New HTPC recommendations?

[baj1]

Greetings all,

It's been a while and I hope you are all well.  After almost 3 years of work-hell I finally find myself at home for a while with some free time so I'm working on my honey-do list.

NextPVR updates are on that list and while I was digging into that it got me thinking.  While our 9yo HP 1080T PC is still humming along as our NPVR server and family room client, it's still Win7 (with support ending next year) and I'm concerned about how much longer we should rely on it.  My first HTPC (GBPVR), a Dell 9100, only lasted about 6 years running 24x7 before it went flakey, so we're about 1.5x that unit.  I'm trying to be proactive, especially given I have some free time right now.

Any recommendations for a new box?  I generally look for a deal, but it's such a PITA when problems occur (like "drop everything" to fix it PITA), I would be alright spending a little more on it if that improves reliability. 

Honestly I've been extremely pleased with the 1080T, all I've done to it over the years was add a SSD drive for the OS (not really necessary, but I had the drive), up-sized a few of the 3.5" HDDs for increased storage capacity, and recently replaced the case fan.  The 1080T seems to have all I need, an HDMI output, 4x 3.5" bays (and SATA ports), and a 5.25" bay for a Blueray DVD drive.  Anything else I should be looking for in a new PC?

Thanks for your time.

-Brad

[drlava]

Hi, I'm looking at this exact question right now. I've been very happy with GBPVR/NPVR over the past 10 years. I'm trying to decide between an asrock DeskMini A300 with AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with Vega 11 graphics acceleration or a Hystou S200 (aliexpress or similar) i5 8300h based system with UHD Graphics 630.

The AMDs graphics core is vastly superior but there is little accurate info on transcode capability.. ffmpeg supports AMD's hardware accelerated transcode, but not all transcoders do. DOes anyone have experience with the NextPVR transcoder and whether it uses ffmpeg?

[mvallevand]

Is this for a client, or for the backend and client and will you be using it for other apps too?

Martin

[drlava]

For me, this is for the backend and local client, with auto transcode of OTA MPEG2 to H.265, plus other background apps

[sub]

The AMDs graphics core is vastly superior but there is little accurate info on transcode capability.. ffmpeg supports AMD's hardware accelerated transcode, but not all transcoders do.  DOes anyone have experience with the NextPVR transcoder and whether it uses ffmpeg?

When NextPVR does need to transcode (like streaming to the web app), it does use FFmpeg. It has confirmed working hardware acceleration for Intel graphics. The most recent release also include FFmpeg options for AMD hardware acceleration, but still waiting for feedback from users on this. I'm not anticipating any problems on the AMD hardware acceleration support front.

[baj1]

If it helps, I received the following DIY build recommendation on another forum. My big hang-up in the pre-built PC selection was finding something reasonably priced with 4 x 3.5" internal drive bays. I really do like the recommended case for my installation location.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/...n.3564814/

[mvallevand]

H265 is not a good choice if you plan to use NextPVR web as a player. I don't think many user will even have experience with it and quick sync so I would post your question in a Handbrake forum.

Martin

[drlava]

Thank you for the replies! and hi sub, you're a legend. I owe you another donation at this point. If I end up with the AMD option I'll let you know how the transcode performance goes.

mvallevand, this is the feature I was hoping to use from the NPVR wiki: "Recording Auto Transcode ... NextPVR Server will create a replacement for the original recording file when the recording ends using this value for the lines of video in the image. The recording file will use less disk space and less data will be sent across the network when viewing the recording." MPEG2 streams from off the air just take up more space than they should, and h.265 is quite efficient. I don't want to reduce the resolution, just re-encode.

I've never used NextPVR Web, I use the nextPVR app for playback, or an rPi with OSMC and the NPVR plugin to stream to peripheral screens around the house. Would this be an issue with h.265? If not h.265, what do you recommend?

[sub]

The built in 'Recording Auto Transcode' feature transcodes to H.264. It doesn't currently have the ability to convert to HEVC (H.265) at this stage

[drlava]

Ok, that's still a big improvement. Thanks again.