Synology DiskStation DS214play review

THE TRANSCODER
To enable DLNA media streaming, you must install the Media Server app with DSM’s Synology Package Centre. Downloading Media Server is easy enough, but we’d have preferred to have it already preinstalled and ready to use.

Audio and video transcoding can be enabled within Media Server. Simply select the options you want to enable and you’re away. Even on Microsoft’s ageing and very limited Windows Media Player, we were able to stream FLAC and MKV files that were slickly transcoded in real time.

You can also download and run other multimedia programs in DSM, such as Audio Station, Photo Station and Video Station and you can use these apps to play media files stored on the DS214Play through your web browser. You can even make these programs accessible to non-admin users, which is helpful if you want to let your family access media stored on the DS214Play but not its control options.

The media players listed above also support features such as internet radio and the streaming of content from DLNA servers on your network. We had some trouble streaming content with older versions of Internet Explorer, but we had no difficulty streaming content with the current version of Google Chrome.

MEDIA MOGUL
The DS214play is certainly one of the more specialised NAS devices we’ve seen from Synology and it performs very well. The transcoded video and audio streams we tested were perfect, with no artefacts, glitches or loss of synchronisation. Many popular DLNA clients, including Windows Media Centre and the Xbox 360, are very limited in their format support, and some hardware streaming media receivers struggle with decoding formats such as MKV. If you have difficulty playing your media on your computer or mobile device’s media players, the DS214play could be the ideal media server for you.

In terms of throughput, the DS214play compares well to the similarly priced, Best Buy-winning Synology DS213+, and its transcoding performance makes it ideal for those who need a NAS enclosure for media storage.