Prelude: I need a Mac mini as I run other things on it as well.
It’s time to upgrade my aging Mac mIni. I wanted to see if anyone is currently running Channels DVR on a 2018 Mac mini, and confirm that there are no issues.
Thanks.
Should work great. I'm planning to upgrade my Mini as well
Excellent! That's great to hear.
Out of curiosity, which model are you planning to get? Even the 'mid' level i5 is pretty beefy, so I'm not sure if I'll go with the i5 or i7.
I upgraded to the new Mac mini the day they came out. Running the 3.6 Ghz intel core i3 with 8 GB memory and 128 GB solid state hard drive. Runs great and have had no issues. I have three external drives connected. One 4 TB drive dedicated to just Channels, One 3 TB dedicated to just iTunes and one 3 TB dedicated to applications and data for the mini. Definitely faster than my old Mac mini.
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Do you do a lot of transcoding/ remote viewing? I wonder about the performance of transcoding.
Th base unit is on sale at B&H for $699:
A lot of remote viewing
@Ghealy4, can you please tell me how the 128GB drive is working out for you? Is it large enough for the OS and installed applications? I'm in a similar situation where all my data is on external drives. Very little is on the internal drive. Looking at the mini pricing, I see that I can take a base model with 128GB drive and upgrade the processor to an i7, for the same price of the i5 I was looking it that has the 256GB drive. I'm thinking horsepower is more useful to me than the drive size. I know write speeds are slower on the smaller drives, but I am not sure that will matter for my use case.
The OS and a few applications that require it are installed on the internal hard drive but I have installed most applications on the external drive. Currently I have approximately 80 Gig free on the internal drive. Has been working with no issuses. The mini is used primarily for Channels, remote and local streaming, and local streaming of my iTunes. I have three SD duo tuners attached to the network. Speed and processing has not been an issue with the mini.
I am running on a Mac Mini 2013 and it is working great. No issues.
Would the base model i3 be enough to transcode 4 remote viewing sessions?
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The new mini has a dedicated HEVC transcoding chip which we plan to utilize in an update later this year. But I think it can do several H264 transcoded no problem too
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I use Mojave with Channels DVR and it works great.
I'm considering buying a mac mini to use for a Plex server, Channels DVR and also managing my photos. I'm not sure what the near future holds but I'm trying to justify spending up for this. Can anyone talk me into it or out of it? We are mostly apple ecosystem here. Wife and I both have iphones, ipads and ATVs all over the house.
I have one and it works very well for Channels. I really don't do much else with it to be honest. I was running a 2012 Mac Mini previously which also worked very well. So, from a Channels perspective not much difference in the end user experience.
A part of what I look at when deciding to upgrade from one Apple product to another is the re-sale value on the older model. When I sense the re-sale value is about to "fall off a cliff" for the older product I tend to move ahead with the upgrade. I also look at on-going support for the product wrt to the latest OS versions.
Beyond that, our setup is very similar to what you described. Generally, completely an Apple ecosystem with the exception of the network gear.
I'm the same way...I like to get money for something while it still has value.
For me in this case, it's about running it into the ground so to speak. I've been running a 2012 mini 24/7 for the last 7 years. I don't worry about resale. I feel pretty good about how much I've gotten out of it. It's finally starting to feel sluggish, so I plan to pick up a 2018 later this year.
We felt the same way about our old Mac Mini - starting to get sluggish - but we didn't like that the new one is basically non-upgradeable and is 60% more than the previous one. So we actually tried doing a Hackintosh based on an ultra-small HP8300 and it's been working very well. It was $170 on eBay and came with an SSD so it's significantly faster than our Mini with HDD. We just plugged a portable USB 3.0 drive into it and it's doing a great job as both a general purpose "living room" machine and a Channels DVR Server.
I know that a lot of Mac people would never do that but we felt like we were very loyal too (this was not our first Mini). We just got sick of the soldered-down components and wanted to try an alternative.
I have one, also replaced a 2012 Mac Mini which was still chugging along, but feeling slower. Apple products are more expensive, but they've been super reliable. I think the Mini is the most important computer in the house, so it was worth it to me to spend the extra money. I have channels DVR, Plex, a Unifi controller all running on the Mini and it hums along fine. Also have a large external hard drive that serves as a Time Machine backup for all the Macs in the home.
I also felt at some point Channels may adopt H.265 transcoding, so I'm hoping the Mac mini will be powerful enough to handle this when / if it comes along.
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