Question on RPI B+ and potentially Synology ds414slim as backend (w/ tvheadend)

Jeremy Lee

Hey guys,

Am new to the idea of using NASes as a backend running tvheadend with an XBMC frontend. I just picked up a RPI B+ and am considering getting a NAS to act as the PVR that records the streams from my older HDHR-US unit.

I was curious to know if anyone else has been running a similar setup and specifically used a ds414slim or ds411slim. These are running the Marvell Arm processors so I was wondering what the performance impacts/limitations are as a backend. My understanding though, is that I could have the RPI running as the frontend interface, with the NAS as the backend which would run tvheadend. Is this a correct assumption?

I'm just wondering if the ds414slim will be able to handle all the decoding etc. I'm looking for a pretty low power consumption solution vs what I have now: a Win 7 pc running WMC. It's relatively power efficient for what it is (considering it's an older quad-core AMD processor) but I'm looking for something a little more efficient. I know Synology sells the Intel processor based NASes, but I was looking for something small form factor and lowest power consumption possible (their slim series seem to fit the bill)

Any feedback on this setup?

TIA!

Rob Thornburrow

I'm not using my system in anger yet since I'm still experimenting, but my current set up is very similar to yours.

My QNAP TS-419P (Marvell Kirkwood 6281, older ARM core than the Armada) runs tvheadend, built from sources with specific ARMv5 flags, and is fed from a SAT>IP tuner and streams to a RPi B+. Although the SAT>IP box has four tuners, I'm currently only using a one of them and the QNAP handles that set up without issues. If I were to use all four, I expect that it'll still cope fine.

Remember that tvheadend doesn't do video or audio decoding - it just records (or streams) the raw data which is only decoded at the point of playback (in this case the RPi) so your concerns will be I/O bandwidth when streaming over networks or to disc for recoding and/or timeshifting.