What about sleep? Will the Channels DVR Server wake the Mac Mini from sleep to record a scheduled show?
No. The DVR server needs to remain available to let you playback recordings.
Ok, thank you for the quick reply. I now have my Mini set to never sleep, but that is not exactly what I meant. I was asking specifically about whether the Mac Mini would wake itself to record scheduled shows. I have used EyeTV for years and the software would wake the mini in time to record shows. Also during playback on ATV of recorded shows, wouldn’t the ATV be able to keep the Mini awake via “Wake for network access” setting on the Mini?
We have not tested with sleep mode, so it’s hard to say what works and doesn’t.
I was not aware of any macOS APIs that allowed an application to wake up from sleep, but if EyeTV is able to then they must exist somewhere.
Yes. Eyetv will wake or even power on (start your mac) to do a recording schedule if it is asleep or powered off. Although this is an old article, it may give you an insight for future versions of the MacOS version (I know nothing about coding, so I apologize if I am just confused). This would be an awesome feature someday.
pmset and wakeorpoweron
https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/pmset.1.html
https://www.geniatech.eu/eyetv/faq/troubleshooting-events-are-not-set-in-the-power-manager-schedule/
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Sleeping your DVR server is problematic in that it won’t be available for guide data, recording listings, or all of the other data that your Channels app needs while being used. Channels DVR does more than just record. So sleeping it would make the experience quite painful. It also needs to be running to get software updates and guide data refreshes.
Even if we attempted to do a wake-on-lan, it would create an amount of lag and latency that would make you hate using Channels.
This workflow works great for EyeTV because it’s not required for your primary TV watching. It’s 90% just for recording things. It’s more of a utility. Even when you are using it to watch TV, it’s on the computer that you’re running it on, so clearly it’s already woken out of sleep.
Channels DVR powers everything in Channels on the Apple TV and iOS, so it needs to be running for those to work.
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Touché… good point.
My love for EyeTV became idle frustration… Channels app was one of the reasons why i decided to dump my mac mini HTPC and go Apple TV. Excited for Channels DVR release today!
So should the com skip functionality work on a 2012 Mac mini with an i5 (the 2.3GHz or above) and 4-8gb of ram? There’s also a 2016 version with an i5 (only 1.4GHz and 4gb of ram) which I’m guessing it won’t work with?
For Comskip, any i5 will do ok. Might take a couple of extra minutes depending on CPU + memory. For transcoding, I’n not sure the 2012 models can do hardware transcoding, which is a must, but any of the latest models, even the entry-level, $499, works as a charm.
So should the com skip functionality work on a 2012 Mac mini with an i5 (the 2.3GHz or above) and 4-8gb of ram? There’s also a 2016 version with an i5 (only 1.4GHz and 4gb of ram) which I’m guessing it won’t work with?
The comskip does take some processing and time. I’m currently running on a 4 core i7 2.3GHz mac mini with 8GB of ram and commercial detection runs about 10 minutes per 1/2 hr show. This isn’t the latest hardware but it isn’t low end either.
It works perfectly fine on a 2012, 1.4GHz. Hardware transcoding makes everything smooth. For a 30 minute recording, Comskip takes just 4 minutes if it’s AVC or 8 for MPEG2 channels.
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I am using a Mac Mini Mid 2010, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 8GB 1067MHz DDR3 and it is working flawlessly. I am saving the recordings to an external WD 1 terabyte HDD.
Just to confirm, real-time hardware transcoding works well on a 2012 Mac Mini? I have a quad-core i7 2.3 GHz, 16 GB RAM. If so, I’m all set for the beta when it’s available in the UK!
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Yeh, sounds like you’ll be using a sledgehammer to swat a fly there bud. I was just worried about the 1.4 GHz model. You’ve got enough there to walk it bud.
Haha, I thought so since I use it as my Plex server (amongst other things), and it has no problem transcoding for Plex. I guess I was just thrown by the comment that older CPUs might not support hardware transcoding.
Hmm… time to save up for a mac mini… Something for both plex and ChannelsDVR.as long as I can attach the mycloudex2ultra via iscsi as a local disk or maybe just a USB3 external… (the MyCloudEX2Ultra is not powerful enough to transcode at all or do more than 4 recordings at once or commercial skip well) [3 week availability on the mac mini model I wanted… 
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I would like to install the DVR server on a Mac mini as well but don’t want to invest a lot of money. I saw a cheap Early 2009 mini with Core2Duo 2.0ghz and 2gb of ram from craigslist. Would this be enough to run it smoothly? It runs great from my 2015 iMac 5K but I don’t like leaving it always on. What do you guys think?
Foz86,
It’s still early in the Channels DVR game to have a good understanding of hardware tradeoffs but an early 2009 mini might be pushing the envelope a bit from a reliability and support perspective. You won’t be able to run current OS and you will probably miss out on some hardware transcoding optimization. I’d lean toward a 2012 or newer model and increase your chances that the hardware will be stable for some period of time. I’m not current on used Mac Mini prices, but a low end 2014 1.4GHz Dual Core machine with 4GB ram and 500GB storage is currently available thru apple.com refurbished for $419, so you should be able to get a 2012 model for less then that.
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It’s worth noting that 2009 Mac Minis are not even supported by Apple anymore and were cut out from macOS updates a long time ago. I think the most recent version you can install is 10.7, and macOS is currently in 10.12.
@DebbieFL is using a 2010 core2duo and it is too slow to transcode video for web playback. See Hardware Suggestions and Reviews