This is the place where you can discuss and ask questions about hardware for Channels and Channels DVR.
Wondering about a certain NAS model or the best way to run Channels DVR on your own existing hardware? Ask away and the community will help!
Being an alpha tester and having only a My Cloud (single disk) as a NAS (not powerful enough for DVR), I initially tested on a 2011 I-7 iMac and external 3.0 USB drive. Perfect combination to run all of the DVR functions…including Web UI on browser for viewing On Now and Recordings.
Not wanting to tie up my iMac 24/7 and wanting to utilize a network disk and the higher GB on the MyCloud, I changed to running the DVR on an older, basic Core 2 Duo 2010 Mac Mini with the recordings being saved to the MyCloud (single disk). This combo works great for recordings on the DVR, however it is very limited when trying to view On Now and Recordings from the Web UI. Can only achieve 240p playback and only when other DVR functions (recordings/commercial detection) aren’t being used.
As we are an Apple concentric household, in addition to viewing on ATV4, we utilize Channels iOS for Live TV on both an iPad Air 2 and an iPad Mini 2. For iOS recording playback… currently, we typically utilize other 3rd party apps, until Channels DVR is available on iOS.
Once Channels DVR is available on iOS, playback of recordings and live TV will utilize the hardware capabilities of the various iOS devices rather than depending on the DVR server (in my case, a very underpowered Mac Mini).
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Here’s my setup:
QNAP TS-453A
HDD Slots 1-3 = [4TB each] Forrmatted in RAID5. this is for my stuff, media, and other personal files
HDD Slot 4 = formatted as a single drive [3TB capacity] solely dedicated for DVR recordings.
worked well for me and so far recording, viewing recordings, watching live TV are all seamless and glitch free. best of all, i can see the recorded files in the HDD as mpeg2 files that you can play anywhere in your house [tablet, PC, media servers, android or appletv boxes]. now my DVR recorded shows are no longer tied on a single TV unlike my current Fios DVR. pretty soon i will be returning the DVR box back to Verizon 
Thanks to the Channels development team!
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The WD MyCloudEX2Ultra is not powerful enough to handle transcoding. It is fine for recording and playback to the ATV, but transcoding to web interface the CPU is not sufficient.
Is the Raspberry pi 3 supported? I have TVheadend set up on it currently but moving everything to channels would be ideal.
I installed the DVR on a Raspberry PI and the playback to my Apple TV worked good. I only ran 1 stream and I don’t know if it would support multiple Apple TVs. The encoding for UI interface did not work.
rPI shares a bus for both USB and the network, so you cannot record more than a couple streams at once. The hardware also does not support transcoding or commercial detection.
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Good day all. My current setup is hp mini desk 600's. I'm using one as a dedicated server recording to a 500 gig ssd. No issues on space as we delete nightly.
With the advent of windows 11 and the new system requirements I'm seeing my systems will not take 11. So I'm looking for a good recommendation on a 2 or 4 Bay Nas that can record and stream up to 4k content. I have several movies that are 4k currently and the collection continues to grow. I would also like to use this as a file server so a 4 Bay Nas that has the power to do that is what I'm looking for or a2 Bay that I can attach an external drive to would work as well. As always thank you for any insight you might have.
The Synology DS NAS line is very popular around here. You’ll want to get a plus model, and if you’re hoping to do a lot of 4K content including possible transcoding the bigger the processor the better.
Thank you for the suggestion. With that in mind I'm looking at this model of qnap
QNAP TS-251D-4G 2 Bay Home NAS with Intel Celeron J4005 CPU and One 1GbE Port
Features & details
Intel Celeron J4005 dual-core 2.0 GHz processor
Intel HD Graphics 600
4 GB SO-DIMM DDR4 (Max 8GB)
2 X 3.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s (Diskless)
1 X Gigabit Ethernet Port (RJ45)
3 X USB 2.0 port
2 X USB 3.2 Gen 1 port
PCI-E Expandability
Would this be sufficient to run channels with no hiccups?
Also I'm considering the Synology ds220+. Would this be powerful enough?
I run an older generation of the Synology. It’s one of the most popular NAS models used with Channels. Works great.
Yes the DS220+ is one of the cheapest and best solutions out there to run Channels.
Hello! Currently running channels DVR on a Raspberry Pi4 (2GB RAM). Can anyone help me with a server hardware recommendation for the following requirements?
- (5) concurrent remote streams via hardware transcoding
- Rack or wall mounted
- Expandable storage with USB3.0
What would the bandwidth requirements be for a channels server with 5 concurrent remote streams?
Thanks!
Has anybody tried or considered Channels server on the Libre Renegade as a Pi alternative. Slightly slower GPU than the Pi 4 (2.4 vs 2.5), but supposedly has hardware h.264/h.265 encoding. Seems to be more widely available than Pi at the moment.
We don't currently support hardware encoding on Rockchip boards, but its something we're also looking into given the Pi shortages.
I currently run the Channels server on an M1 Mac Mini with no issues. But my office is littered with aging external hard drives and yesterday, I got fed up with the mess and ordered a 4 bay DS418 Sinology NAS and 4 big drives.
I'm hoping the transfer of Channels from Mac to DMS 7 will be easy but will appreciate any helpful hints. Will I be able to transfer existing DVR recordings now residing on the Mac???
Plan B is to leave the server on the Mac and put the files on the NAS