We have been into Home Theater and whole-house video systems for many years. As a result, we have purchased a large collection of Movies, Albums, TV Shows, and other video content on discs.
One of the main reasons for our investment in our Home Network and our Homelab was to create a home media system that enables us to use our extensive content collection anywhere in our home. This project also enables us to access our content from our cars and while traveling.
We own all of the content that we use. Our purchased content is in the form of physical discs (mostly) and some high-quality downloaded audio content from HDTracks. We respect the rights of the original creators of the content that we use.
Our Content Lineup
We subscribe to the following online services for streaming content:
- Hulu for our main streaming channel lineup
- Hallmark Plus for Movies and TV Shows
- Great American Pure Flix for Movies and TV Shows
- Disney Plus for Movies and TV Shows
- Apple TV Plus for Movies and TV Shows
- Amazon Prime Video for Movies and TV Shows
- Netflix for Movies and TV Shows
- YouTube Premium for short video content
We use a combination of AppleTV 4K Clients, our iPhones/iPads, and our macOS Laptops to run Apps to access all of these services.
Home Media System Architecture
Our Home Network and NAS Storage play a central role in our Media Architecture. We can source content from multiple sources including the Internet, Local NAS Storage, or our Off-Air IP Tuners.
Our content can be viewed or played on any of the TVs and in our Theater via AppleTV 4K Clients. Content can also be viewed and played on our iPhones, iPads, and laptops via the Internet.
The AppleTV 4K’s, iPhones, iPads, and laptops in our home run applications that provide consistent user interfaces to all of our content stores and streaming services across all of our devices.
Central to our architecture is a Synology NAS which provides content storage and servers that organize and stream our stored video to all of our devices.
We consume most of our content by streaming it in its native resolution over our network to our Apple TV 4K clients, macOS Laptops, and iPhones/iPads. Our client devices then convert the video and audio into a format that we can view.
Our Media NAS can also transcode content to formats that require reduced streaming bandwidth. This is useful when we use our content on the go via the Internet. Our NAS does not provide Hardware Transcoding but it seems to do OK with transcoding of content with 1080p resolution or less.
We used wired Ethernet connections for all of the media devices within our Home to ensure a quality viewing experience for 4K content and multi-channel audio. Our iPhone and iPad devices play our content fine using our WiFi network.
Our Synology NAS devices provide snapshots and backups for all of our content including offsite backups via the Internet and Immutable Snapshots for ransomware protection.
Off-Air Video Tuners
We also receive our local channels in off-air digital formats using HDHomeRun Tuners. We have three of these including one that can receive 4K transmissions. These tuners provide IP/Ethernet interfaces to Channels DVR (see below) over our home network.
Synology NAS Media Server
We use a Synology RS1224+ NAS in our Server Rack (NAS device below the drawer in the rack above) to store our purchased Movies and Audio Content. This NAS runs two media server applications that make our content easier to use:
- Channels DVR – Consolodates our Hulu streaming channels and our Off-Air Tuners into a channel lineup and guide. Channels DVR also provides recording and playback of these sources to and from our Media NAS storage.
- Plex Media Server – Organizes all our videos into visually appealing libraries and adds posters, ratings, cast lists, season and episode details, and more.
Channels DVR Server and Plex Media Server run as native packages on our Synology Media NAS. Information on downloading and installing these servers is available via these links:
TV and Theater Clients
We use Apple TV 4K media streaming devices in our Home Theater and on all of the TVs in our house.
The AppleTV 4Ks run apps that provide interfaces to all of our content services and our Channels DVR Server and Plex Media Server. They are capable of displaying 4K content and support Dolby ATMOS multi-channel sound.
Our Apple TV 4Ks connect to the Internet and our Media NAS via our Home Network. We use wired Ethernet interfaces to connect our AppleTVs to ensure a consistently good viewing experience.
Channels DVR
Channels DVR can consolidate channels from TV Everywhere capable streaming services and off-air tuners like those from HDHomeRun into a single channel line and program guide. It also records channels onto our Media NAS storage.
Channel DVR provides a host of features including Commercial Skipping. You can learn more about the features of Channels DVR here.
Channels DVR Server Optimizations
We’ve implemented a few optimizations of our Channels DVR Server to improve its performance. These include:
- Creating an SSD volume for the Channels DVR Server application and associated metadata. This optimization required separating the recording storage from the app’s storage. The recordings are stored on an HDD-based volume on the hosting Synology NAS.
- Creating an NVMe read-only cache for the Synology Storage Pool that stores our recordings.
These optimizations speed up Channels DVR significantly.
Plex Media Server
We use Plex Media Server to store and organize all of our purchased Video and Audio content.
Here is a video that provides a brief overview of Plex Media Server, what it does, and how to get started setting it up –
The following are some feature summaries from the Plex Media site:
- Movies – Organize all your videos into beautiful libraries and we’ll add the finishing touches with posters, ratings, cast lists, season and episode details, and more! Have a bunch of related movies, shows, and music? Make a Smart Collection to bring them together in one place for you to enjoy and share.
- Music – You bring the music, and we’ll do the rest. That means automatically organizing all of your songs and albums, providing beautiful cover art, artist bios, genres, and more. And, Plex supports playback of virtually any music file format, including lossless types like FLAC.
- Watchlists – It’s an infinite list of shows and movies to keep top of mind, that saves to your free Plex account. See something you like? Add it to your Watchlist in one click!
Plex also provides Live TV and DVR services.
You can view and manage your content from a variety of different devices via the Plex and Plexamp Apps. You can download these here.
Plex Media Server Optimizations
We’ve implemented a few optimizations of our Plex Media Server to improve its performance. These include:
- Creating a RAM disk on the hosting Synology NAS and configuring Plex to use it when transcoding streams as they are played. We upgraded the RAM on the hosting Synology NAS to 64 GB and allocated 85% of the RAM to the RAM disk.
- Creating an SSD volume for the Plex Media Server application and associated metadata.
- Creating an NVMe read-only cache for the Synology Storage Pool which holds all of our media.
These optimizations speed up Plex significantly. The use of the RAM disk also reduces the wear on our SSDs.
The following video is a good source of information on optimizing Plex Media Server.
Media On The Go
We can use our content on the go. Apps are available for iPhones, iPads, and PC that work with our streaming services as well as Plex Media Server and Channels DVR Server.
The iPhone Apps can connect to Chromecast-enabled TVs in hotels to play our content when we are traveling.
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The images above show three of the Apps that we use remotely.
- AppleTV App – Plays streaming content from our Apple Library.
- Plex App – Plays Movies, TV Shows, and Music stored on the Plex Media Server on our NAS.
- Plexamp App – Plays Music stored on our Plex Media Server. We can listen to our audio collection in the car using Apple Carplay when we are on the road.
There are versions of these Apps for iPads and other devices as well. Many of our streaming services have Apps as well.