Synology DS218+ for Plex free?

themissingelf

Yes, I'd agree - Plex is "polished" and straightforward but Kodi has just saved me £300-£400 on hardware and potentially a Plex subscription too. Quite a price to pay for convenience and I'm not sure there's that much polish on Plex.

mushii

I tried deploying Kodi at home. WAF Zero. Plex the whole family uses, wherever they are. Plus I share family Photos with my Brother’s Plex account. I also travel a lot and like that I can access Plex wherever I am in the world, which I do quite often. For me it’s the better option, but I see that for others Kodi maybe better.

themissingelf

I'm no expert (and don't really need access outside home); however, I'm figuring I just need to enable remote access to my NAS to watch content via Kodi on my phone, tablet, Fire Stick etc - even if I have to download the content before playing? I do understand the ease-of-use for Plex; however, I'm falling out of love given they seem to remove features (Channels aka. Plugins) - how can that be OK when customers have paid for a service?

next010

For remote access you can set up WebDAV or FTP access on your Syno NAS and Kodi support these though it has been a very long time since I have used those features I cannot recall if it streams or requires download (I think it streams). Go to add network source and cycle through them till you see WebDAV/FTP.

The other way would be to set up a VPN (virtual private network), Syno NAS have this feature built in too, this will make it look as if your on the local network and the Kodi client can access the NAS.

If you have an iPhone there is an app store fork of Kodi called MrMC, it doesn't have all the features of Kodi but the core features are there along with WebDAV/FTP support. It's actually available on the FireTV too if you want to avoid side-loading.