ASUSTOR Portal

You will find the ASUSTOR Portal app in App Central. Use this app to fully exploit the NAS server's multimedia capabilities since it offers access to the KODI (formerly XBMC) application. It also allows you to browse the Internet through its built-in Google Chrome browser or log into ADM to manage the NAS, watch YouTube clips, or monitor live feeds through Surveillance Center. All the above can directly be done on your TV and without a client PC.


This is ASUSTOR Portal's main screen, and you have three options with which to remotely control ASUSTOR Portal:

• The ASUSTOR remote
• The AiRemote app for mobile devices
• USB keyboard and mouse

Plex

Plex Media Server allows you to stream media to numerous devices. These include smartphones, tables, notebooks, etc.

An Asus DSL-AC68U router located at around five meters and two moderately thick walls away was used for all of our wireless multimedia tests. Using Plex, we managed to stream 1080P content (MKV format) with a bitrate of up to 20 Mbit/s smoothly. We noticed frame drops and breaks only during playback with higher bitrate files. We unfortunately weren't able to stream 4K content properly over a wireless connection.

Kodi

Kodi is probably the best media player application around. It can be used to play all popular audio and video formats and allows for network playback should you want to stream multimedia on the NAS to a TV or monitor through the bundled HDMI port. We suggest you use a multimedia keyboard to control Kodi, but you can also use any device that is compatible with Asustor's AiRemote app.

Kodi reproduced every file we tried well, from high bit-rate 1080P to 4K resolution videos. The AS3102T has a weaker dual-core processor CPU, which had it tax its CPU heavily during 4K content playback, something the stronger quad-core CPU of the AS3202T didn't struggle with.

SoundsGood

SoundsGood is a Web music player that allows you to listen to music stored on the NAS via a Web browser. It supports browsing by artist, album, or folder and supports keyword searches. It even allows you to create playlists, and if you connect speakers to the NAS via HDMI, USB, or S/PDIF, you can use SoundsGood as a local music player.

LooksGood

Use LooksGood to stream videos from the NAS to a client through a web browser. It supports high-definition multimedia content, subtitles, and different audio channels. You will find a brief introduction to LooksGood here



The LooksGood app managed to stream 1080P content (MKV format) with a bitrate of up to 42 Mbit/s smoothly over our wireless connection, which is quite impressive. A wired Gigabit Ethernet connection even had us stream 4K content without any problems.


The graph above shows how heavily the CPU was taxed as 4k media content was transcoded using the LooksGood app. As you can see, CPU utilization wasn't high, and RAM utilization was low.