Streaming from a second home?

#1

I'm new to Channels and need some help to think through my future setup.

I have roots in the Midwest, root for the local teams there (college, nfl, nba, ...) and have in-laws there. I really want the local broadcasts from my home (much better local broadcasters than the national ones) rather than the national ones and am thinking that Channels could be part of the solution.

So I live in the PNW. How do I set up Channels and servers so I can watch my local broadcasts here AND OTA or cable sports from my former Midwest base? When it comes to ABC/CBS/... I don't care whether I get that from here or there. PBS was better back in the midwest but I am willing to compromise. Obviously the weather reports are better done locally. I am totally happy doing any installs in my home and my in-laws, but long-term, remember that any set up in my in-laws' home is...well, it's at their home! I'll just leave it at that!

I'd love your thoughts.

(Also, if there is a better place to ask this question, please tell me and I'll see if I can move it.)

#2

Absolutely feasible. What you need is:

Inlaws location:

  • PC/NAS to run 1 instance of Channels DVR
  • Service that gives you your local channels via TVR -or-
  • Antenna w/ HDHomerun tuner

You Location:

  • Same as above.

You'll need to setup Tailscale on both Servers so that you can connect them, then use the Custom Channels on your local server to map the channels you want over from the in-laws server (you can bring over specific channels, a single "source" [ie HDHomerun Tuner or TVE Source] or all of the channels).

I've done it myself and as long as you have reliable internet service, you should be fine. You'll have to learn how to use the text input for custom channels if you want to bring in specific channels but not all. There's plenty of examples on the threads, though they aren't always the easiest to find and there's some nuances to the coding that even I am still ignorant of.

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#3

@Duck2634 what is your DL/UL speeds at each location. Also it goes without saying that you should hardwire all networking.

#4

This can be done now using the OliveTin-for-Channels M3U generator. M3Us can be created by "Channel Collection", and even hosted on a URL.

#5

Haven't given that a shot yet. I'll have to check it out, thanks.

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#6

Excellent point about wiring in the networking. Thanks!

#7

At my home I have 120Mbps down, 5 up. My inlaws are 50Mbps down, 5 up. Is that good enough?

#8

The up may challenge you. You can reduce the bandwidth consumption by adjusting the bitrate down of the channels you share between the servers, but I'm guessing you wouldn't be able to share more than 1 channel at a time from each location, but I'll defer to others that are more knowledgeable than I on that front.

Here's an example of how I adjusted the bandwidth for a channel being shared between the servers.

(http://x.x.x.x:8089/devices/ANY/channels/6001/hls/stream.m3u8?bitrate=1500&indexed=true&resolution=576&ssize=1&vcodec=h264)
#9

Excellent advice @jator !

QQ: If I deploy hardware at my inlaws, I need it to be either absolutely zero-maintenance, or have some method of remote maintenance. Also, it needs to be able to turn itself back on in case of a power failure (which is totally normal given winter snowstorms and summer thunderstorms). What hardware would you use? I was first thinking that a Raspberry PI with an attached SD card or external drive would be cheapest. But is that also zero-maintenance?

#10

SD card on a Pi is pretty much guaranteed to fail, probably within a year. Pi will also not give you transcoding, which you desperately need if you only have 5mbps upload.

If you want something reliable I would recommend Synology DS220+. More cost effective would be an Amazon N100 box running Linux w/ bios configured for auto-on after power failure.

Honestly unless you can get your in-laws to upgrade their internet and upload speeds, it may not be worth pursuing.

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#11

What @tmm1 said. I've deployed 3 Synology NAS servers and they are my preferred over RPi, though not nearly as cheap (and don't go the ARM64 route, I've hit a couple of limitations with that version). Pay a bit of a premium, but for me the easiest to maintain. And speed wise, it's hit or miss. Remember stated speeds are not a guarantee, my Mom's speed with Cox is much less than advertised in Florida (maybe at 2:00 AM, but during peak usage hours is much less).

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#12

To clarify I mean the SD card would likely fail, esp if you installed the root filesystem onto it. Obviously YMMV depending on the quality of the card you buy.

For our RPI image we recommend not using an SD card at all.

#13

No where near.. download is fine and upload would need to be increased. If both sites are going to be "serving" content then upload in both locations would need to be increased.

#14

I do pretty much exactly what you're describing in your initial post. The DVR/HDHR tuners are at my parents' place in Philly and I live in Boston. At my parents' place they have fiber 1gig up/down and in Boston I have 100-200mbps up/down through the ethernet port in my apartment. I have not had a single issue with frame dropping or skipping or anything like that. A quick test shows that the broadcast channels (CBS/ABC/FOX etc.) are about 7-12mbps and cable sports channels (ESPN/NHL/NFL/NBA) peak at 20mbps. The h264 channels (FS2/ESPNDeportes) are a bit less but still a little over that 5mbps limitation you have. You would really need to bump up those speeds in order for it to work smoothly.

I use a Synology DS220 and I have it set to automatically boot when able after unexpected shutdowns. Admittedly, there have only been a couple of power outages in the 3 years I've had it, so I don't know how it would respond to longer or more frequent ones. Also, with tailscale the synology is about as easy to manage remotely as it is locally for non-hardware issues.

#15

Isn’t it possible to simply use ( windows based) web interface and setup as a sounds the ip address of the second HDHomeRun ?

Follow up, if I’m reading the above correctly
You set up a second hdhr and use a computer DvR (does that mean second account?) and then use the tallsvpn to log into the channels dvr?

If possible,on pc web based version can anyone put step by step up for me to try?

I’m trying to use remote ip address as a source vs what is described above ….

Thanks in advance !