Synology Unveiling 2-Bay NAS DiskStation DS214play

Synology Inc. introduced DiskStation DS214play, a two-bay NAS server designed to serve as a full entertainment suite. Optimized for multimedia processing, it is tailored to users’ needs for high-quality video streaming, photo, and music sharing, while keeping all other aspects of NAS uncompromised.

“Designed as the ultimate media hub with complete NAS features, the all-new DS214play will satisfy users’ complete viewing needs,” said Chad Chiang, Synology’s product manager. “Users can easily enjoy movies, TV shows, music and more from DS214play right on their best screen in the house.”

It features 1080p full HD video transcoding on the fly. Not only it is capable of streaming HD digital TV and movies in their original HD quality but also supports a selection of formats, making it easy for users to watch videos via Apple TV, iOS and Android handsets as well as computers without the hassle of installing a 3rd party video player.

Powered by a 1.6 GHz dual-core CPU, DS214play delivers R/W speeds of over 110MB/s and 100MB/s respectively under RAID-1 configuration in a Windows environment. It comes with a built-in floating-point unit and 1GB of RAM, furthering overall performance when running multimedia applications and generating thumbnail images.

Despite performance, power savings at merely 11.5 watts and 28.74 watts respectively during HDD hibernation and in full operation.

It’s equipped with an SD card slot for plug-n-save solution, one eSATA port for external backup option, and two USB 3.0 ports for higher data transmission. Front mount tool-less drive bays with hot-swap capability are available to simplify HDD installation and ensure system reliability.

It runs on DiskStation Manager 4.3, an OS that provides a host of applications to bring better productivity at work and offer a new level of multimedia experience. The last version of NAS OS was honored with Best Choice Award and Media’s Choice Award at Computex 2013.