HTPC/"NAS" for running Emby and more

[TheSwede86 0]

First off, a fresh new member so "Hi you guys!:D"
Ehm. I currently have an Asustor AS5004T which has a Intel J1800 CPU which is an dualcore 2.41-2.58GHz CPU together with 8GB (2x4GB) of RAM. The CPU supports "Quick Sync" and the NAS actually supports Emby: http://www.asustor.com/apps/app_detail?id=306

My setup is as follows:
Sab (via SSL)/Sick/Couch
Kodi on the NAS via its HDMI to my TV for watching things locally
Plex on the NAS for my parents to watch on their Samsung TV (Plex-app in Samsungs appstore)

The problems:
Recently started viewing H.265-videos on Kodi and they lag when panning.

Tried to stream an 1080p movie to my parents with first the highest settings and then gradually lowered the settings but the movie still plays "catchup"  quite often. My connection is 100/10, soon to be 100/100. This was using Plex on my NAS on Plex on their TV. They have 100/10 as well.
Except that one stream the NAS should have been idle.

What I want:
To solve above 
Future-proof it to play 4K video locally (4K@30Hz since I'm guessing 60 is only needed if you intend to play videogames)
Being able to stream locally as well as to perhaps 2-3 remote sources in 1080p without degradation of quality (not sure about the bitrate but we are talking around 10-15GB per movie).

 

Now I actually recently heard about Emby and since it seems to support both my NAS and their Samsung TV with apps then my first questions are:
- Would a Emby setup with my current NAS allow for H.265 to play without lag locally as well as to stream one 1080p source on its "highest" setting remotely?
This would be a good solution right now since I currently have quite a lot of things to buy. Guessing this depends on if the Asustor Emby-app supports utilizing "Quick Sync" and the Samsung Emby-app supports connecting to a remote server.

As to "future proofing" it my thoughts were:
i5 6400 (w. support for "Quick Sync") + GTX 950 (HDMI 2.0 for 4K/30Hz locally as well as NVENC)

The load that CPU would need to carry would be a theoretical of: SAB (SSL) + local viewing of an 4K-movie + remote viewing of an 1080p-movie (w. perhaps one more concurrent remote stream)

Your thoughts and ideas are appreciated! / TheSwede86

Edited February 16, 2016 by TheSwede86

[legallink 187]

Are you anticipating 4k through x265?  Or uncompressed?  Or another codec?  265 requires a lot of processor power.  Additionally, how many concurrent streams are you looking at?  If I add up the above, are you saying you want to support 3 4k streams?  And on that note, do all of them have to be transcoded or will it be direct play?  Aka are you laying to ipads or are you playing to an HTPC.

 

3 1080p streams with an i5 6400 should work pretty well with the proposed setup.  I don't know that you need the GTX 950.  I have a headless i5 2500k (no graphics card), and I can support 3 1080p streams transcoded concurrently (aka all roku's, apple TV's and ipads) (and that is without quicksync implementation). 

 

With ath information you may get a little bit more specific informaiton.

[TheSwede86 0]

Are you anticipating 4k through x265?  Or uncompressed?  Or another codec?  265 requires a lot of processor power.  Additionally, how many concurrent streams are you looking at?  If I add up the above, are you saying you want to support 3 4k streams?  And on that note, do all of them have to be transcoded or will it be direct play?  Aka are you laying to ipads or are you playing to an HTPC.

 

3 1080p streams with an i5 6400 should work pretty well with the proposed setup.  I don't know that you need the GTX 950.  I have a headless i5 2500k (no graphics card), and I can support 3 1080p streams transcoded concurrently (aka all roku's, apple TV's and ipads) (and that is without quicksync implementation). 

 

With ath information you may get a little bit more specific informaiton.

Hi!

 

Thank you for your reply.

I might have a bit unclear above but what I wanted to say was that I would like to support perhaps:

1x 4K-"stream" (locally via HDMI)

2-3x 1080-streams (remotely)

 

That is worst case scenario above,

I would be slinging to either the Emby-app on a Samsung Smart-TV or a Chromecast (v2).

Chromecast seems to support .MKV (guessing either H.264 or H.265 is irrelevant since .MKV is the overall container?) and I don't actually know what the Samsung-TV supports (the Wiki-site is not up yet) but it should support .MKV.

 

Thanks for sharing your setup, if your i5 6400 supports 3x concurrent streams which require transcoding I would be good I'm guessing.

The GTX 950 is to get a HDMI 2.0-port but guessing my soon-to-be motherboard will support it as well so I might not actually require the graphicscard.

I was thinking about the GPU as well to offload the CPU, SAB might run at the same time as the "worst case scenario" sometimes. Then I'll have the option for "Quick Sync" or "NVENC".

 

In regards to the 4K; I don't actually know?

I got plans to get a 4K-TV and guessing the codec will be H.265 since its so good at compressing videos.

 

---

 

On another note:

I installed Emby on my NAS and then downloaded the Emby addon for Kodi and tried both "Automatically" and "Intel Quick Sync" but my H.265 videos still "lagged". 

Weird thing was that my NAS CPU-utilization was not anywhere near maxed. I was perhaps around 60-70% but the videos still very noticably lagged during panning.

All this above was locally via the NAS HDMI-port.

[chriskev 0]

If your CPU isn't maxed and you only see lag while panning, it's possible that your problem is judder.  This happens when your display refresh rate doesn't match your video frame rate.  Most videos are encoded at 23.976, so you want your monitor/tv refresh rate set to 24Hz.  If it's running at 60Hz, you will get judder, which is extremely noticeable on pans.

[bluemonkey07 590]

I wouldn't say most videos, most movies certainly