New to NextPVR - Asking for recommended setup w/ Emby & Homerun

[casminkey]

Hi all, I'm brand new to NextPVR and really trying to break away from the cable companies. I got a file server (FlexRAID), a server running Emby/MediaBrowser and just got into running a Homerun HD Prime with a cable card. So now I'm trying to get a DVR solution and NextPVR seems like a popular choice.

So just curious what a recommended setup for NextPVR would be?

My file server is fairly weak as far as processor power goes and has a very generic video card so not sure it can handle any sort of high quality encoding. So would it be more beneficial to run it with Emby which has a better video card? If so, should I keep recordings locally or can they be stored on a network drive? Is it better to put it on a dedicated PC? Or is it best to upgrade my file server with better hardware and load NextPVR on that so the drives are local?

Just looking for suggestions on what everyone else does that works best for them.

[johnsonx42]

you don't need much CPU to record, nor much GPU. The data coming from the HD Homerun Prime is already encoded, and is written to disk with no changes.

external functions like commercial detection (comskip) need some CPU power, but not a ton... when you say your file server is "fairly weak as far as processor power goes" what exactly do you mean?

[casminkey]

It's an AMD A4 dual core processor, onboard graphics and 4GB memory. It does what I need it to do but wasn't sure what was needed for recording live tv.

I may give it a shot so I can keep the disk's local.

Thanks for the input.

[johnsonx42]

The A4 should do fine... the A6 I am running is little more than an A4 with slightly better graphics (and mine is running the whole works, both the recording and playback side). I sometimes record 4 or more shows at once while watching another show, and all is well. The only concession I make to having only 2 CPU cores is that I limit the number of simultaneous comskips to two at a time.

[mvallevand]

Emby is a CPU hog though, it can max out my i7 laptop just transcoding live tv from NextPVR but that has nothing to do with NextPVR performance.

Martin

[casminkey]

The A4 should do fine... the A6 I am running is little more than an A4 with slightly better graphics (and mine is running the whole works, both the recording and playback side). I sometimes record 4 or more shows at once while watching another show, and all is well. The only concession I make to having only 2 CPU cores is that I limit the number of simultaneous comskips to two at a time.

How do I setup comskips? I can't find that listed as an option.

Thanks for the info though. I may upgrade the system anyway.

[casminkey]

Emby is a CPU hog though, it can max out my i7 laptop just transcoding live tv from NextPVR but that has nothing to do with NextPVR performance.

Martin

I agree. I originally had it all on the same system and HD video's constantly skipped so I setup another PC just for Emby.

[johnsonx42]

comskip is a 3rd party utility, it's not directly supported by nextpvr. google it. nextpvr client does read the .edl produced by the comskip program, and automatically skips the commercials as marked in the .edl file. however it may be of no use if you're using emby for playback, I have no idea what it does.

you'll find an old but still relevant version of my parallelprocessing.bat/postprocessing.bat file linked in the tech support sticky.