Have some old, POS machine taking up dust in some closet somewhere? It will work beautifully!
Over a year in, home, remote, whatever, there is hardly a hiccup.
Also, you can also start with garbage and easily migrate over to better with time.
I use a Raspberry Pi 4. It’s a little technical to set up, but the tutorials online are well written, and it only takes about 20 minutes.
My Pi is in a closet upstairs hooked to Ethernet (same Pi also running HomeBridge, so it’s not totally dedicated to Channels) and never have any issues with streaming local or remote.
1 Like
Set up cost under £80 GBP. Channels DVR app installed on Firestick from appstore. Channels DVR Server app sideloaded to Android TV box. Best to connect broadband via ethernet though you can use WiFi. External hard drive connects via USB 2/3 to Android TV box.
SERVER (Amazon)
Android Tv Box T95 Android 10.0 Allwinner H616 Quadcore 2GB RAM 16GB ROM Support 6K 3D 1080P 2.4/5.0GHz WIFI BT5.0 10/100M Ethernet HDMI 2.0 H.265
HDD (Amazon)
WD 1 TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0
If you want it to be really simple use a shield tv. That’s what I have running the DVR. I can get up to 4 remote streams.
+1 for the Raspberry Pi 4. I set one up for my parents about 18 months ago using the Channels image and it's "just worked" in my experience. You are limited to 1 remote stream if I remember correctly. But even if you switch to something more powerful, it's an inexpensive way to evaluate the software.
IMO this recent issue disqualifies the Shield from remaining on the “really simple” list:
It also isn’t able to authenticate some TVE providers, like YouTube TV.
I would love to run this on a rPi. But isn’t there a transcoding horsepower issue with that class of devices, especially if you want remote streaming? Primary use case is to stream DVR and live TV to a remote residence that has fiber but no cable.
Is that one stream HD?
Yes the 9.0 issue makes it not so simple. I’m able to connect YouTube tv. I played with my friends account for a few days.
2 Likes
Using the YouTube TV app directly, or adding it as a TVE Provider for Channels DVR? Because if it's the latter, the devs say that's not supported.
I don’t know if I’d trust it for a full time remote use like you need, but it works fine for occasional remote streaming with great quality. Within the house, I’ve never had an issue with transcoding. I have Channels hooked to an HomeRun HD with antenna input. It is a RPi 4, so it is the current top of the line (I think…)
I have an rPi3 running Homebridge at my primary home. I could replace that with a top of the line 4 and move the 3 to the remote home for Homebridge only. So that’s an option…
When you say occasional streaming versus full-time, what differentiates the two? As long as I can get an HD stream that consistently looks great on a 75” TV, that’s all I need.
1 Like
I’ve never tried remote to a large TV. Just my phone and iPad.
My Pi4 has Channels, HomeBridge and PiHole all running 24/7 and I’ve never had a hiccup with any of them.
3 Likes
It's more of a question of bandwidth than proc power. As long as you have sufficient upstream at the source and sufficient downstream at the destination you can turn off transcoding and run the stream direct. I turn transcoding off on every device becuase I hate it. My cpu doenst budge at all when running multiple streams. I'm not on a Pi but it shouldn't make any difference. I guess I am old school and have always thought of the Pi as a science project and by the time you buy everything to set it up I could have bought a good used 5 year old PC that could blow it out of the water as far as processing power. Now where the Pi will suffer is commercial detection but if you arent in a hurry then you should be fine...
2 Likes
After a gut check, I decided to just go ahead and order the DS220+. It won’t fit in my entertainment cabinet, but there are other rooms with coax I can make work. The thing I cheaped out in is the storage. Rather than getting an SSD, I went for a classic HDD - the 4TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS HDD was $79 on Amazon, so I just pulled the trigger on that. The total cost is a little more expensive than I’d hope to spend, but Amazon is pretty good with returns.
1 Like
I'm running on a 918+ and it works very well for me.
Yes, the one remote stream the rPi 4 supports can be HD. For me, transcoding Comcast 720p/1080i channels from an HDHR Prime - which are a mix of MPEG-2 and h.264.
1 Like
Is there a table that details these capabilities for the various common systems in use? In the end I chose the DS220+ because I read in the forum that it was recommended and used by the Channels engineers themselves. I’m curious as to how many simultaneous HD streams that can transcode for remote viewing.
Not sure of the number but if max streams for transcoding but if it is important to you return that device and get a computer to run channels on. NAS devices can never compete with a traditional computer as far as proc power.
If you are looking for simple channels solution, starting out with a NAS solution ain't it.
Running on a NAS is a good solution you have both Storage and the Processor in 1 Place easy to maintain and does Hardware Transcoding so what is wrong with that. I run several servers on my NAS and never had a problem with it. You can run in raid In case of 1 drive failure your dvr will keep running.
...
OS
Synology DS1019+
Linux Alpine
3.14.0_alpha20210212 (kernel: 4.4.180+)
CPU
4 cores / Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU J3455 @ 1.50GHz
load averages: 4.94 2.48 1.08
RAM
15.48 GB
92.3% free
NET
1 interface
172.17.0.2
...