Moving hardware - Dell PC or straight to Synology?

Hello,

I want to move my DVR to new(er) hardware.

I've got an old Dell Optiplex PC with an i5-3470 processor / 16GB RAM, and would run CentOS 7 on it.
Is that a decent spec for Channels DVR?
I'm specifically interested in how many concurrent HD recording/playback sessions it would support.

Alternatively I could get a Synology DS218+ but again, are there any details on how many concurrent HD recording/playback sessions it will cope with?

I have two homerun IP tuners - a twin and quad unit (total 6), with several TVs in the house. So occasionally things get busy :slight_smile: I want to choose the hardware which handles multiple stuff the best.

My existing DVR is on a MBP with i7-3520M processor and it struggles with multiple stuff going on - playback stutters when you're recording in HD and want to playback an HD recording simultaneously.

Thanks for your help,

Andre

Is your MBP wired or on wifi? It seems strange that it would struggle as there is a lot of horsepower available.

MBP is on 5GHz wifi, 11na. Showing as rx rate 243Mbps, tx rate 162Mbps.

The ATVs are on 11ac 5GHz. rx/tx rate 400Mbps.

The new DVR home will be wired. Want to replace the MBP completely at some point.

Ah, we strongly discourage running the DVR on WiFi. Especially 11na- that is certainly why your recordings are struggling.

If you're comfortable running linux on your Dell, that i5 + 16GB is way more horsepower than you'd get out of the DS218+. However the DS218+ is much less maintenance if you don't want to deal with installing and updating your OS manually.

Ah very interesting - thanks for that. In the short term, would it be beneficial to move it to 2.4GHz?

Finally are there any details about max concurrent sessions? What's the limitation - disk i/o?

Thanks

5GHz provides more bandwidth than 2.4GHz; you really ought to run wired with ethernet instead of wireless. Disk I/O may be a consideration, but if you're running your DVR server over WiFi, you're going to saturate your bandwidth there before disk I/O and bandwidth is a concern.

Thanks folks. I know 5GHz has more bandwidth - I wasn't sure if 5GHz 11na had a specific issue. Looks like there may be around fast roaming on Ubiquiti managed network, but this is disabled on my wifi network anyway.

I will get the Dell PC set up in the next few days and move stuff over :slight_smile:

Thanks