[elsmandino]

Hi,

I have decided to swap out my internal TV tuners far a SAT>IP device, meaning that I no longer need to record to my server.

To save a bit of power/noise, I want to run TVHeadend on a small ARM device, to which I can attach a hard drive, for recording/streaming to multiple Kodi clients on my network.  The device can be left on 24/7.

For various reasons, a RPi3 seems a bit limited in its specs and I was wondering what else might be a better alternative.

Something like a Rock64 or Odroid XU-4 perhaps?

Any pointers would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[tjay260476]

TVheadend can easily run as a virtual machine, that is if you have a NAS or server that’s on 24/7 I did this and works brilliantly. with the vm machine have the virtual disk set as dynamic size, so it doesn’t take over the physical disc

[elsmandino]

Hi, 

I have just read through your signatures and note that you have gone from NPVR on a windows server to TVH on a RPi3 - how are you getting on with that?

Do you record to your server (am I also correct in thinking that you have swapped this from Windows to Ubuntu?) or are you recording to a hard drive connected directly to your RPi3?

[tjay260476]

Originally I had TVH running on the Pi via Libreelec, I thought this was overkill as I wasn't using Kodi on that machine, and although works perfectly well I just moved it to a Virtual Machine on my Server, which is running Ubuntu and TVH.

However, you can install Rasbian Lite onto the Pi, and follow the instructions on my signature as they 'should' work as both Rasbian Lite and Ubuntu are Debian based.

The Pi had an external hard Drive and used that for recording and time shifting, and worked very well, remember the Pi3 is 1.2GHZ Quad Core at 1GB RAM, to give an indication, my Virtual Machine is more limited, Single Core, although 2GB RAM. 

So, in fairness to the little ol' Pi3, it isn't 'limited' as I have TVH on a 'slower machine', just can be cheaper! I think the only limited is how many tuners are on your network, but from what I recall is if two instances of Kodi are watching the same channel, then TVH just uses on tuner and streams to both. I had three instances connected to the Pi, and no lag at all there, and I was recording too if that is anything to go by.

[elsmandino]

Thanks TJay.

Sorry, I misunderstood your setup.

I thought you had swapped your Windows Server to Ubuntu, but I see now that you are running Ubuntu virtually (from within Windows) and then installed TVH that way.

Out of interest, did you consider swapping the full server completely over to Ubuntu?

[tjay260476]

I did, but my email server side of things runs hmailserver which I prefer over dovecot etc. (still Free and Open Source though!), not only that, over 3TB of media to shift over from NTFS to EXT4 is not my idea of fun!

Also with the Hyper-V and virtual machines i can have Ubuntu just running TVH so it's the only program running on that VM and nothing else, hence why I have half jokingly said that running the Pi with Libreelec running TVH/Kodi was bloated! It means I have a Raspberry Pi to play with, at present it is to test v18 before I deploy it to my two Pi's running Libreelec.

In fairness, if you have a Windows 10 machine and your CPU/RAM can do virtualisation/have enough RAM for VM's (only need 2GB for Ubuntu), then I'd say rather than spend out on hardware even a Raspberry Pi in this instance, then do that.

At present my Server has 8GB RAM, 2GB for TVH, 2GB for my Windows Workstation, the other 4GB is for the Server itself just to give an indication on how much you may need.

[mosmos]

I've got a raspberry PI server with satIP receiver and it works just as good as on a traditional pc server.
USB drive powered by PI.
Multiple simultaneous clients with timeshift work ok.
Only function that does not work is transcoding which I don't need.

[elsmandino]

Thank you both - I have a linux-based server that is on 24/7, so the logical thing for me would just to run TVH off that.

However, I am definitely tempted to have a go with a RPi, just for fun.

What external hard drives did/do you both use?

Mosmos - are you using a RPi3?  Also, what SATIP receiver are you using?

[tjay260476]

I used a desktop usb external but pretty much anything usb wise on the Pi would work and it works even with time shifting

[mosmos]

I have a RPi3, a spare 500GB passport which was lying around and a telestar digibit R1.

[elsmandino]

Thanks - I shall give it a go.

One other quick thing - I recently bought an R1 and am having trouble connecting it to my home network.

Have you had any such problems?

I am beginning to think my Netgear switch is to blame.

[mosmos]

Since setting it up, I haven't had issues with the R1 networking.
I only thing I can remember at the time when I first got it was that it didn't like a fixed IP address.
I reserved/assigned its ip address in the router so that it always gets the same address via dchp when it boots.

[elsmandino]

Interesting - I have had no end of problems with getting my R1 set up.

This is the second one I have had as I assumed that the first was faulty and returned it - I now have exactly the same problem.

It just will not connect to my home network when I plug it in to my unmanaged switch but it immediately works when I plug it into my router (I also tried an old router as a switch and it connected immediately to that too).

I have also tried assigning a static IP on my router, doing the same on the R1 itself and also trying DHCP but it makes no difference.

I have also tried about 15 network cables and tried different ports on the switch and the same thing.

I am beginning to think that the switch is somehow faulty but given that it works fine for every other device plugged into it, it seems really strange.

Running out of options now but to try and return the switch on the grounds that it is faulty or just buy a switch from another brand (I have a Netgear GS208).

[fredfred]

At old work location there was this networking guy who did all kinds of things good and bad... we had trouble with SOME clients in a part of the network using DHCP and if I remeber correctly it was something called portfast that had to be on or off in the switch. I have no idea what that is or how to configure it but it might be useful info to you.
*might*
Just trying to help, really have no idea

[mosmos]

Have you tried the custom firmware sat>ip axe?