I have been running my DVR on a DS218+ for 2-3 years with no issues, but we are selling our house and going full time in our motorhome, and I just don't have room for the DS218+ (at least not so far.
).
What is the smallest footprint that can be used? Having one box instead of a separate HD would be preferred.
Use will be to access our current library from ATV, and recording TVE content. We will have an always on internet connection where we have service.
Thanks!
OS
Fanless Mini PC Quieter 3
Windows Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
10.0.22000 Build 22000 (kernel: 10.0.22000 Build 22000)
CPU
4 cores / Intel(R) Celeron(R) N5105 @ 2.00GHz
load averages: 0.00 0.00 0.00
RAM
7.75 GB
55.0% free
NET
1 interface
10.0.0.188
Disk
12.5% used
200.88 GB available
Activity
Watching ch719 HMMHDP from Edwin's Fire TV: strength=90% quality=100% symbol=100% rate=3.9Mb/sec buf=0% drop=0%
I use a Raspberry Pi in an Argon One M.2 case with a 2TB ssd. It's a nice compact solution.
Old laptop from pawnshop. Built in battery backup. Has built in battery and hard drive. Upgrade it to a ssd.
Mini-PC. Prebuilt or barebones. If you want something with some power. I have a Asrock x300w. Its a barebones pc. Fits a SSD and fits in a ryzen cpu. My wife has one I put a 4700g into. It fits on a Vesa mount behind the monitor.
I am currently running (testing) on a Raspberry PI 4 I had being used as a Plex server with a 1TB USB SSD. We don't really put much load on it with two viewers, but we tend to record a lot. Seems to work great so far. It all fits in the palm of your hand unless you add a HRHD, which is not much bigger than the Raspberry. No fans yet and so far seems fine.
My 2 cents... go with an intel nuc with a 1tb HD. Plenty of power and everything is contained in a nice small case.
Here is one on amazon but there are many options. Ditch the win10 os and go with ubuntu linux and you've got yourself a really nice headless dvr appliance.
Intel BOXNUC8i3CYSN1 NUC 8 Home, a Mini PC with Windows 10 https://a.co/d/f2AQJKT
Thanks! My only experience with Raspberry Pi is a DMR Hotspot for ham radio. How difficult is it to get the Channels DVR installed and running?
Thanks!
How hard is it to switch it to Ubuntu and get the Channels dVr installed and running?
Honestly its not hard. There are a ton of youtube tutorials out there. Basically you just a usb installer, boot from the usb stick and the installer is off and running. I'm happy to help you as I'm sure many others in the forum will as well. Ignore the windoze nay sayers who say that you must have a gui and deal with all the crap, you dont have to....
Thanks! I've been looking at YT and reading on this forum and other sites. I used to know Unix inside and out, but that was many years ago
Here’s another vote for Raspberry Pi. If you’re only going to run channels on it they have a custom image you can use, or if you want to be able to run other things as well, like Plex you can use Raspberry Pi OS and install channels that way. I’m not very experienced with Raspberry Pi but I still found it very easy to set up and use.
I did not bother to use the custom install image since my Pi4 is actively used for other things too.
I installed it with the unix install script. Just make sure you put the install directory (small) on a native filesystem that supports symbolic links, and then you can put all the media on another drive of your choosing. I had a 1TB usb ssd that is exfat and the installation process doesn't like not being able to use symlinks but I use that for channels storage just fine.
I installed in on the PI sdcard for now until I decide to do differently or until Channels changes their install script to work with filesystems that don't do symlinks. It works great.
As I look into this, I am liking this option more and more. Just to be sure that I am not missing something, I need to buy the case, power supply, RPi 4 and the SSD. Anything else?
Any recommendation for the SSD? My NAS has 4TB drives, and we're using about 3TB of that, but I am sure that we can eliminate a fair amount of that. My wife is a bit of a DVR Packrat 
Pi's Right now are overpriced ... By the time you get all the parts etc ... you might as well get a NUC like @slampman suggested.
Agreed. Also you get more horsepower and dont have to fool with a case, cooling, etc. If you need a lot of space just put a 2tb ssd in there 
On mine i have the internal 2tb ssd and i have 2 external enclosures one with a 10tb HD and the other with a 5tb HD. I have a script that runs every night that copies anything older than 90 days to the HD's.
Yeah, a NUC isn't out of the running. I need to go through our DVR to see what we can delete, but I think we will need 2TG, so it would be nice to find one with 2TB already in there.
You can swap it or just go for a barebones one
This is not the smallest footprint here, but if you need to get multiple family members connecting remotely (transcoding), it seems to work for me. I bought it last year for $550 and am satisfied with its performance, now I see it's down to $400.
I'm coming from mid-tower desktops, so this was a much smaller box for me.
Pretty easy really, but when I was working I was a linux systems admin. I installed the Raspberry Pi OS then installed the appropriate linux version of the DVR server.
The Channels admins here have also developed a Raspberry Pi image that should make installation on a Pi even easier than the solution I chose.
Note, I use the Pi solution in our rv. I already owned the Pi so it was a no-brainer to use it. At home I use an Intel Nuc. The Nuc is a better solution but the Pi works well for our use in the rv.
It does not seem that big to me I would find a spot for it somehow.
But then again I am on the extreme opposite end - with a rack mounted Server with large RAID storage -
The rasp pi should be fine though for a mini setup for you. I would personally pick that over a laptop. One could argue that with a laptop you have a built in monitor and a battery backup - but with the power out your network is probably not online either.