I currently have a Mac mini (2012, Quad core i7) with 16GB RAM and an internal 2TB HDD which I've been using for the last few years to store our collection of photos, home video clips (mostly from when the kids were young), our iTunes library (approx 100Gb), and other data amassed over the years (the stuff you never seem to delete). We have iPads, iPhones and a couple of new model Roku's attached to our TVs and I installed Plex some time ago on these, and we also have a few Sonos speakers that are connected to the iTunes library too.
At the moment my data is a bit vulnerable, I basically plug in an external 2.5' HDD and do incremental backups on an ad hoc basis (whenever I remember / feel like it basically!) and then store the backup drive in a secure place.
So I'm looking to improve on this and ensure I have some redundancy / resilience, and also rip our collection of DVDs (80 approx) and Blu-rays (70 approx) so that we can simply browse and watch using Plex on any device.
A few years ago I had a dabble at ripping a few DVDs using Handbrake. In the last few days, as we are locked down, I have my daughters ripping the rest of the collection onto the free space on the 2TB HDD on the Mac mini using MakeMKV, and I'm then adding them all to a queue in Handbrake to convert to M4V files (H.264) which I believe can be played natively by the Roku and our iOS devices. I have a Pioneer USB3 Blu-ray burner arriving tomorrow to be able to do the BR collection.
So - I've started looking at NAS drives as an alternative to using the Mac. It will immediately give me some redundancy (2 disk mirror) and I was thinking of going for 2 x 4TB to ensure I have plenty of space for the foreseeable future. From what I've read, if I choose the right one, a NAS will allow me to do all of the things we use the Mac for currently, i.e. host our videos, photos, and DVD/BR rips via Plex to a mixture of clients, store our data securely (or at least provide some redundancy), host an iTunes library for Sonos, and no doubt lots more. I've also recently got Office 365 Home (with 5 x 1TB OneDrive included) so I'm thinking of using one of the OneDrive accounts to store our critical data as a second backup, synced with a share/volume on the NAS.
The thing I'm struggling a bit with is transcoding. I'm converting all the MKV rips to M4V, so they should, I believe, play natively on our devices and therefore not need to be transcoded. But we do have thousands of video clips filmed on various cameras/camcorders over the years which range in format from AVI, MPG through to AVCHD (MTS) files. So most of them will need to be transcoded by the NAS via Plex unless I'm going to laboriously convert them all first. When I watch them on say the Roku using Plex they do take quite a while to start playing compared to the DVD rips - and this is of course with them being transcoded by the quad core i7 (2.3Ghz) in the Mac mini.
Budget is about £500 including hard drives. Is there anything better than a Synology DS218+ with 2 x 4TB drives for this price? Will it be beefy enough to transcode the above stuff on the fly with no issues, and will it be faster or slower than the Mac for this? It only has 2GB RAM and a Celeron processor, although I know you can't directly compare it to the Mac as they are about efficiency etc.
I also want to make sure I'm future proofed to an extent - we may go 4K at some point in the next couple of years, not sure, in which case I'll be buying some UHD movies to play on our Xbox One as well. I may want to rip these at some point too - will a DS218+ do the job for those, with Plex?
Final question - as I'm about to start ripping our Blu rays tomorrow, is there any easier / faster way to do them using free software than the MakeMKV / Handbrake combo? What kind of file sizes can I expect if I convert the MKV into an M4V using the 'High' setting on Handbrake?
If there's another option, e.g. attach a cheap NAS to the Mac, and leave the Mac doing the hard work with transcoding etc, then that's fine, I just want to know what the very best option is, given my needs. I do ideally want it to be cost neutral though - the Mac mini is worth about £550 - £600 I think so it would fund a nice NAS - adding a cheaper NAS to the Mac would however cost me £300+ I suspect.
Thanks in advance for all the help and apologies for the long post !