HYBRIDDESK STATION

By installing the applications required to enable the HybridDesk Station you can use most of the applications found in the NAS from the comfort of your living room and/or bed. Unfortunately just like with previous NAS models we had a hard time locking onto 30Hz at 2160p resolution but 25Hz will do fine for our tests (from the settings screen you can also choose which apps can be shown on the main screen).

The applications installed by default are Google Chrome, Clementine (multi-platform music player), DeadBeef (music player), Facebook, File Station HD, Firefox, OceanKTV (Karaoke), LibreOffice (office suite), Surveillance Station, Music Station HD, QTS (web interface), OpenTTD (game), Photo Station HD, Plex Home Theater (media server), QVR Pro Client (Surveillance Station Upgrade), Skype, Spotify (music, podcast, and video streaming service), Supertux (game), TuneInRadio (online radio), Video Station HD, Wesnoth (game), HD Player (combines the photo, music, video stations) and YouTube (KODI was installed manually by us).

Accessing the QTS OS from HDMI may still not be as smooth as the desktop browser version but it can come in handy for emergencies.

Once again if Karaoke is your thing then the OceanKTV will brighten your day not only because of its new features and plethora of available songs (via YouTube) but also because of its very easy to navigate and colorful interface.

Plex Home Theater really needs no introductions (not only can you can organize and playback all your media collection through here but you can also watch online channels/feeds).

The HD Player allows you to view pictures listen to audio and watch video clips but it lacks many things we’ve gotten used to from KODI including support for some file formats.

We installed the latest available KODI version (v18.0 Alpha 2) in the TVS-873E-4G but for some weird reason (perhaps due to the 4GB memory) we were unable to playback heavy bitrate 4k media (65-85GB MKV files – we were however able to play full HD MKV files). This could be due to the fact that QNAP no longer supports KODI but since we had no problems with previous QNAP models in which we manually installed KODI our eyes fall on the amount of available RAM.