Tvheadend bandwidth question - flow of data?

Davor Komljenovic

Hi, can anyone please help me understand how the data will flow in this Tvheadend configuration?

If I have Tvheadend running on Intel NUC (where LibreELEC is running Kodi, which runs Tvheadend PVR client) with 4 tuner HDHomeRun network tuner, and I select a share on NAS as the place for TV recordings, how will the data flow? Everything is connected by gigabit ethernet, in case we need to discuss bandwidth.

Will tv streams flow from HDHomeRun to Intel NUC running Tvheadend then to NAS? Do the streams get temporarily stored on Intel NUC hard drive then they go to NAS? I am trying to understand how the data will flow, is there any chance I will run into a bottle neck in case I want to record 4 HD streams at the same time while also watching at least 1 recording from the recordings stored on NAS?

I just want to see if it is better/more efficient to run Tvheadend on NAS and record directly to the hard disks inside of NAS instead of running Tvheadend on Intel NUC but recordings are stored on NAS over the network.

Hiro Protagonist

Data will flow:

Recording - Tuner -> TVH -> NAS
Streaming - Tuner -> TVH > Kodi

Playing recording - NAS -> TVH -> Kodi

TVH can't tell the difference between local HDD and network shares, so there is nothing stored on local HDD before being sent to NAS.
With gigabit ethernet your proposed scenario will be fine.
While theoretically setting up TVH so that it can record to local HDD would improve efficiency [one less trip over network], you will be far, far short of saturating your network and in practice this unlikely to make any difference.

Davor Komljenovic

Thanks for the answer.

I guess I can first test by having recording share on the NAS and run Tvheadend on NUC. I do not see a lot of negatives except one. If I do it like this, I need NUC to be on all the time. I cannot power down NUC. NAS will be on all the time anyway so running Tvheadend on it would not make a difference in terms of power consumption while it would let me shutdown NUC whenever I don't use it.

However having Tvheadend on NUC allows me to run timeshift directly on NUC.

I will have to test both and see what is better.

Saen Acro

Put solar panel on roof do what you want with your own energy ;)

There is always a positives and negatives, there is no universal solutions'.
NUC idle is less than 10W (3.6-11W) claiming Intel
On other side this is equal to 3.5" HDD consumption.