In my continuing battle against the $70/mo “cable” bill (I have satellite TV, but same guts), I have been pushing both hardware and software at the problem. So far, I’ve tried:
Here’s a short history of recent events.
In November, the Tivo started acting up, so I turned it off, and added an IP TV Tuner (HD HomeRun) to pull down live TV off the air.
To perform the DVR (scheduling, recording) function, I put EyeTV software on the Mac Mini (an older, 2GHz CPU with 2GB of RAM).
To decrease the “hop count” of how far all this data has to travel over the network, I moved the external USB 2.0 hard drive (2TB) to the Mac Mini.
Because the hard drive is now on the Mini, I moved the Plex Media Server (which acts as a file server for movies and recorded TV shows) to the Mini also.
The Mini was also acting as the main Plex client (attached to the TV).
So, this poor little box is doing a lot of work:
– writing up to 2 HD video streams at the same time
– reading possibly many (but generally no more than 1 or 2) HD video streams
– rendering at least one HD video stream to the TV
The Mini was … not doing well… with all this.
So, I tried offloading work from the Mini. I started with moving the Plex Client to a Roku XS (which has a very nice and easy interface).
I became concerned that the weak point (or “one of the weak points”) in the system is the USB 2.0 link between the Mini and the Media drive.
So, I decided to pick up a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. It’s essentially a hard drive with a ethernet cable coming out of it. The hope is that the network will be faster (or more reliable) than the USB 2.0 connection for streaming all those files in and out. Also, hopefully client boxes like the Roku can connect directly to the NAS, instead of going to the Mini first.
After much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair, I landed on the QNAP TS-412 NAS. It has 4 drive bays, and dual ethernet ports. The dual ports sold me, as I can probably find a way to segment my network so that client boxes get their own private connection to the box, and the EyeTV server can have a different one. I also picked up a pair of 3TB Seagate drives.
All of this gear showed up on my doorstep last night.
The NAS box itself looks a bit utilitarian, but setup was a breeze. I really liked all the little extras: it came with 2 bags of screws for mounting drives, as well as a pair of Ethernet cables. I mounted the drives, plugged it in, and did the initial setup and firmware upgrade (downloaded 3.8.1 off of the QNAP website). It turns out that the NAS will do a whole bunch of things that I may or may not use it for; it can be a Surveillance camera hub, run a web server (including MySQL DB), or even be a printer spool for up to 3 USB printers!
There’s a “one touch copy” USB port on the front. I hooked up the 2TB Media drive, twiddled the settings a bit, and started copying files a bit before midnight… this will take awhile.
While files were copying over, I poked around on the box to see if there were any other settings I could try out. And I decided to try an experimental build of Plex Media Server (PMS) that someone had cross-compiled for QNAP.
In short, it worked perfectly. Plex went right in as a new “app” on the NAS, and it started scraping my Movies folder and downloaded metadata and cover art!
I tested the new server from the Plex client on my laptop, and it spun right up.
So now the NAS is becoming the new Plex Media Server for my network! This means that the Mac Mini gets 2 more things offloaded (no USB drive and no PMS), and it’s down to just dealing with EyeTV scheduling and recording (and maybe some Live TV if that’s how we end up doing that).
I will still have to do more testing to make sure that the Mac Mini can handle its ever-lightening load. If it can’t handle EyeTV, I might have to offload that to a different machine (maybe the iMac, or my laptop… or maybe even the NAS box).
In case all else really fails, I might even be able to press the Raspberry Pi into service.
With fits and starts, I limp towards a solution for getting rid of DirecTV forever.
I’ve got a Roku HD that pretty much negates the need to buy any satellite or cable TV service, but then again, we never had pay-TV to begin with. I never understood the Ethernet port on the XS until now, but with the NAS it makes perfect sense.
How much power does a NAS draw when it’s active/idle? I like having Plex, but I don’t want my desktop sucking down juice the whole time I’m watching something. With the small CPU’s I’m guessing they don’t draw much…
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for reading.
The TS-412 came with a power brick rated for 12VDC @10A, or 120W. Compared to the 300W+ supplies in a desktop box, it’s a nice savings.
I haven’t measured the idle current, but the NAS can’t be drawing anywhere near 120W (even at full bore) at the moment — it’s only half full of drives.
The big win for me is that the data doesn’t have to go across the network several times as it would seem to have to if I had the movies on the NAS but PMS on a PC, feeding a client on a third box (Roku or otherwise). This way, it just goes from the NAS straight to the client. w00t.
Getting the family to consciously switch from “live TV” to “streamed TV” has been a struggle. As long as there’s a Live TV feed somewhere in the system, they’ll happily watch Netflix/Amazon/Hulu for weeks without watching any live shows (or even locally-recorded ones). But as soon as anybody wants to “watch the game”, the wheels fall off the bus.
The Tivo was definitely a lot easier to deal with; the interface was grand and even a little kid could drive the remote. I still strive for that level of ease-of-use. I’m getting there.
Be well,
Jimbo