HTPC Discussion with meep (Peter)

[garycase]

Thread to continue a discussion between garycase (Gary) and meep (Peter).

 

Feel free to contribute ... this is basically a discussion we were going to have via PM, but were asked to make public.

 

This was my initial post (in a different thread) -- I was interested in the virtualized setup meep has to run 3 HTPCs in a single UnRAID box:

 

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... I'm going to describe what I'm considering and see if you have any comments based on your experience ...

 

I have 3 independent HTPC's => the primary one has 8 tuners (4 dual-tuner Hauppauge 2250's),  8TB of storage for recordings, and is always on (it does all the recording).    The other 2 are only on when we're watching their attached TVs ... which really means we're watching either something that was recorded on the main HTPC or a movie from my media server (an UnRAID server that's also always on).    I've got Cat-6 runs throughout the house, so everything's connected; but if I ran HDMI to all the TV's the runs would be over 100', so I'll just stay with the independent systems.

 

The primary HTPC only has 8TB of storage; but I move anything we want to keep to an UnRAID server that has FAR more (only 24TB at the moment, but easily expandable if needed).    I've been toying with the idea of making that box a v6 UnRAID box and installing Windows 7 (or 10) in a VM to manage the recordings;  but I'm not sure if the Hauppauge cards will pass through okay.    I'll probably test that this fall, as I can't really do much testing on the "live" system, since my wife seems to ALWAYS have something scheduled to record    [You'd be surprised how much you can record when you can record 8 channels at once and have virtually unlimited storage => we don't come CLOSE to watching it all ... but if somebody says "Have you seen this new series?" we can almost always say, "Oh, we haven't, but we have it all recorded, so we'll have a look !!"]

 

Did you have any issues passing tuners through?  ... and were there any bandwidth constraints if/when you did that?  How many channels do you record at once?    I presume you record to a dedicated non-array drive ... is that correct?    I'm thinking that if I make the main HTPC an UnRAID box, I'll have everything record to a 1TB SSD, and then move all of a day's recordings to the array overnight.  That would certainly eliminate bandwidth issues for recordings; and 1TB is FAR more than we'd ever record in a day => I may even make the moves only apply to recordings more than a few days old, so stuff we record/watch/delete (news programs, talk shows, etc.) wouldn't get moved if we'd already watched them.

 

 

[meep]

Hi Gary

 

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you - it's been a busy few days at work.

 

So you're currently running a set of discrete HTPCs with distributed tuners and local storage with manual transfer of content to unRAID.

 

Given your cable runs, this makes sense. HDMI won't really work over those distances so a centralised set of VM HTPCS won't work as well as it does for me (unless you get into HDMI over ethernet).

 

You're thinking of setting up a VM for tuners is getting closer to my set up;

 

I have a single windows 7 VM on my unRAID server which manages all the recordings. I have a Digital Devices Octopus (http://www.digitaldevices.de/english/Octopus_PCIe_Bridge.html) in the machine passed through to this VM. This is a really nice system that uses a single PCIe x1 slot for an adapter which then supports up to 4x additional tuner cards, each of which has dual DVB-T/c or DVB-S2 tuners allowing for a maximum of 8x tuners.

 

I've had no trouble at all passing this device through to the VM, setting up drivers etc. It works really well. I don't imagine you'd have any problems with your Hauppauge cards but you'd need to test.

 

Unlike you, in my set up, all my cards are in the same machine. One central 'tvserver' schedules and manages all recordings. I use ArgusTV as my PVR software of choice as I've found it to have the best series record support and most flexible scheduling config.

 

My Win7 TVserver VM has 16GB of memory allocated. 12GB of this is set up as a Ramdisk and assigned to ArgusTV as the time shift disk. (http://mediaserver8.blogspot.ie/2014/08/ramdisk-for-timeshifting.html). This means that whenever someone tunes to a live TV channel, it's written to RAM on the TVserver and streamed from there. This is the fastest way I can find to do it.

 

I've got a 'Recordings' share set up in unRAID, set to use the cache drive. When ArgusTV is recording, it saves there. Although the TVserver mounts this as a network drive, as the cache drive is an SSD and in the same physical box as the VMs, it's super fast. Content is automatically transferred to the protected array overnight thanks to unRAIDs mover functionality.

 

Overall then, I have a centralised PVR setup with reasonably fast timeshift and recording with automated transfer to protected storage. I like this  setup as it means that all clients have immediate access to both live TV and all recordings instantly (you can watch a recording in progress from any client, for example).

 

In terms of clients, I have a mix of VMs and physical machines. As noted in the original thread, I'm lucky in that 3x of my screens are within easy cable runs of my unRAID server so I can have HTPCs driving those screens virtualised. For screens further afield, a low-power, low storage physical machine connected to the network is all that's needed as the client machines have no requirement for tuner cards etc.

 

I use MediaPortal as my client software of choice. I used to be a Plex head but the frustrating lack of any support for liveTV forced me to look elsewhere.

 

ArgusTV integrates well with MediaPortal and the image quality of TV content in MediaPortal is miles ahead of Kodi.

 

So far, I've not encountered any issues with recording or playback performance. However, even though I have 6x tuners available, I've never had all 6 in action at the same time. 3 or 4 would be the max. (A couple of TVs watching different live channels and a couplem of recordings in the background).

 

The only issue I have right now is an occasional 'freeze' of live TV. It can be rectified by hitting 'stop' and then re-selecting the channel. It's an annoyance more than anything and as recordings are unaffected,  I'm not super-motivated to fins the root cause. (I suspect something to do with ArgusTV timeshift file size settings but I'm not sure).

 

I've been tinkering with whole-house PVR systems for over 10 years. I've been through most solutions from SageTV through Plex, Kodi, NextPVR etc. etc. The setup I have now is probably the best I've had (though I'm looking forward to what happens with SageTV when Google open source it). t would be much easier to just subscribe to SkyTV and be done with it but I love the tinkering and where else can you get a system with 8x tuners, virtually unlimited storage, unlimited multi-room support and the ability to chose what updates/features get applied?

 

 

Peter

[garycase]

Interesting setup.  I'll have to look at Argus "one of these days" [= in the fall/winter after our summer travels]

 

All of my tuners are also in the same box (the main HTPC).  The other HTPC's are simply used as clients and don't have any tuners [well, actually one has one tuner "just because"].    All of the recordings are on either the main HTPC or the UnRAID store ... so I simply have those 2 locations set as the media locations for all of the systems.    All the PC's run Windows 7 Media Center, which works fine for this.  The only frustration is you can't watch Live TV from one of the clients -- but that's a minor issue, since (a) we almost never watch anything live; and (b) you CAN watch live TV on any of the TV's, since they ARE TV's ... you just can't pause/rewind/FF the live TV except on the main system.    I'll definitely have to look at Argus, however ... if only for that capability.

 

The main HTPC is an i7-4790 with 16GB;  the clients are somewhat less well endowed ... but still pretty nice setups.  One's an i5 with 8GB; the other is a ultra-low power Atom.  Both of the clients are off (actually in s3) when not in case, so they don't draw any appreciable power;  the main one is on 24/7.  I could, of course, distribute the tuners, but don't see any reason to do that, as it would then require a 2nd system to be on 24/7.

 

Works fine.

 

I've also had HTPC's at home for well over a decade (more like 15 years).  Used Beyond TV for a long time - it had a VERY nice interface -- and would probably still be using it if they supported captions (but they don't).    Played a bit with Sage, but basically found that Windows 7 Media Center works just fine; supports captions; is easily shared through the home; and with a simple little 3rd party add-on can support as many tuners as you want to throw at it.  [Tuner Salad]

 

We also almost never use all of the tuners at once (I have ... but it's surprising how often you can get close.  I have Media Center set to always record 15 minutes after a program ends, just in case there are any scheduling delays; so the # of tuners in use can be increased when you have back-to-back recordings.  I also have everything recorded on Sunday evenings set to record an extra hour, so when sports events run long we still have the complete show(s) [This has come in handy a lot].

 

I also record a lot of stuff "just because" -- e.g. we record multiple news broadcasts; several late-night shows; etc. that we generally don't watch [set to keep 5 of them, then just delete them] => so if I read about something that happened or that somebody interesting was on a late night show I can watch it after-the-fact.

 

I'll definitely have to play around a bit with virtualizing the setup ... but the reality is I'll have to build a new system to do that, as our main unit is used so much my wife wouldn't exactly be happy if I was "fiddling" for a few days      I may use the i5 client system to try this out -- it's a pretty nice setup, and I could move a single dual tuner card to it (or just buy another tuner -- I've actually been toying with getting a 6-tuner Ceton cablecard tuner anyway) and then see how it works.

 

Definitely something to play with this fall.

 

 

[garycase]

One question r.e. Argus => does it have a "Watched" setting for multiple users?    It'd be nice to have a record of which shows each of us (wife & I) have watched.

 

Another nice feature that's missing from Media Center would be a "resume on a different system" -- where you can simply continue watching something on a different client without the need to FF to where you were [assuming you remember  ].    Does Argus have something along those lines?

 

[sgibbers17]

I have a windows 8 VM on my esxi server using 2 hdhomeruns and 2 hauppauge dual tuners, argus tv, and recordings get saved to my unraid VM via the cache drive.

 

I have plans to move to unRAID v6 when it goes final instead of esxi.  Than I can just use tvheadend docker and the hdhomeruns and not have any VMs.

[garycase]

Why use the Docker instead of a VM?    Doesn't that eliminate the ability to use the Hauppauge cards?

 

One thing I assume from your current setup is that the Hauppauge cards pass through with no problem - right??

 

[sgibbers17]

Yes the cards passed through no problem in esxi, I can't recall what Hypervisor you are using but esxi works.

 

I don't need the hauppauge cards.  I bought the hdhomeruns in anticipation of moving to a docker.  But if tvheadend doesn't give the the scheduling functions I need I will move to kvm with a window 8 argus tv setup again as I really enjoy argus.  Right now my windows VM only records tv and is a kodi database.

 

When v6 comes out I will have to figure out how to move my esxi VM to kvm first and then setup tvheadend as to have less down time.  I am hoping that I can just convert the esxi VM to something kvm can use without having to reset everything up again. Argus is a pain to setup but is great when it is done.

 

[garycase]

Argus definitely sounds like something I need to look at -- have you guys compared what it does vs. Windows Media Center?  Just curious what I'd gain (and, if anything, lose)

 

[meep]

One question r.e. Argus => does it have a "Watched" setting for multiple users?    It'd be nice to have a record of which shows each of us (wife & I) have watched.

 

Another nice feature that's missing from Media Center would be a "resume on a different system" -- where you can simply continue watching something on a different client without the need to FF to where you were [assuming you remember  ].    Does Argus have something along those lines?

 

Gary

 

I can't say with certainty that has multi-user tagging - I've never needed such a feature so just don't know.

 

It certainly does allow resumption - or at lest the integration with MediaPortal allows it.

 

 

[garycase]

Thanks -- I'll just have to install it and play around a bit.    Likely going to be a while, as we're going to be gone for a good bit during the next 4 months.

 

[sgibbers17]

Argus has many more features  than WMC.  The major draw bake to WMC is that you can not directly save recordings to a network path only local storage, ther are ways around this like symbolic links to make WMC think it is saving to a local drive.  Another feature that I use on argus that I love that WMC does not have is record episodes once so if you want to watch a show that is syndicated that you haven't seen before it will record new and repeat shows if that episode was not previously recorded.  WMC can only record new only (so if you missed the first showing the second showing will not record even if it is an encore later in the week) or all episodes.  Argus is also free, WMC is not unless you have windows 7.

 

WMC is far easier to setup,  argus has a large leaning  curve and you have to find your own EPG XMLTV grabber if your provider doesn't include one in the signal (usually only 3 days worth in the USA).  I use webgrab+plus witch also has a hight learning curve.

[lionelhutz]

Gary - Similar question to you as you asked sgibbers17. Why convert the HTPC to unRAID so you can run W7 as a VM? Bigger plans to run other stuff that requires dockers or more VM's?

 

If I was in an area with more ATSC channels available I'd probably play with TVheadend feeding Emby. I like where Emby is going but I think you'd find it to immature for reliable heavy family use. But, it does have the resume watching anywhere feature.

 

[garycase]

Gary - Similar question to you as you asked sgibbers17. Why convert the HTPC to unRAID so you can run W7 as a VM? Bigger plans to run other stuff that requires dockers or more VM's?

 

Just because 

 

... No real reason other than I've toyed with combining the "tuner farm" with storage for a while.  I've actually debated between doing a VM for primary recording HTPC [w/UnRAID v6] or just adding a RAID-6 array to my existing setup.

 

I've also been thinking for a while about trying other media player alternatives ... so I'm going to go ahead and build a fairly potent system independent of what we're actually using so I can try various alternatives without upsetting the spouse by having things changing until I've decided just which system I think we should change to; and having the ability to let her try that while still having the old system available.

 

... This, of course, also has the side benefit of "justifying" a nice new 80" screen for my spare room    [Gotta have a display for the new system -- right??]