Is it worth it to update Channels DVR from a 4th gen i5 4250U nuc with 8gb ddr3
to
N95/16gb/m.2 mini pc?
My caching on home screen of thumbs always seems to lag, the i5 4250u is on windows 11, fans are clean. SSD is an old crucial mini-sata i think. dvr recordings written to usb3 external drive. sits under tv area.
Other option , getting back to a docker install would be ugreen flash nas with the 10th12th gen i5 Intel i5 1235u 10-Core CPU and usbing a exteral drive as well, so as not to write to the nvme pool. Seems like overkill but i certainly could. I just kind of liked having channels on its own hardware on windows 11. Has been rock stable. Just a little slow sometimes starting up. no lag or issues over gigabit etthernet on the nearly 12 year old nuc.
Yes, it'd be worth it, though not necessarily night and day. Anything running single core would have similar or slightly better performance, but multi-core would be noticeably better. Faster RAM, potentially faster networking, modern codec support and super low power consumption would be additional pluses.
This alternate approach though, opens up some very interesting options. With a platform like this (though not necessarily this exact unit), you could run Proxmox, and setup a VM or LXC to run Channels DVR, but also have the ability to run many things in other VMs or LXCs.
Proxmox is such an amazing platform, in that it gives you the ability to have mission-critical virtualizations running side-by-side with the experimental. I do this very thing myself, with the Windows 11 VM I run CDVR in doing its thing day-in-day out, alongside LXCs running Docker with both production and experimental containers.
Here's a write-up I did on an all-flash NAS (running Proxmox), which is absolute magic:
And here's some detail on the concept of "virtualizing everything":
I mean, i am running like 30 containers already on the ugreen all flash nas, what is another. i run xteve , iptvboss, plex, arrs, and many other containers. all work great, just liked the simplicity of the nuc for my dvr. even though all the heavy lifting is done on the flash nas. I dont own an n95 mini pc, but have set up more than a couple for family for basic computing on windwos 11 as they cannot be beat for the cost / power consumption and specs for paying bills, and email. and browsing.
On the other hand, i can record 8 things without dropping frames on the nuc 4th gen i5, I've seen it in process before, with access to 8 HD homerun tuners, tve, and iptv. Its hard to ask for more from a 12 year old cpu. but i know there is slow down in commercial detection etc due to the cpu and transcoding is pretty basic on 4th gen intel. #decisions
Ah OK, I didn't catch that you already owned the Ugreen Flash NAS. I thought you were deciding between the two approaches.
I own both of the Terramaster Flash NAS models. I wouldn't give a tuppence for their OS, but with one running Proxmox (test sever), and the other running Proxmox Backup Server (production) -- I'm incredible impressed with the all-flash NAS concept. These are clearly what everyone will be using in the future.
I have a couple of the ugreen nas units. The flash unit is one i am sweet on, Its a a little workhorse with 4TB 2x2TB so far occupied. Ugos is not half bad ( coming from being spoiled by synology dsm) , I have several unraid licenses as well for future use. I might migrate it over the the flash unit and see if some improvements have been made. Never had channels running on anything that fast before, but i am on gigabit ethernet and have been on the old 4th gen nuc as well. I keep saying i will pick up a n series mini pc for myself but always talk myself out of it. when i migrated from synology a few years ago, i decided to move channels off the nas and to the nuc. Its works quite well but there seems to be just a little slowdown on the thumbs on the library / home screen. not sure why. Might just be the client on my shield 2019 . I dont see the issues on the 3rd gen appletv 4k. That tvos is so much more polished than the android code though its not even funny. Wish channels devs would put more efford into android/googletv code. The lists/folders view of dvr is not available on android ( huge miss) in my opinion.
Its all running on 12 cores now on the flash nas, I am still remoting the mount for the external HD back to the nuc, but the caching issue seems to be gone, could just be the new database migration onto the ugreen nas. Its done, running as host so that the beacon works for channels via docker. I think it doesnt function in bridged mode unless that was updated. Yes it is considerably faster lol on the 12 gen i5 with 32gb , and igpu transcoding.
