Trying NextPVR...Windows or Unraid?

[snagglewest]

V5 is not cpu intensive if all you're doing is recording and watching live TV from a client like nextpvr.exe in windows or Kodi either directly or via the knewc add-on.  Those clients just play the stream directly which uses little cpu power.  When you start to transcode streams the cpu usage goes up, but the only time you would have transcoding running is if you're watching live TV from the web UI or if you're post-processing videos.  Heck, folks are running the recording service on RaspberryPi's with success which just reinforces the low cpu load as far as recording goes.

I have zero experience with Unraid, but I know it's capable of running docker or even VMs natively.  Even if your Unraid server is a bit under powered, you may very well be able to run V5 in a docker container or even a linux distro VM successfully.  It might struggle with transcoding, but you'd just have to try it to find out for sure.  The up side is you would be recording directly to your NAS  saving the extra step.  And. if you're goal is to reduce the number of machines running and power consumption, you could also use a small single board computer like a RaspberryPI3 for you're Kodi appliance to hook to your TV.

Bottom line - just try it, you might be pleasantly surprised!