I am currently running the DVR on my 2020 iMac with a 4TB HD for the recordings. This set up requires the iMac to be on 24hrs a day. I know nothing about the Pi's, but admitidly it is tempting to set up the Pi4 for the cost and to be able to turn off the iMac daily and save some power.
Is it worth it to move to a Pi for someone who knows nothing about them?
I knew nothing about Pi's and was in the same boat as you just a few months ago after discovering Channels. I couldn't close my MacBook without shutting off channels, so I looked for alternatives. I found the TechHive directions online to setup Channels on a Raspberry Pi 4 and it's been great.
But the new dedicated Pi server setup that the developers have come up with seem even easier. I say go for it.
If you use the Channels image to make the Pi a dedicated DVR it's even easier. It took me maybe 10-15 minutes and it works perfectly
This might answer some of your questions. I think overall you will have a much better experience with the iMac, but I get that you don't want to depend on having your computer up and running 24/7.
I concur. I just wanted to add my experience with Raspberry Pi 4 as a DVR (replacing my Mac Mini which had previously been used as the Channels DVR at my house.) I did not have any previous experience with Raspberry Pi. I had already set up my Mac Mini, so that part of the process was still familiar to me. I wish I had done it sooner, as it was surprisingly straightforward, just following the instructions on the Channels website for DVR over Raspberry Pi. https://getchannels.com/dvr-server/ I just had to get a Raspberry Pi 4, a case, a power supply, and a microSD card (only used it temporarily to flash the Raspberry Pi 4 to boot from USB), then a USB external drive, (flashed it with the Channels DVR server image). The Raspberry Pi site had Macintosh software for free, to do both the flash of the SD card, as well as the flash of the Channels DVR image. It works great, runs cool, no fan, is silent, and lets me turn my Mac Mini off whenever I feel like it.
Does it ever suffer from being out of resources, when multiple streams are running/recording and its trying to run comskip at the same time?
I'm currently trialing channels but its running on a vm at the moment and I'd like to move to a Pi eventually if it can handle the load
I have two AppleTV's using Channels TVos app to view from this DVR, as well as an iPad and an iPhone for the same purpose. So far, all I've tested was watching a recorded show from one AppleTV, while at the same time watching a live show that was being recorded (from a SiliconDust HDhomerun Connect 4K tuner) - I was able to skips ads in the recorded show, and saw no lags, buffering, etc. The temp on the Raspberry Pi went from 45ºC to 53ºC. FYI running Version 2021.0428.1701
Typically the only performance limitation on the Pi is when transcoding is needed. It can only do one stream at a time. Under normal circumstances, transcoding is only used when accessing your DVR remotely, or via the web ui.
I'm now seeing my Raspberry Pi DVR server crash after a few hours. I think it might be the SSD I'm using. It comes back up when redo the "flash the image to the external USB drive" and restart the Raspberry Pi. It doesn't stay up for very long, though. I haven't had much time to figure out what's going on, or how to fix it yet.
Actually, I just checked it again remotely, and it is back up again.
I am in the same boat, running on a 2012 iMac. I looked up what the power consumption is for my iMac when left on 24/7 and calculated that out for a year. Turns out that the cost of keeping the iMac running ($35/year) was less than the cost of purchasing all of the parts needed to build out the Pi. Of course after a couple of years the Pi is cheaper, but I am replacing the iMac next year any way so that expense is already baked in to my plans and I know that the Mac is able to handle all of my devices without issue.
The iMac uses 79.8 W of power when it's in use with the display on, 20.6 W when it's in idle mode with display off, and 1.03 watts when in sleep mode. I have the screen on about 8 hours a day on a busy day.
I went offline again, so I've added a powered USB hub in-between the Raspberry Pi4 and SSD drive. It is up now, and I will monitor to see how long it stays up.
Two days since I installed a powered USB hub in-between my Raspberry Pi4 and the external hard drive it is booting from for Channels DVR. It has stayed up, and made recordings, per passes, etc, and done commercial-skipping, all with no problems. Two days up. (I'm assuming it was a power-starved SSD drive at this point, and that the issue is resolved.) Any changes, and I will reply back again.
Over a week solid of uptime. Problem is resolved 100% with just a USB hub (powered)