Channels DVR work great inside the home. No issues. Outside the home, I've had it. Can't get anything to playback live or recorded. Ipad will play about 2 secs then goes black. Chrome browsers any platform either shudder video or audio drop outs. I even tried my Chromebook with video buffering, audio dropouts or no playback at all.
I started Channels DVR with My WD Cloud Home. It worked for in home and sometimes outside home, but to take advantage of the commercial skip I would have to wait several hours for the drive to process the recordings. The Drive was very slow. So I removed that service from my drive.
So I installed Channels DVR on my laptop. At first It seem flawless. In home playback was perfect. Even the skip commercial processing were finished in a timely matter. So I thought finally it works. I open the app on my Fire TV 4K stick. Live TV was great. My antenna channels and TV Everywhere sources streamed perfectly. Playback recordings with no issues. So still at home I played back a recording with my chrome browser. Video issues stated earlier. I looked at the transcoding setting to change it to hardware when I noticed that there is no setting for hardware/software transcoding. Software was only thing there. Before would be able to change this to hardware on my WD Cloud Home and the video and audio would work but now I can't try this at all to see if my laptop will playback with hardware transcoding. So now before I really give up on this is there anything that would help rectify my issues with this. I really like being able to use TV Anywhere with this server. Right now I'm juggling between 4 devices to get my entertainment without cable and Thought Channels DVR with the TV Everywhere option was the answer.
What kind of laptop are you using. What gen intel processor and what GPU do you have? Is the laptop hardwired into the network. What OS are you running? Remote streaming has been a little touchy during the betas but @tmm1 has worked out most of the bugs with me and it's working great now. What is your internet provider and download and upload speed? All of those play a factor into how remote streaming is going to work.
It sounds as if you are trying to take advantage of features in Channels that require more processing power than you are giving it.
Commercial detection can be processor intensive, and entry-level NAS offerings usually have woefully underpowered processors. For example, you claim it takes hours to post-process your recordings for commercials. To put this in perspective, I run Channels on an old i3-5010, which is 4 generations old; it takes around 30 minutes to process an hourlong recording, and sometimes less.
Similarly, this processor has rather poor HW transcoding quality, but even when watching remotely at either 720p or 480p, quality was still more than acceptable. (Having spent most of the past year away from home, Channels' remote viewing ability was the number one reason I moved from Tvheadend.)
It appears that your problems with Channels' underwhelming performance in your experiences mostly stem from not giving a rather robust piece of software adequate and robust-enough hardware to support the use cases you anticipate.
Also, perhaps some more details about your setup would help pinpoint where the problems are.
My provider is Spectrum. I’m Using Netgear R6400 AC-1700 Router. Here is an Image from Channels DVR Setting screen on Laptop. My Download is 200 Mbps and upload is 12 Mbps. ftp to my NAS drive and can playback the mpeg directly with no issues in playback. So the upload speed at 12 is sufficient.
I did a complete refresh of the laptop so there are no files or documents on the Laptop. Only Channels DVR and Plex are installed. Plex is not running by the way.
But it run great but It doesn’t support TV Everywhere.
For headless machines/servers, 4GB is quite adequate; for machines running full desktop environments like Win10 Pro, that's the bare minimum. Also, AMD graphics are not supported for hardware transcoding; only Intel graphics, and in some instances Nvidia, support hardware transcoding.
You haven't stated whether your DVR server is using wired ethernet or wifi; streaming video, especially high bandwidth video like OTA MPEG2 streams, is incredibly bandwidth intensive and really ought to be hardwired. Using wifi for your DVR server is never recommended, although your results may vary.
If this laptop is only to be used for Channels/Plex, I would recommend putting a minimal Linux install on there, and you may get better results.
I understand COST is always a consideration. But a NAS like the Synology 218+ or 718+ is a great option for a easy not hassle setup that performs well with other options like Plex etc.
DVR Server (Laptop) is hardwired to one of the Ethernet ports on the Router. All my devices including the HD HomeRun Tuner are hardwired via MoCa (TP-Link) Adapters. All ethernet ports and adapters are GB ports
Can TV Everywhere work with this NAS. My Cloud Home would not work because theres no chrome app.
I just look at pricing and yes cost is definitely the consideration. My laptop was the best option for me for cost since I wasn't using it for anything. My new laptop would be better for this but I need it portable so it can't be used to run all the time.
The 18 series NAS from Synology (218, 718, 918, etc) all have 64-bit Intel processors that support hardware transcoding for Channels, as well as running Chrome as needed for TVE support.
You can get a refurbished 4 tB pr2100 for $200.
I went with the 1 Bay option instead of two. Saves my a couple of hundred buck but should be what I need agreed. Its a DS118
1 GB DDR4 is a bit tight. I guess for only running Channels it should be OK.
You should verify with developers before choose a small NAS if you want transcoding and TVE support. Most of us recommend getting a NAS with INTEL Celeron Processors. Your choice does not I believe. I also believe you can get a 2 bay with only 1 drive then option to upgrade later.
Nothing worst then buying something and have buyers remorse .. A DVR is something you will be using everyday I would rather invest a little more then regret it later on.
The DS118 has an ARM processor by Realtek. We do not support transcoding on this CPU so it will not work for remote viewing.
Someone tell me what I can get. I'm not technical here. So I need to know what I can use. You talking jibberish to me. Still need to watch the budget also. What about this one. I can get one drive for now and afford this one. Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218
will this one work. I'm not technical. I can get one drive and get another one later.
Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218
You want the 218+
This one Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218+ (Diskless)