What is the Status of HDMI NAS Drives in 2021?

[Music] hello and welcome back and today i want to talk about the subject of hdmi enabled nazis more precisely i want to talk about the state of play when it comes to hdmi analysis right now because it has to be said that in the last few years hdmi equipped nasa's that's nasa's with a visual output port have started to get less and less appealing now there's lots of reasons for that i will go through in a moment but today's video can be broken down into three main sections one why is hdmi kind of dying out two what is the state of play with hdmi on a nas right now in terms of support and what you can do and three most importantly do you need an hdmi equipped nas so first and foremost off the bat this is the tvs 472 xt it's a four by thunderbolt and 10 gpu equipped now for the majority of that we're gonna largely ignore what we're interested in of course is that hdmi port there on the rear if my light isn't going absolutely crazy right there that hdmi equipped port let's leave that facing the other way that enables a number of ways in which you can interact with your visual equip data or dealing with visual or graphically uh manipulated user interfaces on the gui from qnap and use this device in more than just a file folder structure it allows you to use it um in surveillance in virtual machines in entertainment and more so with all of these extra features and functionality out there why has hdmi started to sort of disappear it's not completely gone but it has to be said for every 10 nasties that are out there probably only two three at a push of hdmi on them well a lot of that is to do with the cpus inside these devices it's no secret that a lot of the cpus have been affected by the shortages sure but the number of cpus that are used in traditional network attached storage devices have changed a lot of file transferring and the way these systems are designed to integrate with systems in home and business environments has changed the way people interact with the data the speed at which they want it and what they do with it using their client devices or simply by the web browser and because of that the cpus inside these devices have become less graphically orientated the most classical example of course is the new ryzen series processor the ryzen v1500b a quad-core 2.2 gigahertz processor that doesn't have embedded graphics it is x86 and it's a 64-bit processor comparable to you know anything from intel out there and that cpu doesn't have embedded graphics but it can still handle graphical manipulation again virtualization flex media server 4k and 1080p surveillance that's what i think it can handle all of them but it does it with software handling it does it with more resources and power than an embed embedded graphics cpu would do so now that ryzen is one example but with the rise of affordable arm 64-bit processor from brands like real tech and the ever-growing demand for xeon processors in the majority of network attached storage and data center environment means that it's less profitable to produce a system that has embedded graphics for business prosumer maybe the ifrs your pentiums your celerons they're fine the majority of that is being produced these days the brands make more money on a system there's far more geared towards file handling for business small or big than it is towards entertainment even the scaling you've seen on the promotion of these devices you've seen less mention of things like flex media server less mention of kvm keyboard video mouse let's mention of those features and functionalities so that's one of the main reasons the cpus are just not designed to have hdmi outs they don't have that visual output you can get around it a lot of systems again tune up a kind of championing this in that their systems will have um support of graphics cards so if you do want the graphical component and therefore you want the hdmi out as well as graphical support they allow a gpu passthrough to allow you to install a range of graphics cards into these systems with some nas is arriving with additional power cables as well to support rather aggressive graphics cards on top of that you have support of things like ai assisted surveillance which does require graphical manipulation and therefore with synology with their ir based system the dva 3221 technically their only ai assisted system there that nas there has a graphics card inside it doesn't have hdmi out but it needs that graphics card to manipulate that data so that this leads us onto the state of play of hdmi right now on and ass in 2021 and going into 2022 these systems that are actually that still have the hdmi port still have a huge amount of features and functionality available to them we've already mentioned plex media server we've already talked about a virtualization with a vm that can be deployed directly from this with a keyboard video mouse surveillance is obviously the big big big one with the idea of having a standalone surveillance station that can also be accessed remotely but on top of that in qnap's case with qvr they have increased the number of ai assisted applications which again require graphical embedding inside and therefore are available to be utilized with hdmi out even their most beastly desktop right now the atax uses a one of a very rare um xeon that has embedded graphics and that system has hdmi the state of hdmi equipped nas is in 2021 2022 although thinner on the ground is a better quality at least in terms of hardware than it's ever been but the amount of development that's going into applications that are hdmi supported is thinner than it's ever been which is a real shame because it's a tremendous amount of opportunity here with these increased resources to take advantage of these systems in a greater way i mentioned plex there there's now no official plex app for hdmi out there was a time with hd station uh before version four where there was a plex app that allowed you to enjoy your plex media server collection directly connected via the nas via an hdmi into your high-end tv particularly with these systems that have got hdmi 2.1 and 2.0 ridiculously um high-end 4k 60 frames and 120 um i think hertz hdmi abilities but the flex app is no longer supported on these platforms same goes for kodi kodi is long gone officially and although both of those apps can be installed unofficially it's not the same and it's a lot more rigamarole and it feels slightly dodge sometimes in terms of your warranty and support when you're doing something with a nas just it's a big old window that goes you know you're doing this without us supporting it right on top of that surveillance with the hdmi out is still pretty good on these systems it has to be said qbr has continued to support hdmi out but even when you're using it it really feels just like the hdmi client running on maybe a linux vm or something like that or a container it doesn't feel as sharp as it was a few years ago still very very good you've got access to the full system and the cameras but a number of the options aren't visibly there as they are we're dealing directly with the graphical user interface you're still you still feel even though you're connecting with the device on kvm that you're still dealing with a light client as opposed to the full range of configuration options open to you in the gui via your web browser with regards to virtualization um one video that i never successfully got to complete maybe i will with running a virtual machine on the latest generation of devices and using hdmi out qnap allows you to connect your virtual machine to the qnap and take advantage of something called qkvm it allows the vm to be ported directly from the hdmi on the nas the virtual machine with a keyboard and mouse turning this into in some cases a very very powerful computer that can also be remotely accessed as a nas simultaneously what sounds bad about that well nothing bad but we were preparing for a video where i was going to utilize a device like this one with an i3 processor to run a retro gaming rig with the launch box and it became very apparent early doors that the refresh rate of qkvm because it's still running very similar to the vnc connection of um remote accessing the vm that the refresh rate the minute you were doing something uh graphically orientated watching media running games where the frames are refreshed quite rapidly that the refresh rate isn't quite as good and even if you are using an as an hdmi 2.0 like this this nas which is supposed to do 4k at 60 frames per second and 1080 120 it wasn't able to refresh that vm and the bottleneck was happening internally not there on the hdmi port there so the state of play of hdmi on nas right now the hardware for what there is is beautiful and qnap are pioneering this getting ahead of everyone else the only brand even getting a bit close is asa store but it has to be said that although the general standard of hardware is up there the third party client support and qnaps and development on these apps because of demand appearing to be more niche is also dropping likewise now should you still buy a nas with hdmi well i think yes i think it's a great little feature and when you buy nasa as an hdmi port i guarantee the cpu inside is something good from solaron at the base there even a dual core um you know j4000 series cpu all on the 5000 series gets implemented all the way through to your pentiums i3s i5s and their isaiah i7s if there's an hdmi port on a nas it means it has embedded graphics or a transcoding engine or integrated graphics or support of a graphics card sometimes already implemented into the system which is a good thing it's a more capable tool and it's got more resources readily available just don't go into buying an hours with hdmi and assuming it's going to be perfect because you are still running a feature that is arguably more niche within the niche subject of nas within the subject of it and by the process of elimination updates to them are nowhere near as frequent as other apps thank you so much for watching i hope you've enjoyed this video if you have let me know in the comments and click like so i know these videos actually get somewhere and i can help you guys out do visit the guys at span.com for your data storage needs and otherwise i will see you next time

Channel: SPANdotCOM

Views: 1,607

Keywords: data storage, nas drive, das drive, raid storage, data storage solution, HDD Storage, SSD Storage, Hard Drive Storage, Data Storage Solution, RAID Solution, NAS ENCLOSURE, HDD Enclosure, Data Storage Specialist, Data Storage, NAS, DAS, SAN, SATA

Id: 2mMSuoNzuUc

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021