The RN526X is a great NAS - performs very well in my testing so far. I plan a more complete report later on - but as far as file transfer speeds go, I'll probably need a 10 gbit upgrade to my desktop PC to see its real performance limit.
A couple of folks here have been asking about streaming performance, and I do have some early results. These are based on publically available 4K demo material.
Of course if video transcoding isn't required, it handles streaming effortlessly. Even high-rate 4K videos put no CPU load on the NAS - 1-2% at most.
If you are looking for 4K transcoding, then you will reach the limits of the CPU.
-4K H.264 content can be transcoded to SD, and more-or-less maxes the CPU. Transcoding 4K to higher resolutions (720p or 1080p) fails - stuttering and pauses..
-4K HEVC content stutters even if the output resolution is set to SD.
Though I haven't confirmed it yet, it should handle 1080p transcoding with no problems.
It'd be useful if someone has similar 626X results. I suspect it can handle 4K->1080p transcoding, but that depends on how well the plex transcoder utilizes the four cores.
NOTE: my quadcore desktop (a couple of years old now) can't transcode 4K either...
Plex can make good use of the quad-core CPU in the RN626X as discussed in e.g. 626 Plex performance
Yes - @NASguru ran some useful streaming tests. The 626X can handle multiple 1080p transcodes. It handled some 4K->1080p transcoding, but stuttered on a couple of clips.
Though if you have the disk space for 4K, you probably can also keep a 1080p or 720p version...
So that makes me feel good. My Upgraded 516 can now handle trancoding 1 4K video to 1080P. I only have the 1 right now I was doing for testing. It was buffering like crazy on my non-modified 516. It doesn't sound like performace wise with the CPU is all that much better. You do have the advantage of the 10Gbit ports.
Not sure how many jobs PLEX can handle at once. Is it a direct plat 1080P, or is it a transcoding job. Which if it's a friend at their house, it's getting transcoded down to 720P at 3Mbps. Still looks good and not hogging my Limited upload speed bandwith. It's FREE for them, so can't complain!!! Are you playing on a iPad, or whatever, so how do you really compair fairly?
You're NOT going to get the same performace building your old NAS with a PC Case and using a i7 processor and whatnot. It's also going to be more power hungrey and more work. Some people like that. There's a lot of flexability in what you can do. On the other hand I like the nice smaller size of a ReadyNAS. A 6 disc version is still kind of large and heavy, but it fits into my small closet nice. It's easy to use for the most part. XRAID works well. Plugging in a UPS is as simple as plugging a USB plug into the NAS. Thw power saving features are easy to set. The hardware seems built pretty well. I'm a fan.
So that makes me feel good. My Upgraded 516 can now handle trancoding 1 4K video to 1080P. I only have the 1 right now I was doing for testing. It was buffering like crazy on my non-modified 516.
Cool.
FWIW, the trend in transcoding (like rendering) is to use GPU acceleration to off-load the CPU. I don't think the server chipsets in the new ReadyNAS include any GPU capability, but if transcoding becomes a must-have feature for home NAS owners, then Netgear will likely have to add that in future models.
Yes, using the GPU would be a good idea. Don't some NAS's out there have that ability currantly? That is one direction to go. That's bascially what a GPU does. ARM processors are getting more and more powerfull every year also. At some point good enough to do 1080P transcoding. Not transcoding down to 480P.
For me, transcoding is very important. Most everything I'm streaming is getting transcoded. I have friends streaming my content at their own house, and so I have to reduce quality down to 720P at 3Mbps speeds because of my Limited Upload bandwith of around 6Mbps or so. Even though my Download bandwidth is around 100Mbps. It still looks great for them and besides, it would be dumb to complain!!! Not with access to over 700 movies, most in HD quality.
If my NAS wasn't fast enough like it used to be with the older ReadyNAS I had, I'd be using my Windows PC once again to run PLEX on. It's rare when something is actually Direct playing for me. Even right now, a friend is watching one of my movies at her home. PLEX is showing Transcoing, with Video Transcode (h264) and Audio Transcode (aac). A 1080P Video with 3 audio tracks, TrueHD 7.1, AC3 5.1 and AC3 Sterio. Transcoding is top priority for me. I do have to have limits of who connects because the NAS Intel processor can only handle so much. I still want to be able to watch my own content without hickups.
4K is a big jump in fize size and transcoding needs. I still don't see much point in it unless you have a 100" plus screen or sit almost point blank in front of the screen. I'm not worrying about it anytime soon. But it's good to know what a NAS can do.
To use GPU acceleration the software would have to support it.
Absolutely. And of course the NAS would need to have a suitalble GPU too.
One challenge is that 4K encoding is a moving target at the moment. For several years H.264 was the dominant video codec for both broadcast and streaming. That is now fragmenting for 4K (for a variety of reasons). There's H.264, H.265, VP9, with a new AV1 codec being developed by the Alliance for Open Media. So hardware acceleration that works today might not work a couple years down the road.
The fallback is to set aside some space, so you can keep 4K and HD verstions of the same content.
Exactly. There's just no simple solution right now, so we're stuck with the CPU doing it all. 4K I just think is pointless for most people anyway. To many people already have to small of a HDTV right now for the distance they sit from it. It's really larger then most people think. Getting a 42" 4K TV is outright silly. With 4K, unless you are sitting point blank in front of the screen, you're looking at screen sizes of 100+ to really make 4K worth it. The only practical way to get 4K is with a Front Projector A 4K 100"+ screen size LED would be crazy high price wise. Put it this way, what do you think you're watching when you go to the movie theater? You're watching a 4K Movie on that HUGE screen!!! Is your screen that big at home? Quite frankly, this is why so many are perfectly happy streaming so called 1080P from Netflix onto their TV's over the better quality of a Blu-Ray. They can't see the difference. I bet they couldn't tell any better if a DVD was playing. That's having to small of a HDTV for the distance you're sitting. 4K just makes it more pointless. You need a even larger screen then the HDTV you currently have. Really the only thing that may matter that people could see, is HDR (High Dynamic Range) Where you have blacker blacks and whiter whites, and more colors. That's part of the currant 4K standard. 4K is also better for 3D movies as you have a higher resolution for each eye then a 1080P HDTV. So 4K can matter for those things. The higher resolution? Not really. Not unless you have a screen that's large enough to matter. I'm not worry about about 4K now. when my 50" Panasonic dies, which was the correct size at my old house for the distance I sat, it really to small for the distance now at my House. I really need around a 65" HDTV minimum. Seems large, but really it isn't. I'd rather get a larger 1080P HDTV for less then a smaller 4K for more money!!!
@JBDragon1 wrote: With 4K, unless you are sitting point blank in front of the screen, you're looking at screen sizes of 100+ to really make 4K worth it.
I think you are somewhat overstating this - there's a useful chart here: http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html With a 55" set you can see improved resolution at 4K for viewing distances between 5 and 7 feet.
As you point out, there's also the wider color gamut and HDR (which are two different things). As a practical matter, all the higher-end sets are 4K.
That chart again. O, you want to pull that one out, Can you read it right? Lets do it simple, at 5 Feet going by that chart, to get the FULL Benifits of 4K, you need about a 80" TV!!! That's what it's showing on your chart!!! 5 feet is really pretty close to where people sit in say a family room, where it may be 8 feet on adverage. Looking at your chart again. It's Maxed your chart out to 140" For the full Benifits of 4K!!!
This calculator maxes out at 75" So at 5 feet at 1080P, it's showing a 37" HDTV. When you jump to 4K it jumps up to 55" This is not the full benifit of the resolutions, it's the Minimum size that's really needed. Go up to 8 feet, it's showing 55" for 1080P and it's MAXED OUT for 4K 75", In fact I have to click back to see where 75" really is recomended for distance. That's 7 feet when it jumps to 75" But going by your own chart, you're boarderline to see any benifit at 8 feet with a 75" screen.
THX has their recomendation, but it's only for a 1080P display. Divide the size of your screen by .84 (screen size is measured diagonally). For example, a 65-inch TV divided by .84 equals a 77-inch viewing distance (6.5 feet). So how far away are your eye's form the screen? I'm around 8 feet. So I already really need a 80" 1080P HDTV and only have a 50" currantly. 4K I'd be in the 150" range.
Looking on their chart, they show Ideal and the MAX distance which is less then Ideal. So at around 8 feet. Ideal is already Maxed out there chart. The smallest, less then Ideal is at least 70".
So no, I'm not really overstating anything. I could get a 4K 70" Samsung TV for about $1400. I really need at least 100". LG has a 98" 4K 2015 model on Amazon used for $37,000. Or a new 86" for 8 grand. Which is why I say it's much better/cheaper to go with a Front Projector. If you want the real benifit of 4K.
The resolving power of the human eye is often cited as 50 cycles per degree (CPD), which turns into 100 pixels per degree. Your first link (at least) assumes 60 pixels per degree is the limit of human resolving power. That makes quite a bit of difference.
To give a different example, a 65" TV subtends an angle of 25 horizontal degrees at a viewing distance of about 3.2 meters. At 1080p resolution, the pixels per degree is 76.4 (1920 pixels/25). UHD is of course twice that.
With my 100 pixel-per-degree threshold, the resolving power of the human eye is more than 1080p - so UHD would have some benefit. But if you use the lower 60 pixels per degree threshold, then there would be no benefit.
So our different views on this are grounded in using two different values of human visual acuity in the analysis. I'll stick with my more conservative value, but freely admit for most material it frankly doesn't matter (since the source material simply doesn't have that level of fine detail anyway).
We are way off topic, if you want to discuss further I can separate this onto its own thread.
Have run many 1080p files via my 526x with perfect video resolution via plex on a series 9 samsung....loving the new setup and speed from the 526x. Can run 4k with some stutter but for now 1080p excellent.
Ya, the 526X Like a stock 516 is good playing/transcoding a couple 1080P streams at once. 4K though is a lot more Data, My 516 would stutter/Buffer to the point of not worth watching. That's transcoding from a 4K video down to 1080P that my 1080P HDTV can see. It sure doens't know what 4K is. If you need 4K, the 626x would have been the one to get, but even then, you would be limited to 1 4K Movie at once. Anything more then that? Like a 1080P stream at the same time or Direct Play, maybe be able to do it. My Upgraded 516 which basically turned it into a 716 other then the 10 gig ports, also allow me to stream 1 4K Video. I really have no plans to do that any time soon. 4K takes up a lot of space and I think 1080P is just fine. But for testing to see how much better it performs, it was a good test. No more buffering!!!
The 526x is a Nice looking NAS with enough performace for Home use with PLEX if you're looking for a all in one solution with the power to do on the fly transcoding, which for me is very important. Glad it's working out for you. It's nice not having to deal with your discs. Being able to just watch any of your movies in any room of your house with a TV, or even away from home. It's like your own personal Netflix type service. Except it's all content you like. You can even share with friends, which I do. I have over 700 movies and over 100 TV Series with over 2600 Eposodes. Been buying DVD movies for YEARS. My first DVD was Lost in Space. I have a huge Disc Spinner filled with DVD's, HD DVD's and Blu-Ray's. I've been ripping discs and sticking them in a 300 disc binder which I have a few of. I then toss the cases. I have the Discs as a last resort backup. It takes up a fraction of space. I don't have to hunt for a disc. I still have a number of Blu-Rays to rip. You know you buy a a movie on VHS, then it's on DVD, and now it's Blu-Ray. Talking about buying the same move over and over. I'm sure not going to buy a Digital copy when I can just rip my Blu-Ray and create my own Digital copy that's DRM free.
