Synology DS218J?

Channels DVR Server
#1

Hi All,

When I was planning on going with Silicon Dust’s DVRing service I was going to use a Synology DS218J with a pair of WD Red (5400 RPM) 4TB drives in RAID 1, which I was told would be quite sufficient. Will that also work well for the Channels DVR engine?

There have been times in the past where we wanted to record as many as three shows at once, thus the HDHomeRun Connect Quatro network tuner. So I can see the possibility of recording three shows while watching another, maybe previously-recorded, show. (There are people over on SD’s forum that claim they’ve had as many as six streams going on/off a DS218J at once.)

I realize there’d be no transcoding for remote viewing, but at about a $120 savings, I’ll take that trade-off. We’d rarely need or use remote viewing, anyway. Any other gotcha’s or trade-offs?

Thanks in advance.

#2 
CPU Model	     Marvell Armada 385 88F6820
CPU Architecture 32-bit
CPU Frequency    Dual Core 1.3 GHz
System Memory    512 MB DDR3

This is pretty bare-bones in terms of specs. It should work well for basic recording and playback of multiple streams, but no remote access and commercial detection will also be quite slow.

#3

My wife and I briefly discussed the desire for remote access last night and agreed we’d rarely, if ever, use it. We rarely watch any TV at all while on vacation. The commercial detection, though… is there somewhere I can read up on how and how well that works?

I’m easy to persuade to spend more money on tech toys :smiley: But to be convinced enough to argue for it with the family CFO: That’s a different question :wink:

#4

Personally, I’d download it and run it on something you have like a Mac or pc and record some of the shows you watch and see how it works on your channels/shows.

If you haven’t bought a NAS yet, it would also serve as a baseline for performance.

If I remember correctly, the $8 doesn’t get billed until the beginning of the second month, so you have time to try it out.

#5

[quote=“ImNotSerious, post:4, topic:6446, full:true”]
Personally, I’d download it and run it on something you have like a Mac or pc and record some of the shows you watch and see how it works on your channels/shows.[/quote]
That’s probably what I’ll do, assuming it’ll run on my Linux MINT 17 (Qiana) MATE server.

[quote=“ImNotSerious, post:4, topic:6446, full:true”]
If you haven’t bought a NAS yet, it would also serve as a baseline for performance.[/quote]
No, I have not.

By the time I’m done with The Project I’ll have invested north of $1,000 in hardware and software. I’m approaching this incrementally. I don’t really otherwise need the NAS, and I’d hate to spend the $410 (DS218j), much less $540 (DS218+), for a NAS, just to find out the DVR solution really wouldn’t work out well for us.

Yeah, first month’s free. I’m not really so concerned about the $8, but thanks for the info.

#6

You might also consider the DS218play, which has a price-point in-between the 218J and the 218+. It has a newer 64-bit ARM chip with double the cores and double the RAM:

CPU Model	     Realtek RTD1296
CPU Architecture 64-bit
CPU Frequency    Quad Core 1.4 GHz
System Memory    1 GB DDR4

That chip also has some hardware transcoding capabilities, although we don’t support those in Channels DVR yet.

2 Likes
#7

Hi :slight_smile:

So I see you posted this info about the DS218play about 7 mos ago; do you recommend it still today? I was considering this to replace my really old and under-performing Synology NAS and liked it's price point, as you said, between the 218J and the 218+

Thanks :slight_smile:

#8

Honestly I think you will be much happier with the 218+. The 218play is a great ARM NAS, but still doesn't compare to the raw performance of an Intel based NAS.

#9

Ah ok thanks for the input :slight_smile: