As far as the Brix goes, would this get the job done? I've bought plenty of refurbished products before and have never had a problem. The price is reasonable. I would add a USB 3.0 external drive.
That's the exact model I have Channels running on right now. It runs Plex (whose files are stored on a NAS), Channels (which records to an external USB3 drive), UniFi SDN and UNMS. I have no problems with remote streaming, nor with recoding multiple (6+) programs at once while streaming.
(Of course, my Brix is running Arch Linux with the Zen kernel, so I'm not sure what performance with Windows will be. I also have 8GB RAM and rarely see more than 2GB in use at any given time; my swap partition is almost never touched.)
I've noticed since I switched to the mini pc with a USB 3 external drive that load times are about 3x longer than with the mac with an internal hard drive. Does that sound about right?
Buying these parts for my next build (a few for each paycheck)....
-This case....https://luna-design.org/dnk-h#design
-ASUS Prime H310T thin-ITX board
-Intel Core i3-8100 CPU
-4GB RAM
-Sandisk Cruzer Fit 32GB USB thumbdrive, loaded with UNRAID ($60 license)
-WD Blue 1TB HDD 2.5”
Total cost, $450. Matching the size of a Mac Mini and having the freedom to swap out any parts for upgrades as needed....priceless.
New to channels DVR - got tired of the poor DVR capabilities of PLEX and the abominable interface of HD Home Run DVR
I noticed that there is no love here for the QNAP series of Intel powered NAS Devices
Running Channels DVR on a QNAP TS451 4 bay Nas that is running powered by Celeron J1900 Chip - Intel quick sync enabled for hardware transcoding
works great with both Plex and Channels DVR - I've found that Channels DVR has less than half of the CPU utilization for the same tasks that Plex will require on my NAS.
Qnap offers intel powered Nas's that are typically less expensive than a similarly powered Synology box
I think that the lower tier of Intel chips work great for the majority of users - If you need multiple transcoded streams or are servicing multiple TV's with DVR, then I recommend going with a Intel PC with a least a I3 or an I5 processor
Here is a NUC that should be fine to run Channels DVR ...
1 Like
I have a QNAP TS-251+ with a J1900. Honestly that chip is ages old now (launched 2013), and I'm definitely starting to notice its age.
If I were in the market for QNAP again today, I'd go with the TS251B which has the same J3355 which is in the Synology DS-218+. The TerraMaster F2-221 also has the same CPU:
Synology DS218+ (J3355 dual-core 2GB): $299
QNAP TS-251B (J3355 dual-core 2GB): $285
TerraMaster F2-221 (J3355 dual-core 2GB): $250
TNAS is less featured than QNAP's QTS or Synology's DSM, so if you plan to use a lot of NAS apps and features then the more polished Synology or QNAP interface may be worth the extra money. But from a hardware perspective these three NAS are identical.
Although @tmm1 doesn’t recommend J1900 CPU (due to age of chip) in his latest post “NAS Recommendations”:
Another viable (low priced) 4bay NAS from Qnap:
The TS-451+ does use the older J1900 chipset
I was looking to build a "Hackintosh Mini" so I got an older HP8300 USDT business machine on eBay (10"x10"x3"). It came with an i5-3475s, 8G RAM, a 128G SSD, and a 256G HDD. It was $170 shipped. It has turned out to be a great machine for Channels DVR. I just plugged in a portable USB 3.0 drive I already had for the recordings. There are lot of these HP8300 machines - and also the Dell Optiplex 7010/9010 machines - out there on eBay and Amazon for less than $200. Mine came with Win 10 and I added OSX to it. But you can run them with anything you want. I was going to get a new Intel NUC but this seemed like a better option and - so far - it has worked out very well. And you can also choose the other form factors for these - SFF, Mini-Tower, or Regular-Tower.
2 Likes
What is the speed of the NIC on these ?
The HP8300 has an Intel 82579LM Gigabit card. But I actually just use a $20 Wifi Range Extender (with an Ethernet port) because we don't have a wired connection in the room where the machine lives. I get about 70 mbps which is more than enough.
Just thought I would update the status of my channels build as it is pretty unique and I want people to know it can be done.
My Server is currently running on an HP DL360e Gen8 server. Virtualized Windows 10 using ESXI as the hyper visor. I am passing my Nvidia Quadro p2000 through to the VM.
My storage is being shared from my FreeNas server over the network.
I just ran a test 3 local Apple TVs, 4 remote ios devices, and 1 remote Apple TV. Everything was smooth.
If anyone has questions let me know.
2 Likes
I've been using Channels now for short while. I am happy and staying. I cancelled my Cable TV service with Cox after 20+ years including 15+ years of HDHomeRun legacy and Extends plus 10+ years with 3x HDHomerun Primes setup with BeyondTV (old throw back for those that know SnapStream) and WMC when Cox went full DRM. We are a household family of 5 and we watch a lot of TV.
For Channels setup, I've been using a Synology 1813+ 4GB ram and 36TB storage. works well, but I also use this NAS as my backup storage for the house. (we/I am a data hoarder for pics and media). I have been able to record 4-5 TVE streams simultaneously with no real issue to note. I'm just concerned of overworking it when 9TBs of data backups are happening.
So, I traded some old server equipment for a used QNAP TS-253Be-2G unit. I upgraded it to 16GB ram with 2x 6TB Raid-1 Iron Wolf drives. I plan on using this as my Channels DVR server with no other purposes.
Can I expect this QNAP to perform well for my needs? is there something I should setup/config to get better performance?
Any helpful suggestions are welcomed.
here is some info on QNAP ....
1 Like
Thank you, I've already setup Channels properly on the QNAP with firmware 5.0 and did a few test runs. I looked around the forum for a bit to ensure I was not completely blind-sided. I saw a few references for the QNAP 251+/451+ models so I was a little bit confident.
2 Likes
For anyone looking for cheap solutions I suggest ebay! I got my channels DVR running on an HP prodesk 400 G4 I was able to snag on ebay for $90. Has a 7th gen intel pentium with quicksync and 8gb of ram it came with. I threw a m.2 in for boot and am using a 4tb usb3 drive I had laying around. Works great!
3 Likes
I just started using Channels on a Synology DS220+ with 10GB RAM and it works way better than my old setup, which was a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB RAM.
What HDD are you using with your DS220+?
Different NAS (I use asustor) but I have Seagate Enterprise Exos x16 7200rpm. I have had very good luck with. Never had a failure. I haven'tbhad I/O issues.
Good bang for buck on storage. $16.50 per TB on Amazon right now. I currently have 5 EXOS drives between 2 devices.
1 Like
I have a 2TB Firecuda hybrid drive installed at the moment. Planning on buying two 10 TB
Seagate Exos 7E10 drives at some point.