Budget NAS for DVR

[ronpod]

Are you able to setup the WD My Book (WDBBGB0040HBK) as a stand alone NAS on the wireless network or does it have to be connected to a computer at all times to function as a DVR?

[tmm1]

The single-drive My Book drives do not meet the minimum specifications for Channels DVR. So you would need a more powerful computer to do the recordings if you were using that drive.

[ronpod]

Would you be as kind and list a few of the more “economic options” for a drive that would be able to meet those minimum specifications as a stand alone NAS drive? I have no brand preferences so any brand is good by me…

[tmm1]

Most people end up picking either a Synology DS216+ii or QNAP TS-251+

[ronpod]

Both of those options are diskless bays that cost $300 when you add the disks to it you end up spending $500-$600… that’s not a cheap option
Any other solution?

[tmm1]

The TS-251 (not the plus) is available on Amazon $249. You can get a single 2TB drive for $82.

https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-251-Personal-Transcoding-TS-251-US/dp/B00L8GHOQ8/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1490061830&sr=1-3&keywords=qnap+ts-231

https://www.amazon.com/Red-2TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B008JJLZ7G/ref=pd_sim_147_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FFP4KFNZ5PNGN10TP08V

[tmm1]

There are even cheaper NAS available, but they typically don’t have Intel CPUs (which means you won’t get features like transcoding or commercial detection).

If you’re fine without those features, you could go with something like the TS-231 for $199.

The DVR would also work on many low-end NAS models, but you might notice that it’s slow which can become frustrating.

If you have any old computers in your house, those tend to work really well with the DVR and are often more economical than NAS.

[karlmitchell]

If you want ultra-cheap, and know Linux, you could try an ARM-based ODroid-XU4 running Linux with a USB-3 hard drive added. This is a very cheap way to build a NAS. Again, no real-time transcoding, but it should get the job done. If you want to stream, you could run my Plex transcoding scripts.

More information on ARM systems are here:

ARM64/AAarch 64 based SOCs

Thanks to a very responsive development team we now have not only ARM32 but also ARM64 builds for Linux and now Android too. For those of you wondering why this is desirable, this is because both they tend to do better than Intel Core ix systems in terms of both performance per watt and performance per dollar. ARM SOC boards - the Raspberry Pi 3 being the most famous example - are typically extremely cheap, starting at around $40, usually only use a few Watts of power, are are often fan-free/…

[tokyotony]

Hate to jump in here for this post, but would the new Synology DS118 work with Channels?

[Boiler92]

I just in the last couple of months installed a DS116. I use it with an ATV 4K and it works great. It does not have an intel processor, so like has been said in earlier posts, it will not transcode. For me, that is a non-issue because I’m using a ATV. It would be problem with an older 2Gen Amazon Fire TV, Firestick or play back using the Channels DVR webpage. All together, I spent about $200 buck for the NAS and 1TB drive.

[cjlcooper]

I purchased the 8$/mo subscription for Channels DVR as I have a WD Mycloud 2gb NAS drive https://www.wdc.com/products/personal-cloud-storage/my-cloud.html
that I was hoping I could record directly to. I discovered after the fact that the drive was running version 4 of the firmware and thus doesn’t contain the ability to install the Channels DVR app outlined on the channels web site.

I have a mini-PC that I installed the Windows version of the DVR app on and mapped a share from this NAS device and was able to use it for recordings. I love the channels app on my Apple TV and recording is easy. However, I have to leave the mini-PC awake all the time for this to work and every-time we have a power outage or a bleek in our network access which is frequent, I lose my recording connection and have to log back into the Mini-PC and reestablish the channels connections. This is a pain so I would prefer if I could record directly to my NAS device.

So I went out and purchased a new WD MyCloud Home 4gb device https://www.wdc.com/products/personal-cloud-storage/my-cloud-home.html at best buy ($179.00) thinking it being newer, has to be running a compatible firmware that supported the channels app. To my surprise, it was also running 4.0 firmware but does have a “Services” option that has various services such as “Plex” that can be configured. However, I don’t see any option to adding a channels DVR service? Anyone know of a solution?

Strangely, I have two HDHOMERUN devices and the HDHomerun DVR App on a PC or IPAD allows recording directly to the WD NAS drives so it would seem that the Channels folk should be able to do the same.

Any hope from any channels support folks reading this text of coming up with a solution for the WD NAS cheaper drives?

[karlmitchell]

If you want to go really cheap, and don’t mind something without hardware transcoding, you could consider the ODroid-HC2 running Linux. Don’t forget to buy drive, power supply and case too.

http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php

[tmm1]

So I went out and purchased a new WD MyCloud Home 4gb device https://www.wdc.com/products/personal-cloud-storage/my-cloud-home.html at best buy ($179.00) thinking it being newer, has to be running a compatible firmware that supported the channels app. To my surprise, it was also running 4.0 firmware but does have a “Services” option that has various services such as “Plex” that can be configured. However, I don’t see any option to adding a channels DVR service?

We wrote and submitted an app for this model to WD a couple months ago. They said they would review it, but haven’t gotten back to us