Connect/Extend with regards to NAS capability

Playground Hardware
#1

Hi everyone,

I’m switching the house over to DirecTV Now for my cable channels, and need a solution for local channels as 1) It doesn’t appear they are in Indy right now and 2) They have no contracts with CBS. So I’m spec’ing out hardware now. I noticed someone said they were looking at a NUC, and with RAM and a 1TB hard drive that should put me at about $230. I think I saw that you liked the Celeron processor. Now if I do something like that, could I get away with a Connect rather than an Extend? Or more simply, if I get an Extend, can I go lower cost with a NAS? Because I already have a NAS that works fine for my file sharing a personal cloud. But it’s not powerful enough to handle DVR. And since it’s just for locals, I don’t need a ton of space. I’ll probably DVR some sports occasionally, some CBS programing, and frankly, the one-off Disney parade that my wife wants to watch.

Side question: When you have DVR, does live programming go through the DVR? Or does DVR only work when you record something? I ask because it appears to me that the Extend just reduces the congestion on the wireless network overall. So if I’m watching live, and it goes through the DVR, does it have the same effect?

Thanks!

#2

Regarding your side question. Live TV does not go through the DVR. When watching live TV it is HDHomeRun Tuner over wired or wireless network to your device, which decodes the MPEG2 or H264 stream. Doesn’t touch the DVR at all. However, if you are recording a show on the DVR you do have the option of watching the recorded show off the DVR from the beginning.

I have two Extends and currently use them as follows:
For live TV to AppleTVs I use no transcoding. My experience is this provides the best picture possible. All of my AppleTVs are on on wired gigabyte network so I don’t have to worry about the amount of data the MPEG2 causes no issues.

For live TV to wireless/iOS devices I use transcoding. Even though I have a current AC wireless network this provides smooth playback even when a devices is a distance from the wireless router or there is other wireless network contention like multiple wireless devices streaming HD video. Any tradeoff in video quality is not noticeable on the smaller screens.

For DVR (I was in Alpha group) I do use heavy transcoding which converts the MPEG2 to H264. I do this to reduce the size of the recorded shows.

Overall I am happy with the flexability of the extend over the connect but there is a significant price difference so you have to factor that in.

#3

@snow66

how do you do the transcoding to convert mpeg2 to H264? do you do that manually? in a NAS?

thanks.

#4

@krblgc

I think he’s doing it in the HDHR Extend. Which makes sense to me.

@snow66

Thanks for the information. It’s very helpful. I guess it comes down to whether or not I have faith in my router, which is an Asus RT-AC3100. I’m definitely not on the power user side like you are. I have 2 wireless Apple TVs, and 1 wired Apple TV. And I probably won’t be using the tablets/phones for viewing. So worst case scenario right now if I have all three devices going at the same time, 2 of which are wireless, and I’m using a connect, I think I’d be OK. My rudimentary test of wireless from my laptop had me at 200Mbps over the 5Ghz band, and I still have my 2.4Ghz band for everything else. But I don’t really know where my bottlenecks will be.

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#5

krblgc,

how do you do the transcoding to convert mpeg2 to H264? do you do that manually? in a NAS?

I use the HDHomeRun Extend to transcode. The primary difference between the Connect and the Extend is that the Extend offers hardware transcoding right within the unit white the Connect does not. IMO SiliconDust does a poor job of explaining the difference. They advertise that the Extend can be used with slower wireless networks but don’t explain that it is because it can transcode the video to reduce bandwidth.

BTW - older versions of the Extend required a fan for cooling which where noisy and prone to failure. The Channels team did not recommend the Extend units. SiliconDust now offers a fanless unit (come out 3rd quarter 2016) which solved the problems. Not sure if the Channels team has changed their mind on the Extend, but I find the hardware transcoding to be a very useful feature.

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#6

Just to run a test, I’ve got 5 TVs streaming right now. I have some older Apple TVs that I can Airplay too, both DirecTV Now streams are being used, plus a Disney Jr and HBO app stream going… no problems. I think maybe I can stress less about this whole thing now.

So would it be safe to say if I just did a Connect, and didn’t transcode on the server, that the hardest thing on the DVR hardware would be the processing for commercial detection?

#7

The mpeg2 streams from the HDHR are 3-4x bigger than what you see in most apps, so the test might not be totally equivalent.

Personally I recommend the connect. It’s tiny and sleek and works very well if you have good wifi coverage all over the house.

#8

I’ll second what tmm1 is saying.

With my AC1900 router I can wirelessly stream 4 or more 1080p mpeg 4 videos concurrently without issue. If I try to wirelessly watch 3 HD mpeg 2 television stations at once I get occasional stutter. I’ve even run into stutter with 2 HD mpeg2 streams at times.

The US HD OTA mpeg 2 streams are usually 6-8gb per hour, where most internet streaming services compress 1080 mp4 or h264 streams down less then 2gb/hour. That makes quite a bit of difference in wireless bandwidth requirements.

Generally you get about 50% reduction in file size using mp4/h264 vs mpeg 2 with similar perceived quality. So a 4GB mpeg 2 movie would look similar to a 2GB mpeg 4 movie. United States OTA HD television looks better then most cable and streaming options because it uses less compression. FYI - the newer h265/HEVC codecs give an additional 30 40% reduction in file size over h264/mp4 with similar quality. My experience with HEVC has been great. Tools for HEVC compression are much less mature then h264 compression, but the codec looks great at low data rates.

#9

Really great info guys, thank you. It’s very helpful. So looking at something like the NUC, and got FreeNAS installed on it, with maybe a 1TB laptop drive, and then use an extend to do the realtime compression, I should be safe to ingest two MP4 streams and maybe play out one or two simultaneously? Or do I need a RAID0 to get more throughput? I would think if I’m just pushing bits around, and not actually decoding on it I should be fine. And if I decide I don’t want the Extend’s encoder turned on, I’m safe.

One other side note, I’ve found both the Extend and Connect out-of-stock. Are they just having trouble keeping up with demand, or do they have a new product coming out?

#10

Christopher, RAID0 won’t be required from a throughput perspective. I have a USB 3.0 drive on my router and can stream multiple mp4 files from it to different devices at the same time. From a DVR perspective i’d be a bit more concerned about CPU performance for features like pre-scanning for commercial skipping or transcoding to view using the Web UI (addtional transcoding is needed for display on the Web UI even if you are using the Extend).

As for the Extends and Connects being out-of-stock. I ran into a multi-week out of stock condition when I was purchasing my second Extend. I think SiliconDust does a poor job with inventory control at times. I am not aware of new models on the way. The Extend was just upgraded a couple of months ago.

#11

Below is my current deployment… I’m sharing for reference only:

Mini PC: Intel NUC 6I5SYH (quad core i5 6260U). Latest BIOS update was applied - Ver. 55
RAM: 16GB (DDR4 2133)
M.2 SSD: 128 GB (6gb/s) <-- OS Drive
SSHD: 2TB (2.5 Inch, 6GB/S) <-- DVR Drive
OS: Fedora Wstn 25

Total Cost: $646 (purchased from Amazon)

The NUC currently runs Channels DVR and Plex Server. In my personal opinion this is the perfect deployment to run both server applications.

Thank you!

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