Client / server or not?

[liteswap]

I'm pondering whether to go client / server. Right now, the sole client in the household, the living room PVR, does it all. I run a backup routine every night after the EPG update to back up the video directory to the server in the basement. I'm wondering whether to:
1. Record / playback directly from the server to save backing it up (and because the PVR OS disk is an SSD and the video recordings disk is not, it could run silently)
2. Set up a virtual server on the server hardware to run nPVR as a server, which would enable the possibility of installing other clients. The server runs 24/7 anyway so there would be no sleep etc issues there. Would this gain me anything else over option 1?
3. Leave things as they are because it works

Thoughts?

[ACTCMS]

This is a topic which is regularly discussed... I've never regretted taking the server/extender route - first with MVPs and now with NMTs - no noise, no fuss - it just works.

Alex

[liteswap]

I thought this would be a regular discussion too but a search (for 'client server' and 'server') revealed no specific discussion of the fundamentals. So I thought it was about time there was one.

[martint123]

I'm firmly with the client/server setup. A couple of NMT's in my case. My server is an old clunker, but it doesn't need any horsepower for what it does. I checked it this morning to see how much processor/USB bandwith was being used with my recent addition of a DVB-T2 USB stick and it was runing at 12% with two simultaneous HD recordings, one nova-t-500 recording an a final Sky recoding via a PVR150. If it had to be a simultaneous client, it would nee more uumph and the cabling would be a mess.

I have a client in the garage and should my server go tits up, this can double as a server but with slightly fewer tuners available.
Considering a refurb NMT is in the price area of fancy video cards, it's a no brainer for me.

[Jaggy]

I've never regretted taking the server/extender route - first with MVPs and now with NMTs - no noise, no fuss - it just works. Alex

I'm 100% in agreement with you there, I went down the exact same route I have also never regretted it.... I now have four NMT's being served by an old ("very old" now I guess in computer terms) AMD 64 3200 computer with only 1Gb of RAM & no real video card or anything fancy in it apart from the cluster of HDD's & it works really really well & didn't cost all that much to setup.

[BrettB]

I'm 100% in agreement with you there, I went down the exact same route I have also never regretted it.... I now have four NMT's being served by an old ("very old" now I guess in computer terms) AMD 64 3200 computer with only 1Gb of RAM & no real video card or anything fancy in it apart from the cluster of HDD's & it works really really well & didn't cost all that much to setup.

I agree, too. I did upgrade my server a couple of years ago to get more CPU power because I typically record multiple HD programs at the same time and use comskip to do commercial detection on them. The recording and playing doesn't take much server power, but the comskip processing of HD recordings (especially mutiple concurrent ones) does.