not sure why you need a "separate" server...I have the software installed on my networked 2019 imac I7, and clients installed on my 4 nvidia shields, using a hd home run 4 tuner tv box for the signal, and everything runs like a champ, and aways has..integrates with my plex server on my NAS with no issues, so I am a bit confused as to why you need a separate anything? In the past I had it on Apple TV 4k, trouble free, and various firetv/sticks/boxes, all ran perfectly..
comskip is much slower on the Pi as mentioned earlier. Like 10x slower or more.
That is because I do not currently own a desktop Mac. This is not something I can do with any of my current Macbooks. I currently do not own any Raspberry Pi or NAS. I have an old Haswell Win10 PC but it is in a small room that already gets hot and I don’t want to add a bunch more load and create more heat.
All my other computers are all locked work machines and I cannot use it for a DVR server. So that is why I am considering my different options because I will want to buy a good long term solution that is performant, lower heat output, and lower maintenance because I usually have long work days and don’t want a solution that is too fiddly for me to maintain so the family and wifey can be happy.
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Yeah, I knew it was slower but I did not know how much slower it was. But 10x slower is very significant so that is good to know.
Thanks for sharing
I recently upgraded to a base M1 Mini from a base spec '14 mini that had been great but sloooow to perform maintenance tasks. It serves 3 Apl tv 4K as well as a wireless Time Machine back up destination for the wifeys Macbook. I use a Home Run HD tuner to feed it. For storage I use a G-Drive 4 TB that supposedly had a WD Red server grade drive installed. You may be able to find a pre-owned '14 Mini if you would like to save a few $ from OWC. A '14 Mini would be preferred over the '18 due to the lower power CPU (laptop 14 w) vs the desktop CPU (65w) in the '18. I would highly recommend a SSD version over the spinning rust HD version. https://eshop.macsales.com/configure-my-mac/UAEG1DS3XX2X0GG https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/external-drives/g-technology-g-drive-usb#0G03594-1
For additional reference - I have a Synology DS918+. Comskip for me typically takes 10 minutes per hour of recording.
I run a Synology server as well. It's pretty much set it and forget it. It's got redundant drives, runs Plex and will fetch the Pluto M4U files for me. It works flawlessly from outside my network and I don't have a single complaint with this solution other than the high power usage of 3 spinning disks 24/7 in my utility room.
I use an older i5 Laptop for a couple reasons, main one is it is essentially a computer and UPS in one. My Tablo and HDHomerun Connect are on a UPS thus my OTA recordings continue even if I lose power or internet. Secons is I had the laptop as I had retired it for a Surface Pro 6 when Costco put them on sale.
I too migrated off of a Roamio to an HDHomeRun and Apple TV 4K, initially using an iMac as the DVR server. I've never looked back.
As a fun holiday project, I setup the Raspberry Pi DVR to replace the iMac, per the excellent instructions provided by Channels, and have been super pleased. It's a great little setup, very inexpensive and runs great.
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I second the Synology option. I have a DS716+II that I pulled from an IT environment, and it's a champ. My Synology system also doubles as a Plex Media server and can handle all streams just fine.
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I switched to a Mac mini M1 with 16 GB of RAM with two 8 TB external drives and am extremely pleased with the low power consumption, silent operation and speed. I have it wired to my router which connects to multiple Apple TV 4Ks via WiFi. You likely don't need to buy the 16 GB version to get the performance but I chose 16 GB as I also wish to eventually use the M1 Mini to run a virtual Windows machine once that is supported. Skipping between plays (the huddle time) when I watch football is nearly instantaneous compared to when I had the Channels server running on my everyday Windows 64GB laptop running the exact same 8 TB hard drives that now are connected to the M1 Mini. Go with the low-end Mac Mini M1 ($699) combined with an 8 TB hard drive from Costco ($139) and don't look back. Lastly, I have 6 over the air tuners (HDHomerun Quatro and HDHomerun Duo) plus a subscription to Philo and can record 5-6 programs at the same time with no issues.
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Something must have been set up wrong with the 64GB laptop. I run a mini Windows 10 PC for the Channels server and FF instantaneous when watching football on all sources. Docker and Plex servers are all running simultaneously. I have 12GB of ram at the moment and it is completely silent using a 1 TB SSD over USB.
The FF worked well at times on the laptop but at times it froze or was really slow. I kept attributing it to the router needing rebooting. It wasn't until I connected the new Mac Mini M1 to the same router that I realized the router was never the issue. The PC laptop also couldn't handle recording 4 or more shows while simultaneously playing something back on the Apple TV consistently well. To be fair, I had lots of services running on the laptop which may have slowed it down. The fastest the laptop ran Channels was not nearly as fast as the fastest the Mac Mini M1 is running it. I'm not at all an Apple fanboy as I despise some of their biz practices but I have to give them credit with these M1 computers.
What kind of laptop are you running and is it dedicated to just Plex and Channels?
It is a low watt mini PC with a 7th generation processor.
None of the problems you mentioned. I is my daily driver pc and does all the server and docker stuff while I am editing music/movies/tv and surfing the net and such. Sometimes having two sports simultaneously, one on mini pc, and another channels dvr. It has a fan but is silent because of the speed.
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Deskmini 110 that was $100 plus processor, $50, and memory, don't remember $...
I recently switched to a Pi4 from running it on my desktop PC so that I could dual boot to windows without taking down the DVR. As others have noted, comskip has been the only significant slowdown and I only noticed it last night because I typically don't watch anything until hours (or days) after recording. It looks like it took 15 min to run on an hour long, OTA show (while also recording another show.) Skipping ahead is slower now too, but still faster than it was last year before I built my new PC. If the new PC hadn't spoiled me for the last few months, I'd have been stoked with the current performance.
Generally simpler and lower power is good if you don't see your needs expanding. The all in one box option (essentially an appliance) that runs Ubuntu is two thumbs up. From there a NUC is a bit more(not much) complicated but may provide some flexibility and a bit of expandability. My route (which probably is not good for you - this will use power) was to wait for a good deal on a dell server. Powerful processing with a lot of expandability on a lot of areas (power, HDMI, RAM, Disks, pci). To add to that option's complication is I run it in a VM (VMWare) environment. But VM allows for extremely easy work, maintenance, backup to be done on the Channels DVR guest VM instance.
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I, too, have the OTA and switched to Channels. I highly recommend the NAS solution as the NAS can perform several other functions and runs 24/7 anyway.
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I was a Roamio OTA/Mini user for many years but recent issues with sluggishness in the newer OS and black screens on the Mini’s drove my family crazy.
I’m running Channels on a QNAP-TS253D NAS with 2 3TB Hard drives. My hard wired clients are all either AppleTV Gen4’s or 4K’s as well as a couple of wireless iPad’s. Wired client connections are all 1Gb and the NAS is connected with a 2Gb port channel.
This setup works great. The NAS has no problem with transcoding or commercial skip. Best of all my family has no issues with the Channels UI which was my biggest concern coming from many years of Tivo use.
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I agree with the NAS option. quiet and set and forget. I use a QNAP NAS with a Intel proc, although Synology has great units also. go with a NAS that is natively supported by Channels
on the low end, an arm based NAS with one drive would be a very good dvr box, if your needs/budget warrant, you could go with a multi Bay nas with a Intel processor for superior trancod8ng performance