Synology DiskStation DS716+II 2-Bay SMB NAS Review

Usage: Media Functions

Before we dive into the media functions themselves, we need to stop by the Control Panel again. Within the System section, is the Indexing Service. Here, we will want to make sure that our photo and video folders are linked and indexed.

There are also settings for Video Transcoding and Photo Thumbnails within this page, so check them while you’re there.

The indexing and conversion take a lot of resources, so time it for when it isn’t needed. You can also pause and delay the action in you temporarily need the full system resources.

Audio Station

Testing the Audio Station is quite easy. Copy some music onto the NAS and launch the app. You get a tonne of various sorting options, you can create your own playlists, or you can generate a Random 100 list of your library.

Before we move on to our actual files, we better take a look at a few of the settings first. Within the options, we find the Transcode options, among other things. With a CPU like the DS716+II, we’ll want to make sure that it is turned on.

How you want to browse your music library depends on what you’re looking for and how large your library is. There are plenty of options such as browsing them by album artist, or folder.

Entering an album will show all the album’s songs and their details. Double click a file to play it directly in your browser.

You can also play internet radio directly through the Audio Station. Select one of the hundreds of pre-listed server or add your own custom ones.

Photo Station

To test the photo station, I’m copying a little over 10GB of photos. The copied photos include various unedited product photos as they have the highest resolution and size but also edited photos that I’ve used in previous Synology articles.

The synchronisation for my folder with edited photos is quick, and I can browse all my photos with various display options.

The unedited photos take a bit longer to process. Not only is there ten times the photos, the resolution is that of a 30MP camera. We can already browse the images, but the thumbnail and miniatures are grainy as they still are processing in the background.

Smart Albums is a quick way to organise your photos. The function finds photos and videos based on the filters you set and return the result as an album.

Among the various view methods, is one with titles. That can make it easier to find the photo you are looking for among your hundreds or thousands of pictures.

The Photo Station isn’t just for yourself; you can also use it to share with friends and strangers. If you make the service available to the public, then you can switch to Photo Station only accounts and keep people away from your actual DSM users.

You can even use the Photo Station to create your blog. You can also export existing blog in a method that makes them easy to import into WordPress.

Video Station

For the Video Station, I’ve copied a couple of movies and TV shows onto the DS716+II and we’ll see how the Video Station handles these files. In total, there are around 100GB files in this section.

The first thing we need to do is to tell the Video Station where our files are and what they are.

Then we double check that we have enabled hardware acceleration. With the support for it in the DS716+II, it would be stupid not to turn it on.

You get various viewing options from thumbnails to details.

The TV shows function had trouble identifying some of my files automatically, but the folder view always works.

Entering a show and then a season will show you all the episodes within. A single click is all it takes to play it from here.

You can also get details grabbed from the internet about the various content.

Media Server

The media server works a lot like the video station, except it can stream to various media players. There is no problem in using the same media libraries across apps, so there’s no need to store your files double.

The Media Server doesn’t have its own playback function, but it does come with a set of settings to adjust. For example, it allows us to change how music is displayed when accessed through this service.

We can also increase the compatibility by transcoding the audio.

Plex Media Server

The Plex Media Server is a quite popular app, especially amongst PlayStation users who have had access to the Plex client for a long time. But the Plex client is available for pretty much any system, may it be Linux, Android, Windows, or Mac OS/iOS powered.

You can use the app for free, but there’s also a paid subscription model which will give you access to more features and functions. Whether you get this or not is your choice. If it is your main media playback service, then it might be worth getting the lifetime membership to the Plex service.

Once we have set our folders for the content in much the same way as we did with the other media apps, we can start to watch our movies and shows There are a lot of view and sorting options; we can play it directly in the browser, or stream it to compatible devices.

The movie details come directly from the internet, so you don’t need to add a lot yourself. You also get ratings directly from there along with the cast and more.

TV shows are easily sorted and selected. Again, the app will grab the information from the web and set it up in the fashion you want it.

You can read up on all the details of your shows and browse the various seasons with ease.

Once you’ve found the file you want to play, just play it. The video player comes with an overlay control panel for all the vital features

And once you stop moving your mouse, the overlay will hide and give you nothing but the movie or show you want to watch.