Synology DS415Play NAS Review - Compared to Synology DS415+ - Bluray MKV Encoding

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VIDEO INDEX:
0:02 - Comparison with the DS415+
1:56 - Hardware overview
2:57 - Network drive performance benchmark
3:33 - Video station overview
4:33 - Airplay from video station web interface
5:18 - Live 1080p encoding of a BluRay MKV to an iPad
6:38 - Live 1080p encoding of a BluRay MKV to Chromecast
7:58 - Plex performance (or lack thereof)
8:32 - Conclusion and final thoughts
Many viewers were confused by the fact the Synology DS415+ we reviewed two weeks ago was more powerful than the similar DS415Play, yet the + edition could not do the video encoding the Play can do.
Synology told me that this was a decision on their part to differentiate the product lines - the Play edition for home media serving, and the + editions for small to mid size business markets that need better performance for real time encryption, etc.
Synology sent us the 415Play for testing and I put it to work seeing how well it could transcode a high bit rate Bluray MKV file to my iPad and other devices. Surprisingly it could handle that file with ease to the iPad, encoding it perfectly and firing it off over WiFi. It only used about 30% of the 415Play's available processor resources, meaning the drive could do other things in addition to serving me video.
Chromecast was another story unfortunately. It was not able to maintain the stream as reliably as the iPad, pausing and breaking up while I was watching it.
The DS415Play also allows for the installation of the Plex Media server on the device, but it is not optimized for the 415Play's processor. The result is that 1080p Bluray movie completely bogging down the processor and requiring a reboot. Lower bit rate files (as well as ones that are just passed along to the target device) should work fine in Plex. But I think Synology really wants to steer people towards their own apps vs. something from another vendor.
Overall performance of the DS415Play is excellent - sustaining over 100 megabytes per second in both reads and writes over a gigabit network. More than adequate for any home server tasks.
So which should you choose? The DS415Play is the best top-end home NAS / media serving device I've tested so far in the studio. Yes the DS415+ has even greater performance if you have link aggregation hardware, etc. but from a standpoint of practicality the DS415Play is really all you'll need.
If you're doing things beyond just basic media serving and running more robust server applications on the device, the extra RAM on the DS415+ might be more important than the video encoding features the DS415Play provides.
The bottom line though is that I don't think we need to rely on NAS devices for encoding any more. There are some great players on the market that I've tested (namely the WD TV and the Roku 3) that can take those large bitrate files over DLNA from a Synology or other NAS and play them back perfectly.
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DISCLOSURE: Synology let me borrow the DS415Play for the purposes of this review