We are buying a vacation home with little OTA access. But we do have decent cable internet. I know there is remote access available with Channels DVR, but I have not tried it except to my phone. Will it work reliably to stream recorded shows from my current server to a Firestick on my remote home network?
I searched but most remote access posts are bug reports.
I originally switched to Channels because of its great remote access support. I had no problems streaming whatsoever, both live and recorded content.
The only caveat is to make sure the bandwidth on both ends is sufficient. You may have sufficient bandwidth at the remote point for download, but ensure you have enough upload bandwidth at the DVR server to supply the remote client.
Recently, I took a Firestick 4K with me on a week long trip. I had trouble initially watching live OTA channels remotely due to slow internet connection. Recorded content played fine, but live content was challenging. The workaround for me was to record the live program I wanted to watch and let it get a few minutes ahead before I watched it. No errors or pauses when I did this. I've also used the Firestick on other shorter trips and could watch live OTA remotely without issue. I now keep a Firestick 4K in my travel bag.
What is the upload speed at your DVR? I tried to watch recorded content remotely and it was a terrible experience. My upload speed is only 5mbps so I assume that is the problem. I'm hoping downloading to my remote device will become an option someday. I'll download ahead of time and then watch.
I use Channels DVR almost exclusively through remote access and I believe it's the best remote DVR experience available (at least vs. Plex and Tablo). As others said, the most important factor is sufficient upload speeds. I primarily use Apple TV 4Ks and iOS devices to stream, but I also used a Fire TV 4K in the past and it seemed to work well enough.
Mine is definitely not sufficient. I'm wondering what level of upload speed is sufficient. 10? 20? More? I want to know before I start shopping for better internet speeds.
It depends if you are sending MPEG4 or MPEG2 streams. I assume everyone here except for those like me with 200/200 internet speed are using Transcoding on the Server. I found that Transcoding takes too big of a hit on my server for my needs (when using remote access everyday for many hours per day). Which is why I have tried to go with Native MPEG4 if at all possible. This is why I am using LOCAST + TVE for ALL of my Channels Sources which are MPEG4. OTA is MPEG2 and there a lot or bandwidth or Transcoding is required.
MPEG2 produces impeccable quality that is superior to MPEG-4. MPEG2 is the industry standard and capable of handling video streams from local sources like DVDs and broadcast applications. Yet unfortunately, due to the larger file size, it is not suitable for internet or network applications. On the other hand, MPEG4 utilizes its high rate of compression and smaller file sizes to provide high-quality video and audio across multimedia streaming applications on the Internet.
From my experience:
MPEG2 is around 15mbps
MPEG4 is around 1-2mbps
======= some details =======
MPEG2 vs MPEG4 – Bit Rate & Bandwidth
MPEG2 format encoded files have a bitrate ranging from 5 to 80 Mbits/sec, while the MPEG4 files are substantially low relative to MPEG-2 (some Kilobytes per second). Therefore, MPEG4 format is designed for network applications.
If you make the MPEG2 vs MPEG4 bandwidth comparison, you will find an enormous difference as they are designed for different platforms. MPEG2 requires a lot more bandwidth for streaming compared to MPEG4. MPEG2 has a bandwidth of up to 40 MB per second, but MPEG4 has the bandwidth of around 64 kbps.
Look at the options in the app for remote streams to get an idea of the bandwidth you need. I would recommend 1.5-2 times the bitrate of your selected stream.
So, if you chose 720p/3Mbps as your remote stream, then you'd want to ensure that your home network had an upload bandwidth of 4.5-6Mbps—although more is always better.
The highest bitrate we send remotely is 8mbits/second. As others have mentioned, there is some overhead as well as some need to download data faster than it is being played if you want to avoid glitches. If you can get at least 15mbits/second upload it should be sufficient to stream the highest quality bitrate without seeing glitching.
As a side note: unless you are trying to conserve your bandwidth (like if you're on a metered phone plan) you should just select the highest bitrate (8mbits) and let Channels do its job and figure out the right bandwidth setting on the fly. In the past couple months we have released changes to make it so that you no longer need to fiddle with the bandwidth settings to get the appropriate speed for your current connection. It will even adapt to changes while you are watching.
Could you clarify. In my case I do not use Transcoding and prefer the stream is sent as original because of my upload speed. Are your comments referring to Transcoding Only or if sending original streams?
Have you tried it again in the past few months? I've made a lot of changes that could make the experience better for you.
A couple things to note:
Yes, the bitrates I was referring to was if you had the setting at 8mbps, not if you had it set to Original. Original is fine if you have a very stable network connection and don't ever run into any glitches or pauses due to changing network conditions, but if you want a set-it-and-forget-it option, setting it to "8mbps" will be a less fiddly experience.
I have never had any problems with Original even with OTA MPEG2 because of my 200mbps upload speed and of course a fast download speed at the remote. Now with MPEG4 I continue to not have any problems. My goal was to have very little overhead on my server because of the internet speed. However, if I do go back to MPEG2 (maybe because Locast goes under) then I will try your new Transcoding again.
Thanks for all the feedback! I don't do much remote playback but I when I was away the week of Oct 1st it was a very poor experience. I tried pretty much all the streaming speeds. My server upload speed is around 5mbps. In that Oct 1st timeframe I was using an internet connection on a local 2.4G wireless router. I got a lot of buffering pauses and freezes. I tested again in the middle of Oct (don't know how old my DVR version was) on a 5G local network and again had very poor results.
That's why I assumed my upload speed was the problem.
I just tested my upload speed again and it is 5.8mpbs. Since I'm home I shut off my phone wifi and tried the cell connection set at 8mbps and after 3 pauses during the first minute or so, it seemed to settle down to a decent experience.
I upgraded to 2019.11.12.0124 yesterday so now I'm thinking maybe you've made improvements since my Oct experiences. I'll have to wait until I'm away somewhere to see how the remote internet connection is.
Maybe it's good enough. I'll also look into how much more an upload speed of 15mbps would cost.
Being able to download to my android phone and play would definitely solve this problem and keep me from using cell data when I don't have internet connectivity. I am now on a metered plan. Who could resist $14/G?
But if playback is already better than what I saw a month ago, I'm pretty happy.
I have a dedicated remote connection setup as transcoding 720p 4Mbps. It is an AppleTV connected to a 42 inch LCD. While it isn’t 1080p it isn’t all that bad. It’s been running like this for almost a year without issue. I just recently upgraded to 200/20 internet so I could up the bandwidth stream if I wanted...
It’s great to hear things are going better for you now! I can’t think of anything big that’s changed between the beginning of October and now, so your suspicion of it being related to your local WiFi setup sounds likely.
Just to add my two cents here:
I've had fantastic luck. I travel nearly 100% and access my Channels from everywhere (Europe, Asia, all over America) and use to have to fiddle with quality adjustments but now it does it automagically (thanks @Eric!) and works really well.
I do have 300-500mbps up (it fluctuates) and running on a NUC w/ hardware transcoding. Android TV is my most popular client (but I love the Apple TV more, and will try to bring that next trip) and Web as well, and a few of my friends also accesses it no problem.
My former setup was Simple TV, where I had 3 of their tuners in different markets I cared about (Seattle, SF, Portland) and then you could use one account to access them. While I still don't have multiple locals anymore, the amount of TVE channels I can get now is quite nice and a good change. I've also tried Live TV w/ Plex and it lacks in a few ways as well which is super frustrating (no easy ability to have OTA and Cable in the same account, for example)
Only things to keep in mind: I use Roku stick as a backup, which can't work remotely and they stopped development entirely, and would love to use the Kodi add-on, but its also local only too)
And one of the best parts is: support is top notch! I've had some weird issues, and @tmm1 and others are quick to jump on them and point out they're my fault, usually. 