Kodi Community Forum

So,

I'm looking at using an HDHomeRun for my tuner (Digital Antenna - no cable or the like), and thinking of using my main gaming PC (Windows 8.1, pretty decent specs, but not earth shattering) to run the PVR backend (Likely MediaPortal, but perhaps Argus... Don't know).

I am concerned, however, that it will take up too many resources, or be otherwise "flaky" while we're doing whatever else (games, internet, videos, ..., ..., ...)

So, how much overhead do these PVR backends take? Need to know before I buy (unfortunately), because if it's too much, I might change from an unRAID server to a Windows 8 server in the basement (using Storage Spaces) in order to ensure that I can run the PVR software there. (Or, maybe some other form of Linux mass-storage combined with a Linux PVR backend... Unsure...)

Thoughts?

I'm running Mediaportal backend on a relatively low powered Celeron G1610 (Win7). Resource usage is low unless you are recording/watching live or streaming to clients/updating EPG.
Having said that, I'm using the Sky-UK EPG grabber which I think is much more resource hungry than normal EPG grabber.
If you plan on streaming to (other) TV clients or recording while gaming, then I suggest a separate box. Otherwise I think you will be ok - worst case you schedule EPG updates for a specific (non-gaming) time of day.

Hmmm. Thanks for the info!

Typically, my gaming time overlaps recording time, typically of 2 streams. It's starting to sound like I'm going to need to switch away from unRAID... Anybody else?

A PVR backend shouldn't require much resources. It is just dumping a stream to disk. No processing required beyond extracting 2 or 3 streams from a mux of many streams and plonking it to disk.

So it is mainly disk IO intensive, and that function is pretty critical.

Frankly I would get a second hand dual core computer and run mythtv. My Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20GHz with 4G ram breaks no sweat recording up to 5 streams at a time off an HDHR. It cost me a couple of hundred dollars (in NZ where IT hardware is expensive compared to the US) plus the hard drives.

Hmmm. Interesting. That matches (mostly) the specs of a laptop I have sitting around. Hadn't considered using that, but maybe I should.

It should be very little cpu, assuming you aren't doing any transcoding or anything like that. Plenty of people running backend on raspberry pi's, atoms, etc...

Its all disk/network io.

indeed, you don't need much if you're not transcoding.

(2014-02-04, 10:04)nickr Wrote: [ -> ]So it is mainly disk IO intensive, and that function is pretty critical.

not really. you only need that when you're recording or doing timeshift. and even then it's only ~12MBit for an average HD stream, and ~2MBit for SD

Plus a lot of database writes on mythtv, perhaps not on other backends.

And of course it depends how many streams you are recording at a time!