Mini PC suggestion

[rosede]

My current installation is on my personal computer. I was testing out NextPVR/Kodi to see if this is the direction that I really wanted to go. After a year, I've decided that "Hey, this works great, and I am going to keep it".

My intent is to put NextPVR on a dedicated mini PC. After a bit of research, I am currently leaning towards this guy, Azulle Byte Plus. It has 4GB of ram and an Intel CherryTrail Quad-Core 1.44GHZ CPU.

The reviews on this little guy is mixed. Most of the reviews say for media streaming and viewing, it works great, but if you try to do anything to intensive, then it bogs down. My current installation is an AMD Quad-core 4.2GHZ CPU with 16GB of DDR3 RAM. If I'm watching TV and working on the PC at the same time, I have caused delay's and drops.

This installation will be dedicated to NextPVR. Would you think that it's a powerful enough machine to run NextPVR? I'm not familiar with the CherryTrail processor and I'm just wondering if its enough of a CPU?

Thanks

Daryl

[sub]

What type of tuners were you thinking about using?

The machine should be ok for most NextPVR activities. You wouldn't want to be doing CPU intensive activities like using a soft encoding analog tuner, or watching content via the NextPVR web app (since it requires transcoding).

[rosede]

What type of tuners were you thinking about using?

The machine should be ok for most NextPVR activities. You wouldn't want to be doing CPU intensive activities like using a soft encoding analog tuner, or watching content via the NextPVR web app (since it requires transcoding).

Hello Sub,

I currently use a HDHomeRun Prime. At the movement I use only a single tuner at a time, but I am planning adding additional TV's to the setup, which I would probably use two of the three tuners, on an occasion.

Perhaps I should look at something like this Intel NUC

This little guy has an Intel i5 2.2 GHZ and I can add more memory.

Has anyone else ran NextPVR on a mini PC, or do they all still run on full sized machines?

Thanks

Daryl

[scJohn]

For a client, an Intel NUC: NUC5PPYH would be fine (4GB Ram and a SSD). For the server, I would go with a I3 and a 1 terabyte hard drive doing minimal trans coding. If you are going to doing a lot of trans coding then I would get an I5.

[rosede]

For a client, an Intel NUC: NUC5PPYH would be fine (4GB Ram and a SSD). For the server, I would go with a I3 and a 1 terabyte hard drive doing minimal trans coding. If you are going to doing a lot of trans coding then I would get an I5.

I've been looking over the NUC's on Intel's site. Right now I'm leaning towards an i5. For storage, I'm using my NAS. I have that working currently, and plan to keep. Or, I also have several 1TB drives lying around. I just might get an external USB 3 case for one of those drives and use that instead of the NAS. My NAS works fine for most things, but it isn't 100% reliable. It has been known to hang and I have to power cycle it.

What is the "trans coding"? Sub said the same thing. I don't know if I'm trans coding or not.

Thanks

Daryl

[sub]

What is the "trans coding"? Sub said the same thing. I don't know if I'm trans coding or not.

Transcoding is when NextPVR needs to convert the video from one format to another (like it needs to change the resolution, or change the codec to MPEG2 to H.264 etc). This is fairly hard on CPUs, since transcoding typically needs to be able to continually decode+resize+reencode in faster than realtime.

Transcoding is only required when watching live tv or recordings on the web interface (since browsers only play H.264+AAC), or when streaming to the iOS client app (since iOS devices only natively play H.264+AAC).

A NUC i5 would have no problems transcoding if you needed to.

[rosede]

Transcoding is when NextPVR needs to convert the video from one format to another (like it needs to change the resolution, or change the codec to MPEG2 to H.264 etc). This is fairly hard on CPUs, since transcoding typically needs to be able to continually decode+resize+reencode in faster than realtime.

Transcoding is only required when watching live tv or recordings on the web interface (since browsers only play H.264+AAC), or when streaming to the iOS client app (since iOS devices only natively play H.264+AAC).

A NUC i5 would have no problems transcoding if you needed to.

Thank you for that information. I have decide to go with the NUC i5.

Daryl

[mvallevand]

Comskip also puts a heavy load on the server. From a client perspective, if you think 4K is in your near future you need to consider lots of things like HDMI 2, 10bit, HDR, H/W HEVC and VP9encoding and decoding. For now most broadcast recordings are fine but if you want 4k Netflix or Amazon Prime on Win10 you likely will need Kaby Lake that are just out. Who knows what is happening with 4K STB, fortunately there is so little content it is not an issue today. New devices like Dish's new AirTV might change that as commercial Android IPTV competes with the STB.

Martin

[rosede]

Comskip also puts a heavy load on the server. From a client perspective, if you think 4K is in your near future you need to consider lots of things like HDMI 2, 10bit, HDR, H/W HEVC and VP9encoding and decoding. For now most broadcast recordings are fine but if you want 4k Netflix or Amazon Prime on Win10 you likely will need Kaby Lake that are just out. Who knows what is happening with 4K STB, fortunately there is so little content it is not an issue today. New devices like Dish's new AirTV might change that as commercial Android IPTV competes with the STB.

Martin

What is Comskip?

Daryl

[mvallevand]

What is Comskip?

Daryl

NextPVR has a wiki. http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...ty.ComSkip

Martin