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NAS, 4k video sharing over Internet

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Mikimix

Serviio newbie

Posts: 1

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2019 6:25 pm

Post Sun Nov 17, 2019 6:58 pm

NAS, 4k video sharing over Internet

Hello,
I need an advice. I want to start a NAS server in my home. I want to buy this: Synology DS418

I would like to share my films and all the data over the internet to my brother's home or even to a friend.
I want them to play smoothly mainly movies in 4K resolution.
I informed about DLNA technology. But this technology only works on the local network, but not over the Internet to another home, does it? So my brother couldn't open my shared folder from the NAS server on TV, could he?

I wanted to test how DLNA works. So I downloaded Serviio on my PC. Sharing movies on TV work well. But only Full HD video was played smoothly. When I tried to play a 4K video, it was freezing every 5 seconds. Only lower quality 4k movies, about 10GB, probably witch less data flow went smoothly.

So the question is how to share smoothly quality 4k movies. I think I will need a faster connection in the local network, so Gigabit network. (not 100Mb/s)

So I need a gigabit network and run the Serviio PRO on the NAS server to share the data over the Internet. Also i need replace my LAN speed and Recipient will also need a Gigabit network and both sides of course must have a fast Internet connection. (I have internet connection 37Mbps and brother 22 Mbps)
Its right ? Have someone some experience with this ?
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atc98092

User avatar

DLNA master

Posts: 5205

Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2012 10:22 pm

Location: Washington (the state)

Post Mon Nov 18, 2019 1:18 am

Re: NAS, 4k video sharing over Internet

You are correct that DLNA is unable to be used across the Internet. With Serviio Pro, you have the option to make MediaBrowser available over the Internet. But that requires using a web browser at the receiving end, which usually means a computer. Very few devices that you use to watch movies on a display have a web browser. But it's certainly possible.

However (you knew that was coming), movies ripped from discs will most likely have bitrates beyond what your or your brother can support. DVD rips usually don't exceed about 10 Mbps, but 1080 Blu Ray rips can exceed 50 Mbps, and 4K movies can exceed 120 Mbps. These are peak rates, but you still need about 70% of that for smooth playback. And even more important is your upload speed. Depending on your Internet access, it's likely you have different upload and download speeds. Some connections are synchronous, but most aren't. For example my DSL download speed is just under 90 Mbps, but my upload speed is only 10 Mbps. I can stream a DVD rip without transcoding alright, but anything higher requires transcoding to a lower bitrate. So, your 37 Mbps Internet download speed might be as low as 5 Mbps up, which is barely sufficient for a DVD rip to stream. How does Netflix stream 4K with only 12 Mbps? Heavy compression and adaptive bitrate streaming.

Which brings another issue: the processing speed of your DLNA server. Synology has some of the strongest products out there, and the DS418 looks like it can handle the transcoding necessary to support a slower connection. But be aware that transcoding will remove any lossless audio (transcoded to standard Dolby Digital), and has the potential to reduce image quality. Reduce by how much, I can't say. But to take a 4K movie and reduce its bitrate to no more than 10 Mbps will certainly be noticeable.

Your local 4K streaming test may not be an accurate judge of your entire system. Depending on the player and the profile you were using, it might be computer processing speed that was the bottleneck, not your network. We would need more information about the computer you were using for Serviio, and the media info about the file you were playing. But yes, a uncompressed 4K Blu Ray rip could be too much for your network if it's not Gigabit.

There are other options to stream across the Internet besides Serviio, and some have their own app that works on different players. But they will have the same issues that I mentioned as Serviio would, namely computer processing power and Internet speeds.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

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