the interface allows, and my smarts (players) on separate boxes, where I can update, upgrade, load codecs at will.

 

[The Paladin]

I have a NAS on the network (WD 6TB) holding all my movies and my daughters collection (totals about 4TB right now) though I dont do blue ray I have all my movies encoded in H265 5.1 surround sound 1080p (sorry I cannot afford a 4K tv) and it plays off my smart TV without a problem.


3 TV in this house often running at the same time, your bottle neck will not be the NAS to play movies, but your router power to manage the video streaming to all devices at the same time, (I used to have that issue with a N900 router which I upgraded to a much faster/multiband and newer router R7800 from Asus. and no more issues for 2 years now

I am sure this will be the same with your TV if you encode it properly in a protocol is understands you will be able to directly play movie from your tv (assuming its a smart TV) without the need to shield and other devices to translate the information ro your tv to play it

 

[XAKEP]

Great Guys, I'll most def take a look at that Qnap TS-453A. And in general I am looking for NAS and using Network to access files. Direct HDMI is something what I have now. I have my PC connected to AVR via HDMI. But like I said before I want NAS so it's nice not movable box that have everything I want in one location and always connected to network.

 

[XAKEP]

I have a Qnap TS-453A NAS box.
Among other things, it holds the entirety of my movie collection.

All my systems, including the little HTPC connected to the TV, sees it simply as another drive latter.
Mapped drive, and it is seamless.

And although I have not implemented this yet, it can serve up directly to the TV, via HDMI. Soon, and I'll be able to remove the Windows based HTPC. The NAS can do all of that by itself.

After looking into this unit I really like what is does. Hardware acceleration for H.265 4K . This is exactly how 4K movies are encoded.
Quick question to you and in general if people know. What drives I should use for something like that and how big I can go. Like I really love WD drives. I had Caviar Black for many years, never had problems with it. I see WD Black maximum is up to 6TB. I guess 6TBx4 Drives will last me very long time if this thing supports 24TB.

 

[XAKEP]

Crap .......according to this playback using H265 HEVC is not possible because CPU too slow. But I don't understand My NO CPU hard drive can play 4K, why in the world you need CPU for that. Unless they're talking about connecting unit with HDMI and using actual unit as playback and not just storage device.

Take a look:

https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=119399

 The playback of h265 encoded movies at 4k is not possible (using Kodi on HD station).
This is a limitation - the processor is not powerful enough,

 

[USAFRet]

Crap .......according to this playback using H265 HEVC is not possible because CPU too slow. But I don't understand My NO CPU hard drive can play 4K, why in the world you need CPU for that. Unless they're talking about connecting unit with HDMI and using actual unit as playback and not just storage device.

Take a look:

https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=119399

 The playback of h265 encoded movies at 4k is not possible (using Kodi on HD station).
This is a limitation - the processor is not powerful enough,

Yes, that is exactly what they're talking about.
HDMI direct from the NAS to the TV.

As just a storage device, with something else being the actual decode playback thing, no problem.