How many remote streams possible?

Channels DVR Server
#1

We will be slowly moving into a new house in a month. Since we have a few minor things to finish, we will basically be living in both places for about two months. I wanted to setup clients in the new house for now until I’m ready to move everything over permanently. My question, how many clients could I realistically stream simultaneously as “away from home”? Say I have four TVs running in the house where the server is, and then four TVs in the new house running. Is that even possible? I know it’s almost completely tied to my server which the details are below:

OS

Hewlett-Packard HP Z230 SFF Workstation
Windows Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
10.0.19043 Build 19043 (kernel: 10.0.19043 Build 19043)

CPU

8 cores / Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz

load averages: 0.00 0.02 0.03

RAM

7.69 GB
51.0% free

GPU
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (8 GB RAM)

Let’s assume its streaming channels and not any DVR or movies. Just straight TV, max load, all 4 TVs running at the same time, 4 in same house with server. 4 remote. Anyone have a similar situation? I know I could just test it, but I’d rather get it sorted ahead of time so if I need to buy hardware I can have it beforehand and get it ready. Thanks for any insight!

#2

Depends on what you mean by TV.

OTA, or TVE.

I think OTA always transcodes for remote, cause it MPEG2, but TVE, is passed through if u use original quality setting with no transcode, if the bandwidth is available to do so. Else, it transcodes, or if u set the setting lower. (i think, i do not remote stream and may be mixing how Channels works vs Emby)

Also depends on hardware, if it can use GPU transcoding or not. Intel QuickSync i think they call it, if u do not have a dedicated gpu.
I have only ever had 4 remote streams, when testing, OTA, as that is how many tuners i have on m HDHR. And my 5th gen Intel i5 dual core Intel NUC did fine with it.

Your internet upload bandwidth at the sever source connection, and the remote connection bandwidth at the client would more a concern. if there is not a fast enough connection with available bandwidth, then how many streams your server can do does not matter.

Local, in home on the same network, does not use transcodeing. so your 4 local tvs do not matter.

edit. ah, 4th gen cpu...did not see that at first. meh, even having 8 cores muti threaded cpu, but not sure how well Quick sync is on that , if it exists on that chip. maybe get a pcie gpu in it, to do the transcodeing, though, that may cost alot these days.

#3

This is a 4th gen i.e Haswell

It can probably do one or two transcodes at a time, and the quality won't be great compared to newer generation CPUs.

See Intel Quick Sync Video - Wikipedia for some more info

You may find this useful too:

#4

I updated my post, I added in my GPU info.

GPU
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (8 GB RAM)

#5

I have 1gig for both up and down. It would mostly be TVE.

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#6

Nah mpeg2 doesn't have to be transcoded. I set all of my remote players to original quality and they work perfectly fine. I never transcode anything, I avoid it at all costs.

#7

If you have 1gb upload don't worry about transcoding. Your setup can handle anything you can throw at it especially if you don't transcode.

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#8

I'm 99% certain that MPEG-2/H.262 video must be transcoded when streaming remotely, regardless of your quality setting. This isn't something really within Channels' control, as H.262 video is not part of HLS, which is the streaming format Channels uses.

Edit: Turns out I conflated browser viewing with remote streaming, and Channels will happily remux when streaming to its own clients.

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#9

As long as you’re using the app, MPEG-2 isn’t transcoded. I’m remotely streaming this:

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image3024×4032 2.75 MB

#10

You're correct. I was conflating viewing in the browser with remote clients.

1 Like
#11

I7-3930K with 16 GB of RAM and an SSD running at legacy SATA-2 speeds. Quadro M-2000 for transcoding. Server is remote - and bear in mind that any time you are watching a channel the DVR is recording it. 100 Mbps up & down VZ FIOS:

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#12

Well shoot, that seems like your processor is barely having to work even though it’s transcoding each stream. Are these remote streams or on same network as server?

#13

The server is remote, at my parents house. There's a mountain between me and their viewing area.

Everything was being transcoded because those were all web sessions. After some recent discussion - and as you can see by the low bitrates of the local channels - I actually stopped transcoding everything as well and set things to stream at original quality, since the normal FireTV and iOS clients we use don't need it (I had been transcoding everything when using Plex for LiveTV because of audio sync issues). As you can see the 100 Mbps upload of their WAN was not an issue, and that was when transcoding everything to 10 Mbps (only 2 of the channels were over 10 Mbps though, and most were less).

I don't have a good way to do a non-transcoding test (I would have to use clients all over the house and I am bandwidth limited to some of those locations) but if you have a good upload pipe it shouldn't be needed. Even if it is, if you unlock the stream limit on your 1050 I would think it would be able to handle 4 streams no problem? It's a Pascal card and has more than enough video memory. Per the matrix posted above it should handle at least 50% what the M2000 can do, and you likely won't need to transcode at all.

I have started watching transcoded content from cellular when waiting to pick my kid up from school, but that's only ever a single stream.

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