Synology Expands its ‘Play’ Lineup with New 4-bay DS415play

Launched earlier today, the Synology DS415play is being presented as the two bay DS214play’s bigger brother. For those adept to finding informational meaning from the device names, the four bay DS415play continues the example set by its two bay sibling by featuring hardware video transcoding, enabling the NAS to deliver full 1080p HD content to practically any media streaming device that might exist on your network. Shipping also with the exemplary DSM 5.0 firmware, the DS415play looks to bring everything the DS214play offered and more by expanding the supported usable storage to a staggering 20TB of raw capacity.

For those of us that like to keep our media files central to a single device and branch outward with our streaming devices, the capacity doubling of the DS415play over it’s smaller brother is an important and logical step forward. With four 5TB drives setup in a RAID 5 configuration, one can expect to have just under 14TB of redundant, usable disk space after formatting. Add onto this the many additional features baked into the Synology firmware and those available for download, the DS415play will find itself at home in the center of most anyone’s media-centric home network.

Powering the DS415play is a 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Atom and 1GB of DDR3 system memory. As for read and write speeds, you can expect to see over 110MB/s and 100MB/s, respectfully. Also available are a pair of USB 3.0 ports and three USB 2.0, all meant to provide access to external storage and peripherals. For those looking to the near future, the DS415play will also support the pending series of Android TV Boxes.

“The DS415play adds the one thing people wanted most in last year’s DS214play; higher capacity,” said Thadd Weil, public relations specialist with Synology America. “With hardware video transcoding, the ability to add up to 20TB’s of raw storage, plus the wealth of multimedia functionality integrated in DSM 5.0, media enthusiasts of all kinds will find a lot to love in the new play. It’s a great home server replacement.”

Available today, the DS415play ships with an MSRP of $539.99.