Cancelling my subscription and why

#22

I tried the RPi for several months. It could not handle the burden of recording several shows simultaneously while supporting 2TVs, screening commercials, etc. It needed to restarted often. Rolling through the guide caused crashes if one stepped ahead more than 4-5 days.

So I bought an i5-based Windows mini-computer for about $350 and the above problems pretty much disappeared. Here’s a link.

Beelink GK Mini PC with Windows... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092M91JSH?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

The only flaw now occurs if I try to scroll forward in the guide over 7 days. Perhaps once a month I might have to restart the computer.

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#23

Rpi would be a device I would only recommend to someone who loves to tinker. Not for a standard user that wants a quick easy setup. While easy to get up and running it could involve a lot of tinkering to get it right for the WAF.

Firestick is another problem. Its slow and doesn't provide the best experience.

Once I switched to AppleTV's, all of my problems went away. The best experience is an AppleTV paired with an intel processor capable with Quicksync.

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#24

I set up a rpi the other day to monitor my pool equipment (i needed something small that can live outdoors). While i was getting frustrated about how sluggish it was, i was thinking about how bad it would suck if i had to use it for channels. I will take a 10 year old pc over a rpi any day....

#25

Even better than when paired with an M1 Mac?

#26

That would be a question for the dev's but the Channels server was designed to utilize Quicksync for transcoding. The M1 is a whole different beast that I don't know enough about yet :slight_smile:

#27

I'm running on a eight-year-old Intel Core i7-4770R that has been running as my home server for that entire 8 years. Works like a dream and rarely goes above 20% CPU utilization. If it dies tomorrow, it would truly suck, but I got my money's worth.

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#28

I'm extremely satisfied with the value I get for my subscription. Bonus, support is super responsive to incidents!

#29

I ran Channels on a Raspberry Pi4 for a year using the Channels Pi image. Zero issues. I'm not using it currently because 1)I upgraded my NAS to a Synology making the Pi for Channels unnecessary, and 2) I was able to sell my Pi4 for almost 4 times the amount I paid for it!

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#30

depends on what you use it for :slight_smile:
I think I would grow too old waiting for this to complete on a pi, (those are seconds not minutes below) :wink:

Commercial detection for black-ish S08E11 The Almost Last Dance 2022-04-05-2129.mpg finished with 10 markers in 46.150839034s (7 threads)

#31

How many concurrent streams can you Ron on that? We watch a lot away from home. I ask because I was offered a 2014 max mini for $100 but wasn’t sure if it was worth it as I’d only use it as a server.

#32

I my 2011 mac mini I have done 5. Never really needed more that that.

#33

I am a HUGE fan of Raspberry pi and have a dozen or more of various types for different reasons, but I've never tried the pi version of Channels. I will say that I'm surprised to read the OP, but that is why I avoided the PI for channels.. I wanted the best possible chance for carefree "worked the first time, and the wife can use it" type of perfection.. I chose instead for the Windows version, running on a VM, and it has been basically flawless. I have experienced a few bugs here and there like anyone else, but as far as buffering and audio sync (things I attribute to hardware shortcomings) there have been none. The one time I had anything like that it turned out my disk was full (oops!)

The OP sounds like he's made his decision, but I'd encourage them not to be so quick to blame channels.. And, now that it's been my only source of content for about 10 months now, I'm thinking maybe I should let the "RPi Lover" in me load up the Pi version just to play with and test!!

#34

I might have another perspective on this. Before I retired, I wrote software across a variety of platforms, but mainly Windows and Unix. I live in a retirement village now, but still dabble in techie stuff. Many older people watch a lot of TV. Netflix and the main TV broadcasters's streaming catch-up are popular. Several people have proprietary "set top boxes". Windows is too hard for most users here, the iPad is very popular.

Perhaps for the "I don't want to manage the box" people a flash card with a custom version of Linux (Raspberry Pi) that is only for channels set to boot from a hard drive, presumably it could be locked down to just the ports that Channels needs?
Then chron to run apt-get to download and update the relevant packages? Trouble-shooting could be minimal as it might only have a very few packages, the HDMI could be connected to the TV. I guess the minimum needed would be a pi, case and 1TB drive. Maybe a software iOS device App remote like ‎Remote Pi - Ratings and Reviews (I haven't used it), or a cheap hardware pi remote? I kept an old Pi 1 Model B+2, that I run as a pi-hole, but it probably won't be up to running Channels DVR (the Model 2 that I had struggled)...

The $150 SiliconDust HDHomeRun Servio 2TB is aimed at the "keep it simple market" - The interface might be considered "challenging", it doesn't skip commercials, the subscription costs $35/year and (obviously) won't run Channels DVR. I use it as extra storage, or occasionally running when my iMac server is turned off and copy recordings to the iMac for Channels - Its pretty slow on a hardwired 1GB network (~1.5GB/min), probably reflecting the processor.

#35

If you have an old mac lying around I find the mac installation/running experience to be entirely unproblematic, and very much plug-and-play.

RPi is probably just too underpowered to be a pleasant experience.

#36

I find it interesting that so many consider the RPi4 an unworthy server. For about $175 I got a 4GB RPi4, Flirc case, power supply, patch cable, SD card and 4TB Western Digital Elements drive. It has run flawlessly for two months, at times recording four programs while viewing two and not a single problem. And the WAF is off the charts. From a technical perspective, I opted for this configuration mainly because I am not a techie.

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#37

I used to use Channels on a 2009 mac mini, which was, I would say, not quite good enough. Recording was acceptable, but playback at best quality stuttered.

I am now using a mac mini 2014 (have been doing so for I guess 7 or 8 years now!) and have found it fine. The fusion drive was fast enough, but I now have my Channels library on an external SSD. I do not ever encounter stuttering, and I have occasionally recorded 3 or so channels, perhaps simultaneously while watching.

For playback I use an aTV 4K (A12 version). Used to have the old aTV HD and that was again fine, no problems, when feeding my old HD TV.

Once Channels is interacting with enough h.265 material this mini may become a problem, but so far it hasn't been even for ATSC3 material (which of course, so far, seems to be only 1080p, not 4K).

#38

You can get a 2014 mac mini on eBay at a comparable price.
Of course it all depends on what sort of device feels more comfortable, but I suspect the mac mini (even with a fusion drive, let alone an external SSD for Channels) will be an easier fit for most users, like the original poster.

#39

Somewhere near the beginning of 2021, I tried Channels. On both a Fire TV dongle and Tivo Stream 4k dongle, I had all kinds of client-side problems. Buffer, lag, confused menu commands, smoke coming out of my ears, etc. No way could I subject that to the rest of the household that doesn't have my tolerance for constantly tweaking things because the are "interesting".

Forward to sometime early in 2022. I decided to give it another try. All of the previous problems were gone. The difference? Although it's possible that it was evolution of the software, I think the change that made the biggest difference was switching those client dongles to using wired networking instead of wifi. I already knew it would make a difference in general. It turned out to make a huge difference.

If anyone is having that kind of problem with Channels, you might get cured with a relatively cheap hardware upgrade. (In case you don't know, you can get these dongles that take both a power and network cable input and then plug into the existing USB power port of many of these streaming dongles.)

(And, FWIW, I don't think I've ever had a server-side performance problem with Channels. I now run it as a Docker container on an RPi 4 with a USB HDD.)

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#40

While wireless speeds can often match (or even beat) a wired connection, they often have much higher latencies than a wired connection. For content intended to be streamed over the internet (HLS/DASH with AVC/HEVC content) this is usually fine; but when streaming broadcast content (MPEG-TS), there is a massive difference. This is especially true when that content is bloated MPEG-2 OTA broadcast video.

(There's a reason that OTA network tuners don't have native wireless networking, but rather only ethernet.)

For users interested in checking out wired adapters:

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#41

I switched to using a wired Ethernet dongle with my 4k Fire stick to improve the responsiveness of the client, and it worked great. Until it didn’t. After about a year the dongle crapped out. So I switched back to WiFi. While it’s not quite as snappy as the wired connection, it’s good enough that I haven’t felt like I need to replace the Ethernet dongle. What changed from my earlier experience is that I swapped out my Netgear router for a Google mesh system. The mesh has proven itself to be a huge improvement over the Netgear for things other than channels, too.