TS-251 vs TAS-268

[Buraczeko]

Hi,

I can't decide which one to buy. I want to use NAS mainly as a Media Center. I don't really care about NAS features. As long as it holds my data a shares them between my Mac and PC then it's good for me. Only thing I'd like to use is Time-machine backups and QNAP Cloud but both of those can handle those tasks so I think it doesn't really matter.

For media playing I want to use Kodi. I don't really like DLNA, Plex and all of those streaming or whatever they're called services. I prefer hooking up straight via HDMI. I've been using Kodi on my PC for years but now I'd like get rid of it and utilize Home Server and Media. I'v tried Plex and Emby but there's always problem with subtitles coding and so on...

I know that TS-251 is much more powerful and supports Video Transcoding but since I don't care about video streaming that much I think it's useless for me. Or maybe I should change my mind, what do you think?

I'm planning on running NAS almost every day but only for 3-4 hours. Do you think I see some difference in Power Consumption between those two models? I know that TS-251 takes more energy since it's x86 but is it really a big difference?

What I'm little bit affraid is Kodi support in future. I think better choice there is TAS since the Kodi is running here under Android so updates and whole community might be better in future. We're talking about atleast 3-4 years that I'm planning to use this NAS.

Next thing is Virtualization. Can somebody please explain me how this thing works?

I also love the NAS remote for Kodi. It looks much better thank using phone as a remote.

One of the thing I'd love to use but have no idea if it's possible is AirPlay. Is there way to just play music from my iPhone to NAS? I know that Kodi supports this with limited features but is there some dedicated app that can take care of this?

What I'm really scared of is power of TAS-268. Can it really handle 1080p video with a decent bitrate in Kodi? Which one is better here Kodi Android or Kodi in HD Station ?

[Buraczeko]

Hi Philippe,

Thank you for great reply!

Of course I've already searched all informations on both of those but I really wanted to get more the end user experience. Of course on the paper TS-251 looks much better but this still won't help me to decide

I don't really care about 4K video. Hopefully TS-251 handles 1080p well. I'll have the check the specs. Thanks for that.

What I really need is opinion on Kodi. Linux or Android. I will search Kodi Forums now I guess. What do you think about future updates? Would you prefer Linux Kodi or Android one?

I'm more thinking about TS-251 now to be honest. From android I'd use probably only Kodi anyways.

Thank you very much for your help!!

[lnamer]

Hello, I recently bought a TAS 268, mainly to run Kodi, and have been experimenting quite a lot, these are my conlusions after a couple of weeks of fun, am still working to see if there are workarounds to some of my issues.
On one TV I have my original NAS TS-421, connected to a Nvidia shield TV, connected to my TV.
On the other TV I have a TAS-268, media files are replicated form 421 to the TAS 268. The reason I have this set up is that I cant get enough bandwith to get full HD movies streamed from the TS-421 to both TVs (tried WIFI, CPL, etc... and cant hard wire ethernet cables...), so RTRR backup works great.
I have not tried the 251 series, but one of the main reasons I prefer to run under android is the ease to set up a VPN to get french TV abroad, and the flexibility to run android apps.
Overall am very happy with the TAS-268, but find the 421 + Nvidia shield much better, for the following reasons.
- TAS-268 cannot run the native Kodi media player, but needs to launch an external player to get hardware acceleration to play flawlessly full HD. If you install Kodi directly from QNAP store, it will be automatically configured with the external player. This makes you loose some integration (easy subtitle download, asect, etc...). Not a major issue but still prefer the native Kodi player.
- No DTS-HD, Dolby true hd, passthrough with the TAS-268 while it works fine with the nvidia shield (and latest Kodi 16)
- I still havnt found a way to play older VC1 encoded files (first few Harry potter BR for example) with the TAS-268. Player doesnt hardware decode it, MXplayer does but I have sound issues for the moment...
- Interface on shield is much quicker and fluid due to the higher processing power
- Only drawback of shield is Android TV, which has less apps avalaible than standard android ( despite there are workarounds to install apps on android TV)


So I know I am not answering the question as i have never had the 251... But hope it can help a little. Overall I am very happy with the TAS-268 (especially beeing able to carry it with me on vacation to have all my medias available). But my "old" 421 with a Nvidia shield is more powerful for a fixed Kodi installation.
I dont use virtualization and the more Advanced Linux features, so cant help much on that.

[Buraczeko]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the really great replies! I've finally decided and bought TS-251 with additional IR remote. I've paid 7000CZK which is roughly around 300$.

It should arrive until Friday. I'm curious if the Kodi will run fine but if not I'll return it and buy some cheap NAS just for data storage and I'll build some energy efficient HTPC for Kodi.

For now I need to transfer around 3TB of movies to our corporate server and then back to formatted drive in NAS. I hope our IT manager will be ok with that

Anyways, thanks again for great replies, it helped me alot. It's great to see that community around QNAP is active and helpful

[schumaku]

Seriously, I don't think the comparison of the TAS-x68 with the Nvidia Shield is correct. No doubts, the Nvidia has the much more powerful platform, especially the GPU side ... and there is a SoC maker behind who is pushing it ahead. Why not? Simple ... Android TV is much to limited when it comes to serving storage ... nothing near to the TAS capabilities ... "just" the ability to deal with local storage - either read-only, or an encrypted ext4 file system which can't be accessed on any other system.

Appears you are newer to XBMC and Kodi on Android ... many things were much behind the native x86 builds, and it's still not on pair today. What is in general (leaving QNAP out of the play) a no-brainier is an almost full audio pass-through capability on the (sorry) real Kodi is still far away on Android. All what's really missing on he "real" Kodi builds is currently the recognition and pass-throug ability for Dolby Atoms - anything else works like a charm ... any ma decoder can do his job.

A trend I see on the so-popular SoC low-cost to pretty good SoC from Rockchip, Allwinner, AMlogic, HiSilicon, MediaTek, ... and their integrators are customized Kodi builds optimized for their hardware environment (most badly breaking all Open Source licenses ...). For a while I have made me some foes ... well, they behave like ... some forum mods on China (or Malaysian) media player maker are attacking me personally when I'm asking about OPEN SOURCE RIGHTS ... bottom up Kernel config, modded open source ... instead of backing and pushing these violators, I get shot to my back.

Regularly playing and testing coming up Kodi dev and RC builds, I spent some time on the official Kodi 16.0 RC3 - with the plain built-in player - on the Nexus Player (Android TV, x86) and the TAS-x68. Despite the push ... not even the Nexus Player as the Google lead platform does offer AAC or HD audio pass-through. On the TAS-286 there is still (or again) an issue that we get "noise" instead of digital pass-through, most of the stuff is down-mixed to 48k PCM.

We can then also discus if these SoC correctly deal with all the more or less popular 23.976 fps, 24 fps, 25 fps, 29.97 fps, 30 fps, 47.952 fps, 50 fps, 59.940 fps, 60 fps ... and the 1000/1001 frame duplication or suppression (depending on the effective fps on the output used) the educated eye can see ... it's required to keep audio and video in sync.

Nuff said for now ... some latest and greatest (supposed to be...) China Android Media player boxes are on the way ... so more fun to come.

Regards,
-Kurt.

PS. Aside ... if one of the readers has the "official" QNAP Kodi config at hand (calling the external player) .. please post a copy to the forum ... silly me shut my copy to the moon.

[schumaku]

@schumaku ... is it what you want ? :

Yes, exactly ... this is the thing confusing me. I would understand when they would call the SoC custom Rtkplayer as used on other RTK1195 Anroid media players or the like for supporting the acceleration features ... and not the generic com.android.gallery3d

[lnamer]

Thanks all, you have got me motivated to do a lot more testing as soon as I am back from vacation.
Think the only reason to consider at the end a TS-231+Nvidida shield vs a TS-251 is that it is about the same price tag. And have no issue to share files from the NAS to the shield using NFS.
For Kodi on android, have tried this version (http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=252852) on both TAS-268 and shield and only get full audio passthrough on the shield.
Main issue is that I have only MKV files (I have ripped my entire blu ray collection on hard disk for ease of access) this is the only format I know of where I can get multiple audio channels and especially no further compression/modification from the original blu-ray. So they are a bit challenging for my machines.
Yet based on your info, will do some more testing and post on the other form. Thanks for the infos!

[schumaku]

For Kodi on android, have tried this version (http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=252852) on both TAS-268 and shield and only get full audio passthrough on the shield.

This is not an App build imitation...

We should maybe clarify more :
- DTS and DTS-HD are officially Marshmallow only
- TrueHD has not been confirmed by Google, yet.

The Shield backported DTS and DTS-HD to their lollipop and "anticipated" TrueHD

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid ... pid2192124

Rockchip has in the meantime redesigned some software internals, and they have built custom versions of libstagefright and are providing a custom Kodi build providing pass-through for the major Dolby and DTS variants, including the HDvariants on Android 4.4.2. So it can be done. Yes .. we pushed them since 2014.

Said this ... looking at the effort done by Nvidia, by Rockchip, and others ... it's clearly a task for Realtek and QNAP to backport the similar changes ... or bring up Marshmallow (yes, I know ... some QNAPies hate me now) - as of today, both the RTD1195 family (as we have in the TAS-x68) family kept kind of current and compatible - considering these are one of the few platforms where Kodi can't make use of the SoC acceleration features. It is certainly possible to make much more out of the TAS-x68.

[TigerCh]

For DTS-HD and Dolby ... pass-through ... I have NO idea (no hardware to test it) BUT you can open a ticket in heldesk because it's announced (for a part)

Up to 7.1 channel audio passthrough can be supported for PCM
Up to 5.1 channel audio passthrough can be supported for DTS and Dolby.

Philippe.

Hi All !

May be, it will be interested for some.
I have TAS-268. My AVR Marantz identifies DTS-HD MA signal from TAS as standart codec DTS. Likewise and with format Dolby: True-HD from TAS identified as standart codec Dolby Digital.

I opened a ticket in helpdesk about this. Helpdesk answered, that QNAP TAS-268 not support formats DTS-HD MA and Dolby True-HD. Device supported only standart codecs DTS and Dolby.

[schumaku]

Helpdesk answered, that QNAP TAS-268 not support formats DTS-HD MA and Dolby True-HD. Device supported only standart codecs DTS and Dolby.

This is nothing new, some insight ware provided in this thread already. The TAS-x68 software specs are clear: https://www.qnap.com/i/en/product/model ... 08&event=3